The Heart of a Killer

by Jaci Burton

  "Jesus," Gabe said. "I'm going to kill him."

  "Not if I do it first," Roman said.

  "You got there before he..." She bent her head down and wept, her fingers clutching Dante's shirt together.

  Shit. "Let me help you." Dante rebuttoned the shirt, felt her body shaking, then looked up at Gabe. "Go grab that scum and bring him in here. We need to call the cops."

  Gabe nodded and motioned to the others. "Come on."

  Gabe and the others left Dante and Anna alone.

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let you go out there alone."

  "Not your fault."

  She could say that, but it didn't matter. "We'll call the cops and your dad. They'll take care of this." Because Dante had failed to.

  Chin resting on her chest, she gave a short nod. "Okay."

  Gabe burst through the back door, out of breath. "Dante. I think he's dead."

  Dante whipped around. "What?"

  "He ain't movin'," Gabe said. "I tried to wake him up and he didn't move. We tried to pull him to his feet, but he just went down again like...dead weight. When I went to feel for a pulse I got nothin'."

  "It's true," Jeff nodded, his face ghost-white. "He's dead. Oh, man, he's dead, Dante."

  Dante turned back to Anna, whose eyes widened. This wasn't good. "I'll go check it out."

  She scooted off the bar stool. "I'm going with you."

  "No. You stay here."

  She shook her head and gripped his hand. "Don't leave me in here by myself. Please."

  He blew out a breath, torn between wanting her to stay put, calling the cops and wishing none of this had happened. He should have just taken the goddamn trash out for her. Then it wouldn't have happened at all. "I'll have one of the guys stay with you."

  "I'll hang in here with you, Anna," Gabe said, moving next to her.

  She shook her head, that stubborn chin of hers lifting as she squeezed Dante's hand. "No. I need to see him."

  He sighed. "Okay. Stay right next to me."

  They walked outside. He tried to keep her away from the guy, who was still lying there right where they'd left him. Roman and Jeff were standing over him. They stepped aside when he and Gabe got there.

  Dante turned to Gabe. "Stay with Anna while I check this out."

  Anna resisted, but Dante turned to her. "This is as close as I'm letting you get to him. Understand?"

  She nodded, still shaking.

  Gabe pulled Anna to his side. Dante went over to the guy and nudged him in the side with his shoe.

  "Get up, asshole."

  Nothing. He kicked him harder this time.

  "Come on, get up."

  He kneeled and put his fingers on the man's neck, searching for a pulse. He couldn't find one there, or on his wrist. God, he was a bloody mess and Dante didn't want to do it, but he leaned down and laid his hand over the guy's chest.

  The body was warm. He was still warm. But there was no heartbeat, no pulse.

  Dante looked up at his brothers. "He's dead."

  "Shit. Sonofamotherfuckingbitch." Jeff tore at his hair and started pacing back and forth. "Now what do we do, Dante? We killed him."

  Dante stood. "We go back into the shop and we call the cops."

  "No."

  Dante turned to Anna. "What?"

  Anna shook her head, tears streaking down her face. The hysteria had gone, replaced by a calm awareness of exactly what to do. "You have to get out of here. All of you. Now."

  Dante went to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "Anna We killed this guy. We were protecting you. Besides, he came at us with a knife. It's kind of self-defense."

  "I know that and you know that. But you all have juvie records. You know how it'll look. You still beat him up and now he's dead. You all have to get out of here. I'll call my dad and he'll take care of this."

  Dante shook his head. "No. I can't let you do that. I'm not leaving you."

  "He's right, Anna," Gabe said. "We can stand up for this."

  "No, we can't," Jeff said, his hands balling into fists as he paced. "I don't want to go to Juvie again. We got a nice family and I wanna stay there."

  "Me, too," Roman said, sniffing back tears. "Let Anna call her dad and make this go away."

  "What are we, a bunch of pussies?" Dante stared them all down. "We did this. We can handle it."

  She took them in with her gaze, and knew she'd do anything to make sure they stayed safe.

  Anna pulled Dante to face her again. "I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you. To any of you. You saved my life. God only knows what that...guy...would have done to me if you hadn't showed up."

  Tears fell down her cheeks. She didn't bother trying to swipe them away.

  Dante folded her against him. "Anna, it's okay. You're okay. We've been through worse."

  She pushed on his chest and shook her head. "No. I won't let anything bad happen to you because of me. Please, just do this for me. Please."

  "Let's go inside." He wrapped his arms around her and led her back inside.

  "What do you want to do about him?" Roman asked.

  Dante looked over his shoulder at the dead guy. "I guess we leave him there for now."

  "What if somebody comes?" Roman asked.

  "Not much we can do about it."

  Once inside the shop again, Dante checked Anna's wound. The bleeding had stopped and all she felt was a raw throb she was determined to ignore. She wished she could ignore everything that happened. Concentrating on something other than herself would help. She wiped her face and hands, lifted her chin and stared them all down, determined they were going to see things her way.

  "I want you all to go. Now. Hurry, before someone finds the body. I'm going to call my dad and we'll figure out what to do."

  "That's not right," Dante said. "You shouldn't have to deal with it."

  "I'll have my dad. He'll help. I'm not going to have you be charged when it was you all who saved me. Now go. Please."

  "She's right," Roman said. "You know what they'll do to a group of juvies who beat a guy to death, even if he did attack a girl first. We could have just pulled the guy off her, held him and called the cops. We didn't have to beat him up. We didn't have to kill him."

  "Come on, Dante," Jeff said. "We can't handle any more on our records. We'll lose the house, our family. I can't do more time."

  Dante paced the shop. "It's not right for this to come down on Anna. Hasn't she been through enough?"

  She stopped him, cupped his face with her hands. "You saved my life tonight, Dante. All of you. Let me do this for you."

  The pain in Dante's eyes, the guilt she saw there, hurt her more than that jerk outside did. "He hurt you. We had to make him pay."

  Tears welled in her eyes. "I know. Now let me thank you the only way I can. Go on. I'll handle this."

  Dante shook his head. "No, Anna."

  Roman gripped Dante's shoulder. "She wants to do it. Let her."

  Anna grasped his hand. "I'll call my dad right away. Dante, please."

  No way was she going to have him take the fall for this. She'd stand here all night if she had to and argue with him. But finally, he nodded and she exhaled.

  "Fine. We're outta here." He pressed his lips to hers, soft and gentle. "Call your dad right now."

  "I will."

  "We'll head out the back door. We're going to move the...body...behind the Dumpster so no one sees him."

  "Okay. And I've got his knife."

  The other guys walked out the door. Dante stood there, his fingers wrapped like glue around it as he looked at her. "Lock it behind us."

  Anna bolted the back door as soon as the guys left and ran for the phone. Her father picked up on the first ring.

  "Daddy?"

  "Anna? What's wrong?"

  As soon as she heard his voice, she fell apart.

  "Daddy, someone hurt me."

  One

  Present Day

  He shouldn't have come home. He'd promised t
o stay away, but maybe it was finally time.

  Nothing much was different in the old neighborhood. The only thing that had changed in twelve years had been him.

  A lot had changed for Dante Renaldi in twelve years. The last time he'd been here had been the night he and the guys had killed someone in an alley. He'd left town right after that with Anna's father's help--more like his insistence--and he hadn't been back since. And in those twelve years he'd mastered the art of killing.

  So maybe he hadn't changed much at all.

  He vowed he'd stay away. Nothing was going to bring him home again. But one person could bring him home--his foster mother, Ellen Clemons.

  Anna's father, Frank Pallino, might have asked him to walk away after that night--and never come back. And he had. But he owed everything he was to George and Ellen Clemons. Those were two people he could never walk away from. He trusted them.

  They knew where he'd gone after that night, where he'd been all these years. They didn't know what had happened that night--he owed Anna that much. But he'd stayed in touch with George and Ellen over the years so they'd never think he'd walked away from them after everything they'd done for him.

  So when Ellen contacted him and asked him to come home for her and George's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, there was no way in hell he was going to say no.

  Twelve years, thousands upon thousands of miles and a few wars since then, he figured it was time to come home. He'd earned that right, especially after Afghanistan. If Frank Pallino didn't like it, too fucking bad. He'd kept his part of the bargain. He'd left, he hadn't tried to get in touch with Anna in all this time, or with any of the guys. And he had no clue what was going on with Anna.

  Coming home could finally give him some answers.

  Anna was the big question he was tired of wondering about. He needed to know, had spent too many nights bedding down on foreign soil, staring up at the stars and thinking about her. The only visual he could drum up was her in a shredded pink-and-white blouse, that damn heart-shaped carving on her chest and all that goddamn blood.

  Seemed like the only thing in his head these days was blood. He saw plenty of it when his eyes were open, and he saw Anna's when his eyes were closed.

  He didn't want that memory anymore. Time for some closure, to remove some of the blood from his mind.

  His plan was to get in, get out, make it fast. He'd do his duty to Ellen and George, check on a few things, then leave. He didn't intend to stay. He was used to not staying long in one place, so he planned to treat this like a mission. All he had to do was get the intel he needed, then move on. It wasn't as if he and the guys were friends anymore. Or brothers. There wasn't going to be a reunion.

  Once he left he'd find a nice beach for R & R and erase a whole lot of shit from his memory bank.

  He'd rented a car at the airport, a nice nondescript midsize piece of junk. It wasn't military issue and there wasn't a chance in hell he'd be driving over a bomb, so this car suited him just fine. He almost felt like a regular guy.

  Almost.

  Ellen had invited him to stay at the house. He smiled at that. To her he'd always be a kid. One of her kids, one of the many who passed in and out of their lives, but to the Clemonses, they were all "their" kids.

  And okay, he wasn't a heartless bastard. He was here, wasn't he? But he wasn't going to sleep in a race-car bed.

  He hadn't checked into a hotel yet, just wanted to cruise the old neighborhood to see what was what. Same houses as always, same parks, same sweltering-as-amotherfucker kind of summer night when the humidity could suck the very life from you, and if it didn't, the mosquitoes would. It was this kind of night he remembered from twelve years ago, a night so hot you couldn't take enough showers to wash the sweat off.

  He thought about dropping by George and Ellen's house, but that could wait until tomorrow. It was late and they had kids he didn't want to wake up.

  Tonight he wanted to see the old haunts, check into his hotel and get on the right time zone. Tomorrow would be soon enough for whatever reunions had to be done.

  He was actually looking forward to seeing George and Ellen, the last foster parents he'd had before Frank Pallino got him emancipated and into the service of the United States Army. Dante wasn't sure if that was the best thing that had ever happened to him, or the worst. But considering he'd been about to turn eighteen and had no prospects for college or a future, Frank Pallino had probably done him a favor. He had skills now he never would have had if not for the army. Either way, what was done was done, and it was better than jail or God only knows what would have happened to him. He owed the man.

  He supposed he owed a lot of people.

  The streets were wet tonight. A hard summer thunderstorm had come down just as he'd walked out of the airport. Dante had stood just outside the airport doors and watched the rain. It had reminded him of that night twelve years ago.

  Full circle again.

  Maybe he shouldn't have come back. As he'd sat at the rental car place watching the rain sheet sideways onto the pavement, the memories pummeled him, those twelve years sliding away. He could still see the alley, could still see Anna the way she looked when he and the guys had walked into the ice-cream shop that night. She'd been decked out in pink and white, her button-down shirt with the little puckers all over it, her dark brown hair in a high ponytail and her caramel-brown eyes mesmerizing him like they always had.

  He wished he could remember her eyes and her smile instead of her tears and all that blood. He wished he could remember the happy times instead of the trauma that bastard had inflicted on her that night.

  He exited off I-44 at Hampton and headed south, turning down Wilson toward the Hill. The old brick houses all looked the same with their small front porches and well-manicured lawns. Some of the restaurants had changed names, but a lot hadn't, owned by the same Italian families for generations.

  Saint Ambrose Church still stood, proud and signaling the old Italian legacy of the Hill. Some things never changed. He toured the old streets where he and his brothers used to hang, wondering which, if any, his real mom had lived in. He had an Italian name, that much he knew. His parents had never married, and he'd never bothered to search his ancestry, figuring there was no point in looking for people who either didn't want to or couldn't keep him. He'd had his foster brothers, and the Clemons family who'd taken him in at fourteen and given him almost four years of the best family life a kid like him could have ever hoped for. That had been good enough.

  He left the Hill and made a beeline for Forest Park. The park was deserted, but well lit to keep people like him and his friends from loitering at night. He loved the curving roads that led toward the zoo, the Jewel Box, the art museum, all the places the Clemonses had taken him. They'd made him feel as if he finally belonged to a real family.

  His only other family had been his brothers. Now, those were some memories, like the nights they'd sit in the park and get drunk or just kick back and talk shit, at least until the cops would chase them out. Those were the good times, when he felt as if he was part of something--part of a unit of people who had your back, who would go to the wall and die for you if it came to that.

  He'd found the same thing in the military to some extent, but that was by necessity, not by choice. You had to trust your unit or you'd die out there. He'd made friends, but not brothers. He'd left his real brothers twelve years ago, and he hadn't even told them why, or said goodbye.

  Now he just felt alone. Even back home, he was still alone, roaming the deserted streets where once he was in a packed car full of his brothers. Or with Anna.

  His cell phone buzzed, so he pulled to the curb and dragged it out.

  It was Ellen. "Did I wake you?"

  "No. I was out driving around. I was going to come by tomorrow. I got in late, so I didn't want to wake the kids you have staying there."

  "Well, there's a problem."

  He went on immediate alert. "What's wrong?"

  "George i
sn't here. He went out earlier tonight and isn't back yet."

  "Where did he go?"

  "I don't know, honey. He didn't tell me. I'm a little worried."

  Dante shifted his gaze to the clock on the car dashboard. It was one in the morning.

  He knew George Clemons. George was a military man, rigid in his routine. Bedtime was nine for the little kids, ten for the teens, and eleven for the adults. Unless there was an emergency, you didn't deviate from the routine. And he adored his wife. Unless things had changed a lot in the twelve years he'd been gone, something was off.

  "You two have a fight?"

  Ellen laughed. "We don't fight, Dante. You know that. I love that man the same now as I did the day he asked me to marry him."

  And that's what he'd liked about living with them. Stability without tension. The Clemonses were solid. George wouldn't just walk out on Ellen and leave without a word. Which meant something was wrong.

  "I'll be right over."

  Dante parked in front of the house just as a hot-looking black Harley pulled into the driveway.

  The guy took off his helmet and turned to shoot Dante a glare.

  No way. Taller, his arms covered in tattoos and he definitely had a lot more muscle showing under that leather vest than he'd had when they were kids, but Dante would know Gabe anywhere.

  Gabe laid the helmet on the back of the bike and headed toward him, a smirk drawing his lips up.

  "Finally decided to come back, huh?"

  Dante pulled Gabe into a quick hug, then drew back. "It was more like a command that I be here for their anniversary."

  Gabe nodded. "Nice of you to show up. And good timing, too."

  "Yeah. Ellen call you about George?"

  "She's worried, and you know her. Nothing fazes her."

  "Let's go inside."

  Dante knew Ellen would be happy to see him, but the tight squeeze she gave him spelled a lot more than happiness.

  She was past the point of worry and well into terrified.

  Now it was up to him and Gabe to settle her down and hopefully figure out where the hell George was while Ellen wrung her hands together and paced the kitchen.

  They'd remodeled, torn out the tiny kitchen where he and the guys used to cram their growing, oversize bodies around the tiny table. Now it was bright, with lots of overhead lighting, and a sturdy solid wood table sat in the place of the old metal one. You could seat an army there.