by Unknown
“What the hell, Eee?” he asked. It was then that Phoebe saw that he was holding her Glock. Dunn must’ve put it down when he’d shucked off his jeans and boots and shirt, and Aaron had it now. He held it like he knew how to use it, which wasn’t comforting at all. “You think she works for the Dellarosas, so you bring her here …?”
“It really doesn’t matter who she is or who she works for,” Dunn said, wringing out his shorts as best he could.
“Damn straight, it doesn’t matter,” Aaron retorted. “She could be motherfucking Mother Teresa, and you still shouldn’t’ve brought her here. The more people who know where we are, the more likely one of them will tell someone who’ll tell someone else, who’ll pass along the info to that motherfucking maniac who—”
“Probably already knows exactly where you and Shelly live,” Dunn calmly finished for him. “Aaron, it doesn’t matter who Phoebe is or who owns her. It doesn’t matter if she does legal work for Manny Dellarosa or washes his dishes or even sucks his dick. Or does all three simultaneously. Because Manny knows. He knows, because I made a deal with him to keep you safe. He’s been keeping Davio in line.”
Aaron was silent at that, just staring at Dunn.
Phoebe raised her hand, her need to set the facts straight winning out over her desire not to upset the man who held her handgun. “For the record,” she said, “I’ve never so much as met Manny or Davio Dellarosa, let alone—”
“Since when?” Aaron interrupted her to ask his brother. The expression on his face was terrible, and Phoebe closed her mouth, focusing instead on becoming as small and invisible as possible. Just as she’d had no desire to drown in someone’s backyard swimming pool, she hated the bitter irony of being shot and killed with her own deadly weapon. “This deal you made …?”
“I contacted Manny a year ago,” Dunn told his brother quietly. “When we realized that Pauline was going to die. I knew Davio would find her from her death certificate, if not from her medical records. And if he found her, he’d find you.”
Okay, wait, who was Pauline? Dunn had mentioned a Francine, during his attempt to get in touch with his former teammates. But as Phoebe looked from Dunn to his brother and back, she decided now was not the time to ask.
Aaron, meanwhile, was staring at Dunn. “Jesus,” he breathed. “What did you do? Are you actually working for Manny Dellarosa?”
“I am,” Dunn responded, holding the other man’s gaze. “At least I was. Before today’s shit hit the fan.”
“Jesus, Eee,” Aaron said.
“I did what I had to. And it was working. The deal I made. But it all got royally fucked up today.”
When Martell Griffin had handed him that so-called Get Out of Jail Free card. But the truth was, nothing was ever entirely free, was it? Especially not if Manny and Davio Dellarosa now believed that Ian had information that could hurt their family.
“Right here, right now, we’ve gotta go,” Dunn continued. “You’ve gotta call Shel and go pick up your kid. We’ll meet at the contact point and regroup. I’ll fix this—I will. I can. I just need a little time. And a chance to talk to Manny.” He glanced over at Phoebe at that, and she shook her head.
Despite what he believed, she did not have access to Manny Dellarosa. Although, maybe her law firm did. And wasn’t that a creepy thought?
“So everything we did, everything you put in place to keep us safe and hidden was, what?” Aaron was asking his brother. “Just one of your bullshit con jobs to keep us on a tight leash, while you sold your soul to the devil? God, I knew it—all that time. I fucking knew it!”
“No,” Dunn said, as he stripped off his wet boxers. He’d apparently decided not to put his dry jeans on over them. And yes, now he was standing there buck naked, and completely unselfconscious about it. “The secrecy you maintained was insurance. Plus, I wanted to be sure that you kept your head down. The Dellarosas aren’t the only ones looking for you—I’m sure you remember. And FYI, I didn’t sell my soul—I just sold a little bit of my time.”
As Phoebe watched through her eyelashes, Dunn pulled on his jeans, commando.
“Go inside, but be careful,” he commanded Aaron. “I doubt they made it over here before me, but still … Get your go-bags, and while you’re at it, grab something for Phoebe to change into, will you?” He threw another glance at her.
She turned her head and quickly put on her best I absolutely wasn’t looking at your naked ass face, instead watching Aaron as he limped across the patio and over to the slider that had a keyhole.
He grimly unlocked the door, but he turned before he went into the house, and he said, “It was my time, too. That you sold to Manny. Or maybe you didn’t think I’d notice when you vanished off the fucking face of the fucking earth, you fucking douchebag.”
He didn’t stick around to hear Dunn’s rebuttal, which was a quiet but heartfelt and drawn out “Shhhhhhit.”
Phoebe cleared her throat, twice, three times. But when she spoke, her voice was still froggy. “I could, um, actually use a rest-room,” she said. “Before we get back in the car?”
“We don’t have time. You should’ve gone when you were in the pool,” Dunn retorted.
She laughed her disbelief. “Oh, is that why you threw me in?”
“No,” he said. “I had to make sure that if you were wearing a wire, it shorted out.”
A wire.
“Unlike you, I don’t work for Manny Dellarosa,” Phoebe said. “Or his brother Davio or his son Vincent”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“or his nephew what’s-his-name—Berto—or any other stray Dellarosas.”
“Which is what you’d say if you did work for them,” he retorted, throwing her own words back at her. Paraphrased, yes, but close enough.
“That’s true,” she said, which surprised him a little—she could tell. “Your brother said—and okay, tangent! There’s a warrant out for Aaron’s arrest in connection to an unsolved murder. As your lawyer, I have to advise you to convince your brother to surrender to the police—”
“That’s not going to happen,” Dunn said. “Davio Dellarosa wants him dead. If D.A. goes into the system for any reason at all, the Dellarosas have the connections and manpower to reach him, and I’ll be burying him by Friday.”
Wait a minute. “Aaron’s nickname is D.A.?”
“Double a,” he told her as he sat down on the lounge chair to tie up the laces of his boots, “r, o, n?”
She got it. “So Shelly’s his …?”
“Spouse,” Dunn said, which was kind of a weird word choice, similar to saying vehicle for car.
“And who’s Pauline?”
“One of Shelly’s half sisters,” he told her.
“And she died?” Phoebe asked.
“Last year,” Dunn confirmed.
“So who’s Francine?” Phoebe asked.
“Shel’s other half sister,” Dunn said. “The younger, not dead one.”
“Big family,” Phoebe said.
“Not really.”
“I’m an only child,” she reminded him. “So, rewind back to your brother. Aaron. Davio Dellarosa wants him dead because …?”
“It’s a long, ugly story,” Dunn said, “and we need to get moving. Besides, I took care of that.”
“By making a deal, with Manny,” Phoebe said. “You went to jail, and Manny made his brother, Davio, stay away from your brother, Aaron.”
“That’s how it worked.”
“So you became, what?” Phoebe asked. “Manny Dellarosa’s Northport prison inside man?”
“No.” Dunn was absolute. “I wouldn’t do that. I was serving time for Manny’s fuckup of a son, Vincent.”
Whoa. And suddenly it all made sense. It was Vincent Dellarosa who got drunk and trashed the cars in that bar parking lot. But because Ian Dunn had made a deal to protect Aaron and his family, he’d confessed and then pled guilty to the crime.
But then it didn’t make sense. “If you were simply doing Vincent’s time,” Phoebe p
ointed out, “then you should’ve been turning cartwheels at the idea of getting out early.”
“It’s not that simple,” Dunn told her.
“Try me,” she said.
There was more to this—she could see it in Dunn’s eyes. But he shook his head. “Imagine if you were Manny Dellarosa, and you had a deal with me—an illegal deal—”
“I’m highly aware of the illegality,” Phoebe said. “And as your lawyer, I have to advise—”
“Shh,” Dunn said. “You’re Manny. And I’m me. And I don’t contact you. I just suddenly walk out of the prison, a free man. Aren’t you going to wonder exactly what I know about you and your fuckup of a son, Vincent? What deal went down between me and the authorities? FYI, Vince currently has a homicide trial on his to-do list. I’m betting this time, Manny’s not finding any takers to plead guilty for him. The death penalty really gets in the way of that.”
“So you think the Dellarosas are going to believe that you have incriminating information about Vincent,” Phoebe said. “And come after you.” Just as Martell had predicted. She cleared her throat. “Then the best thing to do is to get your family to safety—”
“Which is exactly what I’m doing.”
“I can help,” she told him. “I can contact Martell—”
Dunn had already started to laugh. “Deliver my brother to the FBI, who will immediately arrest him and charge him with murder, or even manslaughter? I don’t think so.”
“Did he do it?” Phoebe asked.
“Kill the guy? Hell, yeah. He protected himself—and Shelly—from a hit man that Davio sent to waste them.”
“If it was self-defense,” Phoebe started.
“It was.”
“Then it should be easy enough to clear up,” she countered.
“It should be,” he agreed. “But it’s not. Because the authorities can’t tell their own asses from their elbows, and while they take their sweet time piecing together the facts in the case, Aaron will be sitting in jail where Davio Dellarosa will end him. So, no. I’m not putting him in that kind of danger.”
When she opened her mouth to keep arguing, he stopped her.
“Look, it’s not going to happen,” Dunn said. “I don’t trust you, I don’t trust Martell. And I sure as hell don’t trust the FBI. So I’m going to take care of my brother my way. Same way I’ve done ever since he was two, when our mother ODed. I’m not stopping now.”
Sweet Jesus. Phoebe lowered her voice. “Aaron doesn’t know you were in prison, does he?” From what Aaron had said, Ian had just mysteriously disappeared.
Dunn glanced toward the house, as if making sure Aaron wasn’t within earshot before he sighed heavily. With his elbows on his knees, his hands were up on the back of his neck as if he had a headache. “No.”
Apparently Dunn had disappeared right after making contact with Manny. He’d obviously stayed away from his family from that moment on—maybe to keep them from talking sense into him, maybe out of his desire to keep them safe. Phoebe could imagine the months’ worth of meetings that his deal with Manny had triggered—and not just with Manny’s screwup of a son to get the facts of the crime straight so that Dunn could make a believable confession, but also with the lawyers hired to guide him through the maze that was the Florida legal system. There would have been at least one deposition, a meeting to hammer out the deal in exchange for that guilty plea, a sentencing hearing—all before the start of that eighteen-month sentence.
“Mind taking my Glock away from him before you drop that anvil on his head?” she asked.
Dunn smiled slightly at that. But his smile faded. “Do me a favor,” he said quietly. “And if you’re working for them—the Dellarosas—just tell me you are. And then help me get in touch with Manny, so I can clear this shit up.”
“I’m not working for the Dellarosas,” Phoebe said for what felt like the hundredth time. “Nor am I working for the government agency who hired Martell Griffin to convince you to save those kids. I’m your lawyer.”
He was silent, just sitting there, gazing at her. When he finally spoke, he said, “I’m going to be really disappointed when you change your clothes, if there’s a wire under there.”
“If you think I’m going to change my clothes,” she said, “right here on the pool deck, in front of you, you’re sadly mistaken.”
Dunn shrugged expansively. “Hey, totally up to you. I asked Aaron to get you something dry to wear because I didn’t think you’d want to mess up the leather interior of your new car. If you don’t care about ruining it …”
“I need a bathroom,” she reminded him.
“And I need a mango lemonade with a little umbrella in it, while I sit with my feet up on the beach at Coki Point in St. Thomas, looking out at the Caribbean for about three weeks straight.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am, too,” he countered. “I’m not going to let you go into Aaron and Shelly’s bathroom and take whatever wire you’re wearing and flush it or hide it or eat it or—”
“If I were wearing a wire, edible or otherwise,” she countered, “then whoever was monitoring the transmissions lost contact with me—abruptly—when you pushed me into the pool. So where are they? Where’s my backup, rushing to my rescue?”
Dunn didn’t respond—apparently he didn’t have an answer for that. And the silence of the afternoon worked beautifully as her Exhibit A. Moments ago, there’d been birds chirping merrily from a nearby ficus tree, but even they were now still. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.
As Dunn glanced up at the tree, his eyes narrowed slightly.
“I mean, either I’m an asset or I’m not, right?” Phoebe continued. “Or—here it comes, wait for it … I’m telling you the truth when I say that I was never wearing any kind of wire in the first place.”
It was then that Dunn launched himself forward off the lounge chair and directly at her, on top of her, pushing her with the full force of his XXL body, back into the pool.
Phoebe felt herself shouting with alarm and surprise, but the sound of her voice was drowned out by some kind of roar. And it was only right before the water once again closed over her head that she saw what looked like sprays of dust from the pool deck and from the wall of the house. And she realized instantly what that was.
Someone was shooting at them.
The birds had gone silent because someone was out there, and Dunn had realized it and saved their lives. That roar was gunfire, the sprays of dust were from bullets digging into the stone and stucco.
She grabbed her glasses off her face and held her breath as best she could as Dunn dragged her with him, across to the far side of the sparkling water, where they’d be sheltered from the bullets by the wall of the pool. He kept her tightly against him as he pulled her up and out of the water just a little bit, just enough so that she could breathe with her head tipped back.
Her jacket was too heavy. It was pulling her down again, and she clawed to get it off while still clutching her glasses in one hand. Dunn helped her, tearing at her shirt as well—taking the opportunity to see for himself that she wasn’t wearing a wire, shorted out or otherwise.
Unless, of course, it was hidden in her pants. But he didn’t try to get those off of her.
“Aaron!” he was bellowing, “I need cover! At least one shooter in the tree at ten o’clock!” He swept his hair out of his face with the hand that he wasn’t using to keep her anchored to him, and drops of water sprayed her as he said far more quietly but no less intensely, “When he lays down fire—big breath and a push. When we get to the other side, I’ll help you out of the pool. Then we’re heading for the house, for the door Aaron used. Keep moving, even when you get inside—get back, away from the glass, head for the front of the house, stay down, got it?”
Phoebe nodded, slipping her glasses back on. “I want my Glock back.”
Dunn smiled at that, just briefly. “Yeah, I want your Glock back, too. Aaron!”
“Eee!” came his brother
’s answering shout from the house. “Go!”
Big breath and a push—but Phoebe did little more than draw in a lungful of air and use one hand to keep her glasses on her nose, before Dunn used his tree-trunk-like legs to push off the pool wall and propel them underwater and back toward the house. She just clung to him, along for the ride.
When they came up to the surface, she could hear Aaron laying down covering fire which meant—please God—that whoever had been shooting at them was now focused on ducking and not being killed, and was thus unable to shoot back.
Or at least she hoped so, because she was about to be a great big target.
Dunn was up and out of the pool first, quickly reaching down to grab her by both arms and pull her up, too. He could have left her there—of that she was well aware—but he didn’t. She barely had her feet beneath her before they were running full-speed for the house, with Dunn shielding her as best he could.
That wasn’t just her Glock making that racket—Dunn’s brother was firing a second weapon, too, from the second-story window of the house. He was probably doing it double-fisted, as befitted his super-macho action-star vibe.
Dunn pushed her through the slider, but her wet feet slipped the moment she stepped onto the tile floor and she lost traction—except she didn’t need it because Dunn was pushing her down, diving with her, somehow managing to be both beneath her and on top of her, skidding with her onto the floor as whoever was out there started shooting again.
And this time the bullets took out the glass doors, shattering them with a crash.
But they were still sliding, and then Dunn was pulling her with him again, scrambling farther into the house, past the kitchen island and into the main part of the great room, heading—or so Phoebe believed—for the front door.
He’d somehow managed to scoop her bag from the pool deck, which was good because it held the keys to her car. Although, shit! “The key fob’s wet,” Phoebe said, and the look Dunn gave her would’ve been comical under other circumstances, because it was clear he had no idea why she’d told him that.