“Same here.” I grab fistfuls of my hair as I abandon the bookshelves. Whoever Avara is, it’s clear he isn’t stupid enough to leave anything incriminating at his place of work. My eyes drift to a framed certificate on the wall, and my feet carry me in that direction to take a closer look. “This could be something.” I remove my cell and photograph the cert, immediately sending it to Phillip. His team is currently scouring the traffic cam footage to see if they can find where Lucas’s SUV went, and he’s digging more into his background and Davenport’s to see if he can find a connection.
“He graduated from NYU,” Ben says, coming up behind me.
“Which is where Davenport went to college. This could be the connection we are looking for.”
“I thought Avara went to Harvard.” Leo appears on my other side. “That’s what it said in Phillip’s report.”
“It’s clear everything in that report is fake,” Ben acknowledges. “Put there specifically for us to find.”
“Holy shit,” Leo exclaims, pushing past me to walk to the framed photos on the wall just in front of the desk. “Hell.” He jabs his finger at a photo. “You’ve got to see this.”
Ben and I walk over, and blood leaches from my face as I stare at the photo of a young Lucas Avara with Giuseppe DeLuca, Thomas Barretta, and Alfredo Gifoli.
“Fuck!” Ben yells, slamming his fist into the wall. “He’s the Sicilian DeLuca. It’s got to be him.” It’s what we all suspected but didn’t articulate.
My chest heaves as pain stretches across it. “He’s got Rena.”
“Why take her? If he still has a hard-on for Ben, I don’t get how this works to his advantage.” Leo rubs at his temples as I take a pic and send that one to Phillip too. “What’s his angle?”
“We should leave,” Ben says as a commotion sounds outside.
The door swings open, and a portly security guard blocks the entrance, pointing a standard-issue handgun at us. He surveys the files and papers littering the floor and scowls. “Mara,” he calls out over his shoulder. “Call the police.”
Ben steps forward. “Tell them Bennett Mazzone sends his regards.”
The guard’s face pales, and his arm shakes. There aren’t many men working security in New York who haven’t heard of Ben.
“Mine is bigger than yours.” Leo removes his Glock from the back waistband of his pants and aims it at the man. “I don’t want to hurt you, man, but I will if you don’t get the fuck out of our way.”
“Don’t be a martyr,” I add. “When the boss asks, you tell him Don Mazzone is looking for him and it’d be in his best interests to call.” I slap Ben’s business card against the man’s chest as he reluctantly lowers his weapon and steps aside.
* * *
“Where to, boss?” Ciro asks when we climb into the back of the SUV.
“Back to CH, Ciro, and contact Pedro. We need the chopper.”
“He must have taken her to Chicago,” I say. “We need to get a team on the ground ASAP.”
“We need to think this through,” Ben replies, his boss mask firmly intact. “He could have taken her as a trap, knowing we would follow. We can’t fall into another ambush. We are no use to Serena if we’re dead.”
“The boss is right.” Leo squeezes my shoulder. “I know you’re desperate to get her back, but we need a plan.”
“We need to interrogate the governor,” I say. “We know he’s somehow involved and DeLuca has his wife.”
“Phillip is running the NYU connection to see if he can find a link, but I agree with you,” Ben says. “He’s connected to this, and it’s got to be our next move.”
“Unless Chelsea hasn’t really been taken.” Leo plays devil’s advocate. “That could have been for show.”
“She was terrified, Leo.” The camera footage clearly showed that. “Even the best actress can’t fake that,” I say.
“For all we know, the governor is in on all of this,” Leo says. “If we show up at his place, he could tip DeLuca off and we’ll lose the element of surprise.”
“We already have.” I massage my pounding forehead. “His staff will have told him we trashed his office. He knows we know who he is, and he knows we will have made the connection with the governor by now.”
“Alessandro is right.” Ben agrees as Ciro weaves through the city traffic. “We have to assume he is one step ahead of us, and we are following a path he has set for us. Perhaps the governor will be a dead end, but he might not be. I have heard he’s a family man and he’s devoted to his wife. It’s quite possible he’s in over his head.”
“He could need us,” I say as the suggestion grows roots in my mind. “If Lucas has taken Chelsea without his knowledge or approval, he’s got to be frantic. He’ll tell us what we need to know if we promise to get her out too.”
