Unfortunately, that last breath might not be all that long coming.
I was still holding her tight when my cell sounded out again, three times straight in a row before I broke away to pick it up from the counter.
Trenton Alto.
My right-hand man was a long way from being my right hand right about now, but still, he was trying.
I managed to answer his call on his fourth attempt, grunting out a yeah, what?
“Yeah, what the holy living fuck are you doing?!” he hissed at me. “Did you just fucking kill Lionel fucking Constantine on Hanborough Park Golf Course? People are saying it was some Hardwick guy, but you were there too, weren’t you?”
“What do you think?” I hissed back. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”
He cursed at me.
“Fuck you, Morelli. You’d better be glad it is my fucking business, or you’d be up to your neck already.” He paused. “You’re fucked both as Lucian Morelli and as Terence fucking Kingsley, you know. The cards are all falling down. The Power Brothers have someone on their way already. Warren, a guy with a scar down his face.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” I scoffed. “I’ve got a handle on that one.”
“But you haven’t got a handle on anything, have you?” he said, and his voice got lower. “Because if you’re in Kington Peak, and I suspect you are, you’d better get the fuck out of there right fucking now.”
My blood froze.
“You’re there now, aren’t you?” he said. “You may think it’s a private refuge, Lucian, but you’re wrong. People know it’s out there. People know it’s where you go.”
“People?” I asked him. “Who do you mean by people? I still don’t know how the hell the Power Brothers ever found out about this place, so who the hell else are you meaning?”
“I mean your father,” he told me. “And believe me, Lucian, he’s after you. He knows you’ve fucked up and gone after the Constantines. He thinks you’ve killed Lionel and taken the little bitch Elaine, or even worse than that… he thinks you’ve kept her. For you. The cleanup team are on their way, right fucking now.”
I knew Trenton was breaking every rule of self-preservation and common sense he had in his head.
There was no way he should be warning me. No way he should have ever tried to save my ass from my own undoing.
I stayed on the call long enough to give him a response.
One single phrase.
“Thank you.”
I rarely said it, rarely felt it, rarely considered anyone worthy.
He confirmed what I already knew would be the only route ahead for him.
“This is it for us,” he said. “From this moment on, I’m on team Morelli. They’ll take my life if I’m not. They’ll take Lucinda’s life, too. If they tell me to come for you, I’ll be coming for you.”
Lucinda was his little baby girl. Four years old.
“I know,” I told him.
“Goodbye, Lucian,” he said.
And then he hung up.
9
Elaine
It was bad and I knew it.
“We need to go,” he said. “Now. People are already on their way.”
I nodded, mute, praying I’d packed everything we needed to take, only there was nothing for me to be taking. I had nothing here.
Nothing except Lucian Morelli.
It seemed Lucian did have things left to pack up, though. I should have waited in the car, holding my wound tight in my bandage, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stay still. He was already in the kitchen when I joined him, pulling the panel from the bottom of one of the cabinets, then pulling out several cases to follow. He opened them up one by one to check the contents, quick and sharp. Cash. Lots of cash. Several guns came out after them in a case of their own.
He was a machine as he headed outside and loaded up the trunk with the final contents ready to roll. I would have helped him, but I was too busy getting my feet into my high heels with trembling fingers, managing a surprising amount given the pain I was in.
“Stop it, Elaine,” he hissed when he stepped back in to join me. “Let me do this for you. I was going to help you into this before we left, I just wanted you as safe as possible in the damn fucking car.
I was startled as he dropped his cell onto the porch step and smashed the hell out of it with his boot heel. It was a trashed wreck as he tossed it into the bushes at the side of the house.
“Don’t use that thing again,” he said. “It’ll be a beacon.”
The car was already started up when he slid me back into the passenger seat and fastened me in for the second time.
The tires screeched against the driveway as he sped away, and I stared at the house in the rearview with a strange pang of homesickness in my belly. Yeah. This place had been the closest thing to a home I’d ever known.