SEALed With A Kiss(23)
Swallowing a bitter taste in his mouth, he wished that someone had tried to hit his house last night, after all. Not that he’d wanted Bella or his mother in harm’s way, but he’d been stewing for a fight. Still was.
“Are you going to kill him?”
The fearful question brought Vinny’s attention back to the present. He’d forgotten that Bella was sitting in the chair beside him, playing with her food. The dark smudges under her eyes and the pallor in her cheeks told him she had hardly slept a wink herself. “No,” he told her, “’course not. I’m not a murderer. He’s the murderer.”
Bella nodded, her eyes watering.
“Hey,” he said realizing she still blamed herself for everything. “This ain’t your fault, Bella. No matter what happens, you remember that. Lia does what Lia does. You didn’t force her into anything, did you?”
She shook her head, unable to answer him.
Just then his cell phone buzzed and he snatched it off the table, his pulse kicking to see that Joe was calling him. “Whatchu got, sir?” he demanded in lieu of a proper greeting.
“I saw her. She’s alive.”
“What?” Relief flooded his system, making him sink more heavily into his chair. “Where? How’d she look?”
“I’ve been tailing Rawlings’ assistant, Dave Collum, while the others have been watching Rawlings.” Considering how little sleep the CO had probably gotten, he sounded as sharp and on-the-ball as ever. “Collum left Harrisburg early this morning. I followed them to a warehouse over in South Philly, where a guy pulls up driving Lia’s Kia Soul. The tags were different, but that dent where she backed into my mailbox is unmistakable. The assistant gets out, pays the other guy off, and then transfers Ophelia into his vehicle.”
Vinny swallowed hard and repeated his second question through a tight throat. “How’s she look?”
“Fine,” Joe answered rather vaguely. “But listen up. I called the cops to report a sighting on the Kia Soul, so hopefully they’ve arrested her kidnapper by now. Chances are, he was the same guy Rawlings used to murder Staskiewicz. In the meantime, I’ve tailed Collum’s vehicle to Rawlings’ Philadelphia address. It looks like Rawlings plans to go through with the exchange.”
Vinny scrubbed a hand over his face. His eyes burned with relief and the need to have Lia safe and sound and in his arms again, but it wasn’t that easy.
“I want you to wear Harlan’s dress whites at the funeral. Harley will be hiding so he can film Rawlings’ actions during the exchange. The more evidence we can stack against him, the less chance he can get out of the charges we level against him later.”
“Are you sure Lia’s okay?” Vinny interrupted. Joe’s refusal to elaborate earlier made him fearful. What wasn’t Joe telling him?
“She’s fine, Vinny. She appeared to be unconscious, which means he’s probably got her drugged. There’s a scrape on her face that Rawlings’ assistant looked upset to see,” he added on a side note, “but other than that, she’s in one piece.”
“A scrape. How bad of a scrape? Was she beaten?”
“I couldn’t really tell. I was too far away. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you before the funeral. We’ll stop by your house to pick you up and head over in one car.”
Severing the call, Vinny looked up to see his mother and sister staring at him with identical expressions of foreboding. “She’s okay,” Vinny relayed in a voice that was thick with relief. To his chagrin, he couldn’t maintain his composure any longer. He covered his face with his hands and sobbed with relief. She was going to be back in his arms, back where she belonged by sundown. He could go on breathing.
Thank you, dear, sweet God!
*
Lia surfaced from a deeply unconscious state, fighting the poison in her bloodstream long enough to determine where she was and what was happening to her.
Why am I naked?
Her sudden sense of vulnerability, a breath of cool air prickling her skin, heightened her awareness. She couldn’t open her eyes—her abductor had clearly upped the dose of the tranquilizer—but she didn’t have to see to know that she was being wiped down.
A wet cloth, smelling of urine and soap, moved briskly along her upper thighs, causing her to lurch reflexively. The surface under her back felt smooth yet hard, as though she lay on a sheet draped over a table.
“All done here,” said a mature woman with an African American cadence to her voice. “Turn her over, Mason, and we’ll clean her up from behind.”
Appalled, Lia felt herself being flipped onto her stomach by hands that felt large yet feeble in contrast to her abductor’s. Who is touching me and why?