I couldn’t stop thinking about Angelo Messina.
Naked, wet Angelo Messina, dragging his damn finger down my chest like he planned to lick it after.
I groaned and covered my face with my hand. All I could hope was that he hadn’t noticed my hard-on.
A man like him missing a detail like that?
Yeah, right.
Still, he hadn’t been completely unaffected either. That meant maybe all those rumors were true. So if the Monster of the Morellis was into dudes, did that mean he and the old man Tino Morelli had…?
Tino had never married, after all, although he’d had a string of mistresses, favored women, like the one who’d been with him that night he was ambushed. She’d died later, I knew that, in the hospital, after a long time in a coma. Tino had gone out in a hail of bullets. Messina hadn’t been with him, by all accounts. Yet it had been his life’s work to protect the Don at all costs, to be by his side. So why hadn’t he been with Tino Morelli in his last moments?
I stared at the blank TV screen, thinking so hard that I jumped when the object of my musings reappeared in the room. He was fully dressed, thank God, but more casual than I’d ever seen him before in all those surveillance photographs: black jeans and a navy hoodie. Somehow it all looked like couture on him.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked.
“You told me not to snoop. I didn’t snoop.”
He gave a very faint smile. “How noble of you, Baxter. Maybe we’ll get along after all.”
I ignored the invitation to squabble. “Do you have to tell yourfriendsyou’re bailing?”
“Just doing that now,” he said, looking at his phone. He fired off a quick text and set the phone down on the coffee table. “Coffee before we head out? It’ll be a late night. I want to get started on things. No time to waste.” Before the screen of his phone faded to black, I saw he’d texted someone called “Ned” one word and two numerals:Dylan 37.
“With that shitty stuff you call milk?” I called over. “No, thanks.”
“I thought you didn’t snoop,” he said mildly, but he went on making a coffee for himself as though nothing was wrong.
“Fridges aren’t snoopable,” I pointed out, following him over and sitting at the kitchen bench. “Who cares about leftovers?”
“I suspect you could draw quite a few conclusions frommyleftovers, Baxter,” he said, and I didn’t like the suggestion in his voice. I had a quick vision of a famous crime scene photograph, the aftermath of one of Angelo Messina’s highest-profile kills.
Before Messina was Tino Morelli’s personal bodyguard, he’d been Tino Morelli’s justice, sent to kill those who stepped out of line or who offended the Don. Only 24 at the time, Messina had killed a powerful Capo from the Clemenza Family, Giorgio Benetti. Not justkilled, according to the evidence: seduced, bedded, and then murdered him in the throes of passion.
Messina had been rewarded with a new position as Tino Morelli’s shadow and protector.
Photos of that crime scene, a blood-soaked bed in an hourly-rate hotel, were used in FBI training to emphasize the importance of proper crime scene procedure. The officers who had first attended spent the first twenty minutes taking photographs of themselves with the notorious victim. In the process, they’d disturbed the evidence enough that the case would never come to trial, thanks to Messina’s lawyers, a reluctant DA, and a judge later found to be indebted to Tino Morelli himself.
And so Messina had beat the rap. But everyone knew it was him.
Seeing all that blood on the outside of the body rather than on the inside had given me nightmares for a week. I didn’t have a naturally strong stomach for gore. It had been one of the first things Ethan Villiers had told me I’d need to work on if I wanted to join the FBI.
And now here I was,kicked outof the FBI. But at least I’d developed my stomach over the years. Plus, I had a feeling Villiers would try to make things easier on me than they probably should be, although there was no way I’d be allowed back on the task force.
“Do we even have time for you to have a coffee?” I asked, changing the subject.
“There’s always time for coffee,” Angelo told me reprovingly. “Lesson number one, Baxter.”
He’d said my name more times tonight than I think the Captain had said it my entire time on the task force, and every time it gave me a little thrill, even though I actually hated my given name.
“It’s Bax, please,” I blurted out as I followed him over to the kitchen. “I prefer Bax.” I hopped up on the barstool at the counter and he glanced across at me.
“Alright. Bax.” There. Now we’d gone fromSpecial Agent Baxter FlynntoBax. Maybe we really could get along. “You’re sure you won’t have one?” he asked. “I can make you an espresso if you like. No milk needed.”
“I—sure,” I said, deciding I should probably go with the flow. Make nice with the mobster. The insanity of my position came over me again. I was having showers and coffees with someone I had sworn to apprehend.
I probablyshouldget kicked out of the FBI.
