Chapter Twelve

Campbell

SCOUTING OUT LA Rosa’s estate confirms my worst suspicions: the entire place is essentially a fortress.

Not in a post-apocalyptic bunker sense. The rich don’t need to dive underground in this day and age, not when they can scour themselves off every digital map and hide in plain sight. Looking up anywhere in this neighborhood pulls data years out of date, without a single satellite view to speak of. Acres of trees separate the house from public consciousness, and only a ten-foot-high gate implies anyone lives here to begin with, rather than a park hemmed in by spotless stone walls.

My perch across the street keeps me out of camera range, but offers few other advantages. I’ve been here for hours, and not a single car has come in or out of the property. No other entrance is available, although I was independently able to confirm that La Rosa has a helicopter pad near the house for medical emergencies. But the sky has been clear all morning, so I can rule that out too.

Time to give Enrico a call.

“Hello?” He sounds mystified. Then again, I suppose he’s never heard my voice before.

“It’s Campbell.”

“Oh, shit.” Enrico laughs. “Everyone texts me instead of calling. What’s going on?”

“Is this line secure?” I ask.

“What? Oh, yeah. I make the NSA look like amateurs.”

Sofia has sung his praises for years, and he’s done a lot of work for me by proxy. Breaking online security isn’t my area of expertise. I know the basics to keep myself protected, but in my line of work, social engineering usually goes much further than hacking systems. Except no one associated with La Rosa is going to be caught dead talking to me, much less offer up details about his compound.

“Good. Because Sofia’s in trouble.” I don’t have to sugarcoat this; he’s young, but he’s still a Cattaneo. “And I need your help to get her out of it.”

“Wait, what happened?” Anger punctuates his voice. “Is she okay?”

“She is for now, but it won’t stay that way if Galici and company don’t get what they’re looking for.”

He spits out enough invective to make a sailor’s ears burn. “Of course. Bastards. I have a stack of cash stored offshore—how much are they looking for?”

Smart boy, keeping his money out of the family pot. His uncles would launder it into their own pockets at the first opportunity. “It’s not a ransom. They want Miceli La Rosa dead.”

Enrico is silent for a good ten seconds. “I…I’ve never killed anyone before. Someone like La Rosa? There’s no chance.”

“I’m taking care of that part, Enrico.” I pause, fitting the pieces together. “Sofia never told you what I actually do, did she?”

“Uh, no. She—she said you were a business partner. I thought that meant a friend of the family who couldn’t take the oath.” His laugh is soft, self-conscious. “But she also told me if I was ever in life-or-death trouble, she had someone to take care of it. Is that you?”

I have to give Sofia credit. Enrico has helped me murder almost a dozen people with his intel, and until now, I don’t think he knew. “Yes.”

“You’ve got some real spook factor, Campbell. People have been trying to figure out who you are for a long time.”

The awe in his voice doesn’t make up for the fact that no one should be looking for me in the first place. This shadow reputation is probably how Stefano connected the dots between my appearance and Mickey’s death. After this kill is settled, I have some cleaning house to do.

“I wouldn’t want us to have problems,” I say.

“No, no way. I’d never sell you out. Sofia would cut me to ribbons.” Dozens of clicks fill the line; Enrico types like someone has a gun to his head. “I’m just sorry you got pulled into this mess. Galici and company has had it out for La Rosa for an age.”

That’s what I thought but haven’t been able to prove. “Why?”

“Heroin and coke is why. Miceli is old school. He never wanted the Families dealing drugs, especially since the CIA was funding half the dope we sold in the ’80s. Galici, though? Bought into the trade hook, line, and sinker. Technically, they had permission, a lot of bosses looking the other way, but La Rosa has torpedoed every vote to expand past the eastern seaboard.”

Money and power are essentially interchangeable in the Mafia. Whoever has the most cash on hand can expand more aggressively than his fellows, and once you convince the locals to swear loyalty to a specific family, getting them to change sides isn’t easy. “Before they took her, Sofia mentioned something about a missing shipment.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. The Galicis have been shouting about it for a few weeks, but I have no idea who gave up the location. La Rosa is a chess master kind of guy—it’s hard to picture him running off with a shipping container full of blow.”

I’ll have to take Enrico’s word for it. “I need access to La Rosa. Right now, I’m outside his estate, and everything is locked up tight.”

If this were anything like my usual contracts, I’d be content to wait. Taking a few weeks to learn someone’s exact schedule, then narrowing down the most vulnerable window, makes it remarkably easy to arrange an accident. With less than a week, though, I have about seventy-two hours to put a plan together, then another seventy-two to execute without leaving a shred of evidence behind.

“You want me to hack his cameras?” Enrico asks.

“I want you to hack everything. As long as you can do it without rousing suspicion.”

“Well, brute force will attract a lot of attention, so give me a second.” More typing ensues; Enrico mutters a lot under his breath, but none of it is intelligible. “Right, okay. La Rosa keeps his bodyguards in the family, but the rest of his security is handled by a firm from the UK. Protego.”

I’m not surprised. Framed as “outsourcing security solutions” with no muss, fuss, or media coverage, Protego keeps brutality on tap for a few dozen countries. Most of their employees are glorified prison guards, bringing boots and lead to immigration facilities or jails in nations where leadership is suddenly in question. The rest are actual hired guns, running the old colonial apprenticeship by disrupting legitimate governments in Africa before Protego reassigns them to quieter climes. Despite several decades of controversy, they’ve paid a sum total of six thousand pounds in damages to a single victim.

Working for someone like La Rosa wouldn’t bother them. Cosa Nostra keeps its business out of Britain and vice versa for Italy. The world is big enough for them to eat without scavenging off one another’s tables, so long as no one cares about those getting devoured.

“Does Protego run his security feeds?” I ask.

“Chances are, yeah. I can do a quick ping on that without catching any eyes.” Enrico taps away, humming under his breath. “More than just feeds it looks like. Cameras, movement detectors, and weight-in-motion sensors.”

Now that’s interesting. “What’s the last one for?”

“Don’t know. Not without getting into the actual meat of the system.” He chuckles. “I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.”

Enrico hangs up before I can answer. Kids.

I look at my messages for anything from Justine, but she’s been radio silent the whole morning. The last thing I want is to interrupt an important discussion with her mother—especially if I happen to be the subject matter—which means holding up the quiet on my end too. I’ll check in with her later tonight.

A large brown van pulls up to La Rosa’s gate and slows to a halt. The driver is an older gentleman with the thin remnants of his hair slicked back, face worn to a heavy collection of spots and wrinkles by constant exposure to the sun. He talks to someone on his cell phone for a few seconds, and the gate begins to slide open. The side of the van reads: Maria in Bloom – Private Gardening Services.

Huh. Maybe all the trees around La Rosa’s place aren’t just for show.

I jot down the license plate as the van heads up the driveway, then count the number of seconds it takes for the gate to close. More than enough time for someone to slip in behind a car, but that doesn’t take care of the cameras or the risk of being seen in the rearview mirror. The weight sensors Enrico mentioned might be a factor too.

True to his word, he calls back by the twenty-minute mark, sounding out of breath. “Okay, I got into Protego’s private systems. Real credentials, too, so they won’t have any clue I’m here.”

I blink. “That fast?”

“Well, it took five minutes for the security lead whose phone I hit up with a phishing link to get curious about hot hookups in his area and click it, then another fifteen to clone his logins and two-factor authentication keys.”

Ah. Enrico is breathless from laughing. “You just broke into one of the world’s top security companies with a fake porn site?”

“For a certain demographic, it works nine times out of ten,” he answers proudly. “These guys are so bored staring at screens that they chomp down the bait easy. So let’s see what La Rosa gets with his Platinum Shield package.”

Nowhere near enough, if the line of defense is this easy to crack. “Tell me everything.”

“Twenty-four-hour camera monitoring on the property with interior and exterior cameras for the house, a full set on the gate, and a nice array every hundred yards in the trees. Those are easy enough to loop footage on, honestly, but the motion and weight checks are harder to trick since there’s a physical element involved.”

“Do those checks have logs?”

“Yeah. One second.” Enrico hums, curious. “The weight check went off less than five minutes ago, actually.”

Then I know exactly what La Rosa’s looking for. “It’s in the driveway. A van marked for a gardening company went in around that time. What’s the sensor rated for?”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds.”

Not an issue for me, then; that’s over my weight class. “Makes sense that La Rosa would want to know if a pack of cop cars are suddenly coming through his gate.”

“Or other families paying a visit,” Enrico notes. “Did you get a plate from that van?”

I give him the number while keeping a close eye on the gate.

“Well, it’s legit. Maria in Bloom has had a contract with La Rosa for almost five years, but they service plenty of other houses too. Lots of good, organic reviews online.” Enrico’s tone turns conspiratorial with glee. “Are you going to knock the gardener out and replace him? You could drive right inside.”

“That only works in the movies,” I counter. “You never want to be anyone that a target knows. The key is blending in, becoming one of a thousand that they’ll never remember when someone shows up asking questions.”

But that van could be useful in a few other ways.

“Does Protego get updates on La Rosa’s location? Is he home right now?”

“No direct GPS tracker or anything, but it looks like—” Enrico pauses, then clicks his tongue. “Yeah. One of the bodyguards has a check-in app. He taps it every hour to confirm La Rosa is intact. Last ping was in Manhattan seven minutes ago.”

“Which means he trusts whoever is on staff at home to let the gardener in,” I say.

“Well, that’s a given. Everyone in the family knows that Miceli is a total prick about seeing the help.”

I raise a brow. “How so?”

“He blows all his extra cash on fine art and his private garden, but a ton of the plants are from out of the country, different climates, that sort of thing. They need constant, daily maintenance, but La Rosa can’t do it himself. Being reminded of that makes him blow a gasket. So they’re never going to be around the same time he is.”

A temper is something I can use. “Any idea why the garden is so important to him?”

“It’s so goddamn dramatic.” Enrico chuckles, then throws his voice down an octave. “‘I only respect beauty that lives and dies at my command.’”

Charming. “Is he married?”

“La Rosa’s on his second wife, I think.” He types in something short, then confirms with a grunt. “Yup. Giovanna. Everyone calls her Nina. No kids though.”

I wonder what she thinks about his views on beauty, considering. “Does he drag her around with him?”

“Every time I’ve seen her, the two of them have been together. She’s not really the housewife type, so I’m guessing the only time they split up is when La Rosa has private meetings.”

When women aren’t allowed past the doors. “If he died, would anyone suspect Nina of doing the deed?”

Enrico considers that so quietly the soft whirr of his computer fans sends a spiral of white noise across the line. “Not sure. Hard to say when she’s always in his shadow, you know?”

I’m certainly familiar with the dynamic. “I have an idea on how to get in, but I need to source some equipment. And I need you to track that van in the meanwhile. Once it’s parked for the night, text me. I plan on making a few modifications.”

He lets out a wary laugh. “Going to cut the guy’s brake lines or something?”

This kid has seen too many thrillers on Netflix.

“I don’t spill innocent blood, Enrico.” By a certain degree of “innocent,” but especially not for a contract I’ve been forced into. “But I need you on call. Sofia isn’t getting out of this unless I work clean and quick.”

“Right.” Enrico sighs. “What kind of equipment are you looking for? I can get basically anything but uranium in under an hour.”

Intrigue gets the best of me. “How long would uranium take?”

“Six hours, maybe.” He makes an ambiguous noise. “I’m in an online chat with some of the Navy techs they keep in the nuke rooms. You want to talk about bored? If their COs had a clue what they vent about in private, we’d all be screwed.”

The world is held together by some very strange and fragile threads. “I need a half dozen wireless cameras, a mechanic’s tool set, and a set of private comms. Whatever brand can hook into your setup with the least interference. Let me know what it costs.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Enrico says. “For Sofia, I’ve got it covered. Just toss me an address for delivery.”

I give him details for the apartment and step away from the street. Building the framework for a plan should give me clarity, a blade in hand to carve the path ahead, but every instinct in my body is rigid, tense and ready to fire at a moment’s notice. I’ve killed men like La Rosa before, yet something sets me ill at ease. Blaming it on Stefano’s photos or the short timeline would make sense, except this isn’t logic at the fore. I feel like a predator trying to suss out another in the dark, where everything blends together in countless shades of gray.

Here’s hoping my teeth sink deep first.