Page 45 of Small Town Secrets

The officer leaned in just as he had the car prior. “Morning, Miss.”

“Officer, I live in Harlow.” She attempted an affable smile, but the ache in her cheeks and the wobble of her lower lip said she failed. “My parents are down there with my daughter. I need to get through.”

“I’m sorry, Miss.” The man, perhaps somewhere in his early fifties, gave a sympathetic looking grimace that deepened the wrinkles over his cheekbones. “We can’t let anyone in.”

A sharp ache filled Laila’s chest while she shook her head furiously, pulling her attention from the man standing between her and her child, and onto the two others patrolling the roadblock. They held an air of palpable unease, their wide gazes darting about and their movements stiff.

“I’m not turning around.” Her voice rose a little and she turned back to the man peering through her window.

“Miss, I’m sorry.” He held a calm tone and shook his head, his stoicism in what was a major crisis for her only working to agitate the panic gripping her every thought and feeling.

“I have to get in.” She broke into an uncontrolled yell now and fresh tears burned down her cheeks. “Please. Just let me in.”

“Ma’am.” The officer’s firm tone held an unmistakably assertive edge. “I’m going to have to ask you to settle dow—”

“No!” She slammed her hands into her steering wheel and lurched her car forward, refusing to be sidelined while her child was surrounded in flames.

The men around her broke into a flurry of movement, yelling indiscernible orders to each other, before the one she’d yelled at caught up to her car and wrenched her door wide open.

Even without him there, the metal barriers blocking the road meant her car would get stuck, nor would these men be so accommodating as to move those barriers out of her way.

In her agitated state, she jerked the handbrake into place, but kept the engine running. She launched out of her car and charged ahead, her breaths exploding with every hurried step. She would move those damn barriers herself. Then get in her car. Then get Whitney.

But of course, she had three grown men to fight first. So, before she got that far, three torsos caged her in, multiple arms locking around her.

“Let me go!” Her voice tore from her in a ragged and pain-filled cry, and she fought with every bit of energy she could muster, pushing forward despite the odds against her.

Her worst nightmare had come true. Whitney needed her, but she wasn’t there, and these men weren’t letting her correct her mistake. She had to get to Whitney. She just had to.

“Let me through.” She kicked and shrieked but was being pushed in the opposite direction to where she sought to be. “Just let me through.” Her back hit the side of her car and exhaustion and despondency drew the last dregs of will from her body. “I can’t stay here while my daughter burns.”

Twenty-Seven

Ramos took the highway back to Harlow, the speedometer on his car hovering just a few miles per hour above the limit. His thoughts refused to budge from what had just happened at Mark Farro’s arrest, more precisely Mark’s cryptic last warning, “You’re too late.”

Too late for what?

His heartbeat continued to race. The pieces of this puzzle just didn’t make any sense. His instincts told him he would have his answers when he got back to Harlow. His fear was that he approached a whole other nightmare unto itself.

This is why I avoid getting too attached…

Mark hadn’t seemed fazed with his arrest. Perhaps he was just playing it cool. A man incapable of believing anything bad could stick. But Ramos based that idea on pure assumption and had to be open to other possibilities. Like the syndicate and his connections having played him…

Or that Mark had planned on getting arrested all along.

But why?

He turned off the highway and up the hill, the engine revving against the incline and his mind sifting through what motivated a man like Mark Farro. Money and power were the obvious bet. And Ramos had spent enough time with career criminals to know most didn’t want to waste their lives hustling.

They craved something more. Something hugely elusive when it came to organized crime. Independence. Especially the cold and calculated types, like Farro. He would never settle on a lifetime stint as Rudolph Manzinni’s underling.

Ramos knew from his experience saving Dean’s ass, that leaving an organization like the syndicate wasn’t straightforward. One couldn’t simply turn in their resignation letter and leave. The only exit options were death or prison.

Oh, shit! Prison.

Was prison Mark’s plan?

Had he used his men and Ramos to get there?

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