Untraceable (51 page)

He watched the driver of the Camaro
take out the first car, but he couldn’t understand why the men
didn’t open fire; even Caprizio was asking why the hell didn’t they
shoot? The second car with his men fared no better against the
skilled driver. Whoever this was had to be a top wheelman for the
mob.

When David blew past him, he was
certain the Camaro was going to meet its match; David was one hell
of an aggressive driver. He was stunned as he watched the
auto-ballet taking place between the two cars—David couldn’t get in
a hit, but perhaps he’d get in a shot. He saw the intersection
coming up and watched the other driver dance through the cars like
some kind of freaking ghost, causing a pile-up in the worst
possible place. David would have done the same if it hadn’t been
for an unskilled driver plowing into the BMW. He hated the idea of
leaving David behind, but he hated it more because the only weapon
he possessed now was a coil gun with eight rounds.

Suddenly the Camaro slowed. Caprizio
himself grabbed the coil gun and prepared to shoot the first person
he saw when an amazing thing happened. The Camaro’s driver hit the
brakes and began to spin around. Micah realized two things: the car
was going to slide sideways through an opening which Micah was
approaching too fast to make, and he instantly knew who his
opponent would be—his wife!

He got out the words, “Don’t shoot!”
just as the car drifted through the barriers and he saw Annalisa’s
face. Her expression was intent. Just before she hit the gas, he
saw Sharon and another man in the backseat.

“
That’s my damn daughter!”
Caprizio snapped as he recognized the driver.

“
Sharon has her,” Micah
uttered as he began to think about the direction the truck had been
heading. If Leese was running interference for the truck, perhaps
she’d influenced Sharon about where to take it—the dolomite pit!
There was a road at the end of the beach that should take less
time, if Micah could get through the traffic. Thankfully, there
were no cops to stop the speeding, black 300—they were all headed
to a multicar pile up at the last intersection!

“
Turn around!” Caprizio
barked.

“
No, sir. I think I know
where they’re headed, and I’ll never catch her if I turn around
now. There is another road we can take,” he said, increasing his
speed.

“
Who the hell taught a
woman to drive like that?” Botachelli asked.

“
A guy named Tony Dix,”
Micah began to explain when Caprizio cut him off.

“
No—she thought that was
his name. I may not have been visible to my daughter, but I had
enough people in her world to keep her safe. It was Antonino
Diccionni.”

That immediately explained everything
Micah had ever wondered about Annalisa’s skill behind the wheel;
Antonino Diccionni was a legend in the mafia as the best wheelman
of all time. No wonder she drove like a bat out of hell!

CHAPTER FORTY

Even though by this point, Ryan had
one hell of a lead on me, with all this horsepower, I guessed I
could catch him. I could hear Allen in the backseat still repeating
over and over how amazing my maneuver had been—and I could hear
Sharon telling him to shut up! For the first time since this began,
I smiled.

Even though I don’t think she liked
the distance we were traveling before Ryan turned off, she didn’t
try to stop him. If the overgrown, wide shell drive had obvious
fresh tire tracks when Ryan pulled in, I hoped they would be
unnoticed by Sharon’s men; Ryan, I knew, would wisely follow any
such tracks to where they ended. He stopped about twenty feet
before the unusually deep green waters of the abandoned pit and got
out. Sharon’s men had pulled up on either side and were exiting
their vehicles. There were eight of them, all armed and
formidable.

Ryan was standing just outside the
driver’s door to the truck. I ran immediately to his side and
slipped my arms around him.

He hugged me tight and whispered, “You
did good, baby girl—it’s out of our hands.”

Then he whispered one final thing that
made me feel faint.

“
He’s not
here.”

I wasn’t sure if Micah didn’t figure
it out, or if something happened along the way but all I knew was
that we were in deep trouble.

A man grabbed Ryan’s arm and pushed us
toward the back of the truck.

“
I want to see it,” she
ordered.

The trunk to one of the cars was
opened and a pair of bolt cutters and a crowbar was produced. The
lock was removed and the door went up; there sat two large crated
pallets marked as 100% pure Columbian coffee.

“
Open the crate. I need to
be sure it’s in there.”

The man pried the end off
and let it fall. The packages inside were definitely
not
coffee.

“
Pop your trunks, boys,”
she said, “I think we can fit five thousand kilos in three cars and
then we’ll sink the truck.”

“
What do you want to do
with them?” Allen asked.

She studied us briefly, “I still need
her,” she said, and then gave a deprived look at Ryan. “But I’m
afraid I have no further use for you, handsome.”

“
No!” I cried as the two
nearest men jerked us apart.

“
Once the truck is empty,”
she added with a heinous smile. “Put him in the back and lock the
door down—he can drown.”

“
Why?
” I yelled at her. “He did what you asked? I don’t understand
why you want to hurt him.”

“
Because,
Annalisa—darling,” she crooned in her mordant, honey-sick tone, “he
means something to
you.
You can bear that pain for the rest of your life
knowing you were the reason he died. I bet it’s going to really
hurt to lose someone so precious to you, isn’t it?”

There was no way I was going to give
that bitch any satisfaction! Ryan and I would most likely die, but
I would make sure I damaged her where it would hurt the most—in her
wallet. The man holding me never expected to find my knee plowing
into his balls—matter of fact, I don’t think he expected anything
out of me. I knew I couldn’t get his guns unstrapped quickly
enough, but I wouldn’t have been a match for those men anyway. What
I was after was the driver’s seat of that truck—no one was fast
enough to stop me.

It happened so quickly, but time
seemed to move in slow motion as I made it into the driver’s seat
and twisted the jimmied ignition lock. The truck cranked just as
one man’s arm was reaching inside to grab me. I bit down on his
exposed wrist so hard that he screamed out in pain and fell away. I
slammed the shifter into first gear and dumped the clutch. The next
thing I saw was lots of green—that pit was freaking
deep!

The driver’s door had been open and
the window was down, but the forward motion had slammed it shut.
The force of the water flooding in from the window prevented me
from getting out, and the heavy engine was pulling the truck’s nose
down rapidly.

I was trying hard not to
panic.

I could do this if I just didn’t freak
out. As soon as the cab was completely flooded, I was able to swim
out the open window. I could feel the suction as the truck sank
beside me into the abyss below. When my head cleared, I felt strong
arms helping me swim to shore—it was Ryan.

Sharon was standing on the bank, her
face riddled in disbelief as she watched the crates, which
initially floated out the open door to the surface, begin to sink.
The drugs were absorbing water. The kilos were wrapped in plastic,
but evidently they weren’t water-tight. Ninety million dollars of
her revenue simply disappeared.

“
Kill them both!” she
roared.

We had just gotten out of the water
when I heard a strange noise and observed her men falling to the
ground in apparent seizures.

That’s when I saw a frighteningly
beautiful sight.

Micah was there; blank, emotionless,
and fearless, as he dropped the armed men. They attempted to draw
on him, but he was just too fast. Jonathan was to his left, and I
could make out three men behind them. The two men closest to Ryan
and I, dove toward us, apparently thinking to either grab us as
shields or hostages. Dirt sprayed up into my face as a large
cartridge plowed into the ground, narrowly missing the shoulder of
the man who was reaching for me. Just as his hand touched me, a
second cartridge imbedded into his upper arm, blood immediately
soaking through his shirt. I felt a strong tingle from his hand,
but he was already rolling away from me on the ground and
convulsing into unconsciousness. The man going after Ryan, took a
cartridge to the chest and stumbled and fell backwards into the
water.

Someone was shouting stop, but I
wasn’t paying attention as Ryan dove in for the sinking man. No
matter what had just happened to us, he couldn’t let the man drown.
I helped him pull the cretin onto the bank.

Vitale Moretti was the man who was
shouting. Allen and Sharon were the last two remaining upright.
Allen had been preparing to draw and fire at Micah until he saw
Vitale. Micah’s barrel was pointed at Allen when everything
stopped.

Allen immediately dropped his weapon
and simply asked in wonder, “Boss?”

Sharon was frozen motionless with
shock, her face devoid of color, and her mouth was ajar, but
silent.

Micah lowered his weapon as shock
number two stepped around his right side; my father and Botachelli
appeared. Shock number three was when my father started talking—she
now knew who this mystery man was: Leonard Caprizio, the Capo dei
Capi.

“
You greedy, stupid
bitch,” my father said. “You couldn’t be happy with what you had?
You had position and power. What you tried to do to your father and
Botachelli is unforgivable. But,” he added as he looked at Vitale
and saw the distress on his face. “Your father has asked that
instead of taking your life, I strip you of all power and
association with the Family. For his sake, my decision has been
made. You are leaving this country. If you
ever
,” he emphasized, “come back to
the United States, you will die. Do you understand me?”

I wasn’t sure, but it appeared that
she wasn’t looking at my father. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on
Micah. She burst into tears, crumpling to the ground—only to come
up with Allen’s gun—and that gun was aimed for Micah’s
heart.

I screamed and lunged, but I was too
far away. I heard the blast and watched the fire leave the barrel
as Allen dropped on to her to take the gun away. The sound of a
body falling to the ground made me afraid to turn my head, but I
had to know if she had just ended my world.

My father’s back was to me blocking my
view as the men gathered around the man on the ground. I don’t know
where the strength came from but my weak legs suddenly firmed under
me as I ran toward the group. Ryan was shouting, ‘No,’ but I
couldn’t stop. I wasn’t prepared for what I’d see.

Jonathan was on the ground, his eyes
wide open, blood splattered across his chest from a hole in his
shirt. He was struggling to breathe.

Micah was kneeling beside him; huge
tears forming on his lower lashes when he saw me. “He—he stepped
right in front of me,” came his choked words that were filled with
astonishment.

“
Giovanni!” I cried out,
calling him by his real name for the first time, as I dropped down
and lifted his hand into mine.

“
No,” he uttered and then
corrected me, “Jonathan.”

Hold on, Jonathan, we’ll get an
ambulance. We’ll—”

He gave a faint shake of his head to
tell me no.

“
You were right,” he
whispered. “I did find something worth leaving the mafia for. I
could not allow her,” he paused squeezing my hand tightly as he
tried to get another breath, “to take away someone you
love.”

Micah took Jonathan’s other hand. He
couldn’t speak, but he didn’t have to as the two men stared briefly
at each other.

I leaned down and kissed his cheek as
I became hysterical, telling him to hold on, telling him it would
be okay, he would make it, but in that moment I knew it wasn’t
true. His eyes squeezed shut in pain; he didn’t attempt to take the
next breath. His grip on my hand relaxed—Jonathan was
gone.

My father rose quickly and stalked to
where Allen was holding Sharon on the ground. I watched him pick up
the gun and put it to her temple. Vitale was in the background
begging for mercy for his daughter.

“
Dad,” I cried
out.

He paused and turned toward
me.

“
Please
—I can’t take anymore murder!”

“
He was like a son to me,”
he said, sounding as if he was about to lose his grip on his cold
emptiness.

“
And she’s his daughter,”
I stated, pointing to the tearful man who was now beside me. “You
made your decision. Send her away,” I said, barely able to get the
words out of my emotion-restricted throat. “No more killing—please,
no more killing.”