Frustration has me scrubbing my hands through my hair after executing at least two dozen searches and not finding much. David Barone’s police record is longer than my arm. He’s been in trouble since he was a teenager, but outside of court and police records, there’s not much to find.
I was able to hack his juvenile record, but it’s mainly the same stuff as his adult record; breaking and entering, public intoxication, distribution, intent to distribute, etc. The only nugget is that the DA assigned to his every case is DA Blevins.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I switch the language to my native language and send a text to my cousin.
Brana 14:25: Can you run a background check?
Dimitri 14:27: Da.
Brana 14:28: David Barone. Goes by ‘D’. Possibly associated with La Cosa Nostra. Don’t know which family. Headquartered in Chicago, maybe. Working with an outfit in Oklahoma.
Dimitri: 14:32: Oklahoma? I thought you were in Tennessee.
Brana 14:33: In Oklahoma with Mason, there is a threat to his family.
Brana 14:33: And to someone I care very much about.
Dimitri 14: 34: I’ll make inquiries.
I pull up the tracking app on my phone and stare at the little red dot. My shoulders feel like twisted metal, and I rotate my neck to loosen them, but it doesn’t help. When I spin my desk chair around and stretching doesn’t help, I give up and walk to the kitchen.
The bottle of vodka in the freezer is calling my name and I grab a rocks glass from the cabinet and collapse on the sofa in the living room. Frost has formed on the clear bottle, and I fill the glass half-way and sit back on the sofa to drink myself into oblivion.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARLEY
MAISEY STANDSstill as I scrub the brush over her shoulder and back. I’ve learned she really enjoys rolling in the dirt area of the paddock, probably rubbing off some of her leftover winter fur.
“You could at least roll in the dry dirt.” I mumble to her and pat her neck at the same time. Some of the dirt dried to her fur falls off in small clumps and I breathe in the fine dust flying close to my face, making me sneeze and my eyes water.
I sniff and wipe the moisture from my eye with the back of my hand. The fact that I barely slept last night doesn’t help my tired eyes.
After Jax left yesterday, Mason told me I was being too hard on him. At first, I acted like a jealous girlfriend and accused him of choosing Jax over me, but then he told me about the times he witnessed Jax lose it with pedophiles and traffickers because he hates them so much.
When I asked him for more details, he told me all heknew was Jax lost his mother and sister when he was young. I tried to pry more info from him, but I could tell he was telling me the truth when he told me he didn’t know.
Jax told me the other night that he lost them to some evil men, but when I considered that they could have been the same sort of men as Keith and his father, I felt like the biggest heal in the world.
So, I replayed the entire day in my head all night long. Feeling more and more guilty with each passing minute.
Jax didn’t come back last night, and I realized it was strange to me he wasn’t here. I think the most surprising thing was I was worried he might never come back, which made my stomach upset. I even tried to pinpoint when I started expecting him to be here every day.
His visits to the ranch have been more frequent in the last six months, they have also become longer with each visit. To be honest, when we sat down at the dinner table last night and the chair he’s been sitting in was empty, I lost my appetite.
I miss him.
When he left yesterday, he hung his helmet on one of the fence posts and I lost count of how many times I’ve looked at that helmet today to see if his bike has shown up.
Maisey huffs and shifts her hindquarters to move into the brush I’m scratching over her hip and quarters. “You like that girl?” I chuckle as I scratch her back with my fingers.
Trying to figure out what I’m exactly mad about is part of what is driving me crazy; that, unbidden, he defended me and made sure two men who nearly ruined my life never hurt me again, or that he killed them. Mason doesn’t share his work with me often, but he told me yesterday that they sometimes recover missing women and children.
He confirmed that they kill people like that all the time.
Mason has never said that outright before, but deep in myheart, I’ve always known that his job includes pulling the trigger. He’s a sniper, and a very good one.
He’s one of the most important people in my life. Why am I not mad at him for doing the same thing?
