Page 71 of Above ’N’ Beyond

“Ah.” Jamie nodded. “The boys went to other airports.”

“Now you’re gettin’ it.” Tony nodded emphatically. “Ogdensburg, Plattsburgh, and Massena. Anyway, everyone will be here tonight, and Ma wants you to come. She wants a show of solidarity and family. A show of force. Anything to make our ranks look bigger.”

“Got it.” He’d always thought Paola’s crew was on the small side, probably one of the reasons he’d been granted entry into the family business so soon. “Bella won’t be happy about that. I’m supposed to work the bar tonight.”

“Yeah, well.” Tony laughed. “She’s in for an even bigger surprise. She doesn’t know it yet, but Ma wants her there, too. What Paola Mancuso wants she gets. You know?” Jamie did know. “She said to bring Jax. I think she still wants to win him over, and she never backs down from a challenge.”

“You got it.” Not that Jax would be happy about it. Like Tony said, whatever Paola wanted, she got.

As he pulled from the driveway and turned onto Broadway, his brain’s radar was pinging like crazy. Something was off here. Royally off, and he had a feeling he knew what.

Unexpected green eyes could have been colored contact lenses. Shoes intended to change a person’s height. If this man had needed to alter his appearance that much, then Jamie suspected the name on his passport wasn’t his real name. It had to be an alias. And what about the other pickups?

Paola is smuggling people.

What people, and why did they have to be smuggled in?

He braked at a stop sign. Several categories of people couldn’t travel openly. Those who’d been kidnapped, which this man clearly hadn’t been. Those wanted by the law and with outstanding arrest warrants. Or those who were restricted from traveling outside their country, a common bail condition placed on an arrestee by a judge to make sure they couldn’t flee the country.

Jamie turned right onto 6th Avenue, heading for his apartment. He parked in the driveway, then let Jax out to do his stuff. While his dog sniffed the grass and chased a disgruntled squirrel, Jamie called Lt. Diallo Achebe, the Port Authority precinct supervisor at Stewart Airport, and made a formal request to have the mystery man’s movements traced backward from the moment he exited the terminal to the moment he got off the plane and to get an ID. Lt. Achebe could get the guy’s passport information. Jamie stressed the urgency of his request.

His next call was to Jenkins, to give him an update on the airport pickups. Once Jamie had the IDs, the FBI could run complete background checks on the aliases these men were using. But it wouldn’t answer the other question simmering in Jamie’s head.

Paola had said there would be twenty-five people at her event. She’d want her only son and capo present. He had to assume mystery guy and the three other people being picked up today would be there. Even if Marco, Sammy, Paulie, and Nicky were invited, which Jamie doubted, considering they weren’t capos, that still left at least fifteen other people expected for the event.

Who else was coming? More smuggled people?

Possibly, but neither Paola nor Tony had alluded to more pickups, and the man Jamie had driven to Paola’s house had been the test run. Which meant whoever else was attending Paola’s event…was already here.

When Jenkins’s voice mail kicked in, Jamie hung up, then deleted everything from his call history. Knowing who these men were was critical. Eventually, Jenkins would see the missed call and get back to him. Leaving messages would have been a rookie mistake, and he didn’t want to wind up dead like Jenkins’s last informant.

Wearing a wire to the dinner tonight would be ideal, but he couldn’t be completely certain he wouldn’t be scanned or patted down again. Bella, however, wouldn’t be.

Jamie shoved a hand through his hair. Christ, he was a dick, but it had to be done.

He had a theory. It was only a theory, but if he was right, this investigation was bigger, more dangerous, and wider reaching than the FBI could possibly have imagined.

And a shitstorm was about to rain down on the little town of Nyack, New York.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Bella yanked on her black satin sandals, the ones with the tiny faux gemstones on the straps. Being summoned away from the Bistro for an entire night irritated the piss out of her. Wednesdays were when business started picking up during the week, and she hated not being there.

She smoothed out her favorite LBD in front of the full-length mirror. She loved how the halter neckline accentuated her bare shoulders, one of the few assets on her body, in her personal opinion, that was fine the way it was. As she turned, the asymmetrical hemline fluttered against her calves, and the beaded, sequined flowers glittered and sparkled against the black silk. Would Jimmy like seeing her in this dress?

Since all of Tony’s crew would be at the dinner tonight, she assumed he would be, too. At least her regular bartender had come back to work. She’d have to talk to Jimmy about taking some part-time shifts. Then again, after whatever he’d done to get firmly ensconced in her aunt’s operation, he might not have time. Tony would want him to do lots more of whatever illegal thing he’d done.

Heaviness tugged at her heart. She didn’t like thinking about Jimmy doing bad things because he wasn’t bad, just on the wrong track. He needed to realize there were other things he could do with his life. Good things.

Bella went into the bathroom and rummaged in the top drawer for just the right shade of lipstick. Coral, blush, or plum. After selecting the darker of the three—plum—she uncapped the lipstick and ran it across her lips, blotting with a tissue and wondering if Jimmy would like this color on her.

She groaned and gave a quick shake of her head. Okay, so he’d kissed her goodbye before bolting out the door exactly ten hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. Not that she was keeping track. Sleeping with men wasn’t something she did on a regular basis. First, she had to really like a guy. Then she had to be attracted to him. After that, it was all about chemistry, and wow, did they have it. Her belly flipflopped because mobster or not…

She’d already begun falling for him.

The doorbell rang. Gnocchi raced from his open crate, yipping his little heart out. From the other side of the door, Jax barked. She flipped off the bathroom light and snagged her dress’s matching silk wrap from the bed. When she opened the front door, Jimmy was indeed on her front porch, wearing a charcoal-gray suit, a white dress shirt, and a navy-blue tie.

Lest she drool, Bella swallowed. Jimmy was good-looking in jeans and a T-shirt, but in a suit… Oh my, and be still my crazily beating heart. He looked amazingly handsome and hotter than a crepe fresh out of the pan and drizzled in decadent hot fudge and yummy thick caramel sauce. Yes, she wanted to lick him, all of him, from his head to his toes because he was absolutely, indisputably de-lic-ious.