Tommy Bracco sat in a leather chair in the Baltimore Four Seasons and clicked the remote to ESPN. He was in the large bedroom of a suite that overlooked the harbor. The sun was down and snowflakes drifted across the window. As ESPN came to life, the seventy-five-inch TV was so vivid he could see the acne on the Boston College quarterback’s face. Three minutes left in the game and somehow Georgia hadn’t been able to put away the pesky Eagles.
The bathroom door was open and the shower was running. There was a gathering of leggings, panties and a sports bra piled by the shower door with a mist of hot air creeping over the glass partition. Tommy was close enough to see Cara Perrino’s body through the textured glass door, but averted his eyes and tried to focus on the game. Boston College was driving for a score, and Tommy had a lot of action riding on the outcome. His business relied on Georgia’s defense to keep them out of the end zone.
He glanced at Cara’s silhouette once again and admonished himself. She was a triathlete, every muscle finely toned. But he’d known her since she was a kid. Back when she would ask Tommy to drive her to the mall. This seemed wrong.
The acned quarterback escaped a sack and threw a wild pass on third and long, finding a receiver near the goal line.
“Crap,” Tommy muttered.
His cell phone vibrated and he glanced at the display before he put it to his ear. “Yeah.”
“You see that pass?” Gino Verrado said.
“I saw it.”
“They score, it’ll be a bad night for us.”
“I can count, Gino.”
“By the way, Danson wants to put ten large on the Steelers this weekend.”
Tommy rubbed a hand over his face. “How much is he into us for?”
“Fifteen.”
Tommy owned an online gambling service where 80 percent of his business was completely legit and customers paid up front via credit card. However, the 20 percent who didn’t have the credit limit or the money up front still bet the old-fashioned way. They called in their wager and waited for the outcome to pay or get paid. These wagers were usually very large and made up over half of Tommy’s gross income.
He chose his words carefully. “Tell Howie he’d better bring me an envelope by 9 a.m. the next morning should he lose.”
“Or what?”
“You figure it out.”
“I’ll take his car.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “You serious?”
“What? He needs consequences.”
“Look, I’m not Don Corleone.”
“Well, maybe you should be.”
Gino getting sassy with him.
Tommy sighed. “Tell him if we don’t get paid the next day, I will talk to Marilyn and let her know what a degenerate gambler he is. I’ll also inform her that it wasn’t the maid who stole those diamond earrings from her jewelry box last year.”
“Ouch,” Gino said. “Maybe that’s going too far.”
“Just take the bet,” Tommy said, watching the Georgia defense making a goal-line stand on fourth down and finally put an end to the game.
“That saved our ass,” Gino said, watching the exact same play. “Made it a plus day.”
The shower turned off.
“I gotta go,” Tommy said, then put the phone back in his pocket and returned his attention to ESPN. The players on both teams were milling around the goal line, shaking hands and offering their respect to their fellow warriors. In his peripheral vision, Tommy could see Cara coming out of the bathroom way too quickly to have already gotten dressed.
When Tommy turned, she was holding a white towel around her frame and casually sauntering toward him.
“Where would you like to go for dinner?” she said.
Tommy had to work hard to keep his attention on her face and away from those long legs jutting out from under that short towel. “Anywhere,” he said with a skittish edge.
Cara sat on the bed and crossed her bare legs, keeping the towel loose around her chest, almost as a dare. She produced a tube of lotion and dabbed a spot onto her hand, then slid the lotion onto her legs.
Tommy had to take a deep breath watching this production like a Spielberg thriller.
Cara cocked her head. “Are you okay?”
Tommy clicked off the TV and turned to face her. “So . . . I don’t know, the way you’ve been treating me—”
“How? How am I treating you?”
“Well, for starters, you take a shower with the bathroom door open.”
She shrugged. “What? Were you going to jump me?”
“Of course not.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s just that, uh,” Tommy stammered. “Well, I used to babysit you when your pop was out of town.”
“Tommy, I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m a big girl. It’s like you’re . . .”
Tommy made a circle motion with his index finger. “Go ahead and say it. It’s like I’m family.”
Cara frowned. She looked out the window, then back to Tommy. “Look, I didn’t invite you here to seduce you. I thought it might be fun to catch up. I missed you, that’s all.”
She got up and picked up her metal ThermoFlask of water from the dresser. The thing was narrow but seemed heavy. She took a drink, then she went into the bathroom and shut the door.
Tommy closed his eyes. “Idiot,” he muttered to himself.
A minute later, Cara came out of the bathroom wearing a modest hotel robe with the belt tightened around her waist. She sat back onto the bed and crossed her legs again. A woman with a mission.
“When I was fourteen, you would give me piano lessons. Do you remember that?”
“Of course.”
“Do you remember me putting my arm around your shoulder? Running my hands through your hair, telling you how thick it was?”
Tommy nodded, the memory creeping back into his mind.
“I was smitten,” she said. “But you never reacted. You always made it seem so normal and you never made me feel like I was being naughty or inappropriate.”
“You were just a kid.”
Cara leaned forward, her soft cleavage peeking out. “I was fourteen and my body was way ahead of its time and you knew it. I was already getting looks from college boys, making plays for me the moment I was out of adult supervision. You made me feel like it was okay to be sensual without being judged. And you never once returned my advance.”
“Is that what this is about? A challenge?”
Cara’s face fell.
Tommy held up his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . . your father.”
“My father adores you. Of all the people in the world he would want me to spend time with, your name would be on top of that list.”
Tommy smirked. “That’s probably true.”
“Besides, even if there was something between us, you’re only twelve years older, so don’t make this out to be some lurid interlude between a sailor and a nurse in some overseas hospital.”
Her literary prowess came seeping out of her pores.
He remained quiet.
“Don’t make this weird, Tommy. You were the one person I felt I could talk to without prejudice.” Her expression softened. “You know what you are?”
“A schmuck?”
“You’re genuine. Everyone else is white noise compared to you. I’ve never met a man who would open a door for me, then tell me to stay away from the Serbian bartender because he slips roofies into girls’ drinks.”
“That was five years ago,” he said. “Last time I saw you.”
“That’s right. You were a perfect gentleman. And that’s not because I was,” she made quotation marks with her fingers, “‘family.’ It was because that’s who you are. You look out for the underdog, the kid who gets bullied.”
“I hate bullies.”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him with honest eyes. Nothing but genuine fondness for who he was. Tommy wanted to take her right then and there. Show her just how much she’d meant to him. In that moment of hesitation, Cara stood and went back to the bathroom and quietly closed the door.
Tommy lowered his head with his elbows on his knees. How could he have missed the signs? Cara knew him better than anyone he’d ever dated. She had him pegged like a detective lifting prints from a revolver. He needed to get his mind right and let her know how he really felt.
He went over to the bathroom door, opened it and stood in the doorway, watching her look back at him through the long mirror, tugging a brush through her wet hair.
Cara turned. She was pure and childlike in her innocence, but her eyes were commanding him to make a decision. He placed a hand on her cheek.
“You are beautiful,” Tommy said. “Inside and out.”
“I’m glad you noticed.”
She put her arms around his waist and looked up at him, still making him decide.
There was no reasonable explanation for Tommy to hesitate, so he didn’t. He leaned down and kissed her. It was a long kiss, wet and warm and flush with the newness of two human beings lusting for each other. Tommy slid his hands inside her robe and down her rib cage to her tight stomach, her soft hips. The intimacy was familiar, as if they’d done this a million times before.
After a few minutes, Tommy pulled back for air. “Maybe we should order room service.”
She had to smile at that. The woman coming to the forefront of her face, mature beyond her years. She moved around him and opened the hotel door to place the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle.
Tommy was ready to consummate their newly found desire for each other.
Cara went over to her purse on the dresser and removed her phone. “I just need to turn my phone back on and make sure there’s nothing pressing at work, then I can relax.”
Tommy leaned against the bathroom doorway and glanced down at the bulge in his pants. “I’ll try to hold off the launch sequence.”
She grinned, waiting for her phone to come to life. A brightness to her eyes.
Tommy walked over to the window and saw the snow accumulating in the parking lot. The cars all sprinkled white. He closed the curtains, then began clicking off lamps.
He heard a gasp.
“Oh no,” Cara said, reading messages on her phone.
“What?” Tommy asked.
Then her phone rang and she immediately answered. “Shelby? What happened?”
Tommy could hear Cara’s cousin screaming into the phone, her voice carrying all the way across the room.
“He’s dead!” Shelby yelled. “They’re all dead!”
Cara’s eyes swelled up. “Please no,” Cara murmured, covering her face.
There was a guttural moan and garbled words. Shelby tried to compose herself and explain the situation while Cara morphed from woman to child right before Tommy’s eyes. She collapsed onto the edge of the bed with the phone pressed to her ear.
Tommy sat next to her, rubbing her back and listening to Shelby explain the carnage that had occurred in Arizona. He heard Shelby refer to Sal and Charlie and Lucy in the past tense. Cara’s father, and his brother and sister. All three were gone. Tommy put it together in his mind. Sal was the patriarch of the family. The boss. Charlie was his right-hand man. Lucy was just part of the hit. And that’s what it was. An old-fashioned Mafia-style hit.
Even though Tommy hadn’t seen any of them in a while, they were all interlinked. Years of absence couldn’t erase the bond Sicilian families felt for one another. Tommy grew up with the Perrino family, and hearing the grief in Shelby’s voice had Tommy wiping the corner of his eye.
Cara’s shoulders trembled in Tommy’s fingers as she tried to hold it together.
There was a loud knock on the door.
Tommy got up and peered through the peephole. A uniformed attendant stood behind a mobile cart draped with a white tablecloth and topped with a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice.
Tommy opened the door partway and said, “Not a good time, buddy.”
“But, sir,” the room service attendant said, “this is complimentary.”
“I get it,” Tommy said, Cara sobbing behind him. “But not now.”
The attendant put his hands on the end of the cart as if to push it into the room. “Sir, this is part of the package. The Harbor Suite guests get chocolate on the pillow at night and complimentary champagne when they check in.”
“Okay.” Tommy reached for the neck of the champagne and began to pull it out of the bucket, when the attendant grabbed his wrist.
“No,” the guy said, firm. “I must deliver the champagne to Miss Perrino personally. I’ve had customers complain that they didn’t receive the bottle when I’ve left it with other people in the room. It ends up coming out of my check.”
Now Tommy scrutinized the guy. He was in his late thirties, maybe Middle-Eastern descent. He looked the part of a room service attendant, but something felt wrong. Maybe hearing Shelby describe the Arizona massacre made him overly suspicious.
Tommy stepped into the hallway and let the heavy door shut behind him.
The guy seemed agitated. “Sir, I have a job to do,” he said with a hint of an accent.
“What’s your name?”
“Khava.”
“Is that Iranian?”
“I’m from Chechnya.”
“Huh. Where in Chechnya?”
“Argun.”
It came right off his tongue, so he was either telling the truth or was very well coached. Tommy had heard of the Argun River, but wasn’t sure where it was.
Khava gestured to the closed door. “May I please make my delivery now, sir?”
Tommy leaned his hands on the stainless-steel cart. “Look, Sport,” he said, “I’m not trying to be difficult, but Miss Perrino just had a death in the family. She’s in no shape to receive any gifts. So you could leave it with me or bring it back later. Your choice.”
Khava offered a pained expression as he returned to his original explanation of the delivery. Tommy wasn’t paying attention, however, because he felt the cart jerk in his hands beneath him. It was an unnatural, manmade movement. He tilted his head to the side of the cart and noticed a stainless-steel door. The metal latch on the door was unfastened.
Tommy flipped the latch shut then looked up at Khava. “What’s inside the cart?”
Khava looked confused. “What do you mean? I’m carrying three dinner plates for room 510.”
Tommy’d had enough. Cara was inside dealing with the death of her father and he needed to be there for her. He pushed the cart toward Khava, forcing him back.
“Listen, killer,” Tommy said, feeling his muscles constrict. “You are leaving right now, or we are going to have ourselves a little Chechen standoff.”
There was a moment of indecision on Khava’a face, until the cart began jostling so vigorously that Khava couldn’t play innocent any longer. He made a move for his waistband, and Tommy rammed the cart so hard, the guy fell back, hitting his head against the wall. The cart still rocked viciously as someone tried to escape the tiny compartment.
Khava came out with his pistol and Tommy dove at him, selling out that he could get there in time.
He didn’t.
Khava fired wildly, the bullet ringing past Tommy’s ear as he landed on Khava’s chest, the gun sliding away on the industrial strength carpeting.
Tommy shoved his elbow into Khava’s neck as the guy spit into his face. Tommy got to his knees and landed a solid punch to the mouth, but Khava didn’t blink. He smiled up at Tommy with bloody teeth. They built them tough in Chechnya.
A couple of doors opened from down the corridor as guests poked their heads out.
“Who sent you?” Tommy said, a hand around Khava’s throat and a knee on his sternum.
Khava’s smile broadened. “You mess with the wrong people, you guinea.”
“Guinea? Shit, what decade you living in?”
There was a loud high-pitched howl from inside the metal container while the cart wobbled violently.
When Tommy glanced over his shoulder at the sound, Khava seized the opportunity to uppercut him under the chin. The pain shot through Tommy’s brain and his vision went white. He rolled off Khava, temporarily blinded and suffering from a concussion. He could feel Khava scramble over him and knew the Chechen was headed for the gun.
Tommy swiped randomly and snatched Khava’s pantleg, hoping it was soon enough to prevent his demise. There were screams in the corridor as guests watched the debacle unfold right before their eyes. Tommy desperately pulled on Khava’s pants, tasting blood in his mouth and straining to remain conscious. As his vision slowly returned, he could see the cart tip over and the champagne bottle rattle onto the carpeted hallway.
Khava kicked Tommy in the head, and for a moment he thought he would black out.
A nearby door opened, then shut. Tommy was hanging onto Khava’s leg like a cowboy trying to wrestle a wild calf. There was a distinct metallic thump that rang through the corridor, like an aluminum baseball bat connecting for a deep drive over the wall. A moment later, Khava’s body went limp in Tommy’s grasp.
Tommy was still on his back, trying to control his breathing, listening to the gaggle of voices in the hallway and the constant drum of a fist banging inside the service cart.
A face appeared over him. It was a pretty face with compassionate eyes.
“You all right?” Cara asked, clutching her metal ThermoFlask.
Tommy tried to nod, but a lightning bolt of pain shot down his neck and into his shoulders. He was confused, too. Why was a Chechen trying to kill Cara?
The elevator dinged and a large man in a brown uniform came rushing out with his Glock 22 out in front to him. He acted like he’d used it before.
“Put it down,” he ordered Cara.
“It’s a water bottle,” she said with disgust in her voice. She pointed to the guests now coming forward and rambling their stories to the hotel security guard. “They’ll tell you what happened.”
The security guard kept his gun pointed at Khava, while he spoke into the microphone on his collar, requesting assistance.
The guests came out of their rooms after the gunshot, so they couldn’t have seen who fired the weapon. And by the look of Khava on the floor, it seemed like Tommy could’ve been the shooter.
Cara cradled Tommy’s head in her arms, her eyes still swollen from crying. “This wasn’t a coincidence,” she told him.
“No,” Tommy said, remaining still and gathering his senses. “We need to get out of here.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” a male voice said from behind the throng of hotel guests.
A Baltimore police officer approached Tommy with his gun drawn. “Who fired the weapon?”
Cara pointed to Khava. “That’s the guy who shot the gun.”
The officer glanced around at the guests milling in the corridor for confirmation, but no one could verify her claim.
“Have you been shot?” the officer asked Tommy.
“No, he missed,” Tommy replied, sitting up and leaning against the wall.
“Uh huh.” The officer looked at the security guard who shrugged.
Cara got to her feet and tugged her robe tight around her neckline. She glared at the officer who looked young, like the kind of guy who’d wear his baseball cap backwards when he was off duty.
“You come to a crime scene where there was a shooting,” she said, with her hands on her hips. “What’s the first thing you look for?”
The officer cocked his head, afraid to be caught with the wrong answer.
“The bullet hole,” Cara informed him.
The officer glanced around the corridor, pretending not to be listening to her, but not wanting to look stupid either.
“It’s right there,” one of the guests said, pointing to a spot on the wall next to the door to Cara’s suite.
“Now,” Cara continued, “if the bullet hole is in that wall, and Tommy is right here, and that guy is over there, who do you think fired the gun at whom?”
The officer didn’t like her tone and said, “Listen, Ma’am.”
“Ma’am? Do I look like a Ma’am?”
The officer’s face tightened. “Are you in law enforcement?”
“No, but I’m a journalist, so I know how to observe a crime scene.”
“Okay, well, let me do my job.” The officer grabbed Tommy by the arm and said, “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Tommy scrambled to his feet.
“Headquarters, to straighten this out.”
Cara was about to argue, but seemed to understand this guy wasn’t going to have any of it.
“Pack your bags,” Tommy said to Cara, trailing behind the officer. “Meet me down at Central.”
She frowned and shook her head. They weren’t going to compete with an incompetent police officer. Better to solve it with experienced officials downtown. Plenty of whom Tommy already knew.
The stairwell door opened and a couple of officers came into the corridor, single file, weapons drawn.
“Tommy,” Officer Pete Dority said. “What’s going on?”
The newbie officer pulled Tommy by the arm and made no attempt to engage with the arriving officers.
“Hey, Pete.” Tommy said as they approached the door to the stairwell. He pointed to the upended service cart. “Be careful. There’s someone inside of that thing and I’m guessing he’s carrying a weapon.”
“Where you going?”
Tommy gestured toward the young officer. “New guy, getting his feet wet.”
Dority looked confused and wanted to say more, but the newbie pushed Tommy through the door into the stairwell. He gave Tommy a shove toward the stairs, still holding his gun by his side.
“What’s your problem?” Tommy said. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The officer kept nudging him all the way down the stairs until they reached the bottom floor. He yanked Tommy out a side exit to the back parking lot, where the snowstorm had gathered momentum. He shoved Tommy up against the back of a blue Ford Crown Victoria and said, “Spread your legs.”
Tommy had to place his hands on the frozen roof. “Are you arresting me? I’m a witness.”
“So you say,” the officer said, frisking him, then pulling the cell phone from his pocket and taking it away. He opened the back door to the Ford Vic and shoved Tommy into the back seat where a steel cage separated the front and back seats.
The bench seat was stiff from the freezing weather and the windows were sealed by a blanket of snow. The officer wiped away the snow debris from the front windshield and got behind the wheel. As he pulled away, Tommy said, “You got heat in this thing?”
“Let the engine warm up first,” he said with a slight accent that Tommy couldn’t pinpoint. He thought he’d try the lowkey approach and see where that got him.
“Let me ask you something,” Tommy said. “How long have you worked for Central?”
The guy didn’t respond.
“Can’t be too long if you don’t know Pete Dority.”
“Three weeks.”
“Ah, it makes sense now. I suppose you don’t know my cousin Nick Bracco? He’s with the Bureau. Heads up the terrorist division.”
“Nope.”
“You know, my uncle used to patrol the Western back in the day. Nick’s dad. Until he was shot down by gangbangers down on Gold Street.”
“Sorry to hear about that.”
Tommy rubbed his hands together, trying to mitigate the chill. They were heading north on Central Avenue where Tommy recognized an old cigar shop. “You ever been to Davidus, on top of Mustang Alleys?”
“Nope.”
“Really? You don’t get around much do you?”
“I just got here from out west.”
“Where from?”
“Arizona.”
“Hmm, that’s funny, because that’s where Nick lives now, up in Payson. He and his partner, Matt McColm.”
“And they head the terrorism division from there?”
“Well, they work out of the Baltimore office, but they travel all over. Get home as much as possible, but you know how it is.”
“I sure do.”
The officer was sounding more pleasant now and Tommy felt like this could be defused once he got to the Central District office. Tommy probably knew half the guys who worked there. He was more concerned about Cara. She needed to be watched after. Whoever was trying to kill her wasn’t going to stop until they succeeded.
They went past Baltimore Street at a rapid pace.
“Hey, I think you missed the turn there, buddy.”
“Nope.”
The guy kept his hands on the wheel, but now peered at Tommy through the rearview mirror. Tommy began putting the pieces together. Slowly. The guy didn’t know Pete Dority. Everyone knew Pete.
“Arizona, huh?” Tommy said. “You wouldn’t happen to be Chechen would you?”
Tommy could see a pair of eyes smiling through the mirror.
“Ah, shit,” Tommy said. “You guys are really starting to piss me off.”