Echo, p.18
Echo, page 18
Him.
Not wanting to think about what had just happened when he had touched me, I instead focused on every detail of him that I could take in as if my life depended on it.
And the details, they were a work of art.
The muscles in his arm flexed and moved, straining at the confines of his shirtsleeve as he expertly wove in and out of traffic. The colorful ink on his hands, only interrupted by thick veins that snaked up and disappeared under his sleeves, stood out beneath the glow of every passing streetlight.
His black hair, his fierce, impenetrable expression, his muscles, the tattoos, how he drove, his scent—all of it was a masterpiece. One I would have titled Warrior had I created it.
Except nothing on paper or canvas could do this man justice, and it was not merely him.
It was the world around him.
Moving, parting, bending.
It was his world.
The chaotic nighttime cityscape. The frenzy of neon lights. The blaring horns and rain-slicked streets. The large gun secured in his hand. The braided leather around his wrist. The heavy chain hanging from his neck. Even the small diamond pierced through this nose. If one could possibly capture everything about this man in a painting, he would be a study of extremes.
Impossible strength, blinding anger, fierce stare, hardened muscles, silent movements, impenetrable thoughts—he was frightening, and yet, he was the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on.
Not even my memories of him had done him justice.
And seeing him drive only made everything about him so much more…visceral.
He took another turn, and his dark voice filled the silence between us. “You recoiled when I put my arm around you and lifted you into the Hummer.”
I did not know if it was a question or a statement, but I did not want to address either, so I said nothing.
He drove through more traffic, and I thought I had escaped giving him an answer, but then he demanded one. “Why?”
I glanced out the window and did what I did not want to do. I thought about my entire life and one of the inescapable, crushing realities of it.
Loneliness.
“I am not used to being touched.” I did not know any other way to say it than to confess that I could not remember ever being hugged. That his arm, his strength, they had felt too much like an affectionate embrace. That my body had reacted, and for one brief, shocking moment, it did not feel as if I had been starved my entire existence of something so essentially necessary, like the very air I needed to breathe.
Except his hold, his body at my back, the heat of him—he was more than just air.
Not even a strong gale could describe the man next to me.
Erico Mantovani was a hurricane.
A silent one.
Hurdling us through Manhattan traffic, keeping his thoughts to himself, his jaw clenched and his hand fisted on the steering wheel.
Staring at him, I stepped into the past and remembered how I had wondered what it would be like to be in a car with him. Seeing him drive now, it was everything I had imagined and more, but I had been wrong about one crucial detail.
“I used to think the important men rode in the back of cars, not drove them.” Papà, Ademaro, they had never driven themselves. Now they were dead, and Erico was here, driving me away from fate once again.
“Don’t fool yourself.” He took another turn and merged onto an expressway. “I’m not important.”
“Aren’t you?” I did not know anyone else more important to me, but that was not what I meant. He had been an Enforcer, then he had joined the military. I had heard what Mr. Trefor had called him, what he had called himself.
“I’m not playing this game with you.” He scanned the traffic around us.
Trying not to be hurt by his sharp tone, I looked out the window and suddenly, I wondered if he lived in this city full of chaos. “There is no game here.” Now I felt guilty for being in the estate he had grown up in for the last nine years. “Do you live here?”
“No, and you know exactly what I mean.”
I did not. “I do not.” I was not playing any game with him. “Where do you live?”
He shook his head as if disgusted with me and this conversation before he glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m not playing twenty questions just to extract intel.” Looking over his shoulder, he changed lanes.
Intel. It was a new word choice for him, and I realized this was the new Erico. “You were in the military.” It had changed him. I had only known the old Erico, or a very small piece of him. This new version of him—yes, it was still him, but it was just… more. So much more, that I did not know how to reconcile the fact that he had gone from what he had been to what he was now, and yet, I could not imagine him being any different.
“Christ,” he muttered, shaking his head again. “I was on the Teams.”
“Scusassi?”
“Navy SEALs,” he amended before adding an explanation. “It’s referred to as being on the Teams.”
“Thank you for explaining.” I knew next to nothing about the military, American or Italian, but I did know the reputation of the SEALs. “That is very impressive.”
His half grunt was his only response as he exited the expressway.
I still did not understand how he had gotten there. “They let Sicilians join the American military?”
“They let Erik Markos join.”
“Who is that?”
Pulling into a noncommercial airport and parking next to a large private jet, he turned off the vehicle and looked at me.
But he was not merely giving me his attention as he had all those years ago. His impenetrable expression was one of warning. “I played your game. I answered your questions. Now answer mine.” His jaw clenched, but his voice came out quieter. “I put my hand on you in the office. I grasped your neck. I touched your mouth. You didn’t flinch.” His nostrils flaring, his chest rising with a sharp inhale, every word was an accusation. “So tell me, Sancia. Why did you recoil when I put my arm around you?”
A single heartbeat sounded in my ears in the sudden, piercing silence of the vehicle.
Then, all at once, the weight of the last twenty-four hours landed on me. Forced to leave the estate, forced on a plane, forced to walk into that hotel, forced to listen to angry soldiers arguing, forced to stand there, then shattering glass and yelling and death and blood—so much blood—in the room, on my hands, on my conscience. Erico, tattoos, guns, cold computer rooms, stolen cars…. I had so much blood on my hands.
If panic had a flavor, this was it.
Metallic, guilt, despair.
This was my life.
This was what I had caused.
I could not do this.
I could not breathe.
I could not—
“Sancia.” A huge inked hand reached for me.
I reared back.
“Motherfucker.”
The hand wrapped around my throat, my seat belt released, and I closed my eyes.
Thick fingers gripped the side of my face. “Look at me, damn it.”
I shook.
“Open your eyes, Sancia. Right fucking now.”
The pressure on my throat moved to the side of my face, and I was trapped.
Trapped between two hands that killed.
The dark voice in the dark car got darker. “I said look at me.”
My eyes opened.
His face close to mine, his full lips parted and Sicilian came out. Fluid and low and dominant, he spoke in a language I understood. “Look at me, watch me breathe. Follow my command.” He inhaled. “Take a breath.”
I inhaled.
“Let it out.”
I exhaled.
“Again.”
His chest rose, my chest rose.
He exhaled, I exhaled.
“Another.”
He led, I followed.
Thumbs swept across my wet cheeks.
His voice dipped to midnight. “Why did you flinch when I put my arm around you?”
The dangerous truth slid out like oily tar. “Because it felt intimate.”
For one moment, time suspended.
Then his muscles flexed, his veins bulged, his hands dropped and English came out of his mouth. “Time to move.”
Reaching for him with barely a whisper, the one constant that had kept me going for nine years fell past my lips in a desperate plea. “Erico.”
“Erik.” His voice as hard as steel cut through my soul as his gaze cut across the concrete landscape in front of us. “Erik Markos is my name now. You tell anyone otherwise, I’ll kill you.”
Grabbing his guns, he got out of the vehicle.
Echo
“Erik Markos is my name now. You tell anyone otherwise, I’ll kill you.” I fucking lied, and I hated myself for it. But just because I wasn’t going to kill her didn’t mean I wasn’t livid.
The fact that I didn’t pull the trigger back in Alpha’s office wasn’t the kind of shit I wanted to analyze about myself any more than I wanted to acknowledge that I’d end my life before I took hers.
Shouldering the M4 but hanging on to my Glock, I grabbed my go bag and got out of the Hummer. Scanning the apron and the Gulfstream that already had the lights on in the cabin and the cockpit, I took in the one AES Range Rover that was parked next to the jet and thought about the fucked-up shit I’d just witnessed. I could grab this woman around the throat, and she’d lean into that, but putting my arm around her was intimate?
I didn’t have a barometer for this shit. I’d always fucked nameless women and moved on, but I knew one goddamn thing without question. Normal women didn’t recoil when you touched them.
Women who were abused did.
The only other explanation was that I was the problem. And that had me this fucking close to being angrier about that than whatever the hell Ademaro had done to her, which was fucked in and of itself because I’d watched that shit happen to my mother. I saw her flinch every time Enzo lifted a hand. Then I witnessed Giancarlo become a repeat of our piece-of-shit father. Now I was on the receiving end of the same damn behavior from a woman. It didn’t matter that she’d been under Ademaro’s control for nine years. Any way you spun it, I only saw one commonality.
Mantovani men.
Scanning the airport entrance and the apron, I stood in front of her door and gave her the hand signal to wait before pulling out one of the burners and dialing.
Roark “Romeo” MacElheran answered, but he didn’t say shit.
“It’s Echo. I need a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“One with wings that can land on water.” He was the only person I knew with a seaplane, and it was the fastest way to get her to where I needed her to be.
“The Cessna’s due for scheduled maintenance, and I’m flying out in the morning for Alpha.”
“I don’t need you, just your seaplane, and I’m only going about two thousand miles.”
Silence.
“MacElheran?”
“No.” Roark hung up.
Motherfucker. I dialed November.
The hacker answered immediately. “I see you on the apron. Vincenzo’s already on the move. You need to get in the air.”
“Copy. How much is MacElheran’s Cessna worth?”
November paused. “Two point five million. Why?”
“Does he have an AES account?” Alpha usually set everyone up with a bank account to both pay us and give us operating expenses for when we were in the field. The only exceptions I knew of were November and Conlon, who had crypto accounts, but MacElheran was newly on the payroll, so who the fuck knew what he had.
“Yes,” November answered.
“Hang on.” Holstering my Glock, I grabbed my cell and pulled up one of my offshore accounts. “Give me an account number to transfer to for MacElheran.”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”
Christ. “Then give me an AES account number. You can transfer the funds to him from there.”
November gave me one.
I sent the money and checked to make sure the transfer went through. “There. Three million. Put that in MacElheran’s account.”
“You’re buying his Cessna?”
“Just make the damn transfer.”
“Already done.”
Fucking great. “Good.” I hung up and called MacElheran back.
Four rings and he finally answered.
“November just transferred three million into your account from me. If I fuck the seaplane up, buy a new one. Good?”
Pause.
“Jesus Christ, Mac—”
“You hate flying.”
No fucking shit. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know how.”
“You ever flown a turbo prop?”
“Yes.” Against protest, and only because Alpha had made me.
“How many hours behind the controls?”
Enough to know that I fucking hated piloting them as much as I hated flying.
I lied. “Hundred and fifty hours.”
“With who?”
“Alpha.”
MacElheran hung up again.
“Goddamn it.” I dialed Alpha as Conlon pulled up next to me.
Getting out of an AES Range Rover with a grin as he shouldered his go bag, Conlon glanced at the front passenger seat of the Hummer. “This is going to be fun.”
“Fuck off.”
Alpha answered. “Vincenzo’s Oscar Tango Mike, and he’s pissed. Negative on seventy-two hours. We’ve got twenty-four to thirty-six hours max to execute whatever plan we’re going with. Then Vincenzo said he’s moving in with a show of force. But I did get intel on what he’s after.”
“Money.” It was always about fucking money.
“Yes,” Alpha confirmed. “He says the wife is in possession of the money her father embezzled, and Ademaro appropriated Vincenzo funds when his wife’s father died. He wants restitution.”
“She doesn’t have shit.” Santoro had been too fucking old-fashioned for his own good. He could’ve handed his entire operation over to her instead of marrying her off. If she’d been his son, Santoro would’ve been grooming him to take over since the kid was old enough to add and subtract. “How much is Vincenzo after?”
“Five hundred million.”
Fucking seriously? “That’s chump change to Vincenzo. He’s going to start a war over that when he has billions?”
It was a rhetorical question—I knew how the damn famiglias worked, but Alpha answered anyway. “I’m assuming it’s a matter of principal over economics.”
Shocker. “Anything else?”
“I’m working something behind the scenes, but it’s a long shot. Odds of it panning out are slim, and frankly, I need more time than we have.”
“What angle?”
“Better if you don’t know, but if it looks promising, I’ll loop you in. Otherwise, the only options I see for her are handing her over to Vincenzo with parameters in place, WITSEC, or we make her disappear.”
“Over my dead body to the first.” Vincenzo wouldn’t honor any damn parameters. “Fuck no to the second, and the latter I’m already working on.” Along with a fourth option that Alpha wasn’t in a position to handle. Negotiation. Which I’d only be able to accomplish if I got moving and put my plan into action.
“Copy. I’m assuming you got a location in mind because Roark texted, asking if you know how to fly a turboprop, specifically an amphibian Cessna Grand Caravan.”
“Yeah, I got a place, and before you ask, it’s need to know.” So far, no one needed to know. “Get November working on a new ID for her, full setup, and tell MacElheran I know how to fly his fucking plane.” Christ, this timeline was going to be tight.
“Do you?” Alpha asked. “We didn’t spend many hours in a turboprop.”
Smiling, Conlon goddamn winked at Sancia.
Glaring at the fucker, I answered Alpha. “I’ll figure it out. Text MacElheran.” I hung up and leveled Conlon with a look. “You do that again, or say one inappropriate word to her, and you’re answering to me.”
Chuckling, he held his hands up. “Right. Copy that, Casanova.”
Still glaring at him, I called MacElheran back and started in as soon as he answered. “You good now? You get what you need from Alpha? Can I borrow the damn plane?”
“I’ll fly you,” MacElheran stated.
“No deal. I just gave you three million. One trip. Then you can keep the plane and the money.” I didn’t fucking care about the money. I had a shit ton more I’d siphoned off over the years.
“Assuming you come back.”
What did he care? “You win either way.”
“You need backup.”
Goddamn it. “Says who?”
“Alpha.”
Tipping my chin at Conlon to tell him to keep an eye on Sancia, I stepped away from the Hummer. When I was out of earshot, I played the only move I had. “Getting involved will put you in a position you don’t want to be in.”
MacElheran didn’t comment.
I went there. “This is personal.”
“I figured.”
I waited, but MacElheran didn’t say shit else or mention the solid I’d done for him with Vincenzo, and neither did I because I wasn’t a damn pussy. “Yes or no?”
Pause.
Then, “Destination?”
“North.” It was all I was willing to give him.
“How far north?”
“Not Canada.” But close.
“You need gear?”
Shit. “Yeah, hang on.” I brought up the weather report for the area. Of course it was currently dumping snow. “Deicer and any winter gear you have on hand for a female, boots and a jacket preferable. Food supplies if you’ve got them.”
“Copy. The Cessna’s originally from Alaska. It’s equipped with a TKS system for deicing. I’ll make sure the reservoirs are full. Water and rations are in the cargo hold, enough for two people for seven days. After I fuel up, I’ll coordinate with Zulu to meet somewhere between Miami and Teterboro to save you time.”
I fucking exhaled. “Thanks.”
“Don’t crash my plane.” Roark hung up.
Sending Zulu a quick text to let him know to unlock the main cabin door of the Gulfstream, I palmed my Glock and turned back toward the Hummer.
