Cross varied between sipping from his coffee, and eating the cheese and mushroom omelet on the plate. All the while, men chattered on around him.
Their discussions of business kept him mostly interested in letting their monthly tribute go on for longer than he first intended. Business was good, after all. He had to be grateful for the small things, considering everything else.
“So, the Russians are out of the game now, boss?”
“Yeah,” another one said. “I got word the boss and his bigwig fuckers are down for the count.”
“Any truth to that, boss?”
Cross’s attention shifted from man to man asking questions, and then finally went to the Capo sitting near the windows. “Has there been any problems with that organization or their men lately?”
“No.”
“Then, I suppose you have your answer.”
Rick, Zeke, and the Capo that had helped to dispose of the higher Russians in the Bratva organization a few nights ago passed him looks. Silent, questioning looks. Cross shook his head subtly, and sipped on his coffee once more.
That put their curiosity to bed. The men went back to doing their business as they were supposed to do.
Cross had no desire to explain what had been done to stop the Russians, or that he was well aware the detectives were trying to link him to the three murders. Well … he looked to Zeke, and couldn’t help but take notice of the man’s calm, well-dressed appearance.
Zeke was back home. Doing business. Keeping his head down.
Everything a made man should.
Timur had been disposed of as well. Cross fully believed it. He simply didn’t ask Zeke how, what, or where. Details like those didn’t need to be shared at the moment.
Cross was going to take that same approach with his men regarding the Russian issue. The less men knew, the less likely it was that details about his involvement—or anyone else that helped him—got out. None of them needed that nonsense. Not with official attention on them as high as it currently happened to be.
What happened, happened. It was over. Entirely. As long as the men were safe on the streets, could do their business and work without concern, then that’s all that should matter. He didn’t need to be questioned about it.
His men knew that.
Besides …
He glanced over his men again.
A few looked away as he met their gazes. Some nodded to themselves.
He smirked.
They all knew.
They didn’t need to be told.
Rick finished his task of collecting the last few stacks of cash from the Capos. Cross’s breakfast had been in front of his face for a good thirty minutes while Rick started with the oldest Capo, and worked his way down to the youngest. It was a process. The men never got their meals until this part of tribute was done.
As soon as Rick sat down, Cross waved a hand over his shoulder. Less than thirty seconds later, three waitresses came from the back of the kitchen. Each held two plates. It took them a couple of trips, but soon enough, the men had food to keep their faces filled.
And their minds distracted.
This was a purposeful move on Cross’s part. A trick he had been playing on the Capos for a long while. They waited on food for so long that by the time they got it, they had little interest in anything else.
It allowed Cross to—mostly—discuss whatever he wanted with Rick and Zeke without someone butting in or listening too hard.
“You’re good?” Cross asked Zeke.
Sitting across from him, Zeke nodded. “Of course, man.”
“Had to ask. And Katya?”
“Relieved. Exhausted.”
“Ready to move on, I would think,” Rick said under his breath.
“That, too,” Zeke agreed.
“Everything is settled and done with, then?” Cross asked, carefully choosing his words about Timur.
Zeke didn’t seem to miss a click. “Somewhere in the ocean, all in little pieces.”
Rick whistled low. “Nice.”
“Trust me, that wasn’t the nice part.”
Cross smiled a little at that. “Let’s keep the details scant, huh?”
Zeke nodded once. “Got it, man.”
“Catherine’s heading out to Los Angeles tonight,” Cross said, “and you both know I have the run coming up.”
“When are you heading out?” Rick asked as he separated bills in to stacks of different denominations.
Cross’s gaze passed over his men to make sure they were still eating and distracted. Thankfully, they were. “Tomorrow morning. If all goes well—we’re not expecting any rain storms for a couple of days—then I will be at the border tomorrow night.”
“Saturday night,” Zeke said.
“Yeah.”
“Usually you hit it on a Sunday.”
“Saturday is good, too. It’ll be around shift change, likely. Point is, I want to get home faster. As does Catherine with whatever she’s handling in L.A., you know?”
“Sure,” Zeke murmured.
“So when she gets back and I am back, we’ll all do something.”
Rick raised a brow. “All of us?”
Cross shrugged. “It’s been a while since the Donati family had a big party, hasn’t it? Usually we save those for holidays and whatnot, but hey, Catherine and I have some good news. It would be nice to share with the rest of the family.”
Zeke grinned. “Does that good news have anything to do with another mini—”
He pointed a finger at his friend and said, “Shut your gaping hole right now.”
Laughter answered him back. That did gain the attention of the men around them, but just as quickly, it went away.
Cross went back to his conversation. “I’m not going to say what the good news is, just that we would like to share it with everyone at the same time. Including Katya, by the way.”
“All right,” Zeke said.
“Also, Cece keeps asking about her. She definitely made a friend.”
“Is she going with Catherine?”
Cross shook his head. “No, Dante and Catrina are coming over tonight to grab her after we all have dinner.”
“Ah.”
“Just ask, Zeke.”
His friend chuckled. “Katya keeps asking when she can see her because you know, she’s home and all. That’s when I kind of promised her.”
Cross waved a hand. “You know where Cece is going to be. You’re her godfather. Make your way over.”
“I will.”
“All counted, boss,” Rick said.
Cross was either ready to be impressed that Rick was counting cash quicker, or pissed off because his famiglia hadn’t made nearly as much money as they should. He hoped it was the first over the latter.
“Six-hundred,” Rick said.
“Thousand,” Cross pressed.
Rick confirmed with a nod.
Shit.
That was a damn good month.
“I think I’ll walk it out this time,” Cross said, standing from the table. “You two can sit and enjoy the rest of your meal.”
“You sure, boss?”
“Of course. Besides, someone is out there waiting for me.”
Rick and Zeke turned to check who was waiting for Cross outside the restaurant. No one had noticed the two standing there for the last couple of minutes except for Cross. But hell, he didn’t blame them.
It wasn’t their job to notice everything.
He was the boss.
Not them.
Catherine rested against the front end of Cross’s Rolls-Royce. Cece stood beside her mother, dressed in a leather jacket, dress, and wool leggings. The little suede boots on her feet had been a gift from Catrina, apparently. A way to make the girl wear warmer shoes that also looked like heeled boots her mother had.
“Have a good day, boss,” Rick said as Cross shrugged on his jacket.
Zeke repeated the sentiment. Cross exited the restaurant with a wave over his shoulder as choruses of voices said their goodbyes, as well.
The very second Catherine laid eyes on him, she pushed off the Phantom with a smile. “I was in the neighborhood.”
Down the road, her Mercedes SUV was parked, and still running by the looks of the exhaust puffing from the tailpipe.
Cross pressed a quick kiss to his wife’s lips as his hand skimmed overtop Cece’s bouncing head. “Ready to head home?”
“Yeah, I have to get a start on cooking dinner.”
“Jesus, it’s only ten.”
“I’m making turkey.”
Her defensive tone made him laugh.
Mostly, she just had to be doing something when she wasn’t working. Cooking was one of those things, but he was not going to point it out right now. After all, turkey dinner for supper sounded fantastic.
“And red cake!” Cece said, pushing between them.
“Red cake?”
“Red velvet,” Catherine explained. “I picked up the stuff for it. She thinks it’s going to taste like red apples, so …”
“Someone is in for a surprise.”
Catherine shrugged. “Oh, well.”
“Let’s go, Catty.”
Cece pumped a small fist upwards, and shouted, “Yes, let’s goes!”
“I told you,” Dante said.
Cross couldn’t help but notice the smugness lacing the man’s words, but he was more interested in something else. “What are you talking about?”
“Life.”
Again, Cross blanked.
“I need more to go on here.”
Dante chuckled, and raised his glass of brandy in the direction of Catherine and Catrina who were plating turkey together. “Life is slowing down. Just like I said it would do for you, Cross. And thus, I told you so.”
Cross absorbed the man’s words. At first, he was ready to disagree. He thought, when considered, he had a million and one things he could toss out to Dante to show just how unruly their life still was in the grand scheme of things.
Then, he really thought about it.
Catherine was home more. After she handled this final issue of the competition, she was going to be coming right back home. Unlike before when she always had something new coming her way because Catrina was always using this or that as a teachable moment.
The lessons had come to an end, Cross realized.
Catherine likely wouldn’t head out again for another month, as that’s how Catrina was known to work with her girls. They all gathered at the same time once a month to have private face to face meetings.
Beyond that, Catherine was learning to delegate. Her tasks were not only hers to handle. She gave more responsibility to those she trusted and whom she knew could handle it. The phone calls lessened.
Dante looked to Cross with a grin and a nod. “Hmm, see.”
“Well, shit.”
“I bet she hasn’t even realized it yet, has she?”
“I don’t … no, she hasn’t,” Cross settled on saying.
“Life is finally settling,” Dante said.
“It is.”
“It’s a nice place to be, Cross. Of course, you’ll both have your moments where it gets to be a bit much again. That’s unavoidable in this sort of business. It’ll feel like nonsense begins to snowball one after the other.”
“But it’ll settle again.”
Just like it did this time.
Dante nodded, and sipped from his drink. “It will settle.”
The silence stretched on between them, but Cross didn’t really mind. He used it to further consider what Dante had told him, and the new realization he now had. All the while, he watched Catherine and her mother work at the island. Cece stole pieces of white meat when she thought no one was looking.
Finally, Dante spoke up again, “She needed these past three or so years, Cross. She needed to be busy like that to truly understand and appreciate how to manage all of it coming at her at once. Catrina knew that the right upset—or just a little too much being thrown at Catherine—might put her in a bad place.”
“Mentally, you mean.”
“You can’t pretend her history doesn’t exist.”
“We don’t,” Cross pointed out.
“Good. The fact still remains the same in that she has spent the last three years of her life on constant, high alert. One issue after another. One task after another. Progressively more and more business until it seemed like that’s all she was doing. And what did she learn from it?”
“How to be a good boss.”
Dante chuckled. “More than that.”
“How to be away.”
“And how to make it all go away, Cross. She needed to learn it, of course, and in a way that was firsthand and in her face. Otherwise, pretend learning would have done no good for her when faced with the real thing.”
“Of course,” he echoed.
“I always used to say I pitied the person Catrina decided to let take over for her business.”
“Why?”
“I thought her nature—just who she was—would be a bit much for anyone when it came to business.”
“Kind of is,” Cross muttered.
Dante tipped his head to the side as if to acknowledge what Cross said without verbalizing the words at the same time. “True, yet I don’t think anyone is quite as stubborn and quick as Catherine when it comes to her mother.”
“I used to think they were like two bulls ready to fight.”
“Mmm, me too.”
“We were wrong.”
“In most circumstances,” his father-in-law agreed.
Damn.
“Cece, stop sneaking that meat,” Catherine chided, drawing their attention back across the room. “You’re going to fill up and not eat what I put on your plate.”
Cece shook her head.
“Don’t you tell me no, little miss.”
Again, their daughter shook her head.
Dante hid his laughter by taking a drink. Cross did the same thing.
“Cece Catherine,” his wife warned.
“I noes steal turkey,” Cece said.
As she spoke, little bits of uneaten turkey fell from her puffed out cheeks. Like a little squirrel, her cheeks were filled with meat.
“You did!”
“Noes.”
More turkey fell.
“Cece, I can see it.”
“Noes,” Cece said firmly before she swallowed everything in her mouth. Then, she stuck out her tongue. “See, noes turkey, Ma.”
“That’s because you swallowed it!”
Cece shook her head once more.
“Stop telling me no, Cece.”
“I noes says noes, Ma. I shake my head. Not noes, Ma. Not.”
“Cece, it is the same—”
“Not noes, Ma,” Cece interjected with a shrug. “I says what I says.”
Cross couldn’t help it. He choked on his laughter and the brandy in his mouth. Instantly, all the gazes in the room fell on him. He was still wiping the alcohol from his mouth as he left the room.
Yep.
Every inch of that kid.
All him.
Every single inch.
He regretted nothing.
Cross shifted the gears of the eighteen wheeler lower as he headed down Grand Falls road. Already having passed through Limestone, the border crossing was coming right up. Another three minutes behind the wheel, and he would be beyond the American border into California Settlement, New Brunswick.
A few backroads, and the main town—mostly French—of Grand Falls would lead him onto the Trans-Canada Highway. Twelve hours later, and he would be dropping his load of smuggled guns off to the waiting Guzzi family in Ontario.
Then, he would catch a plane and head back home.
Simple.
Routine.
Nothing new.
Cross flipped open the glove compartment, and pulled out the items he would need to get across the border crossing. He set the Passport, IDs, truck information, and falsified driving log to the passenger seat.
As far as the crossing guards would know, he was a long-haul Canadian trucker returning home from a work trip. The address on his IDs said he lived just beyond Grand Falls in New Demark, about a thirty minute drive once past the border. It would absolutely make sense to the custom guards that the trucker would want to pass on a border with no scale while he had an empty load. On the other hand, a driver with a full load would have crossed the border further down Maine—one Cross knew he couldn’t pass without being caught.
The burner phone in the cup holder rang with a call. Cross’s gaze drifted between the road in front of him, and the phone. Only a couple of people had the phone’s number. Zeke, Rick, and Catherine. That was it. Once the run was over, he would destroy the phone as he always did.
The eighteen-wheeler didn’t have Bluetooth, and picking up a call while driving in this area was a crapshoot. He did not need to be pulled over by cops for having a phone stuck to his ear while behind the wheel.
Soon, the call cut off.
Cross saw the flashing blue and red just a couple of miles ahead of him as the phone began to ring again.
Something in his mind whispered, Fuck.
He didn’t know what was wrong, but something was.
His heart thrummed with it.
His blood thickened with it.
He just knew.
Cross slowed the rig down another gear, but not enough to be noticeable. Cars and trucks were backed up a good mile from the border crossing. Entirely unusual for the spot. A lot of workers for hospitals and Canadians who went to the University of Maine and Presque Isle used the border, so traffic moved smoothly.
It should not be backed up.
Those red and blue lights kept flashing.
Cross answered the call, put it on speaker, and set it into his lap. His rig came to a stop at the very back of the line.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He could not turn back, now.
There was no fucking way he could get this truck turned around without drawing attention to himself.
Cross eyed the long line of cars leading up to the border as a voice filtered over the phone.
“Cross, man, you there?”
“Zeke,” Cross said.
“Tell me you’re not at the border, Cross.”
His body went cold.
His fingertips numbed.
“There’s dogs,” Cross murmured.
K9 units were sniffing down the line of cars. The colored patch on the dogs’ vests told him they were drug, currency, and weapons trained.
He was fucked all over.
“Shit, you’re at the border,” Zeke hissed.
“Yeah. At the back of a mile long line, but they’re closing in. I’ve got five, maybe ten, minutes.”
“Katya got a call.”
Of course she did.
“A friend let her know that a guy she was involved with had a hand in getting information about you, and some of your business. She thought Katya would like to know some of it had to do with gunrunning. The girl specifically mentioned you had a trip coming up for Canada, and that you liked using the Limestone and California Settlement border.”
“People don’t know that information, Zeke.”
“Some of the people in Andino’s organization would know, Cross. Consider that it’s a possibility one of them might have been paid a good enough price to hand a bit of information over.”
Shit.
This was what the Russian meant, he realized. This was what Vlad meant when he said plans were already in motion, and his promise to ruin Cross’s family was not over.
The understanding came on swift and dangerous. Like the undertow in a river, it was going to pull him down and drown him all at once.
He wouldn’t be able to fight back.
Cross wet his lips, and took a deep breath. He couldn’t talk because the more important thing for him to do in that moment was think. Plan. Or rather, go through the plans he already had made for this run.
“It’s a heavily forested area,” Cross said out loud. “Twelve miles past the border and into the woods about fifteen minutes, and I’m at a brook. Downstream another fifteen miles is a private cabin.”
“You said dogs.”
“I need to hit water, especially if they’re human-scent trained.”
“They’ll go down the brook, man.”
“Likely,” Cross agreed. “There’s more cabins, though. Mostly unused given the time of the year.”
“Except you’re at the border right now.”
Cross’s gaze darted left.
Trees stared back at him.
A wall of them. Dense, thick, and great to get lost in. He’d gone over maps, scoured Google Images and Maps for trails and more. He knew these woods just in case.
“As long as I get out of this rig, I am home free.”
His gaze drifted to the window again. A few vehicles and one eighteen-wheeler up, the dogs were coming down with their handler.
“Give me an address,” Zeke demanded. “Somewhere to go, Cross.”
He didn’t have one.
None of those shitty little cabins had addresses.
Nothing.
Rain started falling down outside the rig.
It was going to be wet and cold.
“I’ll call you once I’m … somewhere,” Cross settled on saying.
“Cross—”
“Catherine will know where my stuff is. She’ll know what to look for.”
Cross hung up the call. Keeping one eye on the team of dogs and handlers maybe fifty feet away, he gathered the only things that would help him in the woods. A pocket knife under the seat. The lighter in the cup holder. And the phone in his lap.
The fake documents were just that … fake. They weren’t going to lead to him, and even the images used had been altered just enough to fit the disguise he liked to use during runs. A fake, sandy blond wig, and blue eye contacts that he covered with a pair of aviator sunglasses when he drove. He never ever took the sunglasses off. Should he need to stop for diesel, he only used stations that allowed him to pay at the pump. He didn’t take his sunglasses off, and only exited the truck with a ball cap on and a hoodie pulled over it.
Now or never.
Cross leaned over and opened the passenger door as he unbuckled his seat belt. He slid across the seats with the items in his pockets. He didn’t even think to grab his jacket in the back bed of the truck.
He hit the ground running. Dog barks and human shouts echoed at his back as he darted into the tree line.