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“THERE THEY ARE,” GIA said as she peered down the sites of her McMillan Tac 50 rifle. The scope had a range that was so powerful, she felt as if she was right there with the Wenns as they stepped out of their limousine and onto the sidewalk in front of the Stone Foundation.
“Do you see them? They’re moving toward the paparazzi. Smiling for them. Turning this way and that for them.” Her voice darkened. “Imagine if they knew that it all ends for them tonight.”
She and Carlo were in the office Mario had leased for them. It was dark inside. Their rifles—held securely to the windowsills with metal brackets so the guns couldn’t move—peaked slightly through the barely-open windows. They were thirty stories up, so unless someone had superhuman vision, no one would see them now or later in the evening, when they planned to shoot and kill Alex and Jennifer Wenn as they left the party to go home.
“I could kill Jennifer right now,” Carlo said to her. “I’ve got her head right in my sites. I can take her now—can you take him?”
“Back off,” she said to her brother. “We can’t kill them now. And you know why, so why are you even going there?”
“Because right now is perfect,” he said as he leaned into his rifle and crouched low behind it. “One shot, and she’s dead.”
“Save it for later. Right now, the city is alive with cops actively on patrol. But hours from now, when it’s past midnight, there will be fewer cops on the streets, which is why we’re taking the Wenns then, when they leave the party. If we shoot them now, it would be next to impossible to escape this building. The cops would swarm us.”
Reluctantly, he pulled away from his rifle and turned to face his sister in frustration. She could see his face in the city’s ambient light, and she could tell by his tense expression that he wanted this behind them as much as she did, particularly after the stunt Rowe had pulled on them earlier that morning.
“Have you heard from Mario?” he asked.
“Not yet, but he’ll come through for us. He’ll get rid of the Murano and Jones’ body. Especially if he wants the money I offered him to clean up that mess.”
“Why did Rowe trick us like that?” Carlo said. “Why didn’t he just come clean with what he was intending to do?”
“Because he’s sick,” she said. “And because he knew that neither of us would have stood for it.” She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension she felt and sank back against the wall behind her. “What’s done is done. He’s paid us in full for Jones, and we’ve already transferred that money to another account so that he can’t rescind it. Better yet, he’s on a plane now, flying off to wherever the hell he came from. I say good riddance to him. Tonight, we end this and get on a plane ourselves. By tomorrow afternoon, we’ll be relaxing on a beach far away from here.”
“You can’t get me out of here soon enough,” he said. “This job has been a bitch.”
“Agreed. But look at the money we’ve made from it,” she said. “And it’s almost over—just a few more hours to go. And trust me, Carlo, if Rowe even tries to stiff us for the Wenns, we will go after him. We’ll find him. And we’ll kill him when we do.”
“I’m with you on that,” he said. “But when aren’t I with you?”
“You’ve never let me down,” she said in a low, sincere voice to him. “Which is why I love you. There were too many years in my life when I thought that I could only trust Uncle Niccolo. And then you proved me wrong. Thank you for that.”
He leaned forward and took hold of her foot, which was stretched toward him, and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us,” he said. “We should have brought something to eat. That party won’t be over until midnight or so—maybe even later.”
“Here’s my promise to you,” she said. “When we kill them and if we get out of here safely? I’ll buy you a slice of pizza somewhere.”
“That’s what you’re offering?”
“Fine,” she said. “Once we’re out of the States? I’ll treat you to dinner at a five-star restaurant. How’s that?”
“Now we’re talking.”
“Thanks for being the best brother a sister could ask for. Whatever comes from tonight, I want you to know how much you mean to me.”
“We’re going to be fine, Gia.”
Were they? They’d certainly planned well for their escape, but nothing was certain, especially in the wake of what Rowe had pulled on them that morning. She didn’t answer him.
“Why do you look so worried?” he said. “We’ve run through this drill at least a dozen times. The building has a side entrance. We just need to get to it and get out of here before the cops get here. We can do that. Hell, we’ve planned for that. We’ve dressed like a couple of lovebirds out on the town for a reason,” he said. “You’re in a pretty dress. I’m in a casual suit. If anyone questions us, we’ll be walking hand-in-hand and looking as if we’re in love. No one will question us, so relax.”
When she remained silent, when she couldn’t remove the tension from her face, he squeezed her foot again. And when Carlo did that, she looked up at a ceiling she couldn’t see before she joined her brother and looked out the windows next to them.
The next few hours would feel like forever to her, but Carlo was right. She needed to get her head back in the game. They could do this because they had to do this. They had a job to finish. And so, with a loving pat on her brother’s leg, she joined him in settling in to wait for the next several hours for the moment when they would end the evening with two carefully placed shots into two very wanted heads.
