Dogs, ribs showing, snapped at one another as they searched through the trash on the ground. Broken glass was strewn everywhere in the unkept brown grass that dotted the yards behind tumbling fences long in need of repair. Houses, paint peeling, squatted like sad memories to the past, broken stairs leading to sagging doors.
There were no new shiny cars on the dirty, narrow roads. If one drove onto them, they would be spotted immediately by all residents. The roads throughout the neighborhood had large pits and potholes in them as if this part of town was so forgotten even the way in and out had long since been lost to the city.
Emmanuelle was certain Stefano had let Valentino know his men couldn’t bring their vehicles close to the neighborhood without letting Miceli know he was being raided. Miceli didn’t need sentries of his own, not with this pitiful place. She had spotted three snipers on the roof of an old apartment building that she was fairly certain no one could possibly be living in, but she’d seen the homeless take shelter in all kinds of buildings. This one seemed as if it might collapse at any moment.
The walls of the abandoned apartment building actually sagged in places, or appeared to if one looked at it too long. She squinted her eyes, studying it from the mouth of the shadow she’d taken to arrive at the location Stefano had given her. He was waiting, along with her brothers and cousins.
“There are children inside,” Stefano said, the lines in his face grim. “Part of the roof has caved in. There’s mold on the walls, meth labs in two of the apartments on the second floor and a dead body in an apartment on the first floor. It’s been decomposing awhile.”
“This is where they bring little children?” Mariko asked softly.
“They are selling these children to pedophiles, Mariko,” Ricco said. “They couldn’t care less what kinds of nightmares or poisons they expose them to.”
“What shape are they in?” Vittorio asked.
“Most of them are thin, bruised, terrified. The littlest ones are curled into little balls,” Stefano said. He was back to using his flat, expressionless tone, the one that gave nothing away, but told his family he was at his deadliest. “They are kept in dog crates of various sizes. Most are dirty, and they aren’t kept together.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Stefano gave that to them before he continued in that same flat voice.
“We need to keep Miceli and Angelo alive. They have to be able to be interrogated. If not by Valentino and Dario, then I want to be able to do so. This has to be stopped.”
Emmanuelle had always known what her brothers were capable of. She’d seen it, although they’d always sent her away, so it was more truthful to say she’d seen the beginning of their interrogations. Were the families the same? She had always thought of the Ferraro family as the family on the side of good and the Saldi family as evil. It wasn’t as black and white as that. Stefano had never made it out that way. He just hadn’t wanted her with Valentino. She knew why. It would be dangerous for the wrong people to learn to ride the shadows.
“We can’t touch those children or attempt in any way to get them out before we take out Miceli’s soldiers. The entire neighborhood is riddled with his people. He’s got them everywhere. He expects Valentino to find him. He wants him to. He intends to make this his last stand. He’s laid traps for him, and we have to find those traps and disarm them before Val gets here.”
“Traps?” Emmanuelle echoed.
“Land mines. If we don’t find them and get rid of them when they leave, they won’t get rid of them, and they could blow up any child walking between the houses,” Ricco said.
“Do you think Val has a traitor talking to Miceli?” Emmanuelle asked. She didn’t want someone Val trusted to suddenly whip out a gun and shoot him in the back when he least expected it.
“It’s possible, but more likely, the moment Marge was taken prisoner, Miceli knew they would make her talk. She knew too much. They didn’t have too many places they could take the children fast and prepare for war. No cops are going to bother them here. No neighbors are going to interfere. He had enough time to set his traps for Val and his men. There’s most likely a minefield outside. If you notice, not a single person in the neighborhood is walking around. That just doesn’t seem right, not even in a place like this.”
In the dilapidated apartment building, condemned and falling apart, the children, taken from their parents and about to be sold by greedy men to line their pockets for more money, were now being used as bait. Soldiers with guns were on rooftops and waited in windows and behind doors for the rescuers to show up to save the children so they could kill them. In the yards and between houses, those same soldiers had planted explosives, which would kill not only the rescuers but, when everyone left, the residents living in the homes in the neighborhood.
Emmanuelle shook her head. When was it ever enough money for some people? What was all the money needed for? Why did some human beings get the idea they were so superior to others? She didn’t get it, yet she had believed her family was “good” and the Saldi family was “bad.” What did that make her?
Stefano broke them up into teams. They had to first take out the eyes on top of the buildings. Once they did so, they had to study the way the roving patrols on the ground worked. That would help to show where any of the minefields were buried. All of them were well versed in noticing details. Looking for freshly dug earth or scattered garbage would be easy enough, but when lives were at stake, they couldn’t be too careful.
Emmanuelle and Vittorio were paired together. Stefano sent them to cover the west side of the neighborhood, with two of her cousins from LA, Max and Tore. They took the rooftops first, trusting that whoever had the apartment rooftop would get their job done fast. The apartment building was the highest point and therefore was considered the “eagle’s nest.” Those eyes had to be taken out first so all of them could take out Miceli’s sentries without his knowledge.
She chose a shadow that took her to the western tip of the subdivision, if one could call the neighborhood a subdivision. Even the trees reminded her of the scary Halloween movies she’d seen where half-dead creatures climbed out of the twisted trunks and assaulted the living with sticklike limbs. What once had been picket fences were broken, shattered sticks, either missing or lying in splinters, mostly long buried in rotting vegetation. Broken windows were boarded or left with large shards of yellow glass hanging. Dirty sheets attempted to keep the cold or heat out. The houses were small, but at one time, they had been nice. Now the porches sagged and boards were cracked on stairs and floors.
Emme stepped out of one shadow into the next to ride up the side of the house to the roof. She couldn’t imagine the roof faring any better than the porch. A man lay on his belly facing the narrow street, looking completely ridiculous in a three-piece suit. He looked so out of place she wanted to laugh. She might have, but she saw that he had laid a child’s blanket down to prevent his precious suit from getting dirty while he waited to kill the rescuers. That blanket had to belong to one of the children held captive.
Emmanuelle didn’t hesitate. She rode the shadow right up beside him, straddled him, snapped his neck and left him lying there with his semiautomatic in his arms because damn him to hell. Stepping back into the mouth of the shadow, she stood for a moment, studying the ground below her, looking for roving patrols. Once she spotted three different pairs of men walking covertly through the narrow housing, she studied their movements carefully, committing them to memory. All riders had to be able to have a photographic mind for maps and grids. Really, everything.