“If we’re ready for it, then it’s not that good of a trap.”
She huffs but doesn’t disagree.
I don’t want to throw myself into a setup. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life hiding.
I’m not exactly sure how to make that possible with all the different people out there who would love to kill me. But I can’t give up the woman at my side. Can’t give up how she makes me feel.
“Alright, I’ll send you what we get for any upcoming deal in North America. As soon as you have details on the dead guy, send them my way.”
“Will do.”
“When are you dropping the body off?”
The mile marker sign I’ve been looking for flashes in my headlights.
I lift my foot off the gas and start to depress the brake. “Now.”
“I know you guys came up with a little truce or whatever that shit was at the restaurant. But maybe hurry the fuck up.”
A small smile tugs at my mouth. “I don’t plan to linger.”
Karmine ends the call, and when a narrow gravel road appears on our right, I turn down it.
We sit in silence as the tires crunch down the path. There are no signs, nothing to signal that something important is back here. But there is. And if we were able to drive through the property, we’d see crushed cars, piles of shit you’d expect in a junkyard. And a building. An unassuming building that looks as run down as the rest of it.
But it’s not run down.
It’s a cover.
And it belongs to The Alliance.
An organization run by three ruthless men. Nero, the unhinged devil who has been the known leader of The Alliance for years. King, the rich guy turned mobster. And Dom, the head of the Chicago mafia who married his way into the deranged family last fall.
They aren’t good men. But they aren’t exactly bad either. Not by my standards, at least.
They did, however, spend a year or so under the impression that I was behind the recent increase in human trafficking.
It was an honest mistake. My name gets thrown around a lot.
But my name was mentioned in relation to the transactions because I was showing up and killing all the men, not because I was in charge of selling the women.
Usually I wouldn’t mind the confusion.
Confusion is good. It’s easy to get lost in.
But it became obvious that The Alliance guys weren’t going to sit back idly while shit went down in their territory. And I don’t expect to die of old age, but I didn’t really want one of them to put a bullet in my brain because of misinformation.
So, last Christmas, when I happened to be in Chicago for a hit, I also happened to get wind of an ambush that was planned for the mafia leader and his new wife. It also just so happened that Karmine was in town, too, with some of her closest friends.
We didn’t get there in time to prevent the ambush, but we did get there in time to kill the attackers. And while Karmine’s army obliterated the opposition, I found myself doing a little field triage that saved Dominic Gonzalez’s life.
Of course, he was too close to death to know I was even there, so when he’d recovered, I found my way into crashing a dinner The Alliance men and their wives were having at a little restaurant.
The grenades were just a precaution. I only wanted to pass on a message.
And that message was simple. I wasn’t the man they were hunting for.
It’s been more than seven months since that night. And I haven’t heard any whispers from them. Neither that they believed me nor that they’re still looking for me. So I’m not really sure whether it worked.
I’m leaning toward it worked. But I’m not quite willing to bet my life on it.
Not yet.
Cassandra lifts her head from my shoulder, seeing the same thing I do.
A chain link fence, with a gate padlocked shut.
CHAPTER 68
Cassie
Hans slows as he pulls the truck off the road to the right, then turns the wheel and makes a U-turn before backing the truck up to the gate.
He puts the truck in park, then turns toward me.
His eyes bore into mine. The night’s darkness hides the color but not the intensity.
I think he might say something, but instead, he grips my face and presses his lips firmly against mine.
“I’ll be five seconds.”
Then he’s out of the truck.
Twisting, I watch him run the few steps to the tailgate and yank it down. He slaps something I can’t see, and the cover on the bed retracts, swiftly rolling up and disappearing into another hidden compartment.
Hans grips the end of the body bag and drags it to him, then hoists it onto his shoulder like it’s a bag of pet food and not an entire man.