The door leading from the garage into the kitchen opened, and a man walked in with a duffel bag over his shoulder. His blond hair was cut short, his blue eyes questioning when he spotted Jay standing in the wide kitchen.
“Matt.” CJ stood up and moved from the living room into the kitchen. “We have company.”
“Is everything all right?” Matt looked at his wife inquisitively. Jay considered how he might feel if he got home after midnight to find a strange man standing in his kitchen. He noted that Matt’s expression held concern rather than suspicion.
“Not exactly.” CJ nodded toward the living room, where Carina was now standing. “There was a shooting outside of Carina’s apartment today. I hope you don’t mind, but I told her that she and Bianca can stay here while we’re gone.”
“Of course that’s fine with me.” Matt nodded a greeting to Carina. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”
CJ motioned to Jay. “Matt, this is Jay Wellman. He’s Pete’s son.”
“Good to meet you.” Matt dropped his duffel bag on the kitchen table and extended his hand.
“You too.” Jay’s eyes narrowed as he tried to place why Matt looked so familiar. Then recognition dawned. “Wait a minute. Your dad is Senator Whitmore from Virginia.”
Matt nodded, surprisingly unaffected by the observation. “That’s right.”
“And your brother is dating Kendra Blake, the singer?”
Again Matt nodded.
“And Amy Miller?”
Now confusion flickered over Matt’s face. “She’s my sister.”
“Talk about a small world.” Jay shook his head, a look of amazement crossing his face.
“I’m not following. How do you know my sister?”
“I work with her. Your brother-in-law is my commanding officer.”
“Wait a minute.” CJ shifted to look at him with wide eyes. “You’re a Navy SEAL?”
Jay sensed everyone’s surprise. He hesitated briefly, his eyes sweeping over to meet Carina’s before he nodded and said, “Yeah. I’m a SEAL.”
18
Carina ran a hand through her hair, trying not to think about how little sleep she had gotten before the alarm clock went off this morning. She had gone to bed right after Matt had arrived home last night, but even her exhaustion hadn’t been able to help her shut off the thoughts racing through her mind.
The memory of gunfire aimed in her direction continued to punctuate her thoughts, as did her newfound knowledge that Jay was a Navy SEAL. Beneath it all was the constant concern that Nick could be right, that someone might really know who she was and be planning to use that information against her or her sisters.
She deliberately averted her eyes from the mirror hanging on the wall in the guest room. She didn’t need to look to know that her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep and that no amount of makeup was going to disguise the tough night she had experienced. She probably looked like a teenager with her jeans and T-shirt, her dark hair pulled back, away from her face, but she simply didn’t have the energy to get ready for work yet.
She felt like her brain was in a fog as she tried to think through her schedule for the day. With the events of yesterday, she wanted to stay with Bianca through her early morning practice. She had already decided to push back her morning appointment at work so she could come back and change after she dropped her sister off at school. She hesitated at that thought, wondering if perhaps she should keep Bianca home just in case Nick tried to pay her a visit, or worse, snatch her from school to force her hand. Of course, practice could be just as risky.
Maybe CJ would be able to give her some advice on what to do. After all, she had lived through threats far worse than just her family trying to get her to come home. Carina slipped her shoes on and grabbed her laptop case, anticipating trying to get some semblance of work done this morning at Bianca’s practice. She checked her weapon, making sure it was within easy reach, and then stepped out of her temporary bedroom into the short hallway that led to CJ’s living room. To her surprise, she heard several voices coming from the kitchen despite the early hour.
When she emerged into the living room, she looked across the wide room to see CJ standing at the kitchen counter, serving breakfast to Bianca and Pete. Matt and Jay were sitting at the kitchen table talking quietly.
“What’s going on?” Carina’s eyes swept the room, finally landing on Pete. “Pete, what are you doing here?”
“Eating.” He finished off a piece of toast and pushed back from the table. “I’d better get going.” He nodded at CJ. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome,” CJ said before turning her attention to Carina. “Can I fix you something, Carina? I have some scrambled eggs and toast, but I can make you something else if you want.”
Carina watched Pete exchange good-byes with Jay and head for the front door before she managed to pull herself back to CJ’s question. Rather than respond, she shook her head. “What’s going on here?” she repeated. “Why is everyone up so early? And why was Pete here?”
Jay stood up, and Carina didn’t miss the silent exchange between CJ and him. “My dad was here to drop off a workout for Bianca. CJ is going to coach her here this morning, and Matt and I were just going over some details for while they’re gone.”
“Bianca’s practicing here this morning?”
Jay nodded. “We don’t want you anywhere that your friend Nick can reacquire you.”
“Reacquire me?” Carina repeated, feeling like she had just been dropped into the middle of a bad action flick.
“Nick has been by the pool a couple of times, and we have to assume he’s still looking for you.”
Even though Jay was verbalizing her thoughts, something about his take-charge attitude put her on edge. “I already told you he wasn’t after me or Bianca.”
“You also told me you don’t know why he’s really here,” Jay reminded her. “Until we know what he’s doing in Miami, we need to take precautions.”
“What about when Bianca goes to school?”
“I’m working on that.”
Carina let out a frustrated sigh as Jay pulled a chair out for her and CJ slid a plate of food in front of her.
“Sit down and eat,” CJ said gently. Then she turned to Bianca. “Come on, Bianca. Let’s get your practice started.”
Bianca grabbed another piece of toast off of her plate with one hand and an oversized beach towel with the other. “Any chance you have some more of those chocolate chip cookies you made on Sunday?”
CJ rolled her eyes and led the way outside as Carina reluctantly sat down.
As soon as the back door closed behind CJ and Bianca, Matt spoke. “Carina, I’ve asked Jay to stay here at the house with you while we’re out of town.”
“What?” She shifted to look at him, immediately noticing the concern in his voice. “Why?”
“We’re worried about you.” He motioned toward Jay. “And I’ll feel a lot more comfortable having someone with Jay’s training here to make sure no one manages to follow you here.”
Carina sighed. “I shouldn’t even be staying at your house. I don’t want to take a chance that your family will be put in danger.”
“CJ and I understand what it’s like to know that someone is after you and feel like you’ll never be safe again,” Matt reminded her. “Jay and I both think you should stay here for a few days to give Jay the chance to do some digging on this Nick guy.”
Too tired to argue, Carina nodded.
“Any chance you can work from here today?” Jay asked, motioning toward her laptop case.
“I have a shipment coming into the store in Coral Gables today that I will need to verify, but I was planning on pushing it back to this afternoon. Although with everything that’s going on, maybe I’ll just see if the store manager can take care of it for me.”
“Great.” Jay motioned to her plate. “After you eat some breakfast, we can start digging into Nick’s background so we can figure out what he wants w
ith you.”
* * *
Jay jotted down notes on a legal pad as Carina outlined the players for the Chicago mafia, or the Outfit, as she called them. He was amazed that her memory was so keen after ten years away from that life, but she described family members, neighbors, and friends with detail that would have led him to believe she had visited with them last week.
He also didn’t miss the way her voice changed when she spoke of her grandfather. She was trying hard to act like the news of his death hadn’t affected her, but Jay knew better. Though Carina clearly didn’t approve of her family’s illegal activities, Jay could see in the way she spoke of them that her past had contained a decent number of positive memories.
Matt and CJ had left for the airport with their kids almost an hour before. His father had returned shortly after his practice had concluded to escort Bianca to school. He had already made arrangements with a friend of his to cover his early afternoon practice so he could stay focused on keeping Bianca safe.
Jay knew it was up to Carina and him to put the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out why Nick Baldino was really here. He looked down at the list of names Carina had already given him and considered his options.
If he was at his office in Virginia Beach, running background checks on these people would be simple. Unfortunately, research from the Whitmores’ home would be limited at best, and most certainly inadequate. He considered his options and ultimately decided he was going to have to call in a favor.
“Out of the names on this list, who do you think would be in charge now that your father is in prison?”
“My uncle,” Carina answered without hesitation. “It’s hard to say who is in his inner circle right now, but I have to believe Nick is one of them since he’s here and says he’s representing the family.”
Jay nodded and pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of the cargo shorts he wore. “I’m going to see if I can call in a favor to get some background information on these guys.”
“Okay.” Carina motioned to her laptop. “In that case, I’m going to see if I can get some work done.”
“If you need to use the Internet, let me know before you try to connect.”
“I do need to use the Internet to log into my company’s website.” She looked at him inquisitively.
Jay reached his hand out and slid her laptop closer to him. “I’ll get you on.”
“I think I’m capable of logging in by myself.”
“You’re capable of logging in so that someone could track your location.” Jay nodded without looking up. He typed in several keys, not looking up for several minutes. Then he slid the laptop back toward her. “You should be okay now, but try not to stay on longer than thirty minutes.”
“Why? What did you do?”
“Let’s just say that if someone tries to track your signal, they’ll think you’re in Tampa Bay.” Jay shrugged and his lips curved up slightly. “Or Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong?”
Jay pointed at her computer screen. “The clock is ticking.”
Carina stared at him for a moment before shaking her head and pulling up her company’s website.
Jay stood up and walked into the living room before he pulled up Seth’s number and pressed the talk button.
“Hey, Jay. How’s your vacation so far?”
“Interesting,” Jay said, his eyes shifting to look at Carina. “I need a favor.”
“Sure. What do you need?”
“I have a friend here who is having some trouble, and I need a background check on the guy who’s hassling her, along with a few other people.”
“I can go on base and run some names for you. How many people are we talking about?”
“About forty.”
“Forty?”
“Yeah.” Jay walked to the front door and looked out the window. “If I e-mail you the names, can you run them for me? I’ll put the ones I’m most concerned about at the top of the list.”
“How deep do you want me to go?”
“Deep. I need everything. Friends, assets, arrest records, names of their attorneys—”
“I get it. You need everything,” Seth interrupted him. “Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”
“I don’t want to get into it on the phone,” Jay said apologetically. “I’ll give you the gist in my e-mail. I was planning on encrypting it anyway.”
“All right. How soon do you need this?”
“Yesterday.”
“I’ll head into the office right now,” Seth said without hesitation. “And let me know if you need me to head down there. Vanessa’s class ends today or tomorrow. We can catch a flight and be there by tomorrow night.”
“Thanks, Seth. I’ll definitely let you know.”
19
Carina paced across the living room, listening for any kind of sound to prove that Jay hadn’t left her here by herself. She had forced herself to focus on work for the thirty minutes that Jay had allowed her on the Internet. Make that twenty-eight minutes. Jay had set an old kitchen timer for her so she would know when she had to get off, and Carina was pretty sure he had robbed her of at least two precious minutes of her Internet allowance.
She had listened halfheartedly to him talk to one of his friends on the phone, his wary tone putting her already strained nerves into overdrive. After using his own laptop to send his friend an e-mail, an exercise that took a lot longer than she would have expected, he told her he was going to double check the security system and take a look around. She hadn’t seen him since.
When the timer had gone off a few minutes later, she had dutifully logged off of the Internet and then gone to look for Jay. She had expected to find him in the bedroom upstairs that had been fashioned into a security observation room, but she only found a wall of television screens and a bunch of equipment she didn’t understand. A quick study of the monitors didn’t reveal any sign of him outside so she continued her search of the upstairs.
The single upstairs guest room didn’t appear to have been disturbed, and all of the kids’ bedrooms were empty. Carina leaned down and picked up one of Spencer’s toy cars off of the floor and dropped it into a bin on a shelf that was labeled “cars.”
Continuing on to the master bedroom, she hesitated before crossing the threshold. Even though she knew Matt and CJ weren’t home, she felt like she was invading their privacy by entering their room. She called out Jay’s name only to be answered by more silence.
She walked farther into the master bedroom, crossing to the French doors that led to a balcony. She pushed the curtains aside and stared out over the expanse of yard beneath her. The two swimming pools dominated the backyard, but a wide patch of grass gave the kids ample room to play. Beyond the grassy area was a wall separating the yard from the canal that bordered their property.
Carina knew from her conversations with CJ that the canal was one of a series of waterways that afforded the residents in her community access to the Atlantic Ocean. A speedboat was tethered to the dock at the edge of the Whitmores’ property, and Carina tried to remember if she had noticed it there this morning when she had looked outside.
Restless and now a little concerned that she couldn’t find Jay, she headed back downstairs, again calling out his name. Again there wasn’t a response.
She crossed to where she had left her briefcase on a kitchen chair and made sure her weapon was still safely inside. As expected, it was exactly where she’d left it, as was her design sketchpad and her latest inventory reports. She knew she should try to get some more work done, but she also knew there wasn’t any way she was going to be able to concentrate.
She tried to tell herself that it was the incident with Nick that had caused this uncommon inability to focus, but she had to admit that her curiosity about Jay was just as distracting. Besides wondering where he had disappeared to, as hard as she tried, she still couldn’t comprehend his complete selflessness.
When they had first met, she had wondered
if perhaps he had been so quick to help her with her car because he was trying to impress her. It had happened before, guys showing her extra attention in an effort to get her to go out with them. Realizing that most guys rarely saw past her outside appearance, she had never had any trouble refusing their advances.
She could also admit that her family background had always made her overly cautious when it came to any kind of relationship. Even though she tried to fight it, she was always afraid that she might start to care for someone only to have them find out the truth about where she came from and decide they wanted to steer clear of the complications of her life. After all, what kind of guy would want to get involved with the daughter of a mobster?
Clearly, that reality hadn’t chased Jay away. Not that he was acting romantically interested in her at the moment, at least not that she could tell. Currently, he reminded her more of a controlling older brother.
Still unable to find any sign of him, she crossed to the front door and looked outside to see that his car was indeed still parked in the driveway. The front yard was quiet, except for a hint of a breeze rustling through the fronds of the two large palm trees that flanked the front door.
Certain that he must be here somewhere, she went upstairs again, this time sitting down in the security room to watch for him outside. After ten minutes passed without any movement, she started a search of the house again. Again, she couldn’t find any trace of Jay.
Her stomach grumbled in protest, reminding her that it was past time for lunch. She made her way down to the kitchen to consider her options. That’s when she caught a glimpse of Jay through the window. He looked completely relaxed, a pair of pliers in one hand and a roll of some kind of wiring in the other. She watched him walk toward the back door and found herself wondering again why he had volunteered to help her.
After seeing his genuine friendship with CJ, as well as his easygoing way with Bianca, Carina was starting to think that he really was just a nice guy who wanted to help. But at what cost? He might be a Navy SEAL, but she doubted that even his extensive training could possibly prepare him for facing the Chicago mafia.
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