Angel didn’t consciously take a breath until she made it back to her apartment. She ran inside, unloaded her pouch, and hid the video camera in the living room vent. Finally, she collapsed down on the couch and tried to organize her thoughts. “Dan” was the key to all of this. He was the one egging the clubs on to fight and he was most likely the one responsible for Mad Max’s death. But how the hell were they going to find a “ghost?”

She thought about the description Hawk gave and what he said about the “accent.” Picking up the phone she called David. “Hey, brother.” He groaned when he heard her voice. Angel laughed. “That’s a nice greeting.”

“I’m neck-deep in shit over here. Legitimate shit. I don’t have time for favors.”

“This is legitimate shit, I promise. I’m about to call Kyle right now and tell him everything.” Almost. “I think I know who has the coins and who killed Mad Max. It was this Dan guy that set it all up.”

“Nice. What do you need from me?”

“I don’t know where to start looking for him. Apparently, no one has even laid eyes on him over ten years.”

“Well, hell, sis, I’m not sure what you need me for. With all that information, you can probably just look him up on Facebook.”

“Save the sarcasm, please. I’m trying. I know it’s a longshot, but I’m going to text you his stats. Maybe you can just run the description through the database. He had some kind of accent years ago too, Russian or something. Like I said, I know it’s not much, but will you do it and just see what the system might kick out?”

With a sigh David said, “Yeah, but with those vague stats, this will be an all-day search.”

“That’s okay. You start there and I’ll get the task force together and fill them in on the rest. Oh, David!”

“Yeah?”

“What do you know about a crime family in New York by the name of Rossi?”

“Bad news. They run underground clubs all over New York. Every time vice busts one, they change locations. They’re into everything—vice, gambling, prostitution, money laundering….”

“Loan sharking?”

“I’m sure. Why?”

“According to my source, that’s who Mad Max was running from.”

“Shit. Then this Dan guy didn’t have to cut him to pieces. Theo Rossi probably has the guy’s head on a pike at his front gate.”

“You know anyone that knows them? Maybe this Dan guy works for them, or freelances.”

“Dabbles in mutilation?”

She laughed. “Yeah, something like that.”

“The head of Vice at Police Plaza would be your best source of information, but I hear he’s a hardass and hard to get ahold of…there is someone close to us that had a little experience with them years ago, though…”

“Someone close to us? Who?”

“Shit. He’ll kill me for telling you.”

“David!”

“Fine, but you didn’t hear this from me. When Sam was first starting out, trying to buy his own boat, he got a little crazy.”

“A little crazy how?” Angel suddenly had a knot in her stomach at the very thought of one of her brothers being mixed up with these guys.

“He was gambling a lot and he got into debt for a lot of money…to Theo’s little brother Tony.”

“Oh my god! Why didn’t I know about this?”

“You were just a kid. I think you were like eight or nine at the time. Anyways, Sam got the shit beat out of him and the cops found him in an alley one night. He wouldn’t talk to the New York cops but he finally broke down and told Dad what was going on. Dad remortgaged the house, paid off the debt and…I don’t know what else, but they never bothered Sam again.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. What else did I miss out on by being so much younger than the rest of you?”

“That’s all I got.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I bet. Okay, David, thank you. I’ll get back in touch soon. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Angel had no sooner ended that call than her phone rang. It was Dax. She swallowed the huge lump in her throat and answered it. “Hello?”

“Hi, baby.” Baby…that sounded good. Not like he’d seen her crawling around on her belly in the dirt.

“Hi. Are you back?”

“Yeah, just got to the ranch. I need to see you. I have some things to take care of first. Will you be home tonight?”

“Of course. I can’t wait.”

“Me too. Hey, Angel?”

“Yeah?”

“Never mind. I’ll tell you when I get there. See you tonight.”

She hung up and stared at the phone wondering what he needed to tell her. It must not be bad, judging from his tone at least. He sounded so affectionate…even more so than usual. Maybe he just missed her. That was a good thing. Even though she’d been following him from afar, she missed him too. She glanced over at the vent where the video recorder was hidden. She made a conscious choice not to think about that now. She’d deal with that later. On her way in to take a shower she made two more calls. One was to Chris Matheson to set up a task force meeting for Monday morning and the other was to Sam. She talked him into meeting her halfway between Hartford and Hanover at a café where she and Kyle met sometimes. Sam wasn’t big on driving, or even leaving the house unless he was getting on a boat, so it took some doing, but in the end, she got her way. Now if she could just get him to remember those days all those years ago…and a guy named Dan.

* * *

“Who told you about that?” Sam had been about to take a drink of his coffee when Angel asked him about his “problems” with the Rossis when he was younger. He set the cup down hard and coffee sloshed all over the table. “Was it Mickey? I’ll kick his fat ass…”

“No, Sam, it wasn’t Mickey. It doesn’t matter who told me. What’s important here is that I need to know as much about it, about them, as possible. They could be the key to this whole case we’ve been working on, and maybe even part of the reason Dad died.” Sam’s face went from being angry to sad when she mentioned their father. He was no doubt thinking about those days and how their father had gone to save his son. It was what Sean Brady did, and when he was alive, none of them had appreciated him enough for it.

“I’m not sure how something that happened like sixteen years ago could help you now.”

“I’m looking for a guy that might have worked for the Rossis back in those days. He was young then, probably around your age. His name is Dan, but I don’t….” Sam’s face went pale. “You know him?” Angel asked, excitedly.

Sam shook his head. “No. I mean, I never really met him face to face. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who beat the shit out of me in the alley that night, but it was dark. They called him ‘ghost’ back then and no one ever talked about him, other than to say he was bad news. I heard he killed his first guy in his teens, and he liked it so much he went around renting himself out to the highest bidder from then on. A couple of the bouncers in Rossi’s ‘establishment’ dragged me out the back door and tossed me onto the pavement. I looked up and there was a guy with a baseball bat. He smiled and said, ‘Hello,’ before he slammed it into my skull. Mostly I just saw teeth. I think he had hair on his face. I’m guessing he was told to leave me breathing, or I wouldn’t be.”

“Did he have an accent, Sam?”

“Yeah.” Sam shuddered. Angel felt bad for bringing up the bad memories, but wouldn’t it be amazing to break this case and find out that Dax had been innocent all along…of most things, at least. “I heard he was Russian. I used to hear his voice in my nightmares. It was smooth and laid back for a man who was about to crack my skull. His ‘H’ was silent and he dragged out the ‘O’ at the end. It was like, ‘Elloooo.’ My world was black after that for a couple of weeks. My memories didn’t even start coming back until the nightmares started. I wish I could tell you more, sis, but that’s all I remember. I hope someday I won’t even remember that much. It was the worst time of my life.”

Angel sat with Sam longer than she had time to, but she felt like shit for sending him on the hour-and-a-half drive home with his hands still shaking. Of the five of them, Sam was always the dreamer—“the sensitive one,” her dad used to call him. Things affected him deeper than they did the rest, or at least he showed it more.

After she thanked him one last time and made him promise to text her when he was home safe, she called Kyle. She kept good on her promise to David and told him “almost” everything. She didn’t mention Frank or the guns, because if she mentioned the guns, she’d have to mention Frank. Kyle was pissed that she’d lied to him and gone off on her own like that, but she could hear the excitement in his voice about “Dan,” even if they didn’t have the guy’s last name. It was finally a starting point.