“Because here’s what I’m thinking,” Elvis continued, pushing himself off the wall and moving over to the table as he slipped his phone into his pocket. He planted both hands on the surface as he leaned forward until he was eye level with the man who tried to take Delaney from him. “A man like Matteo Serrano trusts nothing or anyone. Not something like this, something he’s been waiting fifteen years to finish. He wouldn’t send you to meet us without contingencies if things went sour.” He glanced over at Dane and then at Cochran. “No, Matteo is probably a man who’s careful, likes to make plans behind plans behind plans, like having that extra man hiding in the van” He glanced back at Leon, his eyes narrowed. “Which means you walking into that street this morning wasn’t the only plan in play.”
Leon glanced at him, his expression carrying a flat, professional patience, like he had been trained to give nothing away. Elvis had seen men like him before. Hell, he was one of them.
“He’s not just waiting on a lawyer.” Elvis stood, hands on his hips. “He’s simply keeping us busy. There’s another plan in play. I’d wager good money on it. They’re still taking care of business.”
Cochran’s eyes sharpened as he leaned forward, clasping his hands together, and Dane went extremely still as he gave Elvis his full attention. “Keep going.”
Elvis gave a curt nod as he turned back to Leon. “Talk to me about the second team. You had a man hidden in case things went sideways, the one who tried to shoot Delaney. That tells me there’s another team ready in case you fucked it up. Where are they?”
Something moved over Leon’s face. It was small and only there for a moment, but Elvis saw it like he spotted tells at a poker table.
He felt his stomach drop, knowing he was right. “Shit. I hate when I’m right. Thereisa second team.” It wasn’t a question this time, and he was already reaching for his phone. “Where are they?” He kept his voice calm, knowing yelling would do him no good. “Where’s the second team?”
Leon stared at the table, staying quiet.
“That guy who shot Donovan was hiding, waiting,” Dane said. “It stands to reason someone else was also in the wings, which means they know Delaney got into that ambulance. They probably also know that Gage and Grim followed them.”
Elvis stood straighter and yanked his phone back out of his pocket, punching Gage’s name in his contacts as soon as he had it open. “They’re going after Delaney at the hospital.”
Cochran was already on his phone, calling for help, and Dane was calling for Blaze to scour hospital cameras.
The phone rang four times, and Elvis’s impatience went up a notch each time. Four times was three too goddamn many. The man would have been waiting for his call and answered immediately.
Finally, Gage answered.
Elvis turned away from the table, lowering his voice. “There’s a second team we didn’t account for, and I’m certain they’re there already. Tell me you have eyes on Delaney.”
He could hear the other man shuffling, a chair sliding against the floor. “I’m in the waiting room. They moved Donovan to recovery and would only allow one of us to go with her, so Grim went. She wanted to be with him before they took him to ICU.”
“Get to her,” Elvis snapped. “Call me when she’s in your sight again.”
He ended the call, standing in the interrogation room as he gripped his phone tight enough that it dug gouges into his palm.
Dane appeared at his side, hands on his hips. “Blaze is on it. Anything?”
Elvis shook his head, and Dane gave a curt nod as he turned back to Cochran, which made the man start speaking in rapid, clipped sentences into his phone.
Leon had stopped looking at the table and now watched Elvis with a smirk on his lips that Elvis wanted to punch right off.
His phone rang again.
“I tried calling Grim, but he’s not answering. I’m almost there. Recovery is on the third floor.”
Elvis closed his eyes, his heart pounding under his ribs. “Take the stairs; it’ll be faster.”
“Got it.”
He remained on the phone, and Elvis could hear the slamming of doors and the sound of Gage’s heavy boots pounding up the stairs.
Elvis slipped out the door of the interrogation room, standing in the corridor where he could think without Leon’s smirk tempting him to murder the man. Spinning in a circle, he listened to Gage taking the stairwell, the echo of the door swinging open followed by Gage’s heavy boots pounding the concrete stairs. Another door opened, and then he heard Gagemoving through a hallway, asking people to move, apologizing for knocking someone over.
“Almost there,” Gage said.
Elvis nodded without thinking, his thoughts drifting to Delaney in some sterile waiting room, picturing her hands pressed against Donovan’s side on the sidewalk, about the way she had looked at the marshal before she got into the ambulance with him. Her features had been a mixture of control and fear and entirely determined, all contradictory expressions, as if she couldn’t decide on how to feel.
He thought about Matteo Serrano, who wanted revenge for his father, who seemed careful and a man who planned for everything. He expected a trap and set one of his own while they were congratulating themselves on the hook being swallowed.
And then, out of nowhere, because that’s how things happened sometimes, unbidden and random as hell, he thought of a quote by the King: Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. He heard his mother’s voice underneath it as the two of them sat on the sofa together watching an old screen in a small house in Mississippi while the world passed by outside.
