Not one of the Demons was drinking. None of them appeared to be doing drugs. There were four vehicles. The drivers and two others stayed with each SUV. While they were putting gas in the cars, the others walked across the street to the diner. Six men walking into a diner didn’t raise alarms. They went in quietly and sat down in two separate booths.
Giovanni immediately signaled to his cousins to choose a shadow that would take them to the parking lot where the drivers would bring the SUVs. The lot was on the small side but well kept, with trees shading many of the spaces from any afternoon sun. Two overhead lamps illuminated the lot, presumably making it safer at night. The lamps, coupled with the trees and their twisting boughs, threw interesting shadows in all directions across the lot, giving the riders quite a bit of tubes to choose from.
The first SUV pulled into the lot and the driver parked right in the front in a space to the right of the handicap parking. It was just out of sight of the plate glass window where the booths faced the lot. Vico, the youngest of Giovanni’s cousins there, moved immediately, catching a shadow and riding it straight to the SUV and inside. He was on the man in the back seat, delivering the wrenching signature kill and out of the vehicle before the driver had turned it off.
The passenger opened his door and turned slightly in his seat to pick something up. Vico immediately caught his head between his hands and wrenched, murmuring that justice was served as he pushed the body back into the SUV and quietly closed the door. The driver had jumped out and slammed his door just as Vico closed the passenger door.
“What are you doing?” the driver asked, turning back toward the window.
Vico came up behind him, catching his head in his hands and wrenching. He heard two more of the SUVs in the parking lot, but those weren’t his problem. He lowered the body of the driver beneath the vehicle and stepped into the shadow, allowing it to take him away from the parking lot and back to the vantage point overlooking the little diner. Giovanni signaled to Vico to watch the six men in the diner. They had a good view of the lighted parking lot. No one had emerged. No one had seen. It had taken him only seconds to kill the three Demons, and the bodies couldn’t be seen in the dark where they lay.
Remigio and Maximino both stepped into two different tubes, each one small, the narrow ones that moved fast, tearing one’s body into what felt like a million pieces, scattering them everywhere and hurtling one out as viciously as possible. The shadow riders couldn’t be seen when they slipped out of the shadows and delivered the signature killing moves to those in the vehicles. They couldn’t take chances that anyone in the diner would call the cops; Victor might alert Benito that someone was killing his army.
They wanted Benito to show himself, not go into hiding. As long as he thought he had a huge backing of his men behind him, he would swagger into Ferraro territory demanding everyone in his path to tell him where to find Nicoletta and anyone who might be hiding her from him. They needed Benito Valdez to show himself so they could dispose of the threat to Nicoletta.
Giovanni took the last SUV as the three Demons turned into the parking lot. He rode the shadow right to it, timing it perfectly to enter the back of the vehicle just as it entered. There was a dark strip to the left, and the driver chose that direction so he could park next to the other cars. He was driving very slowly, using care as he entered the lot.
Behind the Demon in the back seat, Giovanni gripped his head, wrenched and laid him gently to one side, and then was on the front seat passenger before either he or the driver knew anyone else was in the car. He killed the passenger just as the driver parked the SUV and turned off the ignition. As he turned his head slightly, just as if he might have sensed something might be wrong, Giovanni was already on him. It had taken only seconds to kill all three men.
It was necessary to exit the vehicle via a door, as there were no shadows to catch inside, but he was wearing gloves. He used the driver’s side door and immediately stepped into a shadow, deliberately leaving the door to the SUV open behind him. No one could see the bodies unless they came up to the vehicle and looked inside.
He waited there, just in the mouth of the shadow. Vico came closer, as did Remigio and Maximino. It was only a matter of time before Victor and the others came out to see what was keeping the rest of their crew.