Over the Line (4 page)

I break into the box of protein bars I brought along to avoid starvation. I’m a regimented eater—high protein, no trans fats or simple carbs. I adhere to a tight workout schedule—an hour every morning on the free weights followed by an hour of kickboxing for cardio. I’m meticulous with my sleep—two to ten AM. I drink socially, but never to excess. Caffeine and nicotine are my only vices and I’m seriously overdoing them at the moment.

This stakeout is totally fucking with my health.

It’s nearly nine hours later, three in the morning, when the limo rolls back into the lot. The steel warehouse door rolls up and it disappears inside.

All the waiting pays off when a round guy with a handlebar mustache emerges from the building a few minutes later, followed by Delgado. I know it’s him because the motion-sensitive floodlight above the door triggers as they spill into the parking lot under it. He gives the old guy a clap on the shoulder and disappears into the blue Chevy.

Adrenaline surges my bloodstream as I start the car. This isn’t ideal. Trailing someone at night and staying incognito is a challenge. If they see your lights constantly behind them, no matter the distance, that’s going to ring some alarm bells. Especially for someone like Delgado who’s spent his entire life looking over his shoulder. I let him get fully out of the lot before I follow. There’s a moment of relief when he slows to turn onto the road and I notice that his left brake light is out. That will make it easier to spot him again when I have to let him out of my direct line of sight.

He heads over the surface roads toward the highway at speeds well exceeding the posted limit. Unlike me, Delgado’s known for living on the edge, so his driving habits shouldn’t surprise me. I try to stay one bend of the road behind him, only catching glimpses of his taillights on the short straightaways. When we reach highway 75, he heads south, finally exiting twenty minutes later at Loveland. He weaves through the abandoned city streets and I have to be extra careful to stay well behind him. He rolls through a red light and takes a right at a corner just past a hardware store. When I turn the corner a minute later, he’s nowhere in sight.

My heart hammers as I speed up, craning my neck down every side street.

“Fuck!” I yell, slamming my hand into the steering wheel as I screech to a halt at the next Stop sign.

I drop my head against the headrest and haul a deep breath.
Stay calm
. Just as I crank the wheel to U-turn, thinking I must have missed him in a side street, I spot taillights halfway over a bridge off to my right.

I hit the gas and the sign that flashes by as I reach the bridge says I’m heading to the island of Port St. Mary.

Delgado navigates dark, deserted roads, surrounded by scrub trees and overgrown ground brush. Here, though I’m tempted after the close call in Loveland, I don’t have to follow too close. There aren’t many turns, and in the pitch dark, his taillights glow through the trees. We pass through the center of some backwater town, with a streetlight on the corner—the only one I’ve seen since we crossed the bridge. On one side, there’s a diner sandwiched between a random white church on the corner and a decrepit auto shop with a rusty sign that says MURDOCK & SON. Across the street is the police station and a grocery store. The town passes in a blink, then we’re plunged into darkness again. Not long later, Delgado takes a right and heads up a narrow dirt road. I wait until I can hardly see the glow of his taillights to follow. But just as I turn in, they fade out altogether. I stop in my tracks and cut my engine, killing my headlights. I roll down the window and listen for several beats of my hammering heart.

Nothing but the distant roll of waves.

At this time of night, there’s nowhere he’d be going except to wherever he intends to sleep. That might not be his house, but wherever it is, it can’t be too far up this road. I climb out of the car and proceed on foot.

It turns out to be maybe three hundred yards to where the sandy street dead-ends. There are only two driveways, both on the left, and I’m sure I tracked his taillights past the first. The second winds up a gradual slope toward a house that stands silhouetted against the moonlight.

I start up the hill, staying to any shadows I can find, which aren’t many. The drive curves around the weathered shingled house toward the front, which faces away from the road, toward a bluff that looks out over the dark ocean. Up top, the blue Chevy is parked between a green VW Beetle and a Harley Davidson Low Rider near a covered front porch that runs the length of the house.

The house is dark except for a faint glow in a second-story window that overlooks the driveway. As I stand watch in the shadow of a scrub oak, a bare-chested Robert Delgado fills the window. He gives the window a tug, opening it, then braces his hands on the frame and stares out toward where I can distinctly hear the roll of waves beyond a bluff thirty feet or so past where I am. He steps away, and a moment later the window goes dark.

I head down the driveway and jog up the road to my car. I spend the next hour as the sun rises driving the island of Port St. Mary to get the lay of the land. I’m going to get one crack at this. I can’t blow it. The more I know, the better my chances.

A quarter mile from the center of the sorry excuse for a town I passed on the way in, there’s what looks like an elementary school, and closer to the bridge I crossed to get here is a fire department and post office. Other than that, it’s homes and marshland. The houses on the north end of the island, closer to town and Delgado’s house, are older and more weather-beaten, but the south side of the island is where the money is. There are what look like vacation homes, many of which have security gates and stretches of private beach.

When the adrenaline spike finally starts to ebb, I head toward the mainland and find a fleabag hotel in Loveland. I check the room over and, though the walls are thin enough I can hear my neighbor’s TV, the headboard is bolted to the wall and seems sturdy enough. That might come in handy if Lee decides to make this difficult. As I drift into sleep for the first time in days, I formulate my plan.

***

The next morning, as I’m waiting at the end of a driveway on the main street near the turnoff to Delgado’s road, I hit pay dirt. The green Beetle that was parked in the driveway next to Delgado’s Chevy sputters past. In the light of day, there’s no mistaking the driver.

Lee.

I’m totally unprepared for my body’s reaction. My heart pounds against my ribs, my palms slick, and spots flash in my eyes.

When I finally remember to breathe, I crank the engine and follow her, much less concerned about being spotted this morning. She drives to the center of town and pulls into the lot in front of the diner I noticed last night.

I need her alone for this to work. The plan is to grab her, get her back to the hotel, and take whatever steps necessary to force the new pass code out of her so I can access the program she fucked with and fix it. So I wait outside, polluting my lungs with two more smokes and drawing on whatever reserves of self-control I have left. When she’s in there longer than I figure it should take for a cup of coffee and some breakfast, I start to panic that she made me and slipped out the back. I keep my head down as I pass the windows and press open the door.

Bells clang above my head. I hate when people put fucking bells on their doors. It makes stealth damn near impossible.

A couple seated near the front looks up, and so does an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a bun, who’s sitting at the table near the door to the kitchen in back.

“Just seat yourself, honey,” she says to me. “I’ll be right with you.”

I keep my face turned away as I find a table in the opposite corner of the restaurant, because seated at the table with the woman is Lee. Her back is to me and there’s an open file box on the table between them. She’s hunched over some papers in front of her, and I breathe a sigh of relief when she doesn’t lift her head.

The woman says something to her then stands and pulls a menu from a wooden rack near the door to the kitchen on her way over. “Coffee?” she asks, handing it to me.

I take the menu from her and keep my voice as low as possible as I answer. I’m about twenty feet away, and there’s background music, but I’d like to think, as much as she heard it, Lee would recognize my voice. “Thanks.”

“Cream or sugar?”

I give her a shake of my head. “Black.”

As I watch Lee over the top of the menu, her fingers thread into her waves and she twists her finger into a strand as she thinks. She’s always done that. We’d be working on some project, or studying for an exam, and I’d just sit and watch her.

That’s the trigger—her hold over me.

Men are like that: hardwired to certain subtle stimuli that make us take notice. Every guy has a trigger—some maneuver that makes a member of the opposite sex stand out and seem irresistible. Who knows where it starts? Some woman at some point does that
thing
that flips an irreversible switch in his head. He spends the rest of his days searching for another woman who can replicate the subtle movement that left the indelible imprint in his mind.

The first time I saw Lee do that, that first day in business law, I hadn’t developed the trigger theory yet. I didn’t understand the primal drive. All I knew was that I had to have her. What I didn’t yet understand is that there’s no turning off the trigger, even after you’ve had the woman in question. What I’ve realized since is that no other woman seems to trigger me the way Lee does.

As she twirls that strand of hair, my dick predictably shifts in my pants as it starts to thicken. Like everything else in my life, I have full control over my libido . . . except when it comes to Lee Delgado. She’s trained my cock to sit up on command.

The waitress is back with my coffee before I’ve even looked at the menu. “Any decisions?” she asks.

I scan it quickly. “The vegetarian scramble. And keep the coffee coming.”

She nods as she turns for the kitchen with my order. She’s back a moment later with the pot, which is perfect timing because I’m just draining the bottom of my mug. This is the first passable coffee I’ve had since I landed in Florida. “Your order should be up in just a few minutes.”

She checks on the other two tables and has a short conversation with a man at the one closest to the door before heading back to Lee. Lee’s already talking as the woman slides into the seat next to her. I can’t hear what she’s saying, but the smoky timbre of her voice is another thing that has always made my dick stand up and take notice. I can’t be within eye or earshot of this woman and stand a chance. Lee shuffles through the stack of papers in front of her and does that thing with her hair again as she points to something with her mechanical pencil.

I have to adjust my slacks. So it isn’t obvious what I was actually doing under the table, I come out with my phone and check texts. I blow out a weary sigh when I read the one from our book manager with the list of the marks who couldn’t cover their bets this week. It’s too short. It’s been that way for the six months since Lee fucked with my program. I forward the text to Al and tell him to handle it. He’ll be happy for something to do while I’m gone.

“Order’s up!” a guy yells through a long window above a counter along the back wall.

The waitress gets up and grabs my plate. She brings it over with the pot of coffee, dropping the plate onto the paper placemat in front of me and refilling my mug.

“Anything else you need, honey? Catsup or Tabasco?”

“No. Thank you.”

She gives me a smile. “I’m Polly. Just holler if you think of anything.”

I watch as she tucks into the seat next to Lee and fills her mug. Lee smiles at her and takes a long swallow.

Ten minutes later, I’ve devoured my eggs and know I’ve pushed my luck. When Polly comes back to clear my plate, I ask for the check.

She tears it off the pad in her short black apron and sets it face down on the table. “Take your time, sweetie.”

I throw a twenty on top of it and stand. “Thanks. Got somewhere to be.”

I go outside, but I don’t leave. I move my car to the grocery store parking lot across the street because it seems a better option than the empty church lot next door or the police station. I’m leaning against the fender an hour later, lighting my second smoke, when Polly opens the diner door and Lee steps through with the file box. I watch from fifty feet away as she loads it into her trunk and Polly pulls her into an embrace. They exchange a few more words, then Lee climbs into her car. She sends a wave out the window in Polly’s direction as the waitress disappears back into the dim restaurant, then pulls onto the street.

I only realize I’m standing here staring when her eyes gloss over me as she drives past. I slip into my car and close the door, but not before her gaze snaps back to me in a double take. I turn my head and a second later, hear tires squeal on pavement as she peels out.

Lee

I sit on my bed and pull open Polly’s file box. But my thoughts keep drifting to what I thought I saw in the parking lot of Len’s Market. I’m losing my mind. What other explanation could there possibly be? No one from the mafia or our old life in Chicago knows where we are.

It couldn’t have been him.

But there’s no mistaking that face: sharp green eyes that don’t miss a thing set between high angled cheekbones; the long, straight nose and wide jaw tapering to a narrow cleft chin; tousled dark hair sweeping up from a high forehead, and neatly trimmed dark shadow of a beard surrounding strong, full lips, all in flawless olive skin.

The first time I came face to face with Oliver Savoca, I thought I was prepared. He was the son of the man who killed my mother. He was the target of endless evenings of scorn at the Delgado dinner table.

There had been blood spilled on both sides after Mama was run down in the street outside the Bienville on her birthday. Over the years that followed, Papa lost himself in his vendetta. It consumed him until he became more animal than man.

I’d hardened myself to men in general, and especially the sons of Papa’s business associates who were only interested in a shot at a slice of the Delgado empire. I expected Oliver would be a carbon copy of Papa—ruthless—or Rob—brooding. He was none of those things.

Two days into my first semester at Kellogg, he’d walked right up to me after class and propped his shoulder against the wall next to my desk, as if he had no clue I’d just as soon cut out his heart as look at him. “Partner with me.”

He was in a tailored white button-down that hugged the V of his back and charcoal slacks, all casual self-assuredness.

“Angela already asked me,” I said, keeping my focus on packing my things away so I didn’t stab him in the eye with my mechanical pencil. “Keith and Donovan are working with us.”

He shrugged off the wall and lowered himself smoothly into the empty seat next to me. “The intelligence of a group is inversely proportionate to the number of people in it. Especially when Keith is involved.”

Against my will, I felt my eyes widen and snap to his. “Excuse me?”

“He’s a second-year with me. The only reason he’s made it this far is because he latches onto the brains in the class for every group assignment.” The hint of a smile ticked one corner of his mouth as he draped himself across the back of his chair. “That would be you, in case you thought I might be referring to Angela or Donovan.”

“And you’re different?”

I didn’t need him to answer that. I already knew he was.

Unlike my father, who made a big show of raining terror down on his minions to keep them in line, Oliver’s composure was his secret weapon. He always seemed to exude effortless authority. Just being in his presence felt empowering. When Oliver Savoca took you down, you never saw it coming.

That moment, as Oliver regarded me with those keen green eyes, I discovered, to my horror, that my greatest turn-on is a man in quiet control.

He tapped his index finger on his temple. “I’m the only one in here who can give you a run for your money.”

“Modest too,” I muttered with a roll of my eyes, closing my bag and standing.

He stood with me and followed me toward the door. “Modesty is the enemy of success.”

There was no apology in his tone, just the vein of cool confidence that ran through everything he said. Everything he did.

“Maybe you’re forgetting that your father killed my mother while I watched,” I sneered. “Why would I want to partner with you for
anything
?”

He was suddenly ahead of me, his arm on the doorframe, blocking my path. He leaned closer and the scent of spice and musk and man crept through my senses and mangled my thoughts. “Because it would be the best thing that ever happened to you. You know what they say about forgiveness.”

Looking back, I know it wasn’t purely fury that prickled my skin into goose bumps. The insinuation in his words was thinly veiled. And Oliver was beyond beautiful.

“I will
never
forgive you.”

“It wasn’t
me
, Lee.” His voice was soft and his gaze pinned me in place. “This could be good for us . . . for our families.”

After years of obsessing over ways to kill him, I knew all about Oliver Savoca. He’d never had a lasting relationship. Instead, he’d left a string of hookups in his wake that, on the surface, seemed meaningless and random. But with a little digging, it wasn’t hard to find his pattern: the assistant to the chairman of Chicago Commerce Bank, the bank that holds most of the Delgado fortune; the twin nieces of the head of another of Chicago’s marquis crime families; the forty-year-old VP of the securities company his family acquired shortly afterward to bolster their legal business ventures. Age, marital status, attraction; none of it seemed to be an issue. It was clear that to him, sex was a business strategy, nothing more.

I was a Delgado. He wanted information on my family. Thought he could charm me into bed and screw it out of me.

But this was my opportunity too. I wanted revenge for my mother. Where better to get it than from up close and personal?

“Prove it,” I said, shoving past and slamming out the door.

I promised myself he wasn’t getting anything more from me than a research partner. Even after I broke that promise, I never deluded myself into believing he ever thought of me as anything but a business venture. What we had was incredible and intense, but it wasn’t love.

Since we’ve been in Florida, Rob’s caught me with Oliver’s picture on my browser more than once. He knows I’m obsessing. He’s right. I’ve been searching obsessively for any mention of what I did to the Savocas, even though I know they can’t go public with it. Chicago might be one of the most corrupt cities in America, but gambling is still illegal. But the thing I know for sure—the thing I was absolutely counting on when I sabotaged the program that logged all the Savoca’s gambling transactions—was that Oliver doesn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. He’s cold and calculating when he’s been wronged, and he’s no different than either of our fathers when it comes to wanting revenge. There’s no way he’s not looking for me.

But there’s also no way he’s actually
found
me.

I’m wound so tight that Ulie’s voice through my door makes me jump. “Lee?”

I unclench my fists from my quilt. “Yeah?”

The door cracks open and Ulie sticks her head through. “Can I borrow the Beetle? I ordered some things I need for dinner at the Loveland fish market and Rob and Adri have the Chevy.”

“Can’t they just pick your stuff up while they’re out?”

She shakes her head. “They took Sherm to Disney. They won’t be back till late.”

“And Grant’s out?”

“As usual,” she says with a flip of her hand.

“If it’s just us, you shouldn’t bother cooking. I’m sure there are leftovers. Take the night off.”

She grins. “I’m taking the opportunity to make something I’ve been wanting to try but I know the boys will hate: charred baby octopus salad with cumin-lime vinaigrette.”

My stomach rumbles. “That actually sounds really good.” I grab my bag off the dresser and dig inside for the key. “Pick up some milk for Sherm while you’re out.”

“Anything else?” she asks, taking it from my hand.

I follow her down the stairs and find both dogs at the front door. Burn is whining for Sherm, just like he always does when Sherm is away. Crash is doing his potty dance, pacing the door and wagging his tail incessantly.

I peer inside the refrigerator. “A twelve-pack of Corona, a dozen eggs, and a loaf of bread.”

“Got it.”

She pushes open the door and Crash and Burn follow her out. I grab the leashes on the hook next to the door and clip them on their collars.

“If you think of it, stop for gas,” I tell her as she cranks the engine. “I forgot when I was out.”

More like I got totally distracted by a ghost from my past.

She nods and bumps down the dirt drive, kicking up a thin plume of dust in her wake.

I watch after her, then scan the driveway and the road beyond. There was no way that could have been Oliver in the Len’s Market parking lot, but that doesn’t stop my heart from racing at the thought.

I turn for the bluff and weave the path down to the beach, where I walk the dogs and try to lose myself in the sounds and smells of the ocean—my new life—and forget about my old one.