Page 7

The ride to Marco’s took a whopping ten minutes on a Sunday, and we pulled into an empty parking lot. It was so close to closing time that I was shocked he’d even taken our order; but he had, so there I was, jumping out of the car with Mark’s cash in hand, headed in to see just how poorly this interaction was going to go.

Nobody was behind the counter when I walked in, but I could see Marco’s intimidating frame in the kitchen through the order window. When his narrowed eyes landed on me, all I wanted to do was run. I might have only had encounters with two mobsters in my life, but damn if they didn’t both have the exact same menacing glare.

Maybe it was a prerequisite to join.

“I feel like you and me need to have another talk, Danners’ kid, because you just don’t seem to be listening.” He made his way out to the counter, pizzas in hand, and placed them down between us. “It’s like you got a death wish or something.”

“No. I just want my pizzas…and my dad out of prison.”

“And I want you to keep your nose outta mob shit so you don’t find yourself dead. We’ve been over this.”

“We have,” I replied, doing my best to stare down a man who basically towered over me like a giant.

“Too bad you’re not more like me. I know when to keep my mouth shut and mind my own business.”

“And when to turn state’s evidence, too, apparently.”

His knuckles popped as his hands balled into fists for a moment before he took a deep breath. “You got lucky with Marazano, kid,” he said as he pushed the boxes my way, “but anyone who gambles enough knows that luck runs out eventually.”

“Good thing I’m not a gambler.”

“You sure about that? Because it sure feels like you’re takin’ chances with the Vollero family.” He propped his elbows on the counter and leveled his gaze on mine. “You might have a death wish, kid, but I don’t. And if you think I can be intimidated by a teenage girl to give up information, then you really don’t have a clue who you’re up against—here or with the Vollero family. I might as well put a gun to your head right now and end this humanely, because they won’t.”

“Well, it seems like Vollero has his hands full on the east coast, since half the family just got brought in by the feds.”

He smiled at my response. “But not him. Never him. They came close once, but now it’s like chasing a ghost—kinda like that other guy who’s gunning for ya.” Then that smile fell away, leaving nothing in its wake but the killer I knew Marco had likely once been. “And if you’re not careful, kid, they’ll appear out of nowhere and turn you into one too. You’ll never see them coming.”

The sharp claw of death I’d grown to recognize raked down my spine yet again, because Marco may have been many things, but full of shit wasn’t one of them. And idle threats were not his style.

“Do you know who the AD is? Or Vollero?”

The muscles in his square jaw flexed as he inhaled deeply, reluctance or irritation fueling the act. “I don’t know nothin’ about the AD, and there aren’t many who could tell you about the boss since he went to ground a long, long time ago…not that are still alive, that is.” I thought of Manny Marazano and cringed. “That’s right, kid. Remember what you saw, because it’ll be you next if you don’t knock this shit off. I thought you woulda learned that when you nearly did a swan dive off a rooftop, but here we are, having this conversation yet again.”

“Yeah,” I said, leaning in closer to the former mafioso, “here I am again, so why don’t you at least answer this for me, and then I’ll go.” He pushed back off the counter to tower over me, arms folded across his chest. “What’s the Vollero organization’s connection to my father’s case?”

“No clue. But it had to be big to ruin his life over it. What I do know is that he and that partner of his had shut down some of the Volleros’ ‘affiliate’ connections, which makes me wonder if they were getting too close to the head of the snake—and the wrong people knew it.”

“And that’s why they wanted him stopped,” I mused aloud, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. “Wrong people like who?”

“Like Vollero himself.”

I shuddered at what the mere mention of that name did to me. “But if Striker knew all this too, then why isn’t he in prison? Why just my father? Unless…unless this was personal somehow,” I said, thinking through all the things my father had endured—and me by extension.

He shrugged with a nonchalance that made me stabby. “Maybe, maybe not, but it sure feels that way, kid. Your dad got a lot of Vollero’s boys locked up. To the boss, that’s personal. Never mind the fact that overturning your father’s cases would be a big win for the family and would put a lot of dangerous people back on the streets. They wouldn’t need to put them both away for that outcome to play out.”

“Which is why it can’t happen,” I countered.

“Oh, it’s gonna happen, whether you and your father are still around to see it or not. Keep that in mind—for your sake and his.” Without another word, he turned away, headed for the door to the kitchen. But before he slipped out of sight, he stopped and looked back at me. “I’ve gotten lucky in my life and dodged a few bullets, so take it from someone who knows, kid: this isn’t a fight you want. Believe me.”

He punched the swinging door to the kitchen open and disappeared, leaving me standing in the empty dining area of the closed pizzeria, wondering how in the hell I could win a game this rigged. If the FBI couldn’t stop a mob boss, then I was pretty sure they didn’t have a shot at stopping the AD, which meant there was no way in hell I could. Sure, I had an advantage in the I-didn’t-have-to-do-things-by-the-book department, but I also didn’t have their resources, their authority, or their arsenal of weapons.

And even if I did, I’m not sure it would have mattered.

Because I had no fucking clue how to hunt a ghost.