Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (32 page)

“Did I hear you right?” Lia whispered as her eyes looked to mine.  “Did you just say what I think you said?”

I ran my tongue over my lips and nodded.

“I love you,” I said again.  “I love you, Lia Antonio.”

Her eyes brightened with her smile.

“I love you, too, Evan Arden.”

I took a shuddering breath and listened to the words play over and over
again in my mind.  The sound was the most beautiful music I had ever heard.

“No one’s ever said that to me before,” I said as the realization
bounced around inside my head.

Lia’s eyes widened.

“No one?”

I shook my head.

“I remember a lot of shit about how God loved me,” I told her, “but no one ever saying it…not like that.  The God shit, well…let’s just say that considering what He’s put me through, God can pretty much fuck off.”

Lia’s fingers ran down my cheek with a sad smile.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.  “I think maybe He brought me to you, so I can’t be too mad at Him for the other stuff.”

For a long moment, we stared at each other without speaking.

“No more of this shit,” I finally said.  My hands cupped her face, and I stared into her eyes.  “I’m done with it—all of it.  We’re getting the fuck out of Chicago as soon as possible.”

Lia nodded her agreement, and I kissed her again.  That action led to another kiss, and before long
, I had to force myself to part with her to make good on my promise.

“I have to get you somewhere safe
—somewhere you can be protected.”

I instructed Lia to get her seatbelt back on as I picked up the phone and
tapped a couple of numbers on the screen.

“I have her,” I said when
Rinaldo answered.

“She’s alive?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I need a safe place for her,” I told him.

There was a long pause.

“You going after Davies?” he asked.

I was going to have to tell him everything about Trent…or Davies
—whatever his name was—but I didn’t want to do that yet.  I needed to know something first.

“Do you have a problem with that, sir?”

“He was just doing a job,” Rinaldo said.  “A job I requested.  Are you coming after me, too?”

“No, sir,” I said.  “And yeah, it was a job.  Consider retribution an occupational hazard.”

I heard a sigh come through the phone.

“All right, son,” Rinaldo said, and I felt my heart start to beat faster.  “Bring her to my house.  Luisa can stay with her.”

Much of the tension inside of me subsided, knowing he would be behind me on this even when he didn’t know everything yet.  I would tell him when I could do it face-to-face, but knowing he was going to back me up on killing someone he thought was on his side was all I really needed to know.

“Thank you, sir.”

I drove to his house with Lia’s hand grasped in mine.  I didn’t want to lose contact with her if I didn’t have to—not for a second.

Nothing would make me leave her unprotected again.

Rinaldo opened the door himself before we had even exited the car.  His driver came around from the garage and took the keys from me, and I
grabbed my duffel bag in one hand and Lia’s arm in the other.  I led her up the marble stairs of the mansion, between two huge, white columns, and through the front door.

“This must be
the one,” Rinaldo said quietly as he looked over Lia.

Other men might have been angered by his scrutiny of her, but I saw it immediately for what it was.  He wanted to see her
—
know
her—and evaluate her worthiness.  Would she be loyal and keep his secrets?  Would she be good enough for his valued hit man?

I looked to Lia, clenched her
arm lightly, and nodded.

“Lia, this is Rinaldo Moretti.  Rinaldo, Lia Antonio.”

“A pleasure,” Rinaldo said as he shook her hand gently.  “Apologies for the contract I put out on you.  Mister Arden and I may have had a bit of a misunderstanding.”

He looked at me with coldness in his eyes, and I dropped my gaze.

“Sorry, sir.  I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“We’ll discuss later exactly what your
choices
were,” he said with the same coldness in his voice.  “Now isn’t the time.  We’ve got quite a mess here at the moment.  With Mario dead—a fact I’m half inclined to hold you responsible for—I’m going to need a little assistance.”

The den in Rinaldo’s house was full of people.  He had two of his trusted men with him
—Victor and Matthew.  They stood on either side of him as he sat down in the leather office chair behind his desk.  Luisa was also there, and she took Lia’s hand and sat her on the couch near the bookshelves.  Nick Wolfe was oddly present.  He wasn’t one to deal with a lot of the business stuff, but with Mario and a handful of others gone, Rinaldo obviously thought he was needed.

Even
Nick’s Russian piece of ass was there.

Milena Severinov watched me carefully
from where she stood next to Nick.  I hadn’t seen her since that night of drinking at Sweetwater and an
almost
confrontation with her brother, Micah.  I walked past them both as I sat on the other side of Lia on the couch.

She was looking around
at the grandeur of the room and was clearly impressed and intimidated by the display of extravagance.  Luisa whispered something to her, which made Lia smile and her cheeks turn slightly pink.  I reached over and ran my hand down her arm before taking her hand and looking at Rinaldo.

“We’ve got all-out war here, boys,” Rinaldo said.  The obvious addition for three women in the room didn’t stop him from using the term.  “Greco’s gunning for us, the Russians are now gunning for him, and they’re all after my enforcer.”

He looked at me pointedly.

“In other words, we’ve got a big fucking mess.  Business is going to suffer, and I’m low on killers and protection.  At the same time, there are fewer and fewer people I can trust.  On top of that, Mister Arden here seems to think I need one less guy around.”

“He was doin’ a job,” Victor pointed out.  “If you’d been around and the same contract came out, you’d kill a chick.”

“Not for fifteen G’s,” I replied.  “What you got is a cheap
, piece-of-shit killer.”

“You
still gonna take out my guy, huh?”  Rinaldo was never one to beat around the bush.

I wasn’t either.

“You mean the fed I’ve been working with,” I said simply.

Rinaldo raised an eyebrow.

“Agent Trent and Kyle Davies are the same person,” I informed him.  “He’s the one who wanted to set you up initially but agreed to let me give him Greco instead.  That must not have been good enough for him if he moved to infiltrate your crew as well.  I don’t know exactly what his game is yet, but he’s not on your side.”

I looked over to Lia and added, “Or mine.”

“How do you know this?” Rinaldo asked.

I lifted my chin
toward Lia.

“She’s seen him,” I said.

Rinaldo looked over to her, and Lia looked down to where our hands were clasped together and bit at her lip.  I gave her hand a bit of a squeeze, and she looked over to me.

“Tell him,
” I said.

“
He’s the same one,” she answered quietly.  “He was at our apartment, arguing with Evan a while ago.  He’s the one who…who kidnapped me.  He shot Odin, too.”

“Holy shit,” a voice said from the door of the den.

We all looked up as Jonathan Ferris entered.

“What is it?” Rinaldo asked.

“You guys are talking about Kyle Davies—the big bald dude?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Why?”

“Because he’s the one who helped me get your shit out of lockup,” Jonathan said.  “Your rifle and phone—he’s the one who had someone on the inside sign it all out for us.”

My skin went cold and
broke out in goose bumps.  I didn’t think about my actions; I just reached down to the duffel bag at my feet and brought my Barrett out in pieces.  I examined each piece in detail, paying special attention to those parts that didn’t require cleaning on a regular basis.

Inside the scope, I found it
—a tiny piece of plastic with a bit of metal at the end was stuck on the inside of the sight, away from where it would be seen looking through the scope.

“GPS,” Jonathan confirmed when I handed it to him.  “Damn small little bugger, too.
  What-cha-ma-nuts has his resources, no doubt about it.”

“What-cha…who?”
Victor shook his head and glared at Jonathan.

“Whatever his name really is.”
  Jonathan placed the device on the tile floor by the fireplace and smashed it under his heel.

“That’s how he kept finding me,” I realized.  I looked to Lia.  “That’s how he knew where we
were when we changed apartments and how he knew I was coming for him at the warehouse.  The Barrett was always with me.”

“How would
Kyle know what weapon you always have on you?” Nick wondered aloud.

“How, indeed?”
Rinaldo echoed.

Jonathan had his laptop out a second later, and his fingers flew over the keyboard.
  Everyone else sat in silent contemplation while he worked.  After only a few minutes, he looked over to me.

“Hey
, Evan—does the name
Keith
Davies mean anything to you?”

“Yeah,” I responded.  In my head, everything began to focus
, and all the parts of the last few weeks began to merge together.  I thought the names had to be a coincidence, but they weren’t—they were the key to everything.  “Marine.  Infantry.”

“Captured about the same time you were.”

“Right before,” I said.  “Trent…Kyle—whatever the fuck his name is—he’s his brother, isn’t he?”

“You got it.”

“He blames me,” I said.

“For what?”
Lia asked.

“Keith Davies was the guy who was nearly court-martialed for giving away our
position when I was captured,” I told her.  “It was my testimony they were going to use against him.  He took the option of being dishonorably discharged instead.  There wasn’t a lot of evidence against him but definitely some suspicions.  No one was ever really sure if he was working for the insurgents or not, but my statements at the debriefing had them checking into him.”

“He killed himself eight months ago,” Jonathan said.
  “It says here his brother was once an FBI agent, but he left the agency a couple years ago.”

Keith Davies’ suicide
would have been just a couple of months before I had my little episode and would have given his brother plenty of time to find me and work on a plan of revenge.

“What did he say to you?” I asked Lia.
  “Tell me what happened when he came to the apartment.”

Lia shifted in her seat and took a deep breath before she spoke.

“I was in the bedroom,” she said, “reading a book, and Odin started growling.”

She looked up
at me, and I could see the tension around her eyes as she spoke.

“I’d
rarely heard him growl before, and I started getting worried.  He got up and went to the door of the bedroom.  That’s when the front door burst open, and he was there.”

“Davi
es?” Rinaldo asked for clarification.

Lia nodded.

“I knew right away,” she continued, “I knew there was something wrong.  His eyes—the way he looked at me and kept smiling, even when…when…”

She took in a sharp breath
, and I rubbed the back of her hand.

“Go on, babe,” I said softly, though the inside of me was ready to start screaming and breaking a few things.

“I picked up that gun you gave me,” Lia said to me, “and I…I tried to do what you said, but I couldn’t.  I couldn’t pull the trigger—I got the safety off, but I just couldn’t do it.”

“Great match for you there, Evan,” Victor snorted.

“Shut the fuck up,” I growled back at him.  I looked back to Lia.  “What did Davies say?”

“He pointed a gun at me and
told me to drop mine.  Odin was still growling, and my hands were shaking.  He yelled at me to drop it again, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I dropped it.  He came into the bedroom, and Odin went after him.”

She paused and her eyes brimmed over with tears.

“He was trying to protect me,” she sobbed.  “He jumped at him, and I heard his gun go off twice.  Odin dropped down in the doorway, and he just kicked him and walked in.  He tied me up, went through everything, and the next thing I knew, he was dragging me out.”

“Motherfucker,” Jonathan grumbled.  “I liked Odin.”

Lia started crying harder, and Luisa took hold of her other hand.  I was just barely holding it together, trying not to imagine the scene in my head.  If I did, I was going to lose it, but some of it sank in anyway.

He was a damn fine
guard dog after all.

My throat tightened up on me, and I turned my attention to
Rinaldo, who looked over to Matthew.

“Go tell Howard to retrieve the body of Mister Arden’s dog,” he said.  “Have him take a crew to clean up the apartment as well
.  Leave no trace.”

“Yes, sir.”

Matthew left the room.  By the time he returned, Lia had composed herself again.

“Go on,” Rinaldo encouraged her.

“He had these little plastic strips which he put around my wrists.  He had the gun in my back as he pushed me into a car outside the apartment building.  I was trying to watch where we were going, but I couldn’t figure it out—I don’t know the city very well.”

“Did he take you straight to the
warehouse, where I found you?”

Lia nodded.

“The whole way, he kept saying how much he was going to enjoy making you suffer, Evan.  He said he’d been planning it a long time and he couldn’t wait to see your face when you found me.”

I swallowed and looked out
toward the window for a moment.  The flickering image of the bomb kid was there in the glass, but I didn’t acknowledge him.

“He took me inside,” Lia continued.  “He kept laughing and telling me he wasn’t sorry it was going to hurt because he wanted you to suffer everything I suffered.  He said he was going to kill you eventually but not until you’d paid for what you’d done.  I kept asking him why, but he never told me.”

She took another breath.

“He pushed me down on the floor inside that room.  That’s where you found me.”

“I found you in a chair,” I reminded her.

Lia just shrugged as she looked away from me.  My eyes met Rinaldo’s, and I could see my expression reflected in his face.

She was hiding something.

“What happened?” I pressed.

“He put me in the chair when he figured out you were coming,” she said.

“What about before that?”

Lia was jumpy and kept looking away from me.  I reached over and took her chin in my hand to force her to look at me.

“What did he do?” I
asked.

“I told you
.  He pushed me down on the floor.”

“What else?”

“He just…well, he hit me.

“What else?”

“He…touched me,” she whispered, still refusing to look into my eyes.

“Where?”

Her eyes closed, and she shook her head silently.

There was something growing inside of me
—something dark and powerful and deadly.  I watched her face and knew there was a lot more than what she’d already said.  Inside, it felt like my organs were caught up in the beginnings of an earthquake.

“Tell me!” I growled.

Her eyes filled with tears.