Paolo pulled over next to a small, gated park two blocks away from the apartment building. Alessandro got out first and motioned for us to hurry it along. “Move quickly. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.” I snorted. Four large men climbing out of a big black SUV was pretty conspicuous.
We casually walked down the sidewalk, talking quietly. Hunter took the lead and said, “Dante and I are going to go ahead and ID the entryway. Gio said there’s an enclosed garden next to the building with a gate that will be easy to open. The door that we’ll use is on that side. Give us five minutes, then follow us in.”
“Are you sure you’ll be able to get in?” I asked.
Dante raised his left arm. “This might not be working so great right now, but I can still pick locks.”
I smirked. “All right. Get going.”
Alessandro and I headed toward a corner bodega while Hunter and Dante continued down the street. Now that we were so close, I was getting twitchy again. I tried to think only one minute at a time. I tried not to think about what Langer might be doing to Greg. That way lay madness.
Just before we went inside the small store, I turned to Alessandro and asked, “Do you think having three ex-special forces members is overkill against one man?”
He held my gaze for a long time before he spoke. “Do you think they would have let you go alone?”
I didn’t have to think about my answer. “No.”
“And if Marco were here, how many would be on this mission?”
I chuckled. “All of them.”
Alessandro nodded in approval. “Your people are loyal because they are family. Not all by blood, but family just the same.” He wasn’t wrong.
As we entered the bodega, I did wonder why Alessandro was here. I hadn’t thought he cared much about my branch of the family. But I wasn’t about to question the assistance.
We were standing in front of a magazine display pretending to look at the offerings when Alessandro began speaking to me in Italian. “Anthony, I know you are worried about finding Greg in time. I know much about stalkers. They want their victims to suffer, to be terrified. They need that power. We will find Greg, and you will need to be strong for him. You may need to kill for him.”
A frisson of shock ran through me. For as much as I expressed the desire to kill Paul Langer, Alessandro’s matter-of-fact statement brought me up short. In my ten years as a police officer, I’d discharged my firearm only a handful of times. None of those had resulted in fatalities. Would I truly be able to kill a man? I thought about my sweet, gentle man, terrified and hurt. The rage was still there, but now it was a burning ball of lava in the core of my being. Yeah, I could kill for him if I had to.
Alessandro checked his watch. “It is time.”
We meandered out of the store and down the street toward the apartment building. Just before we got to the building itself, the garden appeared beside us, walled off by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. The gate that opened into the garden appeared to be padlocked. But I could see that the padlock wasn’t latched. Bless Dante and his lock-picking skills.
We hurried through the gate, carefully replacing the padlock. Dante was standing by the door that led into the back of theapartment building. He gestured for us to hurry. The expression on his face was one I couldn’t read.
“What is it? What did you find?” I asked.
“Come inside, and you’ll understand.”
Mystified, I entered the building and stopped dead in my tracks. “Motherfucker,” I whispered through clenched teeth.
“Is that…music? Is someone playing the piano?” Alessandro asked.
“Yeah,” I growled. “And it’s coming from this floor.”
Hunter pulled his gun from his shoulder harness. “Ready?”
We all nodded and followed suit. Even though the building was unoccupied, the lights in the main hallway were lit. We stopped in front of a door in the middle of the hallway. The music was definitely coming from inside that apartment.
Hunter put his hand on the doorknob and silently counted with his fingers:three, two, one. Just as he got the door open, the music stopped, and we all froze.
“Not good enough. Play it again,” a voice I assumed was Paul’s demanded.
We crept through the open door with Hunter in the lead and me right behind him. The living room was empty, as was the tiny galley kitchen.
“Fuck you,” Greg spat. “You don’t deserve my music.”
I was vibrating with the need to get to Greg before the argument escalated to violence. We moved quietly down the hallway toward the sound, stopping at the door to the first bedroom.
