BELL

“You trying to git away from me so soon?” Laurent moved between the counter and the fridge, depositing groceries in the efficient manner of a seasoned bachelor.

“Honestly?” I smiled. “Yeah.” I pulled a few items out of bags and set them on the counter. “The guy—the one we’ve been worried about hunting me down, is dead.”

At least, he might be dead. We hadn’t received confirmation of that, though I had practically worn out Laurent’s remote by channel surfing news stations. Ridiculously enough, the man didn’t have internet OR a smart device. “So… if he is dead, then problem solved. Threat vanquished.”

“I think you mean vanished.” He regarded me with the sober expression of a man actually thinking over the word usage.

“I think either term works. Please focus.” I leaned against the counter, then stopped when the plastic surface made a sound, something like a crack, from the weight. “I’m about ready to walk home, I’m so ready to get back to Vegas.”

And I was. I thought that seeing Dario would give me some peace and patience. Instead, all I had thought about, since he left, was being back in his arms.

He laughed. “You walk out dat door...” He pointed toward the front of the house. “…and you might get fifteen minutes before you be slapping moustiques and jogging back to the air conditioner. Listen.” He closed the refrigerator door and turned to me. “Best I am aware, he taking you home.” He brushed off his hands. “Okay? Be patient.”

A bit of hope bloomed, and I swallowed it, refusing to believe anything until I had hard confirmation and details. “When?”

“I don’t know when, but knowing him, he’ll call soon. He’s probably in the middle of something.” He shrugged, moving past me and into the living room. I watched him go and hoped he was right.

DARIO

“Well?” The FBI agent raised his eyebrows.

Dario looked up from the gun. “I’ve seen a lot of guns in my lifetime. I own two that look very similar to that one.”

“Not similar, Mr. Capece. Identical. You own a Smith & Wesson that is identical to this one. We have the registration for it, right here.” He slid a page forward, and Dario didn’t follow the movement, keeping his gaze tight on the man.

“My guns are locked in a safe in my home, with serial numbers that match their registration. There’s no way in hell that gun is mine.”

His attorney leaned forward. “Was this the weapon used to kill Gwen Capece?”

Her name caused a pain to stab in Dario’s heart, the short syllables a sudden reminder that he would never see her again. He’d never meet her eyes over breakfast and discuss their day. She’d never bitch about the staff, or laugh at his workout regime, or fill up their fridge with disgusting soy milk and wheat germ oil. He swallowed as a vision of her eyes, open and still, blood dotting her cheek, flashed through his mind.

His best friend. Gone.

Guilt sat, like a thousand-pound weight in the middle of his chest, pinning him to the seat.

“Yep. Ballistics matched it to the bullet. Anybody have a guess where we found it?” The agent tapped the top of the gun.

Dario stayed silent.

The man waited, and the seconds slowly ticked past before the agent sighed, disappointed in their lack of response. “Fine. Hawk’s study. We found the gun in the top drawer of a writing desk.”

“I’ve told you from the beginning that he killed her.” And he’d planted the gun as insurance, in case the wire hadn’t produced a confession.

The agent scooted forward, his shoes squeaking against the floor. “So, you think Robert Hawk left his mansion at eleven o’clock at night, drove over to The Majestic, waited in a suite you set aside for your girlfriend, then shot his own daughter in the back of the head?” He tilted his head. “Come on, Dario. Those lines don’t intersect.”

The guy was a fucking idiot if he thought that was the scenario in play here. And the guy couldn’t be a fucking idiot. Dario kept his mouth shut and fixed his gaze on a point just over the man’s shoulder.

“Oh, you’re not talking now? You pointed every finger you had at Robert Hawk, and now you’re silent?”

He paused, and Dario thought of Bell. Wondered if Laurent had already shared the news of Hawk. He glanced at the clock on the wall and fought the urge to quit this interrogation and call her. He’d fucked all of this up so far. Abandoning her in Louisiana. Not being there for her, at a time when she needed it the most. He’d felt her desperation—had seen the way she had broken down and sobbed.

But he had to keep his distance, and his phone lines free from traceable actions. It wasn’t just Hawk he was worried about finding her; it was also this bunch of federal assholes and their idiotic questions.

The FBI agent plowed ahead. “Plus, we’ve got an alibi. A forty-five-minute phone call between Robert Hawk and his financial advisor, with cell phone triangulation that proves he was in his home during the call.”

Another paper slid forward, joining the gun registration. It was a cell phone report, one line highlighted in bright yellow.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re about to tell me that he hired someone else and kept his hands clean.”

God, this guy was chatty.

Dario leaned forward, ignoring the cell phone report. “I thought we had a common goal in mind—putting Hawk behind bars. Now, your team found the fucking murder weapon in his house, and suddenly you’re playing patty cake as if I need to sit down and do your job for you. Isn’t happening.”

Agent King cleared his throat, folding his hands together as if in prayer. “Let’s just calm down for a moment, shall we? I didn’t say that you were under suspicion. It’s just that...”

He opened the folder and pulled out a series of photos, lining them up in a neat line along the center of the table. Dario watched as the faces were revealed, the driver’s license photos of each player in the game.

The agent pointed to the first face in the line. “Nick Fentes. Sleeping with your wife. Dead.”

He slid his finger off the cowboy and on to the second photo. “Gwen Capece. Your cheating wife and owner of eighty percent of your marriage’s communal assets.”

Everything inside Dario flared, each word boiling his blood. Cheating wife. Owner of eighty percent. That wasn’t what Gwen had been. Those words belonged to another woman, one who didn’t wrinkle her nose when she ate cinnamon, or bake cupcakes on Sunday mornings while singing Frank Sinatra. Underneath the table, his hands tightened into fists.

“Dead.”

Had he needed to say that word? Did he really think, in the midst of all of this, that Dario had forgotten that fact? The urge to stand, to fist his silk shirt and yank him across the table ... it was unbearable. Dario fixed his eyes on the table, on the blur of photos before him, and blew out a long, controlled breath.

The agent slid his finger from Gwen’s delicate features and onto Hawk’s distinctive sneer. “Robert Hawk. Father of your wife. Principal of several outstanding real estate loans that you are responsible for and ... if I had to guess ... serious pain in your ass.”

The words were said without humor, the final word delivered in a flat tone. “Dead.”

Robert Hawk. Dead. It was something Dario had wanted for a decade, yet it felt hollow. Still, the confirmation of the news brought his gaze up, past the pointed chin and whiskery lips and to his light brown eyes.

“He’s dead?” Dario shifted his legs under the table, stretching them out until they bumped into something. “I thought ... I didn’t know there’d been confirmation.”

I didn’t know the bastard was actually mortal. That’s what he felt like saying. With all this time, the fact that such a simple act—a bullet in a parking lot—had felled Hawk ... it seemed too easy. Why hadn’t Dario done it years ago? But the question to that one was easy. Gwen. Gwen hadn’t wanted any harm to befell her father. Gwen had believed that, beneath all of his threats and despicable actions ... that there had been some redeeming characteristics there.

Gwen had been wrong. And now, as a result, she was gone.

The man nodded. “I got the call just before I stepped in here.”

Dead, and Nick had done it. Dario felt both cheated and grateful, a contrasting mix of emotions that didn’t sit well.

The agent tapped on the second to last photo in the row. “Bell Hartley. Your latest girlfriend and the potential target of the murder. Missing.” He said the word as if it meant dead, the suspicion in his voice completely unfounded.

“And then... we have you.” He circled his finger around Dario’s photo. “Alive. Unscathed. In less than a week, you’ve gotten rid of your cheating wife, her boyfriend, her meddlesome father, and inherited an empire. Forgive me if everything seems a little too clean. Plus, there’s the matter of Bell Hartley.”

Her name sounded foul on the man’s lips, and Dario wanted to reach into his mouth and yank the syllables back. “What about Bell Hartley?” Dario growled out the question.

“She’s disappeared.” The man lifted his chin and fixed Dario with a hard look. “Know anything about that?”

“She’s safe. I got her out of town and away from Hawk. That’s all you need to know.”

“Actually...” The man shifted in his chair. “That’s not all we need to know. You can’t keep leaving us in the dark and then expecting us to jump when you snap your fingers. The FBI doesn’t work like that. When you lied to the police and told them that was Bell’s body in that condo—you brought her into this mess. The fact that she’s your girlfriend, and you’ve got a dead wife on your hands ... that doesn’t help anything as far as you are concerned.”

Dario sat back in the chair and folded his arms. “Fine. You want Bell? I’ll bring in Bell. You can ask her whatever you want.”

The man studied him, his finger tapping a slow beat against the desk. “Thank you, Mr. Capece, for that permission. Not that we need it.

“You need it if you plan on finding her.”

The edges of the man’s mouth turned down. “We are, I assure you, quite skilled in that art.” He leaned back and buttoned the top button of his coat. “Finding people is what we do, Mr. Capece.”

“Well, not to measure dicks or anything, but that stack of missing girls’ posters says otherwise.”

Dario leaned forward and tapped the stack of manila folders, his face hardening into a scowl. “I didn’t plan on Bell joining their ranks. You’ll have to forgive anything I did to keep that possibility at bay.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Anything? That’s a strong word, Dario.”

It wasn’t. Anything was a weak word where she was concerned. Anything didn’t begin to cover the enormity of what he would do to protect her. Anything sat in nine-to-five cubicles, it played inside the lines and lived with modern society. Everything was a far better word. He’d do everything to protect her and burn down this town if that’s what it took. Planting the gun ... hiding her away ... it was all just the surface of what he was capable of.

“I feel like we are getting off track.” The attorney jumped in, anxious to justify his eight-hundred-dollars-an-hour rate.

The agent pointed that stupid finger back in Dario’s direction. “You mentioned that you could bring Bell Hartley in. Do it. We want to talk to her, to get her statement on what happened that night. And in the meantime, with this murder weapon in hand and no longer any need to mislead Robert Hawk, you’re free to go. But our investigation is still ongoing. As I said, this is a very convenient turn of events for you, Mr. Capece. All of your problems have suddenly found themselves in the morgue and off of your plate.”

“Gwen was never a problem of mine.” Dario’s voice broke on the truth of the words. “And neither was Nick. Robert Hawk is the only one in this lot I wished ill of. But I didn’t want that.”

He stood. “Being shot to death was too easy a death for him. I wanted him sentenced. I wanted his crimes exposed, those girls’ bodies found, answers and guilt assigned. I wanted him to answer for what he did, and for him to admit to the world that he killed his only daughter. You think I’m happy this happened? You think this is convenient for me? Fuck that. I want my wife back. I want to put her on that ranch, in that cowboy’s arms, and for her to have the life she deserved—one free of a sadistic and tyrannical man who called himself her father. I want to take my girlfriend and have a normal fucking relationship with her, one where she doesn’t have to change her cell phone number, or hide in a million-dollar suite with me instead of going on a proper date. I want the freedom, for once, to live my life without that puppet master yanking on every string.”

He stopped, his breath coming hard, repressed emotions bubbling to the surface. This was bad. He was stronger than this. More controlled. More in control. “You tell me again that this is convenient, and I’ll break your fucking neck.”

He glared at the agent, willing him to open that scrawny throat, to poke at him one more time ... but the man didn’t. He stayed quiet, and Dario turned and reached for the door handle, anxious to find a phone and call Bell.