Chapter 4
Jia
My senses heightenedthe minute Frankie’s phone went off. They were already on high alert from the second I felt that Pa would be looking for me, that was half an hour ago.
Frankie answered the phone. I thought it was Pa calling but it was Vinny.
Frankie had the phone on speaker.
“He just called me man. The boss just called me. Wants to know if you’ve been in touch. He’s looking for you and Jia at the airport. I said I haven’t heard anything,” Vinny blurted.
It sounded like he was in on this plan too.
“Good. I’m gonna get gone with them.”
“Fuck man, he’ll kill you I know it.”
“Yeah, he’ll try to. See you on the other side bro. Don’t call me again, and dispose of the phone. I don’t want you linked to this in any way.”
“Understood brother. I’ll do what I can from this side.” Vinny hung up.
Frankie focused on me and glanced at Xander who’d fallen asleep in my arms.
“We have separate phones. Your father would have tracked me if I used the phone he has the number for,” Frankie explained.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. He’ll know it’s you,” I winced, swallowing hard.
“Yeah I know. I might have gotten away with getting your boy out because that whole area has no surveillance whatsoever, but I knew I was all in balls to the wall when I knew I had to come get you.”
“Thank you.” I couldn’t say thanks enough.
“Not just me princess. It’s him. You were the first thing on his mind when he realized he had a chance. Nothing else. The goal is to get the fuck off the radar. Giovanni has his empire of people and they have eyes. Cops and criminals alike. If I can get us out of sight then we can get ahead.”
It sounded like he had a plan.
“Frankie what are we gonna do? Can we really just disappear?”
“I hope you guys can. I want you to. The boss still has the thing Xander came to get.The blueprints.” He said that in a way to let me know he knew.
“The blueprints?”
He nodded. “He still has them and while he does it’s not good. I won’t be able to just get back inside so I don’t know what’s going to happen on that front.” He gave me a poignant stare. “I think it’s best we take one thing, one step at a time. Get off radar first then think about the other stuff after.”
I agreed. That was definitely in order.
“What can I do? I have to do something to help.”
“No, Jia. I know through this whole thing you hated being told what to do, but I’m gonna need you to do exactly that. This is out of your league. There’s some people we’ll head to in San Diego. I reckon we can hide out there for a max of a day or two. We get there and I hide the truck. Your boy needs to heal. He needs to heal something bad. Don’t be surprised if …” He paused and the linger of silence worried me. “We just have to hope your father didn’t drain him out too much. That whole setup was designed to kill him. The last guy… well, fucking hell, the last guy that was attached to the torture chamber blew up. The voltage was too high.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah. He came to kill your father and that was how your father got him to talk. Guy gave a name; your father got the person who ordered the hit but he still killed the guy for fun. Set the fucking volts to blow the bejesus out of him and that is exactly what he did. Xander was just a few volts away from that and he was whipped. I’m hoping there was no internal damage.”
I gazed down at Xander in my lap. He really did look injured. Pale and weak.
“We should take him to the hospital. Frankie we can’t let him die.”
“Can’t go to a hospital Jia. There’s a doc at the place I’m heading to. I’m hoping they can fix him up. I’m hoping we can get him fixed up because honestly I don’t know what we’ll do after. We got to get out of the state. Get fucking far away. He wasn’t able to tell me about his people. You know anything about who they are?”
