by CINDI MEYERS
In the distance, Anne spotted what appeared to be a gray stone castle set on a rise overlooking a broad valley. Twin turrets flanked a facade of glass and stone blocks that rose three stories, with two-story wings sprawling on either side of the main house. A separate three-car garage and various other outbuildings in matching stone dotted the grounds around the house. “Who owns this place?” she asked. “It’s gorgeous.”
“It belongs to a friend of Pop’s. Somebody who wants him to partner in some business ventures.”
Business ventures. It sounded so prosperous and legitimate. Just another American capitalist doing his part to build a vital economy. Except that the Giardino family “businesses” always had the taint of the shady and illegal. Everything was shiny and respectable on the outside, but underneath was a layer of filth, too often tainted by blood.
They stopped at a stone guardhouse. A man dressed in black and openly cradling a semiautomatic rifle stooped to peer into the vehicle, then pressed a keypad to open the iron gate and waved them through.
A second armed man met them in front of the house and opened Anne’s door. “Mr. Giardino is waiting for you,” he said.
She smoothed the front of her coat, wishing she could as easily smooth down the butterflies in her stomach, and studied the entrance to the house, buying time. Stone columns rose three stories, supporting an arching portico in front of a fortune in stone and plate glass. She’d seen hotels that were less lavish. A massive chandelier made of hundreds of antlers strung with lights glowed from the top of the portico. A ten-foot oak-and-iron door stood open, providing a glimpse into a stone-floored foyer and more antler lighting.
Sammy moved up beside her and took her arm. “Come on,” he said. “We don’t want to keep Pop waiting.”
“Of course not.” In some ways, they’d both been waiting for this moment for the past year. There was no going back now, only forward. “Take no prisoners,” she whispered to herself as she let her brother lead her into the house, and into her future.
* * *
“THEY’VE JUST TURNED onto a paved drive. The number on a post says five-twenty-four.” Jake spoke softly into his phone, as if someone might overhear, though he was sitting in the battered Subaru alone, parked between a rusting ore cart and a leaning spruce, a quarter mile before the estate where Sammy had turned in.
“I’ve found it on our map.” Patrick’s voice was a low growl in Jake’s ear. “Property belongs to a developer out of Denver, Jason Castle. Our friends at the ATF have had him on their radar for a while now, though they’ve never been able to make anything stick.”
“I don’t care about him,” Jake said. “Can you get up there to look after Anne?”
“The place is guarded like a fortress. No way can we come in from the front.”
“What about the back?”
“It’s rugged country. You’d have to come in over the top of a mountain.”
“What about a helicopter?”
“You obviously think I have a bigger budget than I do.”
“Don’t tell me the government wouldn’t pull out all the stops to nail Sam Giardino.”
“We still don’t know for sure that he’s there,” Patrick pointed out.
“We know Anne’s there. And she could be in danger.”
“Then why did you let her go?”
“I had no right to stop her. Besides, what was I going to do—tie her up? Lock her in her room?”
“You could have tried harder to talk her out of going. You could have called me.”
“I did call you. I’m talking to you now.”
“Now that she’s gone, there’s not a lot I can do. You should have called me before.”
“And you really think you could have talked Anne out of doing something she’d made up her mind to do?”
Thompson didn’t answer. “What do you want me to do now?” he asked.
“I thought that was obvious. I want you to get a team in there to protect her.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It’s going to take a little time to pull things together. Meanwhile, you stay put. I’ll be in touch.” He broke the connection.
Jake set his phone on vibrate, then took an extra ammunition magazine from the glove box and shoved it into the pocket of his ski jacket. He stowed his gun in the other pocket, pulled on a stocking cap and gloves, and climbed out of the car. He could just make out the snow-covered ridge of rock that rose up behind the massive stone house. Giardino and his men would never expect someone to come at them from that direction. Nothing but a mountain goat was likely to traverse that approach and live to tell about it.
He leaned back into the car and retrieved a county map he’d purchased from a local outdoor adventure supplier. In addition to roads, it showed all the Jeep trails, cross-country ski routes and hiking paths in the area. Jake traced the broken line of a path that led to the top of the peak behind the house. There was no corresponding trail down the other side, so he’d have to make his own. He glanced toward the house again. Anne’s first call was due any minute now; he’d wait for it, then head for the mountains. One man against all of Giardino’s thugs wasn’t the best odds, but he’d have surprise on his side. And he’d promised Anne he’d protect her. It wasn’t a promise he could afford to break.
* * *
SAMMY LED ANNE into the house, past more guards, who stood like armed statues on either side of the door leading into a great room with a twenty-foot ceiling and three stories of glass that looked out onto soaring mountain peaks. Two more guards waited inside the room, and regarded Anne and Sammy with blank expressions.
Patrick and his men would never get in here, she thought. Even if they found this place, they’d never get past her father’s troops—not without an army of their own. She pushed aside her nervousness. She had to stay calm and keep thinking clearly. “Where’s Pop?” she asked, looking around the room.
“He’ll be here in a minute,” Sammy said.
The alarm on her phone chimed. “I need to call Jake,” she said. “If I don’t check in, he’ll be worried.”
“Go ahead.” Sammy nodded to her phone.
She hit the speed dial for Jake’s new cell. He picked up on the first ring. “I’m here and I’m fine,” she said. “This place is amazing.” That was the code phrase they’d settled on to reassure him that everything was, in fact, okay.
“Have you see your father?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Say goodbye now.” Sammy moved over to her—close enough to snatch the phone away.
She fought the urge to stick her tongue out and turn her back on her brother, the way she would have when they were both teenagers. But she and Sammy weren’t teenagers anymore, and as a grown man, second in command in the Giardino family, he had the power to do her real harm. “I’d better go now,” she told Jake. “I’ll call you again in half an hour.”
She slid the phone back into her pocket. Sammy sank into an oversize leather chair and motioned for her to sit also. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “Isn’t this a fantastic place?”
“Very nice.” She perched on the edge of a sofa that matched the chair. The room was full of overstuffed, oversize pieces, as if a race of giants lived here.
“Sammy! Do you have the lift tickets? I put them on the dresser and they’re not there.” An elfin woman with a cap of white-blond hair hurried into the room. She was dressed in a Nordic sweater, black leggings and short leather boots and was pulling on a pair of gloves as she spoke.
“Don’t worry about the lift tickets,” Sammy said. “You’re not going skiing today.”
“What do you mean I’m not—” She looked up, her voice trailing away in midsentence as she focused on Anne.
“What are you staring at?” Sammy asked. “Don’t you recognize your own sister-in
-law? Elizabeth is back with us.”
All color fled from the face of the woman—Sammy’s wife, Stacy. “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
“What kind of a question is that?” Sammy barked. “We’re her family. Why shouldn’t she be here?”
Stacy turned cold eyes on him. “I thought once she was lucky enough to get away, she’d be smart and never come back.” She turned and left the room, her boot heels hitting hard on the plank floors as she hurried toward the stairs.
Sammy mumbled an obscenity under his breath as he watched his wife leave the room. “You should be nicer to her,” Anne said—not for the first time.
“Why should I? She isn’t nice to me.”
“She’d probably respond better to kindness than cursing. And she’s your wife. She’s the mother of your son.”
He grunted, his usual response to an argument he couldn’t win.
The guards by the door snapped to attention, and Sammy rose to his feet. “What is it?” Anne asked, straining to see.
“Pop is here,” he said. “I hope you’re ready.”
Her heart pounded, and she wanted to shout that she wasn’t ready. But it was already too late. She stood also, and prepared to meet her father.
Chapter Eighteen
The trailhead that climbed the peak behind the estate where the Giardinos were hiding was a fifteen-minute drive from the road where Jake had been parked. He found the start of the trail without too much trouble, despite the snow. Fresh boot prints marked the route, and he wondered if they belonged to casual hikers or people who, like him, had come to check out the Giardino compound.
The trail was steep, but he powered up it, running until his lungs threatened to burst, then resting only long enough for his breathing to return to normal before he started up again. His legs, held together with pins in places, screamed in protest, but he ignored the pain. He had to get to Anne. No matter what Sammy said about her father being glad to see her, he didn’t trust the Giardinos. They were a family of killers, and he didn’t think they’d hesitate to kill one of their own.
After forty-five minutes of hard climbing, he came to the end of the trail at the top of the ridge, in a leveled-off area about five feet square, stamped clear of ice and snow. Someone had definitely spent time up here recently. Had Giardino sent some of his men up here to check out the approach? That would have been a smart move.
Or maybe the feds knew about this place and were keeping an eye on it. Thompson obviously knew more than he let on; Jake hoped the marshal would use his knowledge to save Anne.
He scanned the area below with binoculars. He counted four guards patrolling the perimeter, though they paid little attention to the back of the house, which was separated from a sheer natural rock wall by less than ten feet. The wall itself rose about twenty feet, and above that the mountain sloped back at what he judged to be a sixty-degree angle.
No doubt any scouts that had been sent up here to assess the situation had determined that approaching the house from this direction was impossible. Such an assault would require technical climbing equipment, not to mention nerves of steel.
Jake had been accused of having more nerve than sense, and he hadn’t come this far to give up. He turned his back to the house and carefully lowered himself over the edge, gripping what rock he could with his hands, and feeling with his feet for the next best hold. Loose rock, icy slush and chunks of snow rained down, and it was impossible to determine stable footing from useless debris in the mix of snow, mud and ice that covered this aspect of the mountain. But he managed to advance a few feet.
At this rate, it would take him hours to reach Anne—hours she might not have. He should have purchased technical climbing equipment from that shop in town. But then, he’d have needed lessons in how to use it. This wasn’t a skill the Bureau had bothered teaching in the classes he’d taken at Quantico.
It didn’t matter. He couldn’t see any other way to help Anne, so he kept on climbing, ignoring the pain and the fear and the voice inside his head that argued that no woman was worth risking his life this way.
But he didn’t listen to the voice. He had promised Anne he’d do whatever it took to keep her safe, and it was a promise he intended to keep.
* * *
SAM GIARDINO STRODE into the room, looking more like Sammy’s older brother than his father. Anne had imagined that the ordeal of a trial, prison time and escape, plus months evading recapture, would have aged her father, who was almost sixty. Instead, he looked younger than ever, his dark hair showing only a touch of gray at the temples, his tanned skin smooth and unlined. Hair dye and plastic surgery probably accounted for his youthful appearance, but whatever was behind the transformation, it sent a clear message that Sam Giardino was a long way from being counted out. He had the vigor and intelligence—and the power—of a much younger man.
Standing next to their father, Sammy looked soft and tired. His hair was thinning, his skin sallow, and he had the beginnings of a paunch, despite the powerful musculature of his chest and arms. Worse, Sammy lacked his father’s attitude of command. He kept his gaze fixed on his father, alert for clues as to Sam’s mood, and doing so gave him the attitude of a faithful dog who was trying to avoid being kicked.
Sam stopped halfway across the room, and studied his daughter with the burning blue gaze she remembered too well—a look that said if it was possible to read another person’s thoughts, he would do so. “Elizabeth, is that really you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked. She’d meant her tone to be defiant, but it came out in the voice of a lost little girl.
Then he opened his arms, the same gesture he’d used when she was a toddler heading toward him on unsteady legs, or a weeping preteen who’d been hurt by her first middle-school boyfriend. Those arms had been her refuge, a place of certain safety, and she could no more turn away from them now than she could then.
While Anne embraced her father, Sammy paced around them. “I tracked her down,” he said. “I knew you’d want to see her.”
Sam drew away, his expression solemn, but his eyes misty. “That was a good thing for you to do,” he said. “Go tell Angie we will have an extra person for lunch. And she should fix something special. We have a lot to celebrate.”
Sam’s back was to his son, so he didn’t see the scowl on Sammy’s face when his father addressed him like an errand boy. But after a hard look at the older man, Sammy left the room, presumably to talk to the cook.
With his arm still around Anne, Sam led her to a sofa. “Come here and tell me why you stayed away a year.”
The question was so preposterous she almost laughed out loud. “Dad, you swore you’d have me killed,” she said. “I didn’t think it was safe for me to come anywhere near you.”
“And you were probably right, those first few months.” His eyes met hers, the look chilling. “You did a very bad thing. An unforgivable thing. But a man gets weaker as he ages, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold on to a hatred of you. Not having you in my life was worse than being in prison.”
“Oh, Dad.” She hugged him close and kissed his cheek. She wanted to believe his words, but doubt still nagged at her. She drew back.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“A man came to my house last week—a man who used to work for you, DiCello. He tried to kill me.”
“Frank DiCello left my employment six months ago,” he said. “He went to work for an outfit in St. Louis, closer to his mother and sister.”
“Then you didn’t send DiCello after me?”
He looked genuinely puzzled. “No.”
“He was wearing a lift ticket from Telluride on his jacket, so I thought he was here with you.”
“I haven’t seen DiCello since August.”
�
�After the attack by DiCello, I hid out in a cabin in the National Forest,” she said. “Someone set the cabin on fire while I was inside, sleeping. Later, on our way here, someone tried to run my car off the road.”
“None of this has anything to do with me,” Sam said. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
This was the ultimate oath in the Giardino family, so Anne had no choice but to believe her father. “Then who is trying to kill me?” she asked.
Sammy returned. “Angie says lunch is in ten minutes,” he said.
Sam’s only reply was a nod. Tension stretched between father and son, worse than Anne remembered from before. She’d hoped, now that Sammy was older, her father would show him more respect, and give him more responsibility. But he still seemed to treat his only son like some low-level flunky.
The alarm on her phone beeped. “What was that?” Sam asked.
“I promised a friend I’d check in,” she said.
“She needs to call Jake West,” Sammy said. “You remember him, don’t you, Pop? Though I take it these days he goes by his real name, Jacob Westmoreland.”
“Jake West is dead,” Sam said.
“We believed so, but turned out he’s tougher than we thought.” Sammy gripped Anne’s shoulder, hard enough to make her flinch. “And it looks like he and Elizabeth here are still an item.”
“Is this true?” Sam asked.
“It’s true that Jake survived your attack on him. And that he came with me to Telluride.” She chose her words carefully, wary of sending her father into a rage.
“Elizabeth still thinks she’s in love with the guy,” Sammy goaded.
“Is this true?” he asked again, her father’s sharp gaze sending a shiver through her.
She opened her mouth to deny the words, but could not. Part of her did love Jake, even though she knew a relationship with him was impossible. “Jake is a good friend of mine,” she said, and hoped she wasn’t damning him with this faint praise.