Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
I answered it. “Tommy?”
“Not Tommy,” said a male voice, “But we have him. Get to where Tommy’s brother is and call this number back.”
“What do you want?” I looked at Dario with panic. He took the phone from me and pulled over to the side of the road.
“Who is this? This is him; what do you want?” Dario held the phone for a minute. Then after a minute of listening, he said, “Put him on the phone.” A minute later he said, “Hey. You alright? Yeah, man. Yep, she’s with me. Right. Right.” Then he hung up.
“What do they want?”
“Money,” Dario said, pulling back onto the road.
“Money?”
“Yeah; they want a million cash. That’s it. These guys are small time, guys hired by Castillo’s nephew. They were hired to take out a hit on Tommy but decided to sell him back. They want you delivering the money. Pop has enough money in his vault. I’ll get it and we’ll make the drop.”
I was speechless. Dario pulled around in a U-turn and drove in the opposite direction. Ten minutes later we were at their pop’s place and Dario pulled in and made me follow him inside.
“Why do they want me delivering the money?”
We were in Tom’s office and Dario was opening a safe in the wall behind a family photo of Tom and the four grandkids.
“They probably figure you won’t shoot them; you’ll give them the money and they can get outta there clean. They’ll figure if I’m in there it’s a big chance that I’ll be carrying and it’ll go south.”
Dario pulled out ten stacks of bills and then put them into a duffle bag that he’d fetched from a closet.
“But what if they just take the money and shoot me? What if Tommy’s already... already...” I was panicking, big time.
“I’ll have you covered. We’ll have the place crawling with men. Let’s go. They’re calling in fifteen minutes with the drop location.
“You sure they’ve got Tommy?”
“They put him on the phone.”
The idea of Tommy being taken seemed all but impossible to me. He was so strong, had such a presence, it was hard to imagine him being overpowered. The idea that they’d found his safe house and could’ve shot him…
Dario interrupted my thoughts, “This crew is small time. We give them the money, get Tommy, Tommy and I eliminate the bigger threat, and we send some of our guys to get our money back and take these guys out. It’ll all work out. Don’t stress.”
Don’t stress? Easy for him to say! There was so much going on here. Tom Ferrano in a hospital bed, my father in jail and a sitting duck (or maybe by now a dead duck), Tommy kidnapped for ransom and not from the bigger threat but some other new threat, the rest of the family in hiding. Tessa’s husband dead. And me: expected to do a money drop to get Tommy back?
All while wondering if my own dad was alive or dead.
Dario pulled into a coffee shop drive thru and ordered a coffee and looked to me. “Just water,” I muttered and he ordered for us and then parked in front and stared at the phone.
They’d tracked me somehow to the farm and waited. They ran my bike off the road just down the road and I’d gotten knocked out cold. When I came to, they had disarmed me and had me cuffed in the back of their covered pickup. Now we were in a motel room. I knew this motel. It was two minutes from my condo, where my brother now lived. I knew the décor because I’d fucked a girl here a few months ago and then one of the guys had come in from outside and I recognized the neon diner sign across the road.
These guys were trying to be up and comers, subbing work for Jesse Romero, Juan Carlos Castillo’s nephew. They were stupid. They were careless. And I didn’t like that I’d heard them demand my girl make the drop for the money. I was relieved that my brother had Tia with him, but Dare had better find another way. There was no way he’d send Tia in here. Would he?
I didn’t know how she’d wound up with him, but that was a relief. I didn’t want to think about what they’d have done to her if they’d caught her back at the farm and the minute I woke and knew they’d found my safe house I’d been sick with worry about her being there, vulnerable. There were two of them, one had junkie written all over him. The other guy, a jock type, started chirping at me, asking me what my girl looked like, why there were no pics of her on my phone, talking about how maybe he’d get a taste before they let me go. I sat, not giving them anything, no words, no looks, just dead eyes.