The young dark-haired man gazed from my small wooden desk to my round kitchen table, where Greg’s laptop sat, and said, “Table. It’ll give me more room.”
I nodded and left him to it, going to answer another knock on my door, which I assumed was Dante. Unfortunately, Alessandro beat me to it. When he opened the door, Dante took a step back and fell into a defensive stance, his right hand reaching inside his light jacket. “Who the fuck are you?”
I’d forgotten Dante hadn’t been on the last personnel extraction mission. I hurried to get between the two men. “It’s all right, Dante. This is Alessandro. He’s part of my cousin Sal’s protection detail.”
He relaxed, straightened, and dropped his hand. “Oh. Sorry, man. I didn’t know.” Alessandro grunted and walked back into the living room.
Dante watched him go. “Pleasant fellow,” he said quietly.
I shrugged. “What are you gonna do? Come on in, and I’ll introduce you to everyone else.”
“Who all is coming?” Dante asked. “And why is your cousin here?”
“Hunter’s on his way and should be here soon.” I then explained how Sal had gotten involved and what Gio would be doing for us.
Dante was wide-eyed by the time I finished. “Wow, that was a stroke of good luck.”
“Yes, it was. And I’m lucky you and Hunter are available. Isaac is out of town, and the rest of the search-and-rescue operatives are either too new or on their way to Indonesia.”
“That’s right, I forgot. Marco is going to be pissed he wasn’t here to help.”
“Yeah. The timing really sucks,” I replied.
There was another knock on the door, and I didn’t bother going to answer it. I gestured to Alessandro, knowing he was just doing his job. Besides, he knew Hunter, so the potential for bullets flying was much lower.
When the door opened, I heard Hunter say, “Hey, Alessandro. Good to see you again.”
My cousin’s bodyguard merely nodded and said, “Hunter.”
Hunter came to stand with Dante and me. “Tony, I was thinking about that note. There’s got to be more to it.”
“Are you talking about the note that came with the black roses?” Dante asked.
“What note?” Sal asked.
I repeated what Liz had told me about the flowers and the note. There was still that insistent thought in the back of my mind that I was missing something important.
“It’s personal,” Sal said. “It’s not only about Greg. It’s about something you did.”
I threw up my hands. “But I don’t even know who this is.”
“But you must have tracked other stalkers in the past,” Hunter said.
“Yeah, we do from time to time.” Dante agreed. He gestured with his chin toward Hunter. “Like with your cute little redhead.”
I shook my head. “There’s no way it’s Brent Oberman. He never even knew I was part of the search.”
Sal glanced over at Gio. “Check out that name anyway. Where’s he from?”
“Chicago.”
“On it,” Gio murmured, reminding me of Michael. God, I missed my brothers right now.
“Wait,” Dante said. “Didn’t you get famous after finding Jeremy’s stalker?”
I waggled my hand. “Not exactly famous, but well-known to the right people. But that was almost ten years ago, and that guy went to prison. It turned out he’d stalked a couple of other men and drugged and raped one of them. They couldn’t find him using DNA at the time because he wasn’t in the system for anything. They only found out after he was brought in for questioning when we tracked him down…” I stopped speaking. “Oh shit. The food delivery. He did the same thing with Jeremy. He delivered food to his dressing room door after a concert at Carnegie Hall. Luckily, one of the security guards saw him and he ran away.”
“What food delivery?” Hunter asked.
