Romancing Sal Gabrini 2: A Woman's Touch (23 page)

“Not
good enough, Reno,” Sal said, shaking his head.
 
“This is Gem’s parents we’re talking about.
 
I say put the men on those corners now.”

“Now?”
Reno asked.

“Yes,
now!”
 
Sal declared.
 
“Just in case.
 
And I want men in the four corners of this
town too, men who can see where the car that picked me up is tracking and get
to the scene before I get there.
 
We’ve
got to cover this thing as if you were the Secret Service and I was the
got
damn president.
 
Nothing, and I mean nothing, can happen to
Gemma’s parents.”

Tommy
nodded.
 
“I agree with him, Reno.”

“Okay,”
Reno said.
 
“This is your dance.
 
You want more, I can put more out there.”

And
Reno immediately got on the phone.

Tommy
looked at his brother.
 
The stress in
Sal’s eyes were devastating.
 
“Fab Menza
isn’t going to take a shot right away, so don’t you start firing either,” he
told Sal.
 
“You’re ramped up, but you’ve
got to play it cool.
 
He’s the kind of
prick that will want you to know exactly why he’s killing you.
 
So don’t jump the gun.
 
You’re going to need backup no matter what.”

Sal’s
cell phone vibrated in his hand.
 
That
was now the plan, so that they wouldn’t wake up Gemma.
 
All cell phones were on vibration.
 

“Hello?”
Sal said into his.
 
It was Patty.
 

“Go
now,” Patty said on the phone.
 
“The car
is in front of the Wingate.
 
Get in it
now.”

Sal
was astounded.
 
Patty had said the car
would arrive at eight tomorrow morning. He knew it would come sooner, but this
soon?
 
“Now?” he asked, looking at Tommy
and Reno.
 
“The car’s out front right now?”

Tommy
and Reno immediately took off, running down the hall to the back elevator.
 
They had an escape route, one that would get
them in a non-descript car so that they could track Sal should all of their
tracking devices fail.

“Go
now asshole!” Patty yelled into the phone.
 
“Go now!
 
If you aren’t downstairs
and in that car in five minutes, I’ll kill Pappy Jones, and I’ll torture your
girl’s mammy.
 
Now get, Sal!
 
Like the good little dog you are: get!”

Patty
hung up.

Sal
already had guards all over the Wingate, and a select group of his men and
Tommy’s men guarding the penthouse itself.
 
Sal insisted on the mix of men, so that they could police each other and
thereby ensure that no double-cross would occur and jeopardize Gemma.
 

Sal
went to the bedroom again and looked at Gemma.
 
It was going to take a miracle to get out of this alive, he wasn’t going
to pretend otherwise.
 
But as he looked
at Gemma, he prayed.
 
He believed in
miracles.
 
He believed.

He
left.
 
He took the elevator, hurrying
downstairs, and walked out of his apartment building.
 
When he got into the waiting Van, he was
placed in the middle seat.
 
Beside him
was a muscle man and there were two additional men seated behind him.
 
The driver and a passenger rounded out the
package of tight security that Sal had already expected.

What
he didn’t expect was when the muscle man seated next to him ordered him to
strip.

“Strip?”
Sal asked.
 
“What for?”

But
they weren’t there to answer Sal’s questions.
 
While the muscle man seated next to Sal grabbed the briefcase, the two
men in the back of the Van began removing Sal’s suit coat, shirt, pants, and
underwear in a violent takeover of his person.
 
Sal struggled against it, but not so effectively that he would incur a
gun-butt to the head before he even saw the Joneses.
  
The briefcase was emptied, with the money
tossed into a burlap bag.
 
Then Sal’s
clothing and the briefcase were tossed out of the Van’s window.
 
Sal was thrown a pair of jeans and an
oversized shirt to put on.
 
But it was a
fact.
 
All of the tracking devices were
gone.
 
And Sal knew then that the only
reason he was still alive was because of Fabio’s revenge.
 
Fab Menza wasn’t about to let Sal off that
easily.

Tommy
and Reno were able to follow the Van at a safe but reasonable distance.
 
The tracking was working, even though they
didn’t have time to put all of their men in place.
 
But then suddenly, Reno squinted his eyes.

“They
just tossed something,” he said.

“Briefcase?”

“I
think so, and clothes,” Reno said.
 

Tommy
looked.
 
And sure enough, the GPS was
showing stationary movement.
 

Tommy
angrily hit the steering wheel, but kept his wits about him.
 
He knew he had to get closer, he had to keep
that tail on that Van.

“The
tracking is down,” Reno said.
 
He was
already on his cell phone teleconference notifying the men they were able to
scramble and put in place.
 
“If you see
the Van, follow it now.
 
No matter
what.
 
Follow it now!”

Tommy’s
car flew past the tossed empty briefcase and Sal’s clothing, as he kept his
eyes on that Van, moving in and out of traffic, trying to get even closer.

But
once he turned a corner, following that Van, and ended up on a little-traveled,
back road, his closeness took a hit.
 
In
the form of an SUV coming out of no-where and slamming the side of the car
Tommy was driving.
 
The car swerved
around and swerved around as Tommy fought to maintain control of the wheel, and
Reno held on for dear life.
 
The car
ultimately didn’t flip, and they were both okay, but they knew Fab Menza wasn’t
going to stop there.
 
If he was
sophisticated enough to strip Sal, he wasn’t about to let a simple sideswipe be
his only stopgap.

Two
SUVs showed up, men jumped out with guns, and the ambush was on.

Tommy
backed up the car fast and furiously, swerving wildly as he darted backwards
down the narrow, dark street, and Reno began shooting back.
 
Reno had two guns in his hands, as he fired
without mercy at the men, but there were so many guns firing back that he was
badly outmatched.
 
Yet Reno’s expert
marksmanship, and Tommy’s expert backward driving, proved enough.
 
They were able to get away.
 

Then
Tommy made it back onto the main road, drove down further, cut across other
side streets in an attempt to pick back up the fleeing Van, but it was no
use.
 
The Van carrying Sal, carrying
Tommy’s heart, had already fled.

Tommy
slammed his hand onto the steering wheel, tears in his eyes.
 
Reno leaned his head back, pain on his
face.
 
Fab Menza, he now knew if he
didn’t know it before, meant business.

Fabio
Menza Gabrini slapped Sal so hard across his face that his hair bounced
straight on top of his head.
 
They were
in a deserted, five-story building behind an old skating rink that closed for
business nearly a decade ago, and Sal knew nobody was going to hear his screams
in a place like this.
 
It was the perfect
place for a revenge kill.
 
It was the
perfect place to hide victims and bodies alike.
 
Patty was here in Seattle.
 
Fab
was here in Seattle.
 
Which undoubtedly
meant the Joneses were here too.
 
Probably in this very building.

Sal
was seated in a chair in the middle of the room.
 
Fabio was standing in front of Sal’s chair
and Patty was standing behind Fab.
 
The
burlap bag, containing the money, was seated on the desk.
 
But as Sal had suspected, the money was
beside the point for Fab Menza.

Sal
was still hopeful that Tommy and Reno were able to follow without the tracking
devices, but he also knew he couldn’t rely on that.
 
During Fabio’s entire tirade, with Patty’s
cheering him on, Sal’s complete and utter focus was on figuring a way out.

“Random
shooting,” Fab was saying.
 
“That’s what
the cops claimed.
 
My brother was the
victim of a random shooting.
  
But I knew
that was a lie.
 
Because that’s how we
Gabrinis do it.
 
We do our dirt, and then
put it out there as a random act of violence.
 
Lies.
 
All lies.
 
I knew it from the moment I heard it.
 
It was you or Tommy, I knew it.
 
But Tommy loved him.
 
It wasn’t Tommy.
 
So it had to be you.”

Patty
was the weak link, Sal decided.
 
There
were five of Fab’s men outside of the room, the five that had accompanied Sal
in the Van, but Patty was the only gun inside.
 
He was Fab’s personal bodyguard.
 
But he was also all into Fab’s fables.
 
Which, for Sal, was good.
 
Patty
was all into Fab going on and on about what a great man Benny Gabrini was and
how beloved he truly was.
 
Bullshit all
of it, as far as Sal was concerned, but he listened, and listened, and waited
for his moment.

It
came after a full hour of ranting by Crazy Fab.
 
“He was my brother!” Fab said with great emotion and raised his hand to
strike Sal, once again, across the face.
 
What Sal had noticed previously was that every time Fab slapped him, and
he’d slapped him several times already, he lunged into him and then just stood
there.
 
So this time, when he slapped
Sal, Sal jumped from his chair and, with every ounce of strength he had, rammed
Fabio so hard and fast that Fab rammed into Patty.
 
Patty’s gun flew from his hand, Sal dived
across the room and grabbed it, and before Patty could pull out another pistol,
Sal shot him five times.
 
Sal had
extracted his own revenge.

By
now Fab had already dived beneath a desk and his men outside were already
coming in. And a gun fight ensued.
 
Sal
was able to dive again, behind a coat rack, and return shot for shot.
 
Only his shots were hitting, as he picked off
man after man.
 
Until all five were
down.
 
Sal took a moment, to compose
himself, and then he hurried from behind the coat rack.
 
All five men and Patty were indeed dead.
 
But he immediately saw the problem.
 
There was no sign, none, of Fab Menza and the
burlap bag.

Sal
took off.
 
There was a door behind the
desk, and it was the only way Fab could have escaped the gunfight, so Sal
headed in that direction.

It
led down a series of stairs.
 
But Sal
knew he couldn’t just chase Fab Menza.
 
He had to find the Joneses.
 
So
every door he came upon, he opened.
 
Nothing.
 
Nobody.
 
Floor after floor.
 
Until he made it down to the second floor,
and slung open yet another door.
 
He was
about to close it back, when he saw what he thought was a shoe.

He
aimed his gun as he walked inside, his clothes drenched in sweat, his heart
pounding like a drum.
 
The shoe was
behind a doublewide metal file cabinet.
 
And behind that cabinet, seated on the floor, their hands and feet tied,
a gag in their mouths, was Rodney and Cassie Jones.
 
Gemma’s parents.
 
Sal’s heart leaped for joy, and their eyes
couldn’t hide their own joy, but Sal didn’t hesitate.
 
He went about the business of freeing them,
by first removing their gags.
 
“Are you
guys okay?” he asked as he began to quickly untie their hands and feet.

“We’re
okay, thank God,” Rodney said as he began untying his own feet while Sal untied
Cassie.
 
“We’re okay.”

Tommy
and Reno had driven around every abandoned building, every isolated place they
could think of, in search of Sal.
 
They
knew it wasn’t going to be any hiding in plain sight deal, because Fab was out
for blood, so they kept their attention on the margins of the city.
 
They had every one of their available men on
the case.
 
They had already phoned Gemma
four different times asking if she’d heard from Sal, from her parents, from
anybody, which they hated to have to do to her, but she hadn’t heard a word either.