Untraceable (26 page)

“
No, it’s okay, Micah. I
just never thought I would see you again. I love you,
baby.”

“
Don’t worry,” Sharon
laughed loud enough for Leese to hear, “I’ll keep him happy while
you’re tied up.”

Even through video, Leese could see
his face become the deadly blank that she knew came just before he
killed someone, “Don’t do it, Micah. I love you and I want you to
keep your promise to me. Don’t do what she wants.”

Sharon quickly reached over and
touched the screen and the call was lost.

“
Get her back,” he
ordered, still holding the phone.

“
I said you’d get to see
her. I never said for how long and besides all the ‘I love you’
crap was starting to make me nauseous. You do as I say, and
Giovanni won’t have any fun on this assignment.”

It was time to learn about his true
adversary, “How long has he been in your family? I know he’s
new.”

“
Actually, Giovanni is an
outsider. It seems Leonard Caprizio has taken an interest in me.
Giovanni has been his protégé for the last few years, and when I
told him I needed someone to be safely hidden, he loaned him to
me.”

It was as if someone poured ice water
down his spinal column; he suspected this from the moment Gwen’s
investigator told him he’d only seen two similar jobs, both in New
York. It came full circle, and that circle surrounded the most
powerful mafia boss in the U.S. The Capo dei Capi had upheld
Micah’s untouchable status and now it appeared it was so Sharon
could force him into doing her dirty work. He’d never felt such
complete hopelessness in all of his life, even when Leese ran from
him, he still had hope that someday he’d get her back, but this was
different. If Caprizio taught Giovanni the art of making people
untraceable, Leese was as good as gone from
him—permanently.

“
Caprizio must hate your
father,” Micah stated, his finger raking a single clean line
through the condensation on his glass.

Sharon gave a strange smile, “Not at
all, actually. He and my father were friends years ago when
Caprizio took the top position. Caprizio doesn’t know what I’m
really after. I’d say he saw this as an opportunity to help the
daughter of an old friend—he may not like what happens, but I’ll
claim daddy’s murder as your fault,” she laughed. “No one will
doubt that. I mean, honestly, anyone attaining your position and
then to turn around and risk everything to get out of the Family
over something as ignorant as love is certainly crazy. They’ll all
believe you did it to hurt me.”

He could tell Sharon didn’t understand
the kind of fire she was playing with when it came to Caprizio.
She’d never been known for being careful and cautious and now she
was dabbling in a league of men far beyond even her class of
ruthlessness. Caprizio wasn’t doing this as a ‘kindness’ to an old
friend. He would tolerate Sharon, allowing her to play her wicked
games, but something else was motivating him. Micah needed to
discover what that ‘thing’ was and use it as leverage.

He would need to call David as soon as
he could and tell him to speed up his plans to take Nadia and Kimmy
into hiding because this was only going to get uglier; things might
deteriorate quickly. His own family would also be in danger, but at
least they knew they were living a life where something like this
could happen at any time.

Nadia, Kimmy, and Leese were total
innocents on this battlefield. Robert propelled them into this mess
the day he decided to trade Nadia and Leese’s lives for financial
gain. He paid for that mistake when the judge sentenced him to life
in prison.

“
You have what you asked
for,” Sharon stated, snapping Micah from his distraction, “You know
she’s still alive—now we’re going to discuss business.”

To say she was ambitious was an
understatement. She had plans, big plans for not only assuming
command of her clan, but she still wanted to see the convergence of
the two clans which had been the original plan before D’Angelo
died.

The people Micah killed in the four
months he spent finding Annalisa when D’Angelo sent her running for
the final time, had taken place in odd locations. D’Angelo had been
careful to keep their identities secret and Micah’s only job was to
extinguish their lives. Had he traveled to the east coast he would
have known whose clan was the target and he would have refused.
But, at the time, he had little information and, greater still at
the time, he didn’t care who he killed.

“
I like the idea of
running the lower east coast and the southern coast. To prove you
are loyal to me, you’ll not only take out my father, but I expect
Botachelli to die as well—do this for me and I’ll let her go
completely unharmed. Screw me over, and you’ll suffer in the worst
way.”

He would have been quick to tell her
no, but he had plans of his own already forming. He had to be
convincing. She had to believe he was committing to her completely,
“Who dies first?”

She smiled, “I need to have firm
command of my side before I take over yours, so my father is first.
I know it isn’t going to be an easy feat, but if you are the man
D’Angelo always claimed you were then I think you should be able to
accomplish this first step within a week, two at the latest. Just
remember the faster you do what I want, the faster her release will
happen.”

“
I hope you don’t expect
me to make this painless for him—I’ll be thinking about you the
whole time,” he growled.

“
I hate that
son-of-a-bitch. You can carve his fucking heart out for all I
care.”

Micah rose from the table, “That’s not
a half bad idea.”

“
I’ll call you after I
confirm where he’ll be so you can plan your attack. We’ll discuss
Botachelli afterwards.”

There was nothing more to say as he
turned and walked away from the wicked little seductress. He drove
around to the south side of the hotel where Ryan sat inside a
rented van with a computer running. Micah nodded as he passed
him.

Ryan cranked the van and followed
Micah’s earlier instructions to go to their hotel and wait for
him.

Thirty minutes later, after Micah was
certain no one was following, he pulled into the Garden Inn beside
Ryan’s van.

When he opened the door to their room,
Ryan was sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the computer
display.

“
She made the call; you
captured it right?”

“
Hell if I know! I
captured a ton of shit with this thing. How are you going to figure
out which one was hers?”

“
Easy,” Micah stated as he
began scrolling backward, “she placed the call at 6:19. Here,” he
pointed to the screen.

“
But there are four
entries at 6:19.”

“
Yes, but two are computer
mac addresses; 803 is a local area code; 609 is her
playground—Atlantic City—that’s the one,” Micah stated as he
switched to a different computer program. “Now all I have to do is
track all the traffic on her number and wait for her to say
something that will tell me where Leese is at.”

“
Can’t you just trace the
call?”

“
Normally, yes,” Micah
sighed, “but the man holding Leese is far from normal. His number
is scrambled, and he evidently has a jammer, a signal booster, and
a re-direction device, most likely this call went through two other
cells before it got to him.”

Micah watched Ryan’s countenance fall.
He apparently thought this was going to be easy.

“
She’s in a lot of
trouble, isn’t she?” he finally said.

Micah nodded. Leese was in
more trouble than he was willing to express, “Giovanni isn’t going
to make
any
mistakes—he’s been trained by the best. I’ve got to wait for
Sharon to screw up—and she’s so over-confident, I know she’ll do
something careless.”

“
So what do we do
next?”

“
I,” Micah emphasized, “am
going to spend another day or two here monitoring her phone calls
and making some arrangements.
You
are heading back home—now.”

“
No way, I’m—”

“
Leese would be pissed if
she knew I pulled you into this mess.”

“
I don’t give a shit! If I
can help then—”

“
I will need your help,”
he said and then paused to get Ryan to pay attention, “in about a
week or two—I just hope I don’t get you killed. I don’t know many
people without mafia connections, and that list is narrowed down to
just you when I consider who on that list I can trust to do
this.”

“
Do what?”

“
You’re going to help me
get rid of two of the biggest mob bosses in the
southeast.”

Micah realized the ‘oh shit,’ that
slipped out of Ryan’s mouth was unintentional, but the ‘oh shit’
was about to hit the fan in the biggest shakeup in underworld
history.

CHAPTER sixteen

Ryan unlocked the door and took a deep
breath before stepping inside. He knew Candace was going to be
angry over the way he left her at the church in Florida, and he
really didn’t blame her. Micah told him he couldn’t tell her why
they left, and the best Ryan could offer when his cell phone went
off and she wanted to know what the hell was going on, was to ask
her to trust him, but most of all to forgive him and that he would
see her soon.

It wasn’t over—not by a long shot—but
Micah insisted he leave until the plan was ready to be unleashed.
It would be the most dangerous thing he’d ever done—well, almost.
Telling Candace he would be leaving for an undetermined amount of
time ranked pretty high, too.

He knew from the beginning when he
first learned Micah was part of the mafia that Leese was in way
over her head. He had come to understand what Leese said about
Micah was true: he was a different person on the inside from the
person he had been trained to be. He also knew no matter the amount
of danger, she could never stop loving Micah. She was a pit-bull in
that respect; her heart gripped Micah’s, and she would hang on with
tenacity to that love, even if it cost her very
existence.

He pushed the door open and stepped
into the quiet house. Their bedroom door was closed and he wondered
if she was sleeping. It was two a.m. but she was a bit of a
night-owl like him, so he doubted it. He pulled off his jacket and
draped it over the arm of the couch and proceeded to the bedroom.
He opened the door, sending a shaft of light into the blackness.
“Candace?” There was no response. He flipped on the light switch
when he realized she wasn’t in the bed. He heard the movement of
water and knew she was in the bathtub.

He knocked gently on the bathroom
door, “Baby, I’m home. Can I come in?” He heard her move in the
water again and then some muffled sounds. “Candace?” His heart
picked up speed as he thought something wasn’t right. He turned the
handle; the door was locked. He knocked more firmly, “Why do you
have the door locked?” When there was no reply, he backed up and
kicked the door in.

“
What the hell did you do
that for?!” she snapped.

The room was only illuminated by a
single candle. He flipped on the light and she squinted in the
brightness.

“
Turn it off!” she
ordered. “I have a migraine.”

“
Why didn’t you answer
me?” he snapped back.

“
Turn off the damn
light!”

“
Fine!” he growled,
hitting the switch so hard he thought he broke it. “Why didn’t you
answer me?”

“
I fell asleep, you idiot!
I was just waking up when I realized you were knocking on the
door.”

Ryan exhaled with deep relief. She
scared the crap out of him when she didn’t respond. He sat on the
edge of the tub letting his head drop into his hands.

“
I’m sorry,” she said
softly, reaching with a wet hand to lightly touch him, “I didn’t
mean to yell at you, or to call you an idiot—are you okay? Can you
tell me what’s going on with Leese?”

He raised his head in surprise, “You
know?”

“
A little. I went back to
her mother’s house after the service to get our things. The police
showed up and said the crime lab finally discovered that the woman
who died in the accident wasn’t pregnant—it couldn’t have been
Leese. I had a feeling you wouldn’t have left me that way over
anything other than—than her.”

“
I’m really sorry, but
Micah said we had to leave right away and no one could know what we
were doing.”

“
Can you tell me what’s
going on or do you have to keep it quiet?”

“
Candace, there isn’t
anything in my life that I shouldn’t be able to tell you, and if
there is then I don’t deserve you—but if you could wait a
little—”

She rose up and kissed him to end his
sentence, “I understand, really I do. Would you hand me my towel?”
She pulled the plug and stood up.

He held the towel for a moment before
giving it to her and simply stared, “If you weren’t water-logged
already, I’d drop my clothes and get in there with you.”