Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  After buttoning his suit coat, Patrick removed his phone from the pocket and his expression grimaced.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “It seems I’ve missed a few things.” He shoved the phone back in the pocket. “Madeline, I can’t let you go. Say you’ll stay...at least until Sunday.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not up to me.”

  “Your driver, or whatever he is, determines your schedule? Or is it someone else?”

  I couldn’t tell him about Andros.

  That information would be his death sentence.

  There was power that surrounded Patrick. However, it was calm and strong, demanding yet accommodating. He was a giant sequoia, strong and regal, bending to the winds yet not broken. Andros was a devastating tornado or a wildfire, capable of destroying what had been unharmed for thousands of years.

  I wouldn’t let their paths cross. Patrick wouldn’t understand the brutality of the Ivanov bratva.

  I’d rather die of a broken heart, again, than bring any real harm to my first love.

  “Bye, Patrick. Please stay safe.” Because you sure as hell don’t need to be pulled into my world—you wouldn’t survive.

  He reached for the doorknob. “This is fucking harder than it was when you were asleep.”

  I nodded as tears came to my eyes. “Wait, let me check the hallway.” I pushed past him and peered into the corridor. Apparently, after four on a Saturday morning, the hallway was still empty.

  “Is the coast clear?” he asked.

  I nodded, swallowing my sorrow. That did sound like a teenage phrase. “Goodbye. I beg you not to acknowledge knowing me at the tournament, not more than simply as an opponent.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll pretend if that’s what you want, but know I’m thinking about how it feels to be inside you and the way you moan as I’m going down on you.”

  “Patrick.”

  “That’s not all.”

  “It is,” I said. “You need to go.”

  “You can pretend too, but tell me what you’ll be thinking when you see me?”

  That you’re the only man I ever loved. I didn’t say that. “I’ll be concentrating on the cards because I must win. Please...goodbye.”

  Patrick also looked both directions before slipping into the hallway. Wrapping my arms around myself, I collapsed against the door, holding back the tears. Shakily, I reached for the chain and secured the door. Turning off the light, I fell into the soft bed, surrounded by his scent.

  Staring at the ceiling, I berated myself for agreeing to this tournament, for allowing Andros to bully me into attending. Up until now, I’d successfully avoided Chicago. I’d made excuses, never divulging the real reason.

  Now that I was here, I realized that I avoided the city because I didn’t want to know Patrick’s fate. I didn’t want to learn that he had died or maybe even married again.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick.”

  Tears fell to the pillow as I finally gave in to slumber.

  Patrick

  There was no avoiding the other Sparrows. From the litany of text messages, they had news, and I’d spent the last two hours unreachable. After parking the car in our private garage, I entered the elevator. Even my presence in the garage would set off alarms. If Sparrow, Reid, and Mason were on two, they now knew where I was.

  Inhaling, I straightened my suit coat for the one hundredth time. Even before I could hit the button, the elevator arrived. As I entered, the light for two was lit. That meant they’d sent it for me and preprogrammed it to stop at two.

  Fuck.

  This was an unavoidable command performance. It wasn’t unique and didn’t necessarily have a negative connotation. It was what we did to one another when the other’s presence was wanted or needed. From the command center the elevator could be rerouted. It had been. I sucked in a breath as the elevator began to move ninety-plus stories into the sky.

  I made up my mind. I’d tell them about Madeline.

  I would.

  I’d go back to the beginning and tell them what happened seventeen years ago...forget that, twenty years ago, the day I pulled her into the room in the wall, when she offered to share her bounty of apples with me. When out of the whole crazy fucking world, in the middle of mayhem and survival, a girl pretending to be a boy made my life suddenly worth living.

  I would tell them the truth.

  I hadn’t hidden the information. There had been no reason to divulge it.

  She disappeared.

  In the world we lived in, disappearance usually ultimately resulted in death.

  Seventeen years had passed without a word until Thursday night.

  Yes.

  I stood straighter as I went higher. It was decided. That was what I’d tell them and they’d understand. I presumed it wouldn’t be an easy conversation, but we’d had those before. The memory of a more recent discussion came back to me. It occurred after Mason called our secure covert number. There had been shock, disbelief, and confusion, yet we survived, stronger as a team.

  I swallowed. This would be all right.

  I would explain that since Thursday night my attention had been diverted, not by some subversive plot to overtake Chicago, but by man’s oldest distraction. Like Adam had been distracted by Eve, Madeline was my forbidden fruit.

  Apple.

  Wait. No.

  Eve brought about the downfall of man with one bite of an apple.

  Bad example.

  I needed to think of a better illustration.

  Bathsheba?

  I wasn’t certain why biblical examples were the ones coming to mind.

  The elevator stopped. My time was up.

  The doors opened to the concrete corridor on two. With another deep breath, I laid my palm over the sensor. The metal door immediately moved sideways. Our command center was in front of me, full of activity. Some of the screens over our heads were moving from one view to the next, bringing the mostly sleeping city of Chicago in bits and pieces before our eyes.

  I stood within the room as the door shut behind me, looking at the large screens over where Reid was working. I recognized every one of the eighteen faces. One was mine. Three had been sitting at the same table as I had during the tournament. The other fourteen included Antonio Hillman, Marion Elliott, and Madeline Kelly. No, the name beside her picture read Madeline Miller.

  From where I stood I could see Mason’s face, but not what he was doing, and then there was Sparrow lying on his back, his feet planted on the ground and his spine straight on top of a weight bench. It wasn’t unusual for one of us to pump iron or run on one of the treadmills as we worked and brainstormed. What was unusual was for someone to be holding a bar with weights the size of the ones on Sparrow’s bar without a spotter.

  The long bar bowed with the weight as it hovered above his chest.

  Throwing off my suit coat, I hurried to stand near Sparrow’s head. “How about a spotter?” I asked as I read the black discs. Two one-hundred-pound plates were at each end.

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  It meant he was frustrated or angry. I’d been around these men too long to not know their tells.

  Sparrow’s biceps trembled, the muscles quivering below his t-shirt sleeve as he lowered the weight and after readjusting his grip, pushed higher, locking his elbows. His count was audible as I fought the need to look back up at Madeline’s picture. I couldn’t.

  I waited.

  “8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

  I reached for the bar and lifted it to the cradle above Sparrow’s head. When our eyes met, I asked, “What have I missed?”

  Sitting upward, Sparrow wiped the perspiration from his brow with the tail of his t-shirt and after snatching a bottle of water that had been near his feet and taking a long draw, he exhaled. “Where have you been?”

  “I was checking out a lead.” I looked up at the screens. All the high-end hotel entrances and exits rotated across the feed. I couldn’t lie. Th
ere was a chance I’d been seen. “...At the Palmer House.”

  Sparrow nodded. Standing, he patted my shoulder. “Good job in the tournament.” His smile grew. “Best fucking news all day, and it’s been shitty, but the idea of you turning a hundred grand into three hundred plus some change in a few hours was the bright spot.”

  I tried to smile. “Okay, I won. I’ll keep winning. Tell me what’s been shitty?”

  Mason lifted his head from the far side of the computer banks. “Hillman went to McIver’s.”

  “That’s good. Isn’t it? It’s what we expected.”

  “It is and it isn’t. He didn’t stay long,” Mason said, “and neither did his entourage. I think it was a distraction. They hoped we’d stop watching. We didn’t. Each person took a separate vehicle, ones they had waiting parked near McIver’s.”

  “What?” I said. “They had vehicles waiting at McIver’s? The parking there is shit.”

  “Which means,” Sparrow chimed in, “someone allowed it. I fucking hate that club. I want you...” He was speaking to Mason. “...to go there first thing in the morning and find out who authorized the parking or even whose vehicles they were.”

  “I can do it,” I volunteered.

  His dark eyes came my way. “You have a tournament to win. I want you to sleep.”

  “No. They know me...” I hated bringing up that Mason had been gone, but sometimes even he needed the reminder. “...they’re used to me,” I rephrased.

  “Did my order sound like it was up for debate to anyone else?” Sparrow asked unnecessarily loud.

  When no one responded, I looked back up at the screens. “You’re right. I need some sleep. First, do you know where Hillman and his men went?”

  “It took a while. They went all around the city, stopping at several of the hotels and picking up a few riders,” Reid said.

  “One,” Mason added, “picked up a man at the Palmer. He looked familiar. I think he was at Club Regal last night.”

  My gut twisted. “Do you have a picture?”

  “Yeah, give me a few.”

  “If someone at McIver’s had tipped us off...” Reid began.

  “...wanted to keep their fucking doors open,” Sparrow rephrased.

  “...we could have put trackers on the cars.”

  “Okay,” I said, “we didn’t have trackers, but man, Reid, you found them. I know you did. Where did they go?”

  “Abandoned house in Jefferson Park,” Reid replied. “I’ve been working on traffic cams. Problem is that the neighborhood where they were is so shitty even the cameras don’t all work. Kids think it’s fun to shoot them out as soon as a new one is placed.” He continued typing. “I’ve been working for hours. Honestly, it’s a fucking great location for avoiding surveillance.”

  “As if they know,” I said.

  “Hillman would,” Reid said. “However, we don’t think it was only Hillman and his men. The pictures from the feed are grainy and the lighting sucks. Anyway, besides the people Hillman’s men picked up, there were more, about another four cars. Apparently, there was a party we weren’t invited to attend.”

  He pulled up a shot of the street. It was as he said, dark and grainy. Cars could be seen parked along the curbs, cars nicer than you’d normally see in an area like this.

  “How about license plates?” I asked.

  “Rental companies,” Reid went on. “Mason has been trying to access the agreements, but we’ve been spread pretty thin.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “Did your lead pay off?” Sparrow asked.

  No. She said she’s leaving the city and won’t tell me where she will go.

  “Not really. I should have been here.”

  “You need to go with your gut,” Mason said. “It may not always be right, but it’s rarely wrong. You’re here now. I could use a hand with the rental agreements so I can go back to running facial recognition software on a few of our better shots.”

  “I’ve been running background checks on your opponents,” Reid said.

  “And I’ve been meeting with capos on one,” Sparrow volunteered. “The reports are coming in, but everything is scattered. There have been some blowups with a few different gangs. It’s bullshit stuff that shouldn’t be an issue. I could see if it were summer, but fuck, it’s like ten degrees out there. Why cause problems now?”

  Summer nights, when the temperatures were sweltering, it wasn’t uncommon to have an increase in violence and gang activity. It wasn’t a phenomenon limited to Chicago. Even smaller cities like Gary, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and St. Louis noticed it.

  I pulled out one of the chairs and spun it around, straddling the back as I rolled the sleeves of my shirt to my elbows.

  “No cufflinks?” Mason asked.

  “Yeah, they’re in my pocket. I was preparing to go to sleep before the elevator brought me to all your shining faces.” I logged onto the program they’d already set up with the license plates and rental car companies and began searching the money trail.

  “Here’s the man picked up at the Palmer House,” Reid said.

  I looked up at the screen.

  Shit.

  “He was at the tournament,” Mason said. “I know I saw him.”

  My stomach twisted. “His name is Mitchell Leonardo.”

  “How do you know that?” Mason asked.

  “He has been at the tournament,” I said. “He gave me an odd feeling.”

  “Do you know more?” Sparrow asked.

  My head shook. “I wish I did. All I know is that he’s here for the tournament, watching, not playing.”

  “If he’s here for the tournament, why did he attend Hillman’s house party tonight?” Mason asked.

  Reid began typing. “It fucking helps when I have a name.”

  “So this,” Sparrow began, “nobody who is attending Club Regal’s poker tournament isn’t a player?”

  “No,” I said. “He mentioned he preferred the ponies. I sat near him at the bar trying to get a read on him. He told me that he’s just passing through.”

  Sparrow nodded. “For a poker tournament? I agree, it feels off.”

  “It might not be that far off,” Mason said. He pointed up to the screen. “See the woman?”

  My stomach dropped. If something Mitchell Leonardo was involved in implicated Madeline, I was paying him a visit before the next round.

  The men were talking. “...see here,” Reid said. “I can find multiple instances of him leaving or arriving at the Palmer House with Ms. Miller. They’re always in a taxi cab.”

  “What do we know about her?” Sparrow asked.

  “Do you think we should worry about her when Hillman is having house parties in some of the worst places in the city?” I asked.

  “You don’t?” Mason asked. “They’re connected.”

  Exhaling, I leaned forward on the seat’s back and resumed my research of rental cars. “Of course, everyone is suspect.”

  “Her background is pretty boring,” Reid said. “Wikipedia has a cute little bio. Daughter of average parents, average town, parents deceased, never married, yada, yada.”

  “Then why does she need a goon?” Mason asked.

  “What about Hillman? Is he back from his house party?” I asked.

  “Yes, he and his entire entourage,” Reid answered. “They’re all back at the Four Seasons. I saw them all enter Hillman’s suite.”

  “Has the goon guy returned to the Palmer House?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Mason said.

  Sparrow began to pace. “We fucking need sleep. Is Elliott back at his hotel?”

  “Yes,” Reid said, “he’s been back since he left the club.”

  “I’m coming up blank,” I said. “The cars were rented by three different LLCs from five different rental companies.”

  “Yeah, I was hoping you’d find something different,” Mason said.

  “Credit cards go to the same LLCs.”

  “Let me guess,”
Sparrow said, “all from the same state.”

  “Delaware,” I said, knowing that setting up a shell company in Delaware was one of the easiest, as easy as an email account, and could be done in one day.

  “Patrick, go get some sleep,” Sparrow said. “This isn’t a debate. You and Mason both came to the same dead end. I think we can safely assume that whoever rented those cars doesn’t want to be identified.”

  “Hillman is parading around Chicago’s finest private clubs. He’s not hiding.”

  “Check his reservation at the Four Seasons,” I said. “It’s in his name. Is it booked with his own credit card? Who knows, this could go back to McFadden money. We all know there’s a shit ton out there that the feds haven’t been able to find. McFadden has it hidden away.”

  “Patrick, I fucking mean it,” Sparrow said. “You can’t count cards and beat Hillman without some sleep. He’s not leaving my city with millions in his pocket to fund some kind of coup. What time does the first round begin tomorrow?” He scoffed. “Today?”

  “Noon,” I said as I stood. “First, I need to mention something.”

  The entire room stopped, all eyes turned my way.

  “You sick?” Reid asked.

  “No.”

  “Will it affect tomorrow?” Sparrow asked. “Will it make a difference with Hillman and McFadden’s men coming back to town? Because we need to be razor focused. Other shit can wait.”

  “I don’t believe it will,” I answered.

  “Then go to bed,” Sparrow proclaimed.

  Nodding, I started to walk toward the steel door. Before reaching it, I turned back around. “Tomorrow is the big night at the club. I think we should all get some shut-eye. The capos will notify us if things get out of control.”

  “He’s right,” Sparrow said. “You two,” he spoke to Mason and Reid, “let the programs run. Get some sleep. We’re not all winning a poker tournament tomorrow, but we may be needed.”

  Patrick

  Three hours’ sleep wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough. By the time I showered, dressed, and made my way up to the penthouse kitchen, the room was full.

  “Good morning,” Araneae, Sparrow’s wife, said with a smile over her coffee mug.