29
Damon
It was an extreme situation to cause Felicia to go against protocol, but she had done so without prompting, and had actually been on the lookout for me as soon as the news reports came to her attention. I hadn’t called her on my way there, knowing the cell phone could give away my movements, but she’d left the building immediately on seeing me arrive and pointed to her car. Intuition was on trial with matters at their most fragile, but Felicia’s still succeeded in matching up to the challenge. Despite all she knew of my life, she didn’t even need to question whether I was innocent or not. Taking just one look at the report was enough to tell her that I’d been set up, and although she was usually the definitive law-abiding citizen, she was an instant ally in hiding me from the authorities and anyone else that might like to take me down.
“I’ve got access to a safe house,” she said. “It’s usually for our domestic violence victims, but it’s being renovated at the moment. We’ll go there, get out of sight and then decide what to do.”
It hadn’t been my original plan, being intent on heading straight for Bea, but I had no idea where she was, so I had to have faith that I had at least a few hours to regroup, and Felicia, as always, was right. I couldn’t help Bea by hiding out in the streets. I had to take a wider look at what was going on before arriving at a sound, rather than desperate, course of action.
Giving a mafia hitman knowledge of the location of a legal aid safe house would not have been considered the wisest move by Felicia’s employers. Even so, she wasted no time taking me there. Both Bea and I had family we didn’t deserve, for different reasons, and I knew that from this day forward, it would be the time to start repaying my sister’s faith and patience in me.
If only we could all live through it.
We spent an hour sat in front of the TV, in the distinctly average-looking house that was surprisingly close to the city. We said very little, except when Felicia deigned to ask me about some of the mob’s typical operations. Nothing I could think of about the Carusos came in handy when trying to figure out where they might be holding Bea, and Felicia finally stood up and announced she was going to get a few supplies from a shop down the road.
“I’ll just walk down and grab a few drinks and snacks,” she said. “Can’t have us dying of thirst and hunger while we figure this thing out.”
I nodded, finding it difficult to even think of eating as long as I knew that Bea was in such a desperate situation. Seeing the YouTube video of her tied up with a knife to her throat only caused my fury to swell even more, but it occurred to me to take a better look at the video stream online, although it was the last thing I wanted to see over and over again. The news broadcast was only showing a few seconds, then repeating what had been said rather than letting the whole thing play out, presumably not to scare more sensitive viewers.
Once I was online, I was able to study the complete footage, at first looking at the man with the knife and seeing if I could figure out who he was. Then, on a third watch of the stream, my focus suddenly fell on the couch itself and familiarity came flooding home.
Though the background was largely featureless and could’ve been anywhere, I could clearly see a stain that I knew I’d seen before. A wine stain, I’d always presumed it to be, as blood tended to stain a darker brown color, but I was familiar with it because of an old job that Maurizio and I had once been on. We’d been tasked with holding and interrogating a rival gang member in a house about twenty minutes away from here, and I remembered looking right at that couch as I watched the man beg and plead for his life, gun held to his head by Maurizio. His grey brain matter had sprayed all over it when he was shot, which was why I remembered it so clearly.
It was a grim memory; the kind that I wanted to put behind me, yet my recollections of the scene of interrogation and death saw me jump into life again. That same tunnel vision I’d last used to dispatch of Batista had descended on me. My target wasn’t in my sights yet, but I could sense it, and knowing exactly where Bea was now, I grabbed the car keys that Felicia had left on the table and left without waiting for her.
Time was of the essence and, as much as my sister was right about most things, I would humor no alternative plans, though my own plan could very well mean the end of me. But I had no time to worry about that.
It was now or never.
I was going to save Bea and our baby, even if it damn well killed me.