Then it struck me. The day we’d first decided to take a chance on each other, he’d called someone on this phone to come and pick us up, take us to the safe house in Brooklyn. Someone called Dylan? I hadn’t seen him, because of the blindfold, but I’d heard them talking.
There was no contact called Dylan listed in the phone. I went to his call log and scrolled through to the day we’d first gone on the run.There. A logged call to one Ned Flanders, although I definitely remembered hearing Angelo saying something about a Dylan at the time.
I hit redial and hoped for the best.
“Yeah?” A gruff, single syllable, a male voice.
“I need to speak to Dylan,” I said firmly.
“What? Who the fuck is this?”
“I—I’m with Angelo Messina and he’s been shot, so I need to speak to fucking Dylan, and I need to speak to himright now!” I was going to lose it. Angelo was bleeding out in the back of his own car and some dumbass mobster was going to hang up on me, I just knew it.
“Who the fuck is this?” the voice asked again, carefully. “And if you really do need help,” it added, “you wanna be careful how you answer.”
I was going to hyperventilate and pass out. I had to focus hard to say, very carefully, “My name is Baxter Flynn. I’m with Angelo Messina, and he’s been shot and I think he’sdying, and he needs help.” I wanted to make threats about Angelo being this guy’s Underboss or something, but I had no idea who Ned Flanders was—well,thisNed Flanders, anyway—and besides that, I couldn’t make my brain get the words together.
“Put him on the phone.”
“He’sunconscious!”
There was a short pause, and then the voice said. “Okay. Hang tight; do what you can. Leave the phone on so I can trace your location. Don’t call anyone else, you hear me?”
And then he ended the call.
I threw the phone on the floor of the car and tried to sit Angelo up again. He moaned when I pulled at him, and I figured at least he was trying to come back to consciousness. I pulled off my hoodie and tee, then wrapped the tee tightly around his shoulder and chest, securing it as best as I could. Over the top of that, I pressed both my hands as hard as I could, praying that it would help, that it would keep the bleeding under control.
It might have been the pain that shocked him back into consciousness, because he groaned again. “Bax…” he murmured.
“You can’t die,” I told him. “You just can’t. You’re Angelo fucking Messina, you’re a legend. Legends don’t die.” I took a deep breath and tried to get hold of myself. “You have to hang on. Dylan’s coming.”
“Dylan?”
“I called him.”
“I don’t…” His head rolled back and his eyelids fluttered. There was blood everywhere, and I feared every second would be his last.
My face was wet. Blood? Tears? I had no idea. “Angelo, you have to stay with me.Please.” I had never been so terrified in my life.
Not when I’d been shot at in Central Park, not when I saw my own face as a wanted man on the evening news, not even when I’d been told the news about my family and realized I was alone. Completely alone.
I’d got through all that. But I couldn’t get through this, if it happened. If Angelo died.
I pressed my face to his, smearing him with blood, and prayed to a God I didn’t believe in. I bargained with everything I had. “I’ll turn myself in,” I muttered to whichever deity might be listening. “I’ll go to the task force, tell them to take me in, arrest me, fuck it, even convict me. As long as Angelo lives.Please.”
I knew, even in that moment, that I was doing what all humans did, bargaining with an uncaring universe in the hopes that I could bend reality to my will. And I knew it was useless. But apart from my terrible first aid, I could do nothing elsebutbeg. So I did. I prayed and pleaded into Angelo’s neck, pressing down as hard as I could on his shoulder.
“Please, God.Please. You can’t take him, not till I’ve had a chance to tell him—to tell him I love him—” The reality of it hit me like a Mack truck, forcing a sob out of me. I did. Ididlove this complicated, vicious, damaged man, and I would not be able to live if he died. “Oh, God,please—” I gasped.
Car lights swept over us, making me blink, and a moment later the engine died and I heard footsteps, running.
I stuck my head out of the car, shirtless and covered in blood, to see someone familiar—surely I’d seen his face—
“Nick Fontana?” I asked stupidly. Fontana was one of the new Capos put in place by Luca D’Amato. I knew he was considered ruthless and capable and cold. I was strangely relieved to see it was him, even though he was holding a gun on me.
“You’re Flynn?”
“Yeah. Where’s Dylan?”
