Cain joined Emma on the other side of the bar and walked her to the waiting vehicle with heavily tinted windows.
“You do what’s right, Cain, but whatever you do, come back to me.”
“You have my word, love.”
They kissed, and Cain walked to the other side of the bar again.
There, she pulled back one of the industrial rugs to reveal a trapdoor. She’d wanted to purchase the building for so long primarily because of the door and where it led. Now more than ever, she thanked God her grandfather had told so many stories.
After Cain lowered the door behind her, Merrick replaced the rug before she joined Emma. In the rare chance someone investigated the club, the only thing they would find would be the two used glasses on the bar.
Below the building, Cain flipped on her flashlight and stooped to make it through the narrow tunnel, walking along the edge to avoid the inch of water on the center of the floor. A string of old lights was bolted to the wall on the other side, but they hadn’t worked in a long time and she didn’t intend to fix them. She didn’t want to tip off anyone who didn’t need to know of the tunnel’s location.
After thirty minutes, she reached a rusty white iron door and pulled a set of keys from her pocket. Despite the door’s age, the new security lock turned easily, and when she opened the door the dampness of the river hit her immediately, since she was now close to the port. An old beat-up Buick was parked where Katlin had said it would be, and Cain found the key. Her watchers would never notice the car with all the head-banger stickers on the back window.
At that moment the surveillance teams had another problem. Two of their major targets had totally vanished. Gino had left his house an hour earlier and disappeared into the crowd at a local mall. Whoever had helped him escape knew how to spot the feds’ vans, and now the agents were at a loss.
“Houston, we have a problem,” the one in charge of Gino said as he watched two of his men on the sidewalk in front of Gino’s house search for signs of life.
“You locate your targets yet?” the dispatcher asked. He held his phone, poised to dial Agent Hicks’s number.
“Negative. We’re going to circle one more time, then come back here and wait for him.” The two men outside shook their heads slightly. “Does Shelby have her target in sight?”
“They’re in for the night after an early dinner and a stop at the new place before heading back to Jarvis’s,” Shelby reported. She and Claire were sitting in one van, while Lionel and Joe hung back farther down the street. “Do you need me to cut our backup loose?”
“Hold for now, and let me get Agent Hicks on the phone,” the agent at Gino’s said. “Something about this feels hinky to me, and I want to cover everyone’s ass.”
“I’m telling you, all’s quiet here,” Shelby said, “so let us know if you need more backup to canvass where they were last seen. Looks like we’re going to have a slow night.”
Chapter Forty-Two
The old recreational building smelled heavily of mildew and rot. Gino deserved nothing better for what Cain had in mind because of how dishonorably he’d lived his life. Plus, the site was set for demolition in six months to make room for a new federal building. Then they would find the man the FBI was out hunting for. Cain loved irony.
The stench came from the water left in the old pool, now green and slimy from neglect. It had been years since the sound of children playing had echoed off these walls, and the putrid remains of the once-chlorinated water now magnified the sound of Cain’s footsteps.
Katlin stood at the edge of the deep end and nodded in Cain’s direction. Outside, the night quiet was broken every so often by the sound of distant traffic. The area had once been home to some of the city’s most ruthless gangs. Now the old tenement buildings, as well as all the buildings that had once made up the community, were a ghost town awaiting the wrecking ball.
“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” Cain walked to the front of the building as though she were walking beside a pool at an expensive spa.
“Cain, you fucking asshole.” Gino tried to break free of his bindings and the weight tied to his ankles. He stood in the middle of the pool, the water lapping the middle of his chest. Under the water his hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were also bound by the most common rope Katlin could find. When she and Lou had put him in, they’d looped another long piece that she held in her hand. “Once my father hears about this…Hell, I don’t need him. I’ll take you out myself.”
The relaxed Cain peered out over the shallow end of the pool and cocked her head to one side, as if enjoying the positions they found themselves in. “Gino, I want you to listen to me, because I’m only going to say this once.”
“Fuck you!” He tugged on the bindings on his hands again and stopped when the knots tightened to the point of pain. “Get me the fuck out of—”
His scream died in his throat when he saw Cain nod slightly in Katlin’s direction. Katlin pulled on the rope, dragging him farther into the deep end. The outburst had cost him precious inches he could ill afford to lose if he didn’t want a mouth full of the foul greenish soup.
“Ready to listen?”
“What do you want?” When something flitted against Gino’s leg he shuddered and concentrated on Cain to avoid thinking about what could possibly live in this stuff. Trying to stay upright, Gino willed his body to relax and stared up at her.
“I want so many things we’ll be here for a while yet, so hang tight.”
“You fucking suckered me, Casey. Does it feel good to catch someone with their pants down?”
An urgent call from a business associate of the Bracato family had gotten Gino out of the house. After he and his father had dumped Eris’s body, Gino hadn’t wanted to socialize at all. He sat in the den most nights, watching television and holding his son as he ignored the ringing telephone.
“Sort of how you caught my father unawares the night you gunned him down in the street in front of our offices?” The back door where Cain had entered squeaked as it opened again for their last visitor. “Or is it like murdering my mother? What sort of man kills an innocent?”
“I had nothing to do with any of that, so why am I here?” The shallowest part of the pool contained no water, and Gino pressed his hands closer to his back when he saw a large rat standing on its hind legs sniffing the air. Whatever was in the water with him bumped into his thigh again, and he couldn’t help but wonder if rats could hold their breath.
“You’re here because after talking to your brother Stephano…” Cain stooped, took her hand out of her pocket, and laid the signet ring that belonged to the second oldest of the Bracato boys on the cracked cement at her feet.
The fact that it was in Cain’s possession could only mean one thing.
“What are you doing with that?” Gino, starting to panic, rubbed his bound hands together as if trying to make his own ring reappear.
Cain laid an identical one next to the first ring. “Your brother Michael was next, and he folded like a stack of cards in a tornado.” The last ring came out, and she finally looked up. “Unlike you with my sister, I didn’t have the heart to be cruel to Francis, even though he was more than eager to help your father expand his drug empire. He was trying his best to prove he could keep up with his big brothers.”
Gino screamed in outrage and almost fell forward into the slime. “You fucking bitch. He wasn’t even twenty-five years old.” His anger won out for the moment, and he forgot his fear.
“You’re the last of them, Gino, which is good, since I have only one more question.”
“You’re fucked in the head if you think I’m telling you anything.”
Cain put up her hand, her index finger and thumb a hair’s breadth apart.