Mr. and Mrs. Rossi

“Glad you finally have an appetite,” Roman joked.

Tito feigned a heart attack and clutched his chest. “What? Dante lost his appetite?”

Dante flipped both men the middle finger while Roman shared the story of the one time Dante did not have an appetite to eat. Tito doubled over in laughter. “Whatever. Aren’t we supposed to be watching the door?”

“I already checked it out with Julio. I didn’t see him in there.”

“I hate stakeouts. This night is shot to hell,” Tito cursed.

“We’ll get a chance tomorrow. That’s why I brought Julio over here,” Roman said. “As mayor, he can get us into the jail first thing and help us.”

“I don’t know too much about helping,” Julio said, “but whatever I can do to help my cousin, no problem. If I can’t help, my brother can transfer her.”

“Your brother’s a sheriff?”

“No, a Marshall.”

Dante had forgotten about the Marshall Service in town.

“Jose Torres?” Tito inquired, flipping through his phone.

“Oh yeah,” said Roman, snapping his fingers, “You’ve helped them a few times.”

“Well,” Tito gave a cocky grin, “You know how we do and what we do. I help them. It’d be great catching up with him again.”

“I’ll arrange for it,” Julio said then cleared his throat, “speaking of catching up, Roman, you’ll never guess who I ran into tonight.”

“You got me.”

“Think back to when I was in high school and there used to be this family who came here every summer.”

“I spent my summers with Abuelita, in San Juan.”

“All right, but you remember the stupid bet.”

Roman shook his head, “You made lots of bets, although I never knew why. Women always threw themselves at you.”

Dante enjoyed the cousins’ interplay. Roman, like Dante, grew up without brothers but his cousins were brothers and then the team became family.

Julio shrugged his shoulders, “It’s a curse being this good looking.”

“If you don’t shut up I’m going to fix your curse.”

“Remember the girl I got engaged to?”

“Um,” Roman scratched the back of his head, “I remember the big fuss with your mom. Then we stopped talking about the whole thing.”

“Harley Tomasello.”

Blood rushed to Dante’s ears as he turned his head and did a double take. A sickening punch metaphorically hit him in the stomach. The air blew out of his lungs in slow motion. So did the quick side glances his teammates glanced in his direction.

“Is that right?” Roman asked feigning interest. “What is she doing here?”

“I’m not really sure, but she’s married now,” Julio let out a low whistle, oblivious to the tension filling around Harley’s car. “Damn, whoever the bastard is, he sure is lucky. Man, the girl is still fine. I wonder what would have happened if we went through with—”

Roman cleared his throat, “Hey guys, two o’clock.”

As much as Dante wanted to hear whatever Julio Torres had to say, his mind switched back to work mode and scanned the crowd for Roman’s easy coordinates. Javier couldn’t have put more of a target on his back if he wanted too.