“Put both hands through the bars, wrists together,” Lucas ordered.
Rubber soles shuffled on concrete as Ryan stepped forward to comply. He looked both scared and irritated, but was wisely exercising his right to remain silent. So far, at least. Handcuffs closed around my brother’s wrists with a metallic click-slide–catch. More clattering followed as Lucas opened the cage and cuffed his prisoner’s ankles together.
“A cat’s body can sustain a lot of damage without actually dying,” Lucas said, his voice as deep as the rumble of the earth itself. “You just think about that before you so much as scratch yourself without permission.”
Ryan gulped and nodded, still mute.
Marc had chosen Lucas as the transport guard for two reasons, both of them obvious. As the biggest cat any of us had ever met, Lucas stood the best chance of intimidating Ryan into submission without having to lift a finger. And since every finger lifted against Ryan endangered our chances of catching Miguel, we needed him to remain conscious and cooperative.
But mostly, Marc chose Lucas because as Abby’s brother, he had more reason than anyone else present to want Ryan dead. And Ryan knew it. It was Marc’s way of scaring the living shit out of my brother. It was also the only revenge any of us would have until Ryan had worn out his usefulness.
Twenty-Nine
Owen drove us to Jackson International Airport, parking in a nearly empty pay-by-the-hour lot rather than in the crowded loading zone. We couldn’t risk a passerby noticing the thin and obviously exhausted man chained hand and foot inside a van registered to my father. Unless the officer called to investigate happened to believe we were into traveling orgies and bondage, we’d spend the rest of the night in jail, trying to come up with a suitable explanation before Daddy arrived to bail us out.
Yeah, better to avoid humans altogether.
Marc, Parker, Ethan, and I stood in the parking lot, while Lucas repositioned Ryan in the second row, where Abby could reach him from the front passenger seat. She had his cell phone, and would hold it up to his mouth if Miguel called.
Lucas gave Ryan one final warning, involving how little room his shredded corpse would take up in a garbage bag if he so much as sneezed on Abby before they got to the ranch. Then he slammed the sliding door shut on Ryan’s protests that he wasn’t violent, for crying out loud. By then, we’d all heard enough of his sniveling about being forced into working for Miguel, and no one was happier than I was to be separated from his nasal whine by a sliding sheet of steel and tinted glass.
Lucas said goodbye to his sister and warned Owen not to get pulled over. Then he slapped the hood of the van like the flank of a horse. Owen pulled out of the parking lot, his brake lights flashing at us, and Abby waved goodbye with her head hanging out the front window. Lucas waved back until Owen turned a corner and the van drove out of sight.
We stood in line at the ticket counter to show our IDs to an overcaffeinated clerk tapping away at a keyboard we couldn’t see. Our tickets were already reserved and paid for. Daddy had bought them over the phone as soon as he knew for sure who would be driving back with Abby and Ryan.
Unfortunately, there were no direct flights from Jackson, Mississippi, to Saint Louis, and the forty-minute layover in Cincinnati, of all places, put our travel time with Delta Airlines at almost exactly four hours. The ninety-minute drive from Saint Louis to Oak Hill meant we wouldn’t arrive in Carissa’s hometown until around eight in the evening.
But Ryan had assured us, under penalty of a very uncomfortable ride home, that we would beat Sean and Miguel by at least an hour and a half. Probably more, since neither of them seemed to know how to read a map. That didn’t leave us much time to prepare, but we’d have to take what we could get, because our only shot at catching them lay in Oak Hill, Missouri.
Since none of us had any luggage to check—or to carry on, for that matter—we went straight from the ticket counter to the terminal, where a line of impatient vacationers waited to walk through the metal detector. While we stood, shuffling forward one step at a time, I became the lucky object of several suspicious stares from the guards waiting on the other side of the security checkpoint. Normally, I would have ignored them, assuming they stared at most young women the same way. But this time it was different, and we all knew it. They were staring at my face.I was the first in line from our group, and when I walked through the metal detector with no problem, the nearest guard watched me, expecting me to continue to my gate. Instead, I stepped to the side to wait. The elderly guard gave me a sympathetic smile, as if to say he shared my pain. I smiled back and nodded, knowing that my particular brand of pain would likely give the poor old coot a heart attack.
When Marc joined me on the other side, then Ethan, then Parker, the guard frowned and ambled closer. He smelled trouble, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. We were trouble—just not for him. But he had no reason to know that. Why would a young woman who’d obviously taken quite a beating travel alone with several large men and no luggage? Not even a purse.
I desperately hoped he wouldn’t ask, because I couldn’t think of a good explanation, other than the truth, and I was sure he wouldn’t believe a word any of the guys said. So I did the only thing that came to mind: I took Marc’s hand in mine and snuggled closer to him, making it clear that I was with him by choice.
In spite of my relaxed body language, when Lucas stepped up to the metal detector, the guard’s hand went instantly to the butt of his gun. Lucas always drew attention, but rarely the good kind.
At my side, Marc stiffened, watching the guard watch Lucas. I glanced at Marc as discreetly as I could. He looked relaxed, his free hand stuffed casually in the pockets of his jeans, feet spread a comfortable distance apart—but I knew better. I could hear his heart thump and knew he was already planning the best course of action, should the guard decide to make trouble.
By some miracle, none of us had set off the metal detector, but no one looked shocked when the suspicious guard chose Lucas to be searched by hand. Physical searches were supposedly conducted at random, but even I couldn’t blame the guard for choosing him. If he wasn’t my cousin, Lucas was someone I’d keep my eye on too.
He submitted to the search without complaint, demonstrating a level of patience that might have surprised anyone who didn’t know him. It surprised none of us. Yes, he was big and scary, his nose having healed crooked the last time it was broken. Yes, he could have snapped the guard’s neck between his thumb and forefinger. And yes, he’d be ready and willing to shred Miguel on sight. But while Lucas could handle any trouble that came his way, he never went looking for any. That would have been dishonorable, and far beneath him.
When the guard found no reason to detain Lucas, he let us go. I felt tension roll off Marc like fog in front of a breeze. He smiled and squeezed my hand as we went to find our gate, and if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought he was humming. But that must have been my imagination, because Marc didn’t hum. He grumbled, and snapped, and sometimes cursed in Spanish when he was really pissed off. But he definitely didn’t hum.
On each leg of our trip, I dozed fitfully, trying to make up for my nightmare-riddled sleep the night before. Unfortunately, I never got more than ninety consecutive minutes of rest, thanks to turbulence, frighteningly perky flight attendants, and the persistent demands of my bladder. Of course, that last part was my own fault, because I drank a twenty-four-ounce Coke in Jackson, and a sixteen-ounce coffee in Cincinnati. Yet in spite of all the caffeine, I felt more like a zombie than a shapeshifter when I got off the plane in Missouri.
When we landed in Saint Louis, the gate was packed. Row upon row of occupied, molded-plastic chairs greeted us, along with the conversational buzz of evening commuters: an army of corporate automatons, armed with cell phones and laptops, hell-bent on taking over the world one boardroom meeting at a time.
According to the itinerary Michael had given us, the Di Carlo brothers should have deplaned at a neighboring gate twenty minutes earlier on a layover flight from Atlanta. They were supposed to wait for us, but I saw no sign of them. I was about to follow my nose toward the aromas of fried food and processed sugar when my eyes settled on a familiar face in the crowd.
“Vic!” I cried, instantly wide awake. His head swiveled with a reluctance that spoke of grief and exhaustion, bloodshot eyes brightening briefly when they met mine. He looked like hell. Two days’ worth of stubble peppered the lower half of his face and his chunky-looking brown hair probably hadn’t seen a comb since sometime before his chin last met with a razor. Travel-wrinkled clothes clung to a well-defined frame: a white button-up shirt, undone at the collar, and a pair of snug black slacks brushing the tops of polished dress shoes. They were funeral clothes, and the man hovering at Vic’s shoulder was dressed just like him.
I hadn’t seen Anthony Di Carlo in nearly a decade, but even if I never saw him again, I wouldn’t forget those eyes. Blue like the ocean only gets when you’re too far out to see land, they were both haunting and mesmerizing. Sara’s had been nearly identical.
Vic came toward me with his arms open wide, his eyes magnified by tears. He was half again my size, but when we embraced, I felt like I was holding him up, and it was all I could do to remain standing. He buried his face in my hair, his body shaking against me with the spasmodic rhythm of unrestrained sobs. It was almost more than I could bear gracefully.