Mobster's Bones (Mobster #5) (9 page)

Zipping across town, I know deep down that this is not right. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up straight. Gus’s face is a mask. The darkness swallows up the image of his profile, making him seem as though only half of him is with me in this car. The absolute quiet between us is ominous and, along with the din of the engine, makes me jittery. I bite my nail and stare off out the window, regretting my decision to go with him.

“Where are we going?” I let my eyes jut around into the night; with each second that passes I want to take back opening Jake’s door.

This is wrong.

My mind flits to Troy and I hope that he is okay.

              Jake.
What is he going to think when he finds me gone?

“Gus? Where are we going?” I implore. This time he answers me.

“I’m taking you to Antonio.”

“Antonio is here? Why didn’t he come himself?”

“You don’t need to know.”

There is no emotion to his voice but I can tell he is lying. I know that the guys in my neighborhood learn at a young age to pull the emotion out of everything and only share information on a need-to-know basis, but having grown up with it, I can usually decipher what’s going on in their heads. Without my purse, I can’t even call Antonio to find out.

“Let me use your phone. I want to call him.”

Gus presses the button to lower his window. He reaches into his pocket and tosses the phone out onto the road.

“Hey!” I shout. “What did you do that for?” I spin in my seat to see tiny pieces of phone dance onto the street in the faint glow of the headlights behind us.
Dammit!
I glance down feeling grossly defeated when I notice the backseat is covered with a tarp. I tip myself over the seat a little more, stretching. Duct tape and rope sit neatly in the wheel well below the seat.

“Sit the fuck down!” Gus pulls on the back of my shirt. My breaths quicken even more than they were. I turn back around to face forward. Gus is silent.

“Stop the car.” I wanted it to sound commanding but it came out broken.

Gus’s hands contract around the wheel and a muscle twitches in his jaw; he keeps driving, turning on to an exit for the highway, completely ignoring me. His leg presses the gas pedal and we speed up. I grasp the handle on the passenger door for comfort.

Without being obvious, I look around for anything I can use to get myself out of this. There’s nothing here. I close my eyes and search inside myself for the piece of me that isn’t in a complete panic.

“This won’t hurt. And you won’t have to pretend anymore.”

“What?”

“We need to be together. Vito took you away. But I found you. No one is going to take you away again.”

“Are we going home? To Palmetto?”

“No.” He turns from watching the road to glower at me and I feel it all the way to my stomach. “You ruined that.”

“Gus, you’re scaring me. You’re not making any sense.”

“You shouldn’t have told.” Gus’s profile hardens and he punches the dashboard. The sudden movement makes me shriek. “You always thought you were too good for me!” His free hand snakes out and grabs my throat. He squeezes brutally and lets go. “But you’re not.” I grab where his hand hurt me and tears, hot and heavy, prickle my eyes.

Oh my God!

“It’s you!” I have never wanted to get away from someone as much as I want to get away from Gus.

He’s insane!

“You’re a fuckin’ nut!” I screech. “How could you do this to me?” I sit forward, horrified and mad. “How could you do that to my… mother?” The word gets lost in my throat that has suddenly become crowded with a mass of feelings: foolish, betrayed, terrified.

Gus slams his foot down on the gas pedal, and we shoot forward. The engine roars in protest as he weaves and bobs around other vehicles on the road. They become fewer as we speed away from the town.

“Slow down!” I yell. Gus’s movements become erratic. He’s spinning the wheel around in an irregular motion, getting dangerously close to the metal guardrail. I reach out and hold on to my door again.

“Please! Stop!” I cry out. He’s doing it on purpose.
Does he get off in some sick way from scaring the shit out of me? 
“Gus! Stop!” Up ahead is a hill, an overpass, and instead of slowing down for the curve Gus keeps going even faster. “What are you doing? You’re going to kill us!”

“We can be together this way,” he mumbles almost unintelligibly. I can barely register what he’s saying through my own alarm. The car is racing into the night and the seat belt is cutting into me as I attempt to stay upright instead of crashing into the passenger window. He skims the guardrail on the passenger side and misses by only inches. “You want to be with me.”

“You delusional fuck! We were never together!”

“You love me.” His head sways and he regards me coolly. The car slows. “Say it!” he growls.

What the hell?
Gus is deranged on a level that I can’t even imagine. It’s been him all this time. Torturing me! Messing with me! Deep down it’s a relief to finally know that I’m not crazy. That everything I thought I was imagining was happening. But he’s betrayed me, deceived the family and all it stands for.

“I said say it!” Gus’s hand snakes out and his fingers wrap around my neck again. I smash and hit at his elbow, trying to bend it to break his grip. He lets go. I turn in my seat, sitting on my leg. I brace one hand on the dash and the other on the back of my seat.

I suck in a breath and yell, “Say I love you?” I punch the back of my seat while I’m shouting. “I don’t think about you!” I sneer. “You don’t even cross my mind, you sick son of a bitch!” I’m gasping and my throat aches from screaming.  I take a second happy with myself for telling him how it is when his next words make me go rigid.

“Yes. I. do,” he says evenly and it takes me a minute to soak in his meaning. In comparison to the fit I’m throwing, he’s in a deadly calm. “You’ve been thinking about me for months. You haven’t been able to sleep or eat. That’s because of me…” Gus puffs out his chest and points to it. “I did that.”

Is he serious?
I think and my head shakes side to side in disbelief.

“You are so fucked up! There isn’t a psychiatrist on the planet that can help you!”

“It doesn’t matter now.” Gus shoots us forward again, racing against nothing.

“What does that mean?” I plead and I hate sounding childlike.

“Sit back,” he orders.

“What are you talking about?”

The dark landscape becomes less and less populated. Gus jerks the wheel, sending us off the highway and into a wooded area. Branches slap against the car and windshield, thumping and banging. I inhale in terror as I think at any moment we will slam against the trunk of a tree. A fence materializes in front of us and Gus plows right through it knocking it down with a violent crash.

My panic spikes as I wrestle with holding on or covering my face.

“Where are we going!?” I cry out. “Gus, stop!”

He is oblivious to my pleas. I need to get him to stop. The forest opens up to a clearing and I make a rash decision. I unlock my door and fling it open.

“Oh, no you don’t! Bitch!” Gus reaches out before I can jump. He holds on to me—one hand on my arm, the other on the wheel. My right foot is dangerously close to scraping the earth as we struggle.

“Get off me!” I shriek.

“Get the fuck back in here!” Gus lets go of me for a split second. He closes his fist and socks me in the face, sending me reeling. A searing pain shoots down past my eye, stunning me.

My heel skims the ground, picking up chunks of grass and dirt. He yanks me toward him and forces me all the way back in the car. His arm has me in a choke hold as I lie across the seats. My throat is closing in on itself. I cough, gasping. This is it! He’s going to snap my neck.

My legs wave in front of the open door. My favorite high heels are in the air. I reach out with all of my might bending my leg, stretching. Gus is going to tear my head from my shoulders in this position, the pain is searing through my skull. My fingertips scrape the leather and then I rip it off of my foot. With the shoe in my hand, I flip it over and get a good handle on it. Using the tip of the heel, momentum, and the little bit of strength I have left, I slam the heel into Gus’s face behind me.

“Fuck!” he shouts and his hold on me loosens. I scramble to my knees in the tight cab of the car to get away from him. The vehicle swerves and I bang my chin on the seat.

Gus is swearing and yelling at me but the car door opening is a beacon. I need to make it those last few inches. The car jolts again, sending me forward and knocking me against the windshield. My shoe flies out of my hand and out the door without me.

“You fuckin’ bitch!”

I glance at Gus. Blood is pouring down from his eye. I turn away from him and plant my hands on the door frame, watching as the ground speeds by.
I have to jump.

“Shit!” Gus bellows and spins the wheel, but not before we hit a deep embankment. The engine roars in protest and the car rockets down, cracking against rocks and bushes. I can’t hold on and I fall. Gravity takes over and I roll…

down,

down,

down

against my will, unable to stop myself. With each tumble my skin rips on a rock or a branch, slicing me open. I say a prayer wishing it to end. The darkness mixes with my dizziness, making my blindness that much more debilitating. After what seems a lifetime, my momentum slows and the tumbling ends. Stunned, I can’t move. I lay in the same position fate has put me. Time has no meaning as it passes.

Rustling comes from below me. Feet push and mash the underbrush, and my eyes pop open.
Gus!

I will my breathing to slow and I smash my eyes closed, the numbness helping. I should get up and run. Run away from this psycho! I can’t move. It isn’t even an option right now. I do the only thing I can think of.

I play dead.

“Troy.” I hear my name. “Troy.” I slink through the campus trees and carefully preened bushes following the voice. Behind the hall next to mine, I hear a moaning too. I move aside the leafy branches and tucked away against a tree trunk, slumped over is the shooter. The man is huge but apparently no match for Vito since this is the second time he’s taken him down. I blast forward, enraged.

“You fucker! You shot Celia!”

I raise the gun in my hand. I want to shoot him. He tips his marred, bloody face up to look at me.

“Don’t.” Vito materializes. “Not here.” He pushes my arm down so that I lower the gun. “There are too many cops around.”

“Alessandra’s gone!”

“Lower your fuckin’ voice.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” Vito doesn’t lose his cool like I am. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” I run my free hand through my hair, desperate to do something; I’m helpless and angry. Alessandra is gone.

“How did you catch this guy?” I question Vito.

“I heard a shot and saw him running out of the building. I thought he
got
you, man.”

“He shot Celia in the back.”  Saying the words makes it too real.

“I was aiming for you,” the guy Vito captured rumbles through a fat lip. Vito has fucked this guy up pretty bad in the short time I was in the dorm. The smell of sweat and blood hover in the air.

“Me? What the fuck?” I jut forward ready to tear this guy apart. Vito’s hand shoots out, meeting my chest, stopping me.

The guy spits at my shoes. I bounce on the balls of my feet, hyped to hurt this guy. Vito glances around the area then grabs the guy under his bound arms. He takes him further away from the dorm. He tosses him onto the ground in front of the side wall between buildings.

Vito squats down and I see two guns poking out from the rim of his jeans. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a long knife. He grabs the guy by the back of the hair. I’m expecting this guy to spill his guts. He’s been beaten up and now a knife is at his neck.

“You killed my brother!” the thug says. “You buried his fleshless bones in a fuckin’ random hole like garbage!”

Holy shit! I was so not expecting him to say that. He must have seen us with the bag in the woods.
Dammit!

“So that was your brother. That explains why you’ve been fucking annoying the shit out of me.” Vito grins. “You’re like a fly and I’m the swatter.” Vito puts himself closer, eye to eye. “Well… let’s review this. Your brother stole money from the wrong people. He didn’t want to give it back. Stealing is wrong. Rules are rules, right?” Vito takes the guy’s head and nods it for him, then roughly yanks it back. “What do you know? Where’s the girl he”—Vito points to me using the knife—“was with when you shot at them?”

“Who the fuck knows?”

“I think you’re lying.”

“There was a beige car. Whose was it?” I ask, pleased with how tough and calm I sound.

The guy’s face smirks triumphantly up at Vito and he announces, “You fucked up!”

Vito’s eyes narrow dangerously, turning the knife around and around in his hand. He’s thinking. He lays the knife against the man’s neck again.

“Why have you been following
his
girl?” Vito gestures his head at me.

My girl?
Didn’t he just want to beat the shit out of me a little while ago for finding us in bed together?

“I wasn’t.”

“You shot at her at the mall,” Vito sneers.

“I was shooting at this fucker!” he spits in my direction, contempt coating his words. “I made a deal. We both wanted the same things.”

“So tell me about it. Who is
we
?”

“I’m not telling you fuckers anything.” The guy seems to be steeling his resolve because he purses his lips like he’s trying to keep from opening them. Vito runs the knife across the delicate area under his neck, indicating he’s going to slash it. The guy’s bruised eyes go wide.

“I think you should tell me or you’ll end up just like your brother, bones in a hole.”

The man closes his eyes and shakes his head infinitesimally; fear is making him falter.  Deep down this brutish guy is scared.

“I was following blondie over there.” He nods to me. “I didn’t want the bitch. I noticed someone else following them. A skinny kid. He was watching everything they did.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know…” He is wavering. “I think his name was Gus.”

My face twists in question. “Who the fuck is this Gus?”

Vito stands and his jaw goes hard.

“Where was he taking her?” Vito kicks him. “Now!”

“He talked about going far away with her. He said they were soul mates or some sissy shit like that. Up the highway, north I think.” The man’s head hangs like he just gave away government secrets. Vito’s mind is working.

“Come on. It’s all I know. Let me go,” he whines, completely spent and hurting.

Vito startles me by smashing the guy on the head, knocking him out. He puts the knife away and tugs a small roll of duct tape out of his pocket. Ripping off a piece, he fastens it to the thug’s mouth. He leans down and gathers the guy up, hoisting him over his shoulder.

“Your car’s over there. Move.”

I move automatically, doing what Vito is ordering me to.

“We’re gonna leave this guy for the cops.”

“Who’s Gus?” I ask while opening the trunk. Vito lays the guy down in it. I slam it closed.

“Her stalker.”

“What?” I stop, frozen in my tracks. “Alessandra has a stalker?”

“She didn’t tell you?”

I am taken aback. Why didn’t she tell me?

“No. She mentioned something happened with her mother…” I trail off as everything starts falling into place. The guy I saw outside the dorm, at the football game. The dressing room where Alessandra swore someone was messing with her. It wasn’t this guy in the trunk. It was someone else. It had to be this Gus that took Alessandra.

“Get in.” Vito slips in the driver’s seat of my car, and I slam the passenger door shut. I knew there was something going on with Alessandra but I never pieced together stalker. I’m not sure what I thought.

Vito drives us toward the front of my building just far enough away not to be seen. He gets out, pops the trunk, and I watch in the side mirror as he lays the guy in the grass, bound and duct taped, ready to be found.

Vito gets back in the car, taking an access road that leads off campus, avoiding the all of the police cars.

“How are we going to find her?” Helplessness overtakes me, and I punch the dashboard.

“Gus is going to take her somewhere remote.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know how he thinks. He’s…in the ‘family.’”

“So, let me get this straight. Alessandra’s stalker is in the Mafia. She knows him?” I can’t believe it even when I say it. “Do you know how fucked up that is?”

“We grew up with him.”

“And you didn’t know he was capable of this?”

“We’re all capable of anything. None of us knew he was the one stalking her. Don’t you think I would have fucking killed him if I did?” Vito’s words stun me.

Yes. I trust that he would have.

Vito drives us onto the highway and we’re both quiet. We’re both thinking the same thing. What if we’re too late? This guy must really be a deranged whacko. The fact that he has been raised like Antonio and Vito makes him that much more unpredictable and inevitably lethal.

“I really don’t see how going in a general direction is going to help us find her.”

Vito takes his phone out and fiddles with it while his driving. Over its speaker, there is a lot of talking and what sounds gibberish to me. Then I understand what it is.

“You hacked the police scanner?”

“Yup.”

I listen intently, trying to make out what they’re saying.

Female:
Beige sedan reported driving to endanger off Highway Seventy-five near Vine.

“Plug that into your phone.”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and type into the GPS. The graphics on my screen spin and zoom in.

“We’re ten minutes away.”

Vito accelerates with a mission, having a clear destination. I hope it’s their car they’re talking about. The anticipation of finding Alessandra and seeing her safe is enough to make my heart burst from my chest.

The thought of her dead is enough to send me over the edge.