It sucks to be the tall one in a gunfight.
The thought whizzed through Neal’s mind as she ducked to avoid the bullets pounding the wall behind her. She hunched behind the staircase railing, slammed a new clip into her weapon, and glanced over to her right where Don Mancuso’s bodyguard, Michael, was defending his former boss’s office door with his huge, broad body which had already taken a hit. They needed reinforcements and they needed them fast.
Keeping her eyes trained on the landing, she reached for her phone and speed-dialed Robert Valentino, one of the Mancuso capos who was supposed to have followed them upstairs. The minute the line connected, she whispered, “Get everyone to the front of the house. Take no prisoners.” She hung up before Robert could question her logic or authority since she didn’t feel like explaining the former and she wasn’t sure about the latter. Don Mancuso had been in the ground less than a week before his enemies had begun this assault, and with his consigliere, Siobhan Collins, having fled the country within hours of his death, none of the foot soldiers left behind was certain who was in charge. Their enemies were taking advantage.
She crawled toward Michael and motioned for him to get down. As she drew closer, she pointed to the door behind him. He nodded and fired another round toward the first floor before joining her as she dove into the Don’s private office.
“Grab everything from the desk,” she whispered, as she surveyed their options for escape. “The key’s in there. Book of Acts,” she added, pointing to the worn King James Bible sitting on the surface. Siobhan had alluded to the hiding spot on her most recent call, saying the only way to salvation was through the verses urging action. She hoped she hadn’t misread the clue.
“Got it,” Michael said, holding up the key in triumph before using it to open the Don’s desk. A moment later, his arms stuffed with papers, he stood and inclined his head toward the door. “They’ll be here any minute. You have a plan?”
She should. There’d been plenty of opportunities to practice the skills she’d learned over the years as a loyal soldier and protector of the Don’s consigliere, but nothing truly prepared a person for their world to come crumbling down upon them. She had only her instincts to trust. “Let’s draw them in.”
Michael didn’t hesitate. He picked up a chair and hurled it at the closed office door, instantly drawing fire. If the men downstairs weren’t already on the landing, they would be running toward them now, determined to gun them down. She pointed to the window and ran toward it, throwing open the sash to look out onto the balcony. The drop to the ground was about thirty feet. Survivable, but likely crippling. Even with her natural agility she wasn’t likely to survive a fall like that and Michael would hit the ground like the boulder he was. She glanced up at the roofline, a mere shoulder pull from the balcony railing away.
“Come on,” she yelled to Michael, no longer trying to hide. The intruders knew they were in here and in a minute, they’d be right where she wanted them.
Michael frowned but followed her command and joined her on the balcony. “No way, I’m going to survive,” he said, looking downward.
“True. That’s why we’re going this way,” she said, pointing at the roofline. She stepped onto the railing and clambered onto the roof. Once she was settled, she reached down a hand. “You got this.”
His eyes were wide, but he tucked in and climbed onto the railing while she prayed it would hold him. It took both of them, but they managed to get him up and onto the roof after a few stressful tries.
“What now?” he asked.
She pointed down. “Get ready to shoot.”
As if on cue, two heads appeared below them. She could only imagine their thoughts as they looked at the lush lawn below, wondering why there wasn’t any sign of the bodies that had plummeted there to escape them.
“They’re gone.”
“Because you’re slow. It took you a year to climb the stairs. They can’t be far on foot. Let’s go find them.”
Neal heard the thick burr of the Russian accents, instantly knowing who’d sent them. If she would only wait, they would leave the house to continue their pursuit, but the trouble with guys like these was they would come back, again and again, until their work was done. She held her gun, trained between them both for the few seconds it took for her to reach a conclusion. Pop. Pop. From a distance, the shots probably sounded more like a toy than the real thing, but the blood that fanned out on the chest of each man told a different story. Seconds later, two more men appeared, but this time Michael took aim and took them out.
“You think there’s more?” she asked Michael.
“Not today.”
He was right to make the distinction. This was only the first delegation. The Mancusos had plenty of enemies. What she needed right now was to figure out who their friends were. “We need to get out of here.”
“We can go to the lake house.”
Neal nodded, but her mind was processing all the angles. The Don’s house on the shore of Lake Ray Hubbard was a palatial getaway. When he’d escaped to the oasis in the past, a full contingent of bodyguards accompanied him. But since his death and Siobhan leaving the country and his other daughter, Dominique’s betrayal of the family, the family had been fractured and she wasn’t confident there were enough loyal foot soldiers to adequately guard the mansion on the lake. What she needed more than a retreat was some ammo to use on offense. “You go. I want to do some checking around. I’ll be at Siobhan’s apartment. The feds have already tossed it and they aren’t likely to be back soon.”
“The feds aren’t the only ones we need to worry about. Take some of the guys with you.”
Again, he was right, and she nodded her assent, but she’d already decided she was going alone, certain a contingent of armed men riding up the elevator to the penthouse suite of Siobhan’s fancy building would only draw unwanted attention. In all the time she’d guarded her boss, she’d taken pains to be subtle—a feat made hard enough by her own towering frame. She might not know exactly who was behind the assault on the Mancuso family holdings, but she knew it was going to take some careful maneuvers to get answers.
Thirty minutes later, she pulled the Range Rover she used to drive Siobhan around town into the parking garage at the building and took the elevator to the top floor. She’d entered Siobhan’s place on her own on dozens of occasions, but never under these circumstances, and the eerie quiet of the empty apartment echoed fears she’d been stuffing since Siobhan had fled the country with the federal agent who’d been assigned to investigate her. As she walked through the apartment, she replayed her last conversation with Siobhan.
“You’re in charge for now,” Siobhan said. “You’ve been in the room for enough strategy sessions to know what to do.”
“I have one job—protect you. That’s kind of difficult to do when you slip out of the country without telling me where you’re going. You’re with her, aren’t you?” Neal shook her head, angry that she sounded like a jealous lover instead of the bodyguard who’d lost her protectee. She took a deep breath and tried again. “Royal Scott is a federal agent. Do you honestly think she can shrug off her instincts so easily?”
Siobhan’s voice was silky and smooth. “Nothing worth having comes easy. When this is all over, we will have all given up a lot.” She cleared her throat and when she spoke again, her voice was commanding, like she was standing in the well of a courtroom, making her case before a jury. “With his dying words, Don Carlo placed me in charge. If you don’t trust me, then you doubt him.”
There was no question, no specific ultimatum, but Siobhan’s message was clear: to question her decisions was to test her loyalty, and there would be only one winner of any such test. “Understood. What would you like me to do?”
Siobhan had directed her to contact an old friend, telling her she’d find the number in Don Carlo’s office, which was why she and Michael had been there this afternoon. She totally got why Siobhan didn’t want to give her the information on the phone, but getting shot at hadn’t been the ideal situation for hunting around in Don Carlo’s papers. She’d wound up gathering everything from the drawer Siobhan had directed her to, and now that she was settled, she set the contents on the table to comb through them. Before she got started, she poured two fingers of Siobhan’s expensive whiskey into a glass and inhaled the aroma before taking a long sip. The burn took the edge off the day and relaxed the muscles in her back which had been twitching since she’d bent herself into a pretzel to avoid getting shot.
Most of the papers were invoices for various businesses owned by the family, but tucked in with them was a plain-looking business card for a law firm in Louisiana. Muriel Casey. The last name was familiar and not just for obvious reasons. Muriel had been one of the last calls Siobhan had made before she and Royal fled the country. Neal flicked the card between her fingers for a few minutes, and then picked up her cell and punched in the numbers.
“Law firm,” the voice on the other end of the phone was crisp and business-like.
“Muriel, please.”
A few beats of silence passed before the voice on the other end of the phone asked, “Who’s calling?”
Now it was Neal’s turn to pause. Muriel wasn’t likely to remember her name, but dropping Siobhan’s over an unsecured line wasn’t good strategy. She ran through several options in her mind before settling on one. “Please tell her another lawyer referred me to her. She would’ve handled my case herself, but she’s traveling for an indefinite period of time.”
“Hold please.”
Neal sat through the cloying hold music, hoping Muriel’s friendship with Siobhan extended to taking calls from strangers who needed way more help than a bit of legal advice. A few minutes later, her hopes were rewarded when a brisk, no-nonsense voice came on the line.
“I understand you need a lawyer.”
Neal grunted. “That would be a good start.”
“My secretary can schedule an appointment for you.”
“I was hoping to talk to you now.”
“I don’t do phone consultations.”
“Okay.” Neal waited, unsure of what to say next, and willing Muriel to chime in with a solution. She was the lawyer, after all. For the most powerful crime family in New Orleans. She didn’t have the time or interest to help Neal. “Is there any way you could make an exception?”
“I have an appointment in a few minutes. My secretary stepped out for about five minutes. If you call back then, she can schedule you an appointment. Please give her a couple of different numbers where you can be reached.”
Neal heard the unspoken message, and the minute Muriel clicked off the line, she went to Siobhan’s bedroom. She’d watched her boss place and remove valuables from the large safe in the wall behind her lavish wardrobe on many occasions, and she hoped Siobhan hadn’t removed all of the supplies from the go-bag she hadn’t had a chance to take when she’d left a week ago.
She needn’t have worried. There were several disposable cell phones, still in their packaging along with a stack of fake IDs and several bundles of hundred-dollar bills. She tore through the packaging for one of the cell phones. She still had a couple of minutes to spare before calling Muriel back, so she dug a little deeper in the wall safe and came up with several handguns. Siobhan hated having them here and professed she’d never use them, but she’d been trained to use a firearm from the time she was a teenager. Neal checked the clip on the Ruger before shoving it in her waistband. She left the other two, one for Siobhan and one for Royal, so they’d have weapons when they came back since customs frowned on folks bringing their own.
If they came back.
It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think the unthinkable. She’d spent most of her adult life in the employment of the Mancuso family. Could this really be the end of the empire, and if it was, what was she supposed to do next?
She sat on the edge of Siobhan’s bed and caught her breath. One step at a time. Call Muriel. Make a plan. Execute the plan. She dialed the phone and waited through the rings, forcing anxious thoughts away. When Muriel finally answered, she expelled a breath and gripped the phone.
“Neal?”
“Yes.”
“I understand you need a legal consultation.”
Neal heard the circumspection in Muriel’s voice and took the signal she should do the same. “I do.”
“I can represent you, but I want to make sure no one else is on the line with you, because if we’re speaking privately, anything you say to me is privileged.”
Neal held out the phone and stared at the screen. Muriel’s message was loud and clear. She thought someone might be listening in, and if it was law enforcement, they wouldn’t be able to use anything they said if it was spoken in the context of a client sharing information with her lawyer. She couldn’t promise the apartment wasn’t bugged—she hadn’t had a chance to check it since Siobhan left, and there wasn’t really any need to once she was gone. But even if it was bugged, it was too late now. “I’m alone.”
“That’s good. Tell me the nature of your question.”
She had a lot of questions, but most of them started with what the fuck and ended with what the hell do we do now, neither of which was productive. She took a few seconds to distill her thoughts and blurted out: “I don’t know where she is, but I need to talk to her. We need to know who’s in charge.”
A few beats of silence passed and Neal started to wonder if the call was still connected when Muriel cleared her throat. “You can’t talk to her.”
“Why not? Why can’t I use this phone and give her a shout?”
“Neal, you need to understand what I’m saying.”
She did and she didn’t. This cagey dance was getting to be a little extra. “I need you to say something I can actually understand,” she growled. “How about that?”
“She said you had a bit of a temper. That it might be your tragic flaw.”
“The world’s on fire and you think I have an anger management problem?”
“Focus. You don’t need me to tell you who’s in charge.”
Neal chafed at the admonition. She was plenty focused. She’d been focused on survival since the moment Don Carlo died and her boss skipped town with her new girlfriend who just happened to be an FBI agent. Her entire world was not only on fire, it was upside down and she had no idea who she could trust. She knew Siobhan trusted Muriel Casey, but she didn’t know her other than the fact she was the cousin of the infamous Cain Casey, and she owed Cain the same debt she owed Siobhan and the Mancuso family. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath like she used to do right before tip-off, centering herself for the battle on the court. Except this time there were no rules, or referees, or buzzers to signal the end of the game. Because it wasn’t a game. The battle was real, and the stakes were higher than a championship ring.
She summoned all the strength she could muster. “Tell me what to do.”
“Siobhan trusts you to do what’s right.”
Again, with the vague, non-answers. Neal resisted the urge to slam down the phone. “What’s right is not as easy to figure out right now. Care to be a little more specific?”
“I don’t have to be. You’ve been at Siobhan’s side for years now, and she was at the side of your Don. Succession is a powerful force.”
Neal bit down on her lip to keep from voicing her reaction. The line of succession in the Mancuso family was definitely not straight, but no way was she part of it. Right? Or maybe her job was to serve as a placeholder until Siobhan returned. If that’s what she needed to do to ensure Siobhan’s role was secure when she returned, she could do that. She would do that. “Fine. I’m in.”
Muriel’s laugh was hard. “That’s right. You’ll be just fine.”
“You really don’t know when she’s coming back?” Neal asked, hopeful that because she’d agreed to serve as backup for Siobhan she might be entitled to a little bit more information.
“I have to go,” Muriel said. “Don’t use this phone again.”
She punctuated her point by disconnecting the line, leaving Neal standing in the middle of Siobhan’s apartment with more questions than answers. She wanted to put her head in her hands and surrender to her powerlessness, but she knew the moment she embraced her surrender, the more likely it was she wouldn’t survive it. She wouldn’t use the cell phone again, but now she had names and a place to search. It was time for her to take control.