Ravenous (26 page)

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Authors: V.K. Forrest

BOOK: Ravenous
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She stared at her father’s handwriting. He had put letters and numbers into the crossword puzzles so that if you hadn’t looked closely, you might have thought he’d just done the puzzle, but after a second, it was obvious to her that he wasn’t doing the puzzle. It all looked like such a mess. Dates, names. She looked up at Liam again, confused. “What is it?”
“It’s Corrato’s handwriting, right?”
She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell Liam it was all a mistake, or that it was Donato’s writing. But this, in her heart of hearts, was what she had feared was true ever since the night her uncle was killed. Now she really couldn’t go to the cops. “It’s his writing,” she said softly.
“These are details of criminal activity: names, places, dates. A
lot
of criminal activity.”
“But this doesn’t make sense. My father couldn’t have been involved in crimes. I’ve lived with him for years. I knew where he was almost every second of the day.”
“But only, what, five years? You said you moved in after his heart attack.”
“Right, but I talked to him every day before that. I saw him three or four times a week. I always knew where he was and what he was doing.”
“Did you know he was investigated by the FBI and met with agents in Philadelphia?”
Anger bubbled up inside Mai. She wanted to scream at Liam, call him a liar. But he wasn’t lying. She could see it in his eyes. In the tightness around his mouth.
“Did my father sell drugs?” she asked in a whisper.
“I don’t think so. The dates follow a pattern fitting what we know about Donato. There’s nothing recorded for the years he was in prison. I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure your father was aware of many of his brother’s activities and was keeping the information in case he ever needed it. A lot of it appears to have been written recently.”
“Why would he ever need anything like this?” She stared at the book, hating it. Wishing Liam had never found it. “Tell me,” she said when he didn’t answer. “Please. I have to know.”
His dark, sad eyes met hers. “Maybe it was insurance to keep you safe.”
Chapter 26
I
n the early hours of Tuesday morning, when it was still black outside, Liam put a call in to a guy who worked at UBS and owed him a favor. Olli Burgin was out for the day, so Liam left a message. Olli was a good guy; Liam liked Swiss vampires. At least for the most part. Once Liam had a chance to talk to him, Olli would look into the origins of the accounts without calling any attention to them.
Liam didn’t sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he lay in his bed with Mai in his arms and the rat terrier curled up at the end of the bed. He listened to the howl of the wind. He remembered lying in another bed, in another time and another place, a woman asleep in his arms, just the way Mai was now.
Roxanne had been the last woman, human or otherwise, whom he loved and she had died because she loved him. It had been the Roaring Twenties: Prohibition, legal opiate drugs, a serial killer stalking the streets of New York City. Roxanne had been a jazz singer on the Upper West Side; they’d met one night when he was stalking the stalker. She’d had the smokiest voice, and a laugh that he could hear even now, when he closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to let her get tangled up with his investigation. He hadn’t meant to love her. He hadn’t meant to make that tiny misstep that night. He hadn’t meant to hold her lifeless, battered body in his arms.
As the sun rose, casting faint light in the bare room, Liam looked down at Mai’s sleeping face and promised himself he wouldn’t fall in love with her. He told himself that as long as he didn’t love her, he would make no mistakes and Mai would survive this.
When full morning came, Mai and Liam showered and dressed and sat down to a breakfast of cold cereal. But even though she poured a bowl, she didn’t eat. She just drank her coffee, staring at Prince, who sat by the door that led downstairs.
“You think he needs to go out?” she asked. Those were the first words she’d spoken since she woke.
“I took him out while you were in the shower.” Liam ate a bite of Rice Krispies, trying not to think about the fact that he’d bought the box for Corrato.
“He’s waiting for Dad.”
“Probably,” Liam agreed.
She pushed back from the table, leaving her bowlful of soggy Cheerios. “So what do we do today? We wait?”
“We wait,” he said. “The Weasel will contact us.”
“But he hasn’t yet.”
“He will. He’s just trying to wear on us. It’s how it’s done.”
“
It’s how it’s done,
” she repeated sarcastically. “Because you know
how this is done,
don’t you, Liam?”
He assumed her question was rhetorical. He let her go on.
“You’ve done it before. Dealt with kidnappers, drug dealers, murderers. Something like that. I knew it.” She slapped the kitchen table. “I knew you were too good to be true.”
He pushed his bowl aside, no longer hungry. “I never promised you anything, Mai. Except to help you.
You
came to me.
You
asked me for my help.”
She surprised him with the faintest smile. “I did ask for your help. I asked you because I knew in my heart that if anyone could help us, it was you, only you. And you’re right. You never promised me anything but that,” she whispered. “But I hoped. A girl can hope, can’t she? That there really is the right guy out there? A man you can trust?”
He forced himself to meet her gaze despite the emotions that twisted his gut. What he wouldn’t have given at that moment to be standing in a cold alley alone somewhere instead of sitting in the warm kitchen with her. “You can trust me.”
She exhaled slowly and glanced at the dog waiting at the door. “You think the Weasel will contact us today?”
“Probably.” He got up, taking their bowls with him.
“And while we wait?” She sipped her coffee.
“While we wait . . .” He dumped the bowls and rinsed them. “We start sorting jewelry.”
“We
sort jewelry?
”
He watched the milk turn watery as it went down the drain. Rice Krispies swirled, pooled, and were swept away. “It’s better if you keep busy. It helps pass the time.” He saw a flash in his head of the hours he had waited in that Paris apartment, waiting for darkness to fall, waiting to pay that visit to the Gaudet brothers. It had been some of the longest hours of his life. “You can stay up here if you’d rather. I can do it alone.”
She rose from her chair, taking her cup with her. “And miss the opportunity to size rings? No way.”
Downstairs in the shop, Liam opened the blinds so he could keep an eye out for anyone who approached the building. It was a cold, gray day and when he went outside midday to walk the dog, he smelled snow in the air. It didn’t usually snow in early November in southern Delaware, but snow approached from the west, nonetheless.
Kaleigh was at the front door, tapping on the glass, before four. Welcoming a break from the boring task of sorting hundreds of pieces of jewelry, some worthless, some worth small fortunes, he unlocked the door and let her in. “How was the quiz in calculus?”
She wore her backpack and carried a small brown box. “Sucked. I got 110 percent. You know it’s starting to snow out there?”
He locked the door behind her. “How the hell do you get 110 percent?”
“Extra credit.” She walked over to where Mai sat cross-legged on the floor, her back up against the counter. The rat terrier slept beside her, curled in a ball like a cat. It was such a dark, dreary day, they’d put several lamps on the floor, running a tangle of extension cords to several different outlets.
“Expecting something good? I ran into the UPS guy on the corner. He asked me if I could bring it, since I was going this way.” Kaleigh tossed the box into Mai’s lap. “It was at the door. Hey, cool earrings.” She dropped her backpack and crouched to pick up a pair of paste diamond chandelier earrings from the forties.
“It’s for me?” Mai turned over the four-by-four-inch package, wrapped in brown paper, to read the address. “It can’t be for me. No one—” She looked up at Liam.
Kaleigh looked from Mai to Liam and froze. “Shit,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. I—”
“Give it to me, Mai.”
Mai held the box tightly for a second. “It’s not a bomb, is it?”
He held out his hand.
Mai got to her feet and slowly handed over the box. “Maybe I should open it.”
“I don’t think so.” He turned it over, checking every side. It was addressed to Mai, with his street address, but there was no return address, of course.
“Should I take Mai upstairs?” Kaleigh asked, chewing on her lower lip.
“No.” Mai’s voice trembled. “He can open it, but I stay. It’s
my
dad missing.
My
dad who created this mess.”
He went to the counter, found a pair of scissors, and took his time cutting off the paper. He knew he had to open the box, but he didn’t want to. The flaps of the small cardboard box were sealed with packing tape. When he opened them, the first thing he saw was a smear of blood on the crumpled paper towels inside. He glanced away for a minute.
“What is it?” Mai demanded, her voice shaky.
Kaleigh grabbed her shoulders to hold her back.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Liam swore when he pushed back the paper towel. Inside was Corrato Ricci’s wedding ring. Still on his finger.
Two hours later, Kaleigh remained upstairs with Mai, making her a cup of tea, while Liam took the dog outside. The thing about having a pet was that, even in a crisis, it still had to pee. Liam didn’t bother with the leash. He just carried the little guy down the steps and deposited him in the grass that was slowly becoming covered with snow. There was no way the dog was going to take off; Liam was sure of it. The dog had come back to him because it expected Liam to find his master, and the Prince of Dogs wasn’t going to let him out of the obligation.
Liam looked up and down the alley as he flipped up the collar of his leather jacket against the biting wind. He didn’t sense any humans nearby, but how long would it be before they came if they didn’t get what they were looking for?
When Liam’s phone rang, he hesitated before answering it. It was inside his coat. With Corrato’s finger, which was now in a Ziploc bag. It wasn’t that Liam really wanted to carry the guy’s finger around with him; he just didn’t want to leave it in the apartment or the shop where Mai could find it if she got it in her head that she needed to see it again.
Prince whined, looking up at Liam. The dog obviously wanted him to answer the phone.
“Okay,” he muttered. Snow was beginning to sting his face. The wind had shifted and he turned his back to it. “Fine, I’ll answer it.”
It was a cell phone number with a New York City area code. Liam knew who it was before he answered. “You forgot to block the phone number,” he pointed out to the caller.
“I intended for you to see the number,” the old man on the other end of the line said. “So you could give me a call back, after you chat with your girlfriend. Disposable phones. Nearly untraceable. Wonderful technology.”
“You found us through Anthony.”
“Lucky break, him finding me.”
“You shouldn’t have done that to him.”
“He shouldn’t have been so stupid. He was a braggart. Had he kept his mouth shut and just chatted with me, he’d have probably learned all you wanted and I’d have been none the wiser.”
Liam knew the Weasel was right; that didn’t make it go down any easier. But he hadn’t called to talk about Anthony. “Is this the part where you tell me that Corrato will lose more than a finger if we don’t come up with the diamonds?”
The old guy chuckled, then coughed a smoker’s cough. “Something like that.”
Liam could just imagine the Weasel smoking a fat cigar as he talked. “And if I tell you she . . .
we
don’t know where they are?”
“If you told me that, I would tell you that would be a terrible shame, Corrato Ricci dying for a bunch of rocks.
My
rocks.”
Liam picked up the dog. It was shivering, but he didn’t want to take the phone call inside and risk Mai overhearing him. After a second’s hesitation, he stuffed the rat terrier inside his coat. With the finger. “Corrato okay?”
“For now. Tough old bird.” Machhione coughed again. “Got a lot of fight in him.”
“What if they really don’t know where the diamonds are?” Liam demanded. “What if Donato sold them years ago?”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about taking something that is mine. Old beef. Donato never sold them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because the bastard told me so. Right before my guy held him down and I slit his throat,” he growled.
“Guess your temper got the best of you. The truth of where your diamonds are might have died on the floor of that antiques store. You think of that?”
“You’ve got two days.”
Liam knew the call was just about over. “Wait. What if we do find them? If I bring them to you, will you really let Corrato go?”
“I said it wasn’t about money, but it’s always about money. You bring the diamonds, you get the old man. You don’t bring me the diamonds, the old man dies, slowly. Then we come for the daughter. You can get me at this number for the next two days. After that, I come find you.”

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