Escape, Dead End

by David Antocci

  “I didn’t want to come back here, and it’s not exactly like we’re in the same situation. I appreciate what you did. I really do.”

  Donny had a lot to say but wasn’t about to give Abby the satisfaction of hearing it. He was pissed off, and rightfully so. Still, the conversation that continued in his head revealed more to him that he was willing to say aloud. What I’m sayin’ is that when you left, I lost you. I planned to get out, but how could I lose you and everything else in my life too? This is all I know. I could have left with you. I would have followed you anywhere in the world. But without you, what did I have? I dunno. It sounds stupid, but I just couldn’t lose everything.

  “Go ahead and pretend you’re upset,” Abby said, interrupting his thoughts, “but you’re helping me now, and I appreciate it. I owe you.”

  Donny nodded his head. “You know what? Call me a sucker for those beautiful brown eyes of yours, but I saw you, and there I was again, two years ago like not a day had passed. Of course I’m gonna help you. And what am I gonna lose? You killed Monte, my piece-of-shit boss. Rosso’s dead. You think I wasn’t ready for this to happen someday? I’ve got money stashed away, ID’s, whatever. I can pick up and go whenever I need to. With the old man sick these last few months, the FBI is hot and heavy to move in the second he kicks the bucket, and I wasn’t gonna stick around to see where the chips fall, if you know what I mean.”

  “Makes sense,” Abby said, drifting off a little, watching the road.

  After a few minutes, Donny chuckled and said, “Burner.”

  “What’s that?” Abby asked, not quite hearing him.

  “I just can’t get over it. A few years back, Bryce beat you within an inch of your life, and you did nothing about it. Now you’re some kind of commando, talking about burner phones, and taking out a dozen men like it’s nothing. Is this just all Trial Island?”

  “No,” Abby sighed. “No, the island training was all about survival. Well, mostly about survival. They figure it’s inevitable fights are going to break out, so they teach you a lot of self-defense. I was small and expected to get picked on, so I took it a step further and got some extra personal fight training.”

  “That was kind of obvious, watching the show. But where’s the rest come from? Where did you learn to shoot a gun?”

  Abby had gone back and forth in her head over the past couple hours on how much to trust Donny. She was skeptical of most people, but were it not for Donny getting her away from Bryce, she would have been dead by now. If there were anyone in the world she should trust, it would be him.

  “This guy JJ,” Abby said. “He’s my investigator. I didn’t just come here on a whim. While he’s been looking for Bryce since he shot me and murdered Eric, I’ve also had him training me on all this stuff. He’s ex-military, some sort of special ops,” Abby said, pretending she didn’t remember all the details. “I’ve been in rehab for my shoulder and leg, but on my own time I’ve done some personal rehab, learning to shoot guns and getting familiar with urban-combat stuff. Bryce went to great lengths to kill me. I intend to track him down and make sure he never gets that opportunity again.”

  Donny let out a whistle. “I’ve heard the phrase to beware the wrath of a woman scorned, but this is some next-level shit.” He took his eyes off the road to smile at her. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  Abby dozed off a bit as they drove, but her mind never truly shut off. She thought about the years of friendship she’d had with Donny. She remembered the first time she had really noticed him. It was the night Bryce snapped and tried to kill Ava as an infant. He beat the hell out of Abby as she wrapped herself around the baby to protect her. She always thought Bryce would have killed them both that night had Donny not burst into the room to tear him away.

  From that day on, Donny always watched. He was a silent protector, always nearby if needed. Abby grew very fond of him, and while she had never admitted as much to him, she had dreamt of running off with him on many of the nights Bryce didn’t come home.

  Ava absolutely adored him; she always lit up when he was around. He was the only positive male role model she ever had in her life. Children are an excellent judge of character, and going by Ava’s judgment, Donny was a keeper.

  He made all of the arrangements to get Ava out of the country. It had been so long since she had thought about how much he had done for her over the years, all for the love of a woman he knew he couldn’t have. The way he kissed her when they parted, there was no mistaking his feelings.

  Abby opened her eyes and placed her hand gently on his shoulder. He looked at her and smiled. It was a comfortable smile as if they hadn’t just gone the better part of two years without seeing each other. As if no time had passed at all. They were just friends on a road trip together.

  She wanted to say Thank you, thank you for everything, but she didn’t. No words were exchanged, but she knew that he knew.

  They pulled off the highway and into a small plaza with an all-night diner next to a twenty-four hour convenience store. Abby got three phones at the store and activated them over some much-needed comfort food in the back corner of the diner. She stuffed two in her pocket and handed one to Donny. “This is how we’ll communicate. I don’t want a stupid thing like a phone call to get us caught.”

  He nodded and smiled. “You’re the boss.”

  “Don’t placate me,” she said seriously.

  He grinned. He wasn’t placating her—he meant it.

  Abby excused herself to the parking lot to make a phone call. As she dialed the number from memory, she hoped he would be able to do something with the info she had.

  JJ’s groggy voice came from the other end of the line. “Yeah? Who’s this?”

  “I was able to get some information,” she said excitedly.

  “Abby, do you ever call at a normal hour?”

  ***

  Donny watched Abby through the window. She was having an animated conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line. He couldn’t believe she was back, yet he wasn’t surprised either. Something inside always told him he would see her again.

  Whether he wanted to admit it or not, there was truth to what he had been thinking earlier: he didn’t get out when she did because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing everything. It wasn’t the mob life he was afraid of losing—it was her.

  He had never been truly in with the family, even though his dad had been part of the Rosso operation for years. Donny always felt like an outsider looking in. He tried going in another direction entirely, attending college to study film, but that was a career with a tough road ahead. He realized it early, and when he ran into a little financial trouble, he took some time off to work for his dad and make a little cash. One thing led to the next, and all these years later, he was still in the game.

  He saw the life as a means to an end, but always felt like he could walk away at any point. At least until he met Abby. He was drawn to her and wasn’t entirely sure why. Her looks would have been an obvious place to start, but he knew it was more than that. He felt a connection with her the first time he saw her, even though she didn’t seem to notice him until that night he pulled Bryce off her.

  Maybe it was because she was an outsider, too, caught up in this game and not sure what to do about it.

  Now, she was a force to be reckoned with. He was proud that she had taken control of her life. No one would screw her over again.

  He loathed Bryce more now than he ever had in the past. The bastard kidnaped a child—his own daughter—in order to kill her mother. He remembered that sweet little girl. The last time he saw her was at the airport when they put her on a plane to Canada so she could stay at Abby’s sister’s house. She wore a cute pink beret and her favorite navy blue dress. Abby was completely inconsolable after Ava left, and a short time later had just about completely cut him off. He couldn’t blame her then or now. She had to protect herself emotionally and physically from everyone around her.

&n
bsp; The thought of that adorable little girl, likely tied up somewhere with his monster of a former boss, enraged him. The guys back at the house had obviously pieced together what he had done as far as helping Abby. He had hidden his involvement in helping her get out before, but there was no doing that now. He couldn’t go back.

  ***

  “That’s all you’ve got?” JJ asked.

  “For now. Bryce is laundering money upstate. No info on where.”

  JJ thought about it. “Well, it’s got to be upstate New York. I mean, I guess it could be somewhere else, but I don’t know any other place that people refer to as upstate, do you?”

  “That was my thought, too.”

  “Well, that narrows it down, but it doesn’t give me too much. It’s not like I was even looking in that direction. I’ve never had any indication before that he was in New York.”

  “Well, let’s look at the money laundering, then. What do you have on that?”

  JJ sighed. “There’s a lot of money going through the family, Abby. I don’t have a lead on all of it, especially as I’ve never had any indication that’s where we should be looking.” He thought a moment. “It does tell us where to look, though.”

  “Where’s that?”

  JJ was scrolling through the notes on his tablet on the other end. “Hold on a second... here it is. John Venzo. His name came up a bunch in the financials. He’s got an accounting firm off Taylor Street, in Chicago, near the University of Illinois. Small place; looks like he’s the only employee. A ton of cash goes through there, and all the businesses link back to Rosso in some way every time. I’m sure he’s on the Feds’ radar, too. It looks like he does the books for the family. He probably doesn’t know where Bryce is, or even that he’s out there somewhere, but if he’s laundering, then the cash records are going to be there.”

  Abby was already planning in her head. “How tough do you think this will be to find?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve got more stuff at the office, so let me go in and dig around. I’ll call you back in an hour.”

  “You can’t, I’m calling you on a burner. I don’t want anyone tracing you to me, or what went down here tonight.”

  JJ was silent on the other end for a moment, knowing full well what Abby was capable of. “Who gave you this info about Bryce being upstate?”

  “Rosso.”

  “Abby, how in the world did you...”

  “Isn’t a little mystery better than me just telling you? Watch the news in the morning if you really want to know what went down. You’ll be proud, that’s all I have to say.”

  “I can be out there first thing in the morning. It looks like I can catch an 8:30 flight, touching down at noon. Let me come out and give you a hand. These are dangerous guys. You could use the help.”

  “No, JJ. I’ve got no time to waste. Every minute that goes by is another minute Ava is with that lunatic, in God-knows-what condition. Besides, I’ve got someone helping me. I’m OK.”

  “You do? Who? Who is helping you?”

  Abby looked at Donny through the window, sitting back at the table seemingly lost in thought himself. “An old friend. Don’t worry, he’s someone I can trust.”

  “Alright, well, be careful. Call me if you get stuck; we’ll reassess.”

  “Will do. Thanks, JJ.”

  Abby went back inside and sat across from Donny, leaning over the table. “You know who this John Venzo guy is?”

  Donny thought a second. “Yeah, he does the books. He’s got a place in the old neighborhood. Why?”

  “That’s where we’re going next.”

  12

  HOURS LATER, in the middle of the night, Abby and Donny had seemingly gone through every piece of paper in the accountant’s office. For all of their efforts, they had found nothing.

  They had flipped through every folder in every file cabinet. Invoices and ledgers for an endless list of supply companies, restaurants, and construction businesses. Everything looked legitimate as far as their untrained eyes could tell, and nothing indicated a business in New York, upstate or otherwise.

  “Do you think it would be on the computer?” Abby speculated out loud. They hadn’t touched the computer yet; beyond waking it up to find it was—predictably— password protected.

  “No,” Donny said. “Nothing illegal ever makes it onto a computer with the family. Rosso never trusted them, and he’s probably right about that. Venzo’s got to have another set of books here. I mean, the feds could ransack this place just as easily as us, and they’d know what they’re looking for. Anything that could be tied to laundering is not going to be easily accessible. This is just all the legit-looking stuff. It’s not going to be on a computer. It’s going to be handwritten—nothing that can be tracked or hacked.”

  “Well, where do we find it, then?”

  Donny sighed. “Honestly, we could probably tear this place up from the floorboards and not find what we’re looking for.” He shook his head, looking around.

  Abby checked her watch; it was three in the morning. The office would presumably open around eight, give or take. “You think he’ll be here in the morning? With what happened last night?”

  Donny thought about it. “That’s a good question. Rosso is dead. Franco is dead. Mikey G. is dead. Even Monte is dead. Shit, they’re all dead. The one that’s got me worried is Jerry.”

  “Who’s Jerry?”

  “Monte’s number two. He was in our crew. I guess he’s in charge now. At least he’ll try to take over what’s left. I can guarantee two things: he’ll be combing the city for you—us—and if he finds us, we’d better be ready. He’s violent and reactionary. Doesn’t really think things through, so I doubt his first order of business is going to be to call the accountant to fill him in on what went down. I’m thinking it’s a safe bet that it’ll be business as usual. At least first thing. Mob guys are worse than hairdressers when it comes to gossip, though, so it won’t be noon before everyone knows what went down.”

  “That and they’ll see it on the news,” she said with a smile.

  “I don’t know about that. These mob guys are pretty tight-lipped. I mean, yeah, there’s four dead bodies, but I bet Rosso’s the only one that will hit the news. They’ll take care of the others themselves. It’s not like the guys we left behind are going to call the police or something,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Well, maybe they didn’t.” Abby had a devilish smile about her.

  Donny gave her a quizzical look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Before we left, I took a phone off the hook in the kitchen and dialed 9-1-1.”

  “You what?”

  “Like you said, none of them would do it, and I did sort of gift wrap the whole place. Should be easy work for the detectives. Plus, it should keep them off our backs for a few days at least. Enough time to do what I’ve got to do and get outta here.”

  “Well, you’re probably right—they’ll see it on the news. Let’s hope our guy doesn’t watch the early broadcast before he comes in.”

  “What about the accountant? Do you know him?”

  “No, but I know of him. Met him twice, but I don’t know too much about him. He’s sort of on the outskirts of the family. Keeps his nose and hands clean. He’s got to. If he got pinched by the cops or the feds, that would be bad news for everyone. He’s Rosso’s distant nephew or something.”

  Abby walked over to the desk and took a gun out of the top drawer she had found there earlier. It was old school; a revolver, loaded. She emptied the bullets and put them in her pocket. She went back to Donny who was still fruitlessly flipping through some papers. “Here’s what I’m thinking: we have a couple hours. Let’s get some shuteye in the back room and have a little conversation with John in the morning.”

  The two of them spent the next thirty minutes going through the office, making sure that everything was put back exactly where they found it. There was a back room behind the main office with a microwave and a coffee pot on a
small table pushed up against the wall, and a collection of old mismatched file boxes on the wall facing the door.

  Abby curled into a ball on the floor next to the boxes. It had been more than twenty-four hours since she got the panicked call from her sister that Ava was missing, and she had been running high on adrenaline ever since. For the past hour, her body had been fighting her every effort at thought or movement, and she was ready to crash.

  Donny took off his jacket and laid it over her to use as a blanket, then sat on the floor next to her, leaning against the boxes so he could watch the door, just in case.

  “Thanks,” Abby said. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

  “I’m good. I can’t anyway. I’ll keep an eye out—you get some rest.”

  “Thanks again,” Abby said, adjusting herself to put an arm under her head for support as she lay on the floor.

  “Here,” he said, patting his leg. “You can use me for a pillow.”

  Abby looked up and thought about declining, but Donny’s smile made her remember the comfort that one feels with a trusted friend. She laid her head on his thigh, enjoying a little cushion for her neck and the warmth of his skin that she felt through his jeans. Within seconds, she was asleep.

  Donny rested his left hand on her shoulder and leaned his head back against the boxes, watching the door. In his right hand, he held his gun.

  ***

  With her eyes still closed, Abby stretched out on the floor and inhaled the intoxicating aroma of a fresh brewed pot of coffee. She smiled, opening her eyes, almost forgetting where she was for just a moment. Donny sat on the floor next to her, also asleep.

  Wait a second...

  “Donny,” she whispered harshly, shaking him awake.

  He opened his eyes, rubbing the sand from them. “What time is it?”

  Abby held her finger to her lips, giving him a silent shhh.

  She listened but heard nothing other than the slow drip of the coffee pot finishing its brewing cycle.

  Donny realized what was happening and stood slowly, edging his way to the door and peeking through to see who was out there. He saw no one from his vantage point but couldn’t see the entire room. He looked back at Abby and shook his head. “Nothing,” he whispered.