JOE WALKED FASTER.
They still talked.
He didn’t have any need or reason to open his mouth and verbalize the same thing the rest of them were—this was bad.
Bad, bad, bad.
“What’s the stats?” he heard his uncle, Theo, say. “After forty-eight hours, the survival rate drops in half, right? We’re approaching that, Damian.”
“Could you not right now?” his father growled.
“I’m just saying—”
Joe could practically feel his father’s eyes nailing to his back. “Well, don’t, Theo. Jesus Christ.”
“He wants her alive,” Joe muttered.
He didn’t even bother to turn around when he offered that statement. He really didn’t see the point in looking at them while he talked. Besides, he had better things to do, and he felt that them coming to New York and taking time away from his effort to find Liliana was nothing more than a waste of his time.
More men in the pit.
More ideas they couldn’t use.
More loud voices.
Except … maybe Joe was wrong about that, and his father and uncle would be of great help. He really didn’t know, but his mood was too fucking low to care about anything else except for his own goddamn agenda.
And his agenda was getting Liliana back.
“He didn’t go through whatever effort he went through,” Joe continued, “just to get her back, and then kill her within forty-eight to seventy-two hours. He wants her. He likely wants her so that they can pick up right where they left off.”
“Good point,” his uncle said.
“Joe—”
“Please, don’t.”
His father cleared his throat. “All right, son.”
A sweet, small sense of relief flooded Joe even as his father’s hand came up to pat him on his back. It was a traitorous feeling—he didn’t deserve to feel anything except rage and fear until he got Liliana back, and only then could he worry about the rest.
Yet, he felt it then.
Because his dad was there.
Damian understood Joe.
It mattered.
His father came into step with him while his uncle stayed a couple of paces behind. “Cory is working resources—pulling whatever he can to help. He’ll give us a call should he find something worth using, or that might take us to the Earl man. He said he could do that work here, too, but I know when it comes to you your brother can be a little …”
Distracting?
Intense?
Difficult?
All of the above, but Cory would also feel the need to get Joe’s mind into a better place just because of what was happening. It was his younger brother’s thing. He was wild, but he was also a fixer when it came to his family. And it would only make Cory feel like shit when he realized this couldn’t be fixed.
No, it was far better for Joe to be here, and for Cory to stay in Chicago at the moment. They could each focus on what they were good at without one feeling like they had to compensate for the other, and then they could meet together in the middle again at the end.
That’s it, that’s all.
“How hard was it to keep him in Chicago?” Joe asked.
“I threatened to lock him in a cage,” Theo muttered behind them.
Joe’s lips twitched.
An itch of a smile.
It didn’t come all the way.
Pain seared through his chest—a random sensation he had been feeling ever since he woke up in that hotel room, and realized Liliana was gone. The pain happened if he was thinking for too long, talking too much, walking too often, or shit, breathing.
It happened because she wasn’t here.
And he fucked up.
He should have never stopped looking for her from that point forward. He could have been on their trail, or caught up to them later. Instead, he followed the direction to get back to New York, and now he was even further behind Rich and Liliana than before.
This fucking sucked.
And he was useless like this.
Completely fucking useless.
Joe stopped in the hallway, and put his back to a wall. He stared up at the ceiling, and wished that if even for a second, it would come down and swallow him whole. Take him away to somewhere else where he didn’t have to think or feel, and then maybe his brain would work like it was supposed to.
Maybe then, he would find her.
Or he would know how.
“God,” Joe grumbled, dragging his palms down his face. “I need a second.”
“All right.”
Through his fingertips, he saw his father nod at Theo, and then gesture toward the hallway. The two men walked the rest of the way to Dante Marcello’s office themselves, and Joe only took his hands away from his face after he heard the door click closed.
He stared upward again.
He couldn’t see the heavens here, but then again, he wasn’t one of those people who looked up at the sky and thought that was it, too. He’d only ever felt close to heaven and God in church, and … well, with Liliana, too.
For entirely different reasons.
Give her back, he prayed, holding tight to the rosary hanging from this neck. Give her back to me. Please, give her back to me.
He didn’t bargain.
He didn’t offer this for that.
That’s not how God worked, anyway.
Besides, now that Joe had taken a second and said his peace to Him—for what felt like the hundredth time today—he was slightly better again. At least, for a time. That pain in his chest had stopped, but Joe knew it would be back.
It kept coming back.
He didn’t have time to think about it right now.
Moving down the hallway, he didn’t even bother to knock on the office door before he walked into Marcello pandemonium.
Or chaos.
Two men were arguing with one another. Another—although far older—man was sitting by himself. The Chicago men were on their phones. A redheaded woman stared out the window with her arms crossed, and her expression pensive.
It was only Lucian, leaning against the far wall and ignoring his arguing brothers, quiet father, and distant sister-in-law, not to mention, Joe’s father and uncle. It was only him who looked to Joe when the man came into the office.
Of course, Joe recognized them all. He knew them all. He just didn’t care right now. Until one of their thoughts or phone calls manifested into some kind of fucking information about how they could safely retrieve Liliana, he didn’t give a shit.
“Anything?” he asked Lucian.
The man shook his head, quiet and cold. Joe didn’t think he’d ever seen the man this blank before. His control was … frightening.
Yeah, that was as good of a word as any.
“I think we’re looking in the wrong spot,” Lucian said.
Joe’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
“We’re looking where we expect him. Just like when we watched him before, and trailed him. We did that knowing what we were looking for, or looking at. And I think we missed something because we inadvertently overlooked something else. Do you understand what I’m saying, Joe?”
He did.
But what had they missed?
And when?
“So, you’ve got nothing?” Joe demanded.
Cory sighed. “I have aliases, man, and it’s going to take us a bit to go through shit for that, too. What do you have on your end?”
“A forty-eight hour mark that passed ten minutes ago.”
His brother sucked air through his teeth, and then murmured, “You know it’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know anything at all, actually.”
“Joe.”
Well, it was the truth.
Horrifying, but true.
Joe didn’t respond to his brother, and finally Cory got irritated enough that he asked, “What are you doing right now, anyway? I know Dad and Theo are looking into some shit.”
“Threatening people, you mean.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what they do best.”
Joe rolled his eyes as he came up to a coffee shop he recognized, and sighed. It was his third stop of the day, and he likely wasn’t going to get shit from here, either. Just like all the other places he had gone to in an attempt to backtrack Liliana’s steps in New York. He had to try something different, and he had to keep moving.
Otherwise, he felt useless just sitting the fuck around and waiting for something to happen. That wasn’t his style.
Instead of going into the coffee shop while he was still on the phone, Joe opted to end his call first, and then continue on with the rest of his business. Cory would understand … eventually.
“Listen, I have to go, but call me if—”
“Have you considered the alternative to Rich following her?” Cory asked suddenly.
Joe stiffened. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“The obvious answer, Joe, is that Rich is obsessed with her. He was probably following your girl. Maybe you didn’t see him, or maybe he just outsmarted you all. That’s the obvious answer to how this happened, right?”
As much as Joe hated to admit it—and fuck, he hated to think it, too—Cory was right, as usual. “Thanks for the info I already know, but I don’t need you shoving that fuck up in my face right now. It’s already obvious enough without you doing it, too.”
“No, listen, fuck-head.”
Jesus, save him.
Because Joe was going to kill him.
“I’m saying,” Cory continued, “that it’s easier to look at the obvious because that’s typically where the answers are, Joe, but what if in this case, that’s the wrong place to look.”
Joe hesitated, and then asked, “How so?”
“What if while everyone was busy looking at her and him, he was looking at you.”
“Cory—”
“I know, I know, Joe,” his brother rushed to say, coming off snappish and defensive, “you’re the fucking Shadow, and nobody sees you if you don’t want them to. But you’re not goddamn invisible, Joe. All right? You’re not. And you got mixed up with a woman who clearly had some baggage that you weren’t made aware of going in which might have made you a little more careful in some of the shit you did with her. So, tell me if it’s not remotely possible that someone was watching you, and you weren’t aware because of that.”
Well …
Shit.
“It’s possible,” Joe settled on saying.
But he didn’t like it.
“You don’t think it’s the case, though,” Cory argued, “I can hear it in your voice.”
“Wrong—I don’t want to think it was the case. Big difference.”
“Why not? It could mean you might find something someone else hasn’t found, Joe.”
“It also means I fucked up again, Cory.”
“You didn’t fuck up, man.” Cory sighed when Joe didn’t respond. “Where do you go from here, then?”
Well, that answer was easy.
He needed to stop retracing her steps, and start retracing his.
“I have to go,” Joe said, offering nothing else to his brother before he hung up the phone. He didn’t even let the screen blank out before he was dialing another number—Lucian’s. The man picked up on the second ring, unsurprisingly. He didn’t let Lucian speak before he was saying what was forefront on his mind. “I need … something.”
“Something like what, Joe?”
“Feeds—surveillance. From my hotel, and from Liliana’s show. That charity event, too. The coffee shop I used down the street, and hell, even the convenience store where I picked up my smokes.”
“Why would—”
“Can you get those videos, and have someone survey them, or not?” Joe demanded.
Lucian cleared his throat. “We’ve got someone. A hacker.”
Joe rattled off dates to make it easier. “That’s what I need … and any clips with me in them, I need sent to me.”
“It’s going to take a while.”
“Pay to make it faster, Lucian.”
“Don’t assume I wouldn’t, Joe.”
Yeah …
Damn.
“Any news on your end?” he thought to ask.
“No, but the mother was on the television tonight. Blaming us again,” Lucian grumbled.
Huh.
“Maybe I’ll start with her,” Joe said.
“Joe, that’s dangerous. She might not know your name like she does ours, but she will recognize your face if someone thought to put a goddamn picture in front of her. You’re going to force yourself into a worse position, and what might have been a short while away until the dust clears could be far longer.”
Worth it, he thought.
As long as he got Liliana back.
Nothing else mattered.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Joe swore he could feel the fucking watch on his wrist counting down time, and it was driving him fucking crazy. Each time that second hand moved, it felt like a jolt of electricity against his wrist. Had the watch not been a gift from his mother last Christmas, he probably would have ripped it off and thrown it in the fucking garbage.
Other shit to do, Joe. Focus on other shit.
Yeah, right.
Other shit.
He stood leaning under the street lamp, and despite knowing he should do literally anything else, he lifted his wrist up to stare at the watch. The second hand passed the twelve, and then the minute hand moved along with the hour hand.
Seventy-two hours.
Liliana had been gone for seventy-two hours.
And they were still no closer to finding her.
Fuck.
That pain was back in his chest—deep, aching, and thumping hard. He had at least been able to breathe through it the days before, but now it had turned into something else entirely, and even breathing didn’t help.
Nothing fucking helped.
Joe forced his gaze away from the watch, but only because something else had caught his eye. The woman stepped out on the front porch of her large, tucked away home. The quiet suburb just outside of the city limits was, for all purposes, as safe as it could possibly be.
Except when it came to people like him.
The woman fixed her jacket, and took a cursory glance around her front yard, but little else. She certainly didn’t look far enough down the street to see Joe standing under the lamp light. For the most part, he wasn’t even trying to hide.
He meant to be seen.
At least, by this particular woman.
The senator’s wife.
Rich’s mother.
Marcie Earl tugged on the leash connected to the collar of a small Pomeranian. The little dog looked like a giant ball of fluffy hair as the animal practically bounced down the steps. Its fucking legs weren’t even long enough to get from one step to the next—it actually had to jump to get down.
Kind of amusing, really.
Joe never understood the point of having a dog that small. What else did it do but sleep on your lap, and bark too loud?
Anyway.
As Marcie headed down the block—a usual ritual for her to walk her dog at this time of night, according to information he’d gotten pulled on her—Joe pushed away from the lamp post, and headed after the woman. He kept his steps fast, but light. There wasn’t a single sound coming from his shoes hitting the pavement, not that he wanted her to know he was following behind just yet.
Soon, but not yet.
Marcie barely took in her surroundings as she walked her dog, never looking over her shoulder, or checking for anyone else around. It was a sure sign that said she felt safe in this place, and thought of it as her environment.
People were predictable in that way. They had a way of assuming that nothing bad could ever happen to them as long as it was their space. No one would dare to intrude on their life in that way, as though their familiar, comforting places were sacred, or some kind of shit like that.
Wrong.
That’s where everything bad happened.
Marcie only stopped occasionally when her fluffy little dog wanted to sniff, or piss in someone else’s grass. Joe made sure to keep a respectable distance, but he never even needed to slip behind a vehicle to stay out of sight as the woman went about her nightly business.
She wasn’t worried at all.
Stupid woman.
Once Marcie made it about halfway around the block, she stopped to sit on a bench while her dog finally seemed to take notice of Joe down the sidewalk. The little Pomeranian barked at him, but he wasn’t paying it any mind.
Ankle biter.
What was it going to do to him, really?
His wrist was as thick as its head.
Marcie stiffened a bit on the bench as Joe approached, and then glanced away from him. She clearly didn’t recognize him—which wasn’t a bad thing for his side of the equation—but his presence obviously made her uncomfortable.
Good.
She was about to get even more uncomfortable.
Joe took a seat on the bench, leaned back to put his arms behind his head, and crossed his boots at the ankles. “Nice evening, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
Polite.
Strained.
Joe almost smiled.
She was clearly the type of person who would engage a stranger in conversation simply because she didn’t want to be rude. A part of him found that both annoying, and amusing. Neither part of him cared all that much.
Marcie glanced over at him—the lines around her eyes and frowning mouth spoke of her age, but other than that, she was a pretty woman. Her pale blonde hair had been pulled back into a simple chignon, and her warm brown eyes took him in. He almost wondered if this woman even understood the kind of hell her son was.
She probably did.
That sort of behavior was learned, after all.
Boys didn’t grow up hitting women.
They were taught to do it.
“Did your husband beat the hell out of you, too?” Joe asked.
Marcie stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your son—Rich—he abused Liliana Marcello, and given the shit I know, I can safely assume that wasn’t a one-off occasion for him. There are probably others. More women he’s abused, which means he likely witnessed the same kind of behavior growing up.”
“I—excuse me,” she said, moving to stand.
Joe couldn’t let her do that. His hand shot out fast, and locked around her wrist to yank her back to the bench. “No, don’t leave just yet. I’m just getting started. We haven’t even gotten to the fun part, Marcie Earl.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and her gaze darted around as she hissed, “I will scream.”
“And I will slice your tongue right down the middle, and sit here with you while you choke on your blood until you drown in it. I’ll even give your dog something to chew on or play with while we wait. Now, be quiet.”
Marcie blinked.
Joe smiled at her. “You know, I’ve taken some time over the last day to look into you a little more. I had all this information on your husband, of course, but I didn’t care very much about you. Nothing about you was needed for my job, after all. And then I did need to look into you, so here we are.”
“I don’t know what you want me to—”
“You cake on the makeup, don’t you? Heavy powder, too. So much so, they gave you the nickname Barbie because you always looked so plastic and fake with your hair in perfect waves, your makeup done up, and your false smile plastered on. Every photograph of you next to your husband was exactly the same.”
“I—”
“I bet you used to wear your hair down because it helped to hide whatever marks were on your neck. And when you had to use a shade or two darker than your own skin tone to hide the bruises, you just used a little bit more so it wouldn’t be as noticeable. And that smile? Perfectly practiced in front of a mirror every single night, so he wouldn’t be able to tell how much it killed you when you did it.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“He’s dead now,” Joe offered, “so protecting him, or whatever lie your life had been, isn’t really needed, or necessary.”
“I don’t know who you are, but you need to go.”
Joe laughed. “No. When did he start hitting you?”
Marcie swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“Right now—to talk. Depending on what I get from you will determine a lot of things. Whether or not you get to live beyond tonight and find out what life is like without an abusive husband at your back. You put on a good show for the cameras crying about him, and pushing the hard line that it wasn’t accidental, but I bet in private, all you feel is relief.”
Marcie relaxed a bit.
Joe saw it even though she probably figured he didn’t.
It confirmed everything she wouldn’t say.
Yes, her husband had beat her.
Yes, Rich had learned it.
Yes, she was happy he was dead, but she still had a role to play, too. And he doubted this career-politician’s widow wanted her personal business and her abuse shoved under the spotlight for the rest of the world to dissect, or mock.
Humans were terrible in that way.
“And it’s okay to feel that,” Joe added quieter, “because I sure as shit would, too.”
“What do you want?”
“I want Liliana Marcello back with her family, and your son has her.”
Marcie’s head snapped to the side, and her gaze blazed as she stared—slack-jawed—at Joe. “How do you know Rich has her?”
“I know,” is all Joe offered.
“Well,” the woman spluttered, “I don’t know that, so I’m not sure why you assume I have anything that might be useful to you.”
“I’m sure you know someone who might.”
The woman’s cheek twitched.
Like her fingers.
And her eye.
She was going to lie. Joe saw all the signs.
“He’s my son,” she offered quietly.
Joe nodded. “And so, you want to protect him.”
“Clearly.”
Joe didn’t like to lie, but he could, and he was damned good at it, too. Especially when it meant getting what he wanted. And right now, he wanted Liliana more than anything in the whole world. He wanted her back, so he could tell her that he loved her, and she was his one person made just for him.
He wanted her back.
So, he lied.
“Tell me who would know the information I’m seeking, and I’ll let him live when I find him,” Joe said.
Marcie took a breath.
And then another.
“Trevor.”
“The assistant?” Joe questioned, remembering the man he had punched at the charity event. “You’re sure that’s the answer you want to give me?”
Marcie shrugged. “If anyone knows anything, it’s Trevor Mason. He won’t even answer my calls because he doesn’t like to lie to me. He knows that I know something is wrong, and he has the answers. Or … some of them.”
Trevor it was.
Joe stood up, and glanced back at the woman. “The slitting your tongue thing can still happen, by the way. This meeting never happened.”
Streaks of color managed to break through some of the dirt and grime on the warehouse window, and left red and yellow lines on the ruddy floor.
Ruddy from dried blood.
Usually, Joe liked this time of day the best. A fresh start, and new beginnings. Each day could be something different, if that’s what he wanted to do. On this day, however, none of those thoughts were forefront on his mind.
“One last chance to give me a name,” Joe murmured, his knife twisting beneath the kneecap of the man tied to a chair, “or we start this all over again.”
The guy was bloodied.
Battered.
His mind probably broken.
It had been six straight hours of getting the shit beat out of him in between various methods of torture. And shit, Joe had to give it to Trevor Mason—he was tough. He hadn’t wanted to break, but Joe was what he was.
And he was fucking resilient.
Relentless, too.
He was going to keep going.
He could keep going.
It had been a matter of a couple of hours from the time Joe gave Lucian a name to the point when Trevor was dropped off—bound, gagged, and with a hood over his head—to a lower Brooklyn warehouse for Joe to extract information.
And now it was morning.
He was still working on getting that info.
His control was being tested.
Joe heard the kneecap pop, and Trevor let out a gagging sob. He knew it then that he was going to finally get something useful from the prick.
“Ryan,” the man gasped-sobbed, “Ryan Thompson. That’s the alias he’s been using for a while to do s-shit on the l-low.”
Joe left the knife where it was stuck in Trevor’s knee, and turned to his father. “Call Cory, and mention the name. See what it brings up.”
His father cocked a brow, and didn’t soften in his tense stance with his arms crossed over his chest. “Take a break, Joe.”
Nope.
He shook his head. “I’m good here.”
“Joe—”
“Leave him be, D,” Theo murmured. “Let’s make that call.”
Joe stood straight, and stared out the grimy window a few feet away. Beside him, Lucian paced. At the other side of the warehouse, the other two Marcello brothers stood beside one another in silence.
So had been the way they worked all night.
“P-please, please just … please.”
Trevor’s mumbled, slurred cries fell on deaf ears.
Joe just didn’t care.
“What are you thinking?” Joe asked Lucian.
The man’s pacing didn’t stop. “Nothing you want to hear.”
“I would want to hear it, actually.”
Lucian sighed. “We’re coming down to four days, now. Four days he’s had her. So, what has he done to her in that time, Joe? We get her back alive, but then what? What can I expect to get back? Certainly not the same woman he—”
“Lucian,” Dante murmured quietly from the other side of the warehouse, “don’t do that, brother.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “Let me stew, Dante. It’s all I fucking have.”
Joe felt about the same.
“Like I said,” Lucian told Joe, “you don’t want to know what’s in my head.”
Nothing more or less worse than what was in Joe’s. He had just been able to, for a time, put it aside while he handled this. Compartmentalize, if you will.
“Joe, listen,” he heard his father say as Damian re-entered the warehouse.
Cory’s voice filtered through the phone on speaker. “Ryan Thompson is one of the names that came up—we were going through other ones first, so we hadn’t gotten to that one yet.”
“Speed it up,” Lucian barked.
“Sorry, yeah, so Ryan Thompson bought a private estate in Vermont six months ago, but renovations just finished on it last month.”
“What do you mean, private?” Joe asked.
“I mean … deep in the woods, lots of land, and plenty of security. The records of that weren’t all too hard to pull, but if I had to chance a guess, Joe, that would be it. That’s where I would say he is. I’ve got the address coming through to Dad’s phone.”
“Makes sense,” Lucian muttered under his breath.
Joe turned back to the blubbering mess of a man in the chair. Trevor was still firmly tied down, half-dead, and he wasn’t fucking going anywhere. “If you gave me the wrong info, I will make it my personal mission to kill every single fucking person tied to your bloodline and name. Last chance to correct anything.”
“It’s him—it’s him, I swear!”
Good enough.
Joe yanked the knife from Trevor’s kneecap, and with one hard swipe of his arm, the blade cut through the man’s throat. Blood arched, and sprayed heavily. Trevor was dead in a few seconds, and his wide, glazed eyes stared up at the ceiling.
Just like that, Joe was done.
He dropped the knife, and turned on his heel to head for the door.
Calm.
Cold.
Ready.
He was done with this business, and ready to move on. Ready to finish the rest, and get Liliana back to the safety of her family, and him. He wasn’t going to stand there and fucking dwell like an idiot about the dead man in the chair, or what might be happening in Vermont. He needed to keep moving—to keep getting closer to her—or he was going to fucking explode.
“Jesus Christ,” someone—it sounded like Dante, but Joe couldn’t be sure—said. “Damian, you ought to be mighty fucking proud of that man. I can’t say any of us would be that collected in this situation.”
“We are,” his uncle, Theo, said.
“Very proud,” Damian added. “And far more. Let’s go get her, then.”
“Yes, now,” Lucian snarled.
Joe was already gone.