Storm's Cage

by Mary Stone

  SAC Keaton flicked the lock into place before she moved around her desk and dropped into her chair. “I apologize for the lack of advanced notice. For what it’s worth, I was blindsided when he reached out to this office a few days ago. I personally vetted everything he said, though, and it checks out.”

  Zane kept his expression blank. “Well, we can add this to what we’ve got for the RICO case so far.”

  “Right.” Jasmine propped her elbows on the desk. “I realize that the scope of this task force has gotten to be a little too much for two people to handle. You both know that I’d been planning to bring in a couple others, and I’m going to move up the timetable on that. You have a meeting scheduled with the Assistant U.S. Attorney today, don’t you? When is that?”

  Sunlight caught the face of Zane’s pricey watch as he checked the time. “It’s at eleven-thirty. About four hours from now.”

  “Okay. That works fine.” Jasmine’s dark eyes swept over him and Amelia. “I’ve got a meeting at noon, but I’ll stop in to make sure the U.S. Attorney’s office got everything straight. Once that paperwork goes through for Carlo Enrico, you ought to be able to go pick up that detective. When you get back here, you can start briefing Agent Kantowski on the Leóne family.”

  “Straightforward.” Zane sipped his coffee. “I like straightforward.”

  Even as the words left his mouth, he knew.

  Nothing with the Leónes was ever straightforward.

  8

  Those damn Feds were useless. Carlo had gone through the trouble of hiring a new lawyer—one who wasn’t affiliated with the Leóne family—to keep his deal with the FBI a secret, but the two agents hadn’t fulfilled a single aspect of their agreement. A full twenty-four hours after he’d met with them, he was still in the general population.

  As he returned his breakfast tray, he looked over the inmates seated at a cluster of stainless-steel tables. Casually scratching at the stubble on the side of his face, he took a good long look at the other inmates. None of the men on his floor were affiliated with the Leóne family, and now that he was trying to forge a deal with the Feds, the absence of a familiar face was likely for the best.

  Still, Carlo had never been to prison. He’d never even been arrested before that damn Fed had chased him through the cornfield behind their warehouse.

  Carlo should have been free and clear.

  He’d put the barrel of a handgun to the back of the Fed’s head. He’d taken the guy by surprise. All he’d had to do was pull the trigger or knock the man unconscious.

  But somehow, the Fed had turned the entire situation around on him. Though Carlo’s wrist was on the mend, a dull ache still marked the site where the bone had broken. When he thought back to how the Fed had twisted his wrist, he couldn’t help but cringe.

  Gritting his teeth, Carlo pushed past the mental imagery in an effort to curb his visceral reaction.

  He’d fared better than Alton or Matteo, but the comparison didn’t mean much. Matteo had blown his head off, and Alton had committed suicide by cop. Carlo had at least tried to make an escape, ducking into the maze of corn, not that it had worked.

  If any part of life was fair, Matteo would have been the one locked up. If Carlo had escaped and fled to the middle of nowhere in Kansas, he wouldn’t have killed himself. Besides, Carlo had never laid a hand on any of the girls who came through the warehouse basement.

  Sure, he’d stood by and collected his share of the payment when the videos were distributed to interested buyers on the dark web, but Alton and Matteo would have conducted their sick enterprise with or without Carlo’s approval. At the least, he’d made a little cash from the two men and their perversions.

  Three men, he reminded himself. Maybe more, but all he could remember was the tall guy, a detective in the Chicago PD.

  At the thought of the dirty cop who’d frequented the Kankakee County farm, Carlo jerked himself out of the past and looked around the cafeteria.

  That detective was still on the loose, and until those worthless Feds put Carlo in a safer part of the prison, he had to stay sharp. The Leónes would see his deal with the FBI as a betrayal, but he wasn’t a rat. Carlo just needed to set the record straight.

  He’d go down for the murder of that nosy reporter, sure. He’d committed that crime. Even though he didn’t want to be imprisoned for the rest of his life, under normal circumstances, he’d have kept his mouth shut and taken his chances in a courtroom.

  But he’d be damned if he went down for Alton and Matteo’s kiddie porn. If the Leóne family thought otherwise, then they could go to hell.

  Rubbing at the dull ache in his right wrist, he scowled at the tan line on his left ring finger. The wedding band, like any other accessory he’d worn, had been confiscated by the FBI when they booked him.

  Normally, his decision to turn on the Leónes would ostracize his wife and three children from the rest of the family. But Tina was a Piliero…Leóne royalty. Tina and the kids would be fine, and as long as the Feds pulled through on their end of the bargain, Carlo would be safe too.

  With another glance around the area, Carlo limped his way past a handful of empty tables. The brace he’d been wearing to hold his busted kneecap in place made it hard for him to move with any speed. But at least he could move. Lunch hour was almost over, and he’d prefer to make it back to the cell block ahead of his peers. He’d heard plenty of stories of inmates who’d been killed in the middle of a populated room while the guards were distracted by a brawl or an unruly prisoner.

  The sooner he got back to his cell, the better. At least in the cramped cement room, he only had to worry about an assailant approaching him from a single direction.

  Out here, an attack could come from anywhere.

  As Carlo hobbled past a pair of black-clad corrections officers, he kept his head straight, but his eyes were on the move, shifting left and right as he monitored the men from his periphery. Even though he was the criminal, Carlo trusted the guards about as far as he could throw them.

  To his relief, the men paid him no attention. Their conversation about hockey continued without interruption.

  The closer he got to the wide doorway at the corner of the room, the more he had to remind himself to act cool and not make any jerky movements.

  He hated this damn hallway.

  It didn’t matter that all directions were monitored in real time by security personnel local to the prison. The relative isolation of the drab gray corridor was cause enough for paranoia.

  Swallowing against the dryness in his mouth, Carlo took one last look over his shoulder before he crossed into the hall. He pushed his bad leg as hard as he could to hurry. The rubber soles of his shoes made little more than a whisper of sound against the white and gray tile.

  A short stretch of the hall turned left in an inverted L shape. Carlo hesitated before rounding the corner. He stopped at the edge and carefully peeked around. As he took in the spotless floor and the unadorned cement walls, Carlo released a relieved breath. He was alone.

  Which was good and bad.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

  Just go, stupid.

  Once he made it to the intersection at the end of the corridor, he’d be home free.

  He’d only gone about four feet when a metallic click echoed against the bare cement walls. The sound, amplified by the cavernous space, scared him half to death, and anxiety had his heart thundering against his chest as if trying to escape. He gulped against the dryness choking his airway and slowly turned toward the sound.

  The room behind the heavy door was only accessible to corrections officers, and in his two weeks at the facility, Carlo had never seen it open.

  Hinges creaked as the door swung wide. One orange pant leg emerged, followed by the sleeve of a matching shirt, and Carlo froze in his tracks.

  Why was an inmate behind a locked door that led to the guards’ breakroom?

  Carlo’s first thought was that he’d just caught a pr
isoner and a CO at the end of a sexual encounter. He’d overheard rumors that some guards weren’t above playing favorites to those who occasionally got on their knees, and he’d be a liar if he said he hadn’t considered using the tactic to keep himself from being stabbed while he slept.

  Desperate times called for desperate measures, and unlike Matteo and Alton, Carlo was determined to stay alive, incarcerated or not.

  A short, wiry man clad in the telltale orange of a prisoner stepped into the hallway. His gray eyes darted up and down the hall like he was scared to death of being discovered.

  Holding up both hands submissively, Carlo opened his mouth to assure the twitchy fellow that he had witnessed nothing.

  That was when he saw the knife.

  Not a shiv or a shank. Not a contraption made from duct tape and a sharpened toothbrush. A damned knife.

  The blade couldn’t have been more than three inches long, but the weapon was far deadlier than most of the homemade devices concocted by prisoners in the secrecy of their cells.

  With a swift lunge, the inmate closed the meager distance between them. Carlo barely had time to take a half-step back toward the turn that would take him to the cafeteria when the inmate clamped a hand around his injured wrist. Bony fingers dug into Carlo’s arm like a vice. With strength that did not belong to a person of his stature, the inmate forced Carlo back up against the wall.

  Carlo’s back kissed the concrete with so much force it stole all the air from his lungs. He gasped and choked, but his lungs refused to take in any air. Carlo’s mouth hung open stupidly as his attempt to cry for help died in his throat. Eyes wide, all he could do was stare at the inmate’s greasy hair and gaunt face.

  Even as the sting of the inmate’s blade pierced his belly, Carlo couldn’t find the air to give his cry sound. The inmate pushed the knife in as far as he could before tweaking it on the way out. Searing flames followed the blade’s exit, radiating out from the site of the injury, but as the sensations reached Carlo’s brain, another followed, then another, and again. By the sixth, he’d lost track of the individual wounds as they coalesced into one inferno in his belly.

  He opened his mouth to take in air. Every part of his body demanded it, but with a wet sucking sound, his lungs refused to fill. Sheer panic gripped him as he desperately struggled for even a small gasp of oxygen.

  Red flashed in front of his eyes as Carlo slid down the cold cement wall, staring at the knife in his murderer’s hand, now covered in his blood. Carlo tried to lift an arm to clutch at his ruined stomach, but even that slight movement was a Herculean task.

  Darkness nibbled at the edges of his vision, and the tiled floor was like a block of ice. He didn’t remember the floor being this damn cold.

  When he forced himself to flop his head to the side, he caught a fleeting glimpse of orange as the inmate disappeared back behind the door he had emerged from.

  For the first time, he spotted a second man.

  A guard.

  Before Carlo could make out any of the corrections officer’s features, his leaden eyelids drooped closed.

  He was so cold, and he only wanted to sleep. Even the blare of alarms echoing through the hall couldn’t keep him from the slumber he so desperately needed.

  A slumber from which he already knew he’d never awaken.

  Paper coffee cup in one hand, Amelia approached the glass door as she stifled a yawn. Her sleep the night before had been broken and marked with violent nightmares, and no matter how much coffee she’d poured down her throat, she couldn’t shake the fog following her like a shadow.

  Pressing down on the lever handle, she pushed open the door with one shoulder. Late morning sunshine streamed through the wall-spanning tinted windows, though the blinds had been drawn to block out the brightest glow. Still, Amelia blinked back tears at the sudden shift from manmade fluorescence to sunlight.

  When her vision cleared, her gaze settled on the well-dressed woman seated at the circular table. The warm glow of the sun accentuated the red highlights in her long auburn hair, and though Amelia could tell the shade wasn’t natural, the color complimented her porcelain skin like it had been made for her. In the back of her mind, Amelia could almost hear Joanna praising the woman for her choice of dye.

  At the thought, Amelia’s mouth twitched.

  Brushing off the front of her pastel purple blouse, the redhead turned to step out of the office chair. The heels of her red-soled shoes were at least four inches, but even with the added boost, she was only an inch or two taller than Amelia.

  In truth, Amelia sometimes wished she was a few inches shorter so she could wear high heels without towering over everyone else in the FBI office. Pumps were uncomfortable as hell, but she’d always adored the sassy vibe that came with a good pair of heels.

  Forcing herself to get back into a business mentality, Amelia cleared her throat and extended a hand. “You must be Assistant U.S. Attorney Cassandra Halcott. I’m Special Agent Amelia Storm. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Cassandra mirrored the pleasant greeting, clasping Amelia’s hand in a businesslike shake. “Good to meet you too, Agent.”

  The familiar clatter of blinds drew Amelia’s attention to the door. “Oh.” She waved a hand at Zane as he stepped over the threshold. “I was going to say that Agent Palmer will be here shortly, but there he is.”

  Easing the door closed behind himself, Zane nodded at Cassandra, the prosecutor who also happened to be the beautiful woman he’d slept with a few months earlier.

  In light of the moment—if that’s what it even was—that Amelia and Zane had shared earlier that morning, Cassandra’s presence should have annoyed her.

  Instead, Amelia wanted to giggle like a middle-schooler any time she noticed a hint of awkwardness between Zane and the Assistant U.S. Attorney. Apparently, she was twenty-nine going on twelve.

  Coughing into one hand to disguise a sudden chortle, Amelia pulled out a mesh-backed chair and moved to sit. After her encounter with Alex the night before, she’d lose her damn mind if she didn’t find some way to amuse herself.

  She wasn’t surprised that Alex had kept the information about Trevor to himself, nor was she surprised that Trevor’s mystery employer had been the D’Amato family. Amelia had hoped that Trevor’s supplementary income had come from a hidden ability to count cards at Blackjack, but she’d recognized the wishful thinking for what it was.

  Everyone in this damn city owed allegiance to one criminal enterprise or another. Her brother had been no different.

  She was just as guilty in some respects. All Amelia could do was hope she’d picked the lesser evil.

  As Cassandra went over the plea agreement that she and the U.S. Attorney had worked out for Carlo, Amelia was careful to maintain an attentive expression. But each time Cassandra stopped to gauge their approval, she might as well have been speaking Greek.

  The woman could have merely read off a series of cookie recipes, and Amelia would have smiled and nodded like a bobblehead.

  Sometime in the middle of Cassandra’s explanation, SAC Keaton arrived, but even the presence of the Special Agent in Charge couldn’t yank Amelia’s brain out of its cloud.

  Squeezing her eyes closed, Amelia patted the polished table with one hand. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. I’ll just…I’ll be right back.”

  She caught a fleeting glimpse of concern in Zane’s gray eyes, but otherwise, she didn’t pause to gauge the reactions before she rolled the chair away from the table and pushed to her feet.

  You’re no different.

  The words echoed through her head on the short journey to the women’s bathroom. Alex had kept the knowledge of Trevor to himself because…why? Because she was a cop? Because he didn’t want to hurt her? Or, more likely, because he didn’t think telling her even mattered? She’d been stupid to think she was special to begin with.

  Her stomach roiled as she shoved open the heavy door. The faint scent of bleach wafted up to greet her,
but to her relief, the room was empty.

  As her heart hammered in her ears, Amelia went straight to the last stall in the line of four. Once the lock was in place, she rested her back against the cool drywall and closed her eyes.

  Amelia hadn’t been under any illusion that she and Alex would ever have more than a strained, bizarre friendship. The mafia lifestyle had seemed glitzy and glamorous when she was in high school, but as an adult woman, she wanted nothing to do with Alex’s world. Nothing past what she did at the FBI, anyway.

  She’d thought their past connection had meant something to him. Enough that he wouldn’t use her like he did anyone else under his command. After all, she’d known Alex was a good man at heart. He wasn’t like the others. He was special. Even on opposite sides of the law, she’d been sure they could work together.

  But he was no different.

  Alex had followed in Luca Passarelli’s footsteps, just like Luca had assured her he would, all while he’d had his hands wrapped around her neck.

  At the memory of her confrontation with the powerful mafia commander, she snapped open her eyes.

  She’d only ever told a single soul what had sent her fleeing from Chicago and why she’d been so hasty to dive headfirst into the military life. Keisha Turner—Amelia’s best friend throughout high school and the friend who’d stepped through the doors of the recruiter’s office at her side—was the only person who knew about how Luca Passarelli had come within an inch of killing her.

  She’d been safer in a combat zone than she’d have been if she’d defied Luca’s command to leave the city and never come back.

  Fighting against the memories, she clenched and unclenched one hand. If he tried to threaten her or chase her away now, she’d hang him from the highest rafter she could find.

  And if Alex thought he could use her like he’d used her brother, then she would return the favor.

  With a deep breath, she smoothed out the front of her shirt.