“He asked what apartment I lived in, and he asked if I had a dog. Isn’t that weird?”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I was just visiting a friend. He wanted to know who, and I said I had to go and came back inside.”
I reached behind my back to make sure my Beretta was still in place before I stood up from the couch and went over to her.
“If you see him again, come right back up here,” I told her. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t even make eye contact with him. I don’t care what he says.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“No one.”
“Could you provide slightly less useful information?” she quipped. “I mean, there could be a Guinness record for it.”
“Nice,” I replied. Normally I would have been pissed off by the sarcasm, but for some reason, hearing it from Lia just made my cock jump. I took a deep breath and let it out. “I know who he is, and he really just wants to harass me. I don’t want him annoying you as well.”
“Who is he?” she asked again.
“Never mind. Just tell me if you see him again.”
“Jesus, you are frustrating!”
I shrugged. I couldn’t argue with the sentiment, and it didn’t matter if I was frustrating her or not. It wasn’t going to change the answer at this point. It wasn’t that I wanted to piss her off, it was just the way it was. I couldn’t exactly come out and tell her the dude was a federal agent, monitoring me because I was supposed to infiltrate and bring down a rival mob organization.
Yeah, that would go over well.
So I was stuck with her being upset because I wouldn’t answer her. I wondered how many times we were going to end up playing the same game and wondered how others dealt with this kind of shit. Rinaldo was married, but his wife worked at one of his clubs, so she knew what the deal was before they were involved. Mario was also married, but I didn’t have any idea where his wife came from. She only spoke Italian, and I only understood her about a third of the time because she talked so damn fast.
How many times would Lia put up with my evasiveness?
I ran my hand over my face and growled under my breath. It wasn’t that I was angry—not with her, anyway—but the whole situation had me as tense as I could be. Johnson talking to her was crossing a line as far as I was concerned, and it reminded me that I should really just get her the fuck out of town.
“I also wanted to make sure you realize I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing—at all times.”
If Trent wasn’t full of shit, and I doubted he was, he would know if I were to take her out of the danger zone. If that were the case, and he decided to go after her once I’d returned, I would have no way of keeping her safe. I had to make sure she was safe.
Where was the safest place for her?
With me.
It was also probably the most dangerous, but a lot of that was because she had no idea what she was dealing with, and I wasn’t going to tell her. Telling her could result in anything, up to and including her taking off. If she took off, he might decide to follow her. If she was on her own, I still wouldn’t be able to protect her.
Another option was to forget about the whole deal with the feds, take Lia, and leave town. I would probably be able to manage getting us both away without being followed, though it would take some effort. At least then I wasn’t going to have to balance keeping Rinaldo off my trail and Greco convinced I was on his side.
It was the best option.
“We’re going to leave,” I said definitively.
*****
Lia was pissed.
I couldn’t really blame her. I’d told her basically nothing but demanded she put a few days’ worth of clothes in a bag and just follow me. I didn’t want Odin left on his own—the woman who usually took care of him when I was out of town worked for Moretti, and I didn’t want to risk anything coming out while we were gone, so I tossed him on top of a towel in the back of the car and took him to a dog-boarding kennel. I’d come back for him later.
I drove my Audi up to the north side of the city and parked it outside a nightclub. Grabbing our bags out of the back of the car, I led a protesting Lia through the front entrance of the club, through the throbbing techno music, and then out the back door. Once out back, we made our way down a graffiti-covered alley between the buildings, across the street, and over to a small conference center where I called a cab to take us back south.
I gave the driver an address, and he turned around to look at me.