Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
“What happened?”
“Feds hit the house,” he explains, holding a cup of water with a straw in it to my lips. “Drink.”
I take a sip. I do have memories of chaos, and of the hospital that wasn’t, and I do have that fuzzy ache that you get when you’re in agony but opiates are keeping it at bay. It’s like my body is screaming, but I’ve put it on mute.
“Where’s Angelo?”
“They have him in custody,” Bobby says. “We need to get him back.”
“He’s alive?”
“Yeah. He’s alive.”
“How is that possible?”
“Your people have shitty fucking aim.”
Now that I cast my mind back through the rubble of my memories, I know that I’m not recalling absolutely everything as it actually happened, but as best I recall, it didn’t feel like they were aiming at all, or if they were, it feels as though I had become a target too. I suppose I must have looked very cozy breakfasting naked from the waist down with Angelo and Bobby. Maybe they assumed I had turned. Even so, it’s not typical for any mission to be… eh, who am I kidding. Once the cowboys are called in, and assuming the target has been assigned a kill status, Uncle Sam makes sure they have all the bullets they need.
“They’ve offered me a trade. You for him. Angelo told me to take it, so I’m going to take it. Congratulations, you’re free.”
“Uh. Thanks.”
He offers me another sip. I take it.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
“Doctors saved as much of you as they could,” Bobby says. I won’t realize until later what that little sentence means. For now, I assume he’s telling me I was pretty badly injured.
I lift the sheet that is covering me gingerly and look down my body. There’s a bandage over my stomach, but it’s not large, and other than that I seem to be okay. I can both feel and wriggle my fingers and toes.
I breathe a sigh of relief. This could have been much worse. I could have lost the use of my limbs. I could have lost my life.
Bobby fusses over me for a few minutes before making a call on speakerphone. I’m surprised he isn’t trying to hide any of this from me.
“Robert,” the voice on the other end says. “How are you?”
“Never better,” Bobby says. “Let me fucking talk to Angelo. I don’t like taking instructions through a lawyer.”
“It is well known you do not like taking instructions at all,” the voice on the other end purrs. I don’t recognize it, but it is obviously the attorney representing the Vitali interests.
“She’s awake,” he says. “And she’s alive. So let’s get this fucking swap done, huh? I need Angelo back.”
As rough and brutal as Bobby sounds, there’s something just so lost about the way he sounds when he says he wants Angelo. My heart goes out to him.
“I will inform the relevant authorities,” the lawyer says. “Keep your phone near you.”
With that, the call ends. Bobby doesn’t look happy. I can hardly blame him. He has no reason to trust the justice system to keep him safe, and it could quite easily be a trap.
“You’re a kill target.”
“What?” He looks at me with a sharp, violent gaze.
“On the agency’s list. Angelo is a capture target. They already have him. But you’re on a kill list. There’s a decent chance they will try to kill you rather than swap Angelo for me.”
“Why am I a fucking kill target?”
“Because you’re violent, hard to control, and in the eyes of the agency, you don’t know anything. You’re the dog the cops shoot in the yard before they break down the front door.”
That analogy is as brutal as it is accurate, and I see it hit home. I don’t know if this is just going to make Bobby more paranoid and more dangerous, but I had to tell him the truth. Nobody out there wants him alive.
“Angelo’s not stupid,” I say. “Maybe he’s got this handled on his side.”
“Maybe,” Bobby says. “Or maybe I drop you somewhere, then tell them where you are. I don’t care about being killed, but I don’t want to be caught.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“But you’re still so sick,” he scowls. “I don’t want to leave you unprotected.”
It is a fascinating and incredibly sweet thing to see Bobby torn out of concern for me. I know that those in the House of Vitali don’t love the way other people do, but it is starting to feel as though Bobby might love me.
It takes a few days for things to be organized. For those few days, Bobby and I are holed up in the motel room. Bobby looks after me as well as he knows how, and I prepare myself mentally to be returned to the world as I knew it.
“You going to go back to being a Fed? Going to come for us?”