“Up to what?” Carmine asks.
“She didn’t say, but my alarm bells went off like crazy. I asked Alex if the family did a standard background check before the wedding, and he said that he did it. But my brother is lazy, and I know he didn’t dive very deep. He couldn’t have.”
“I can go so deep, Richard will feel me in his kidneys,” Shane says, reaching for the computer. His fingers fly over the keyboard. “Yeah, this first pass is pretty standard. Credit score is seven-fifty. No jail. Really nothing to report at all.”
“That’s too tidy,” Rafe says, his face still set in hard lines. “That reeks of cover-up.”
“Agreed. It would be easier if I had fingerprints.”
“Be right back.” I turn to leave, but Carmine stops me.
“You’re not going by yourself.”
“Well, then get a move on, and let’s go. I’ll call Annika from the car. She can meet us there. Let’s nail this whole mess on this slimeball.”
Carmine and I hurry to his rental. I barely have time to fasten my seatbelt before he’s peeling out of the parking lot and merging onto the freeway.
“How could my family let this happen?” I wonder out loud. “How the fuck did Rich make his slimy way into my family and start killing people? And why would he do it at his own wedding?”
“Smoke and mirrors,” Carmine says. “If it happened at the wedding, he’d be the last person anyone would look at. Son of a bitch.”
“Why does a random doctor from Denver want to kill your father?” I wonder out loud. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Shane’s still digging. I don’t buy this whole boring suburban doctor bit. He’s hiding something, and we’ll find out what it is. In the meantime, we need to get those prints, and we need to make sure Annika is safe. I don’t like her being there with him.”
“I don’t, either.” I shake my head and watch the city zoom by. “It was all I could do not to kidnap her and make her come with me. I don’t want that asshole anywhere near her, ever again.”
I’m just about to call Annika when my phone rings in my hand. “Hey, I was just going to call you.”
“I need you.” Annika breathes hard in my ear. She sounds panicked.
“What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come to my house.”
“Carmine and I are headed there now. That’s why I was going to call. Are you hurt?”
“No, but if he gets here before you, I will be. Hurry. Please, hurry.”
She hangs up, and Carmine steps on the gas.
“You heard?”
“Yeah.” The set of his mouth is grim. “I don’t know what I expected when we came to Denver, but this isn’t it.”
“No. It’s not.”
I want to thank him. His family is under no obligation to help with this. But I’ve learned one thing in the months I’ve known him: Carmine is a man of honor.
All the Martinellis are.
They may be part of a mob family, but they do what’s right. And my instincts weren’t wrong when I decided to start trusting him.
He’s become much more than just a job to me. There are feelings in play that I haven’t taken the time to dissect, to just be with and figure out.
There just hasn’t been time. I need to do some sorting, determine where my head and heart are.
But for now, it’s enough to be able to depend on him—and to know that I’m safe.
Carmine drives through the open gates of Annika’s drive, and when we pull up to the front door, he cuts the engine, and we’re both out of the car like a shot.
Annika opens the door, her eyes wide in shock.
“What is it?”
“Oh, God.”
Chapter 11
~Carmine~
“I knew it,” Annika says as we hurry into the house behind her. “I knew something was wrong. I just found this.”
She practically runs into an office at the end of a long hallway as if she has to get there before whatever’s in there disappears.
“Is he here?” Nadia asks.
“No.” Annika’s voice shakes as she points to a trunk on the floor next to her husband’s desk. “Look in there. Rich always tells me to stay out of this trunk, that it’s none of my fucking business what’s in here.”
“Lovely way to talk to your wife,” I mutter as I open the lid and stare down at what must be a dozen sandwich bags full of pills, a bundle of hundred-dollar bills, and a piece of paper.
“It’s an address,” Annika says when I pick up the paper. I open it, and sure enough, it’s an address.
449 Oak Ave. 4pm
“He’s a fucking drug dealer.” Annika sits on the arm of a sofa and stares blindly ahead. “He’s dealing. I want no part of this. I’ve worked damn hard to stay out of the illegal scene, Nadia. You know I have.”
“I know.”
“Where is he?” I ask as I turn to look at the two women. “Where is he right now?”
“His office, I would guess,” Annika replies. “And if you’re going there, I’m going with you because I want to give him a piece of my damn mind.”
Richard’s office is across town, so it takes us a good thirty minutes to get there.
I don’t know what kind of pills are in those packages, but I have a feeling it’s the same drug that killed Armando at the wedding. I took a bag and the computer mouse from the desk to give to Shane for prints.
The three of us march through the medical plaza and up a flight of stairs.
“His office isn’t attached to the clinic,” Annika says, pointing to a door next to the clinic. “He likes having a separate entrance.”
“How convenient,” I mutter and knock once before turning the knob. To my surprise, it isn’t locked.
“Well, shit,” Nadia murmurs as she holds Annika back. “No, baby. No, you don’t want to see this.”
“Yes, I do.” Annika forces her way through, and all three of us stare at Richard, slumped over his desk, white foam coming from his mouth. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Keep her back,” I say to Nadia. She nods, and I step closer to the desk. More of the same pills are in piles on the top as if he’d been counting them out to go into bags. Could he have accidentally taken one and killed himself?
Or did he do it on purpose?
Without touching the body, I search the space. I see no note, and nothing seems out of place.
I reach into his pockets and find his phone and wallet.
“Do you know the code to the phone?” I ask Annika.
She just blinks, staring at her husband.
“Annika.”
“No. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Can I take it to Shane?”
I just keep adding things to my brother’s to-do list.
“Yes. My God, he’s dead.”
“We’re going to leave everything exactly as it is,” I say and take her arms in my hands. “We’re going to sneak out of here like we were never here, and then we’re going to call the police.”