Page 79 of Consumed By the Mafia

“I want to see what you have,” Albert said. “Get to my office as soon as you can. And what about Silva?”

Abigail clicked her seatbelt into place and threw the SUV into motion. “He has asked to remain in hiding until the arrests are complete, if possible. He’s willing to testify in exchange for protection, which I promised to bring to you. He wouldn’t even talk until I agreed to that much.”

“So youdon’thave Chief Silva,” Mercer said.

“Not physically in my company, no,” Abigail said.

“Why are you hiding him from us, Fitzgerald?” Mercer demanded.

Abigail opened her mouth, but Albert beat her to it. “Let’s let that go for the time being, Agent Mercer,” he said. “Both of you get here immediately.” He disconnected.

Abigail reached out to do the same before she realized that Mercerhadn’t.

“You really think you have what we need to clean up this mess, Fitzgerald?”

Abigail’s stomach twisted, but for once it wasn’t with guilt. It was anxiety. She was highly uncomfortable having this conversation with Paige Mercer, because she was highly uncomfortable with Paige Mercer herself. “If even half of his information pans out, and we put as many of these people away, the city—the county—will be better for it. I couldn’t imagine this list he gave me, let alone the story that came with it. You’ll see.”

Mercer made a sound that might have been thoughtful, might have been disapproving, but said nothing more before hanging up.

Abigail exhaled heavily and focused for a moment on the road.

It wasn’t long before she noticed the unusual density of traffic and the thick plume of smoke in her periphery.No…!That was the direction of the high-rise where Cristiano and Felicity lived. Where she’d last known Ryoma to be.

Her hands tightened on the wheel and Abigail had to fight to keep them there. She wanted so badly to call and check on him. To slide into the other lane, flip around, and go over that way to see for herself if he was all right. Tears sprang to her eyes as she considered that he might not be. She hadn’t heard from him since she’d told him to evacuate. How long ago had that been?

He had to be okay. He had to have gotten out in time. Hopefully with Felicity, of course. She didn’t wish ill on Felicity, and she knew it would crush Ryoma to lose any of them. They were his family. Hadn’t he said he’d take a bullet for any of them?

Not a bomb!He’d used a stupid train as his big ultimate example, never a bomb. He wasn’t supposed to get hit with one of those. The very idea made her whole body want to constrict and her head start to spin. It was like she couldn’t breathe.

Desperate to distract herself, Abigail fumbled the buttons on the dash until she got the radio on. Turn of the century country strummed out at her, some smooth male vocal crooning about love to the tune of an acoustic guitar. She listened for all of thirty seconds in stunned silence before turning thewhole thing off and laughing to herself.Big, scary mafia guy likes his croony country, huh?It was almost cute. Too bad she wasn’t sure which mafia guy it was or she’d probably have to tease them about it.

The thought distracted her long enough for her to turn onto the street she needed, which put the smoke plum and most of the diverted traffic nonsense into her rearview. By the time she was parking she had sobered again, fresh nerves dancing across her skin. She scooped her precious cargo into her lap and glanced up, as if she could see through the SUV’s roof and into the surely hazy sky overhead.Please let this go smoothly.With Mercer involved, that wasn’t likely.Please let Ryoma be okay.

Abigail shoved from the SUV, locked it behind her, and strode into the building as if it were totally normal. As if this was where she worked on a regular basis. Which was laughable no matter how she looked at it.

She nodded and smiled as necessary, pretended to be patient as she went through the security checkpoints, and eventually made her way all the way to Special Agent in Charge Julian Albert’s office on the top floor. The entire process took far too long and she found only one opportunity during which to check her phone. No new messages, of course.

That’s okay, Abigail. You were always doing this part on your own.She squared her shoulders and pushed into the office, unsurprised to find she was the last to arrive. As far as she knew, Mercer worked in the building.

Mercer didn’t bother standing from the chair she was seated in, merely lowered her phone to her lap and furrowed her brow. “Eighteen minutes. Do you know how busy I am?”

Albert stepped around his desk, a practiced smile teasing his lips and crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Traffic’s still pretty backed up from that building fire, I imagine. No way around it.” That building fire. He said it so casually, yet his words knocked the air from her lungs.

Abigail offered her own professional smile, stopping a respectful distance away, and said, “Yeah, traffic was bad. Sorry.” She raised the items in her hands. “Why don’t we get right to it? I’d hate to keep Agent Mercer waiting any longer than necessary.” The jab may have been juvenile, but dammit, so was Mercer’s attitude.

The other woman only scowled.

Albert pulled the folder from her hands. “What’s in here?” He flipped it open and his brows arched up to his receding hairline. “This is a lot of names, Abigail.”

“Yes,” she said, holding still as Mercer finally stood and walked around to peer over Albert’s shoulder. “That list is all the named criminal associates, broken into categories of affiliation, as Rodrigo Silva knew them. As you can see, the organized crime that’s moving into our area has been setting down roots for some time. It sounds like a slow-play, but its core is Irish mob, headed by Brendan Coughlan.” She paused, remembering the other thing in the folder. “At the back is a printed photo I took, the one that prompted me to go after Silva. The other man is Coughlan himself.”

“There’s over half a page of police and fire on this list!” Mercer exclaimed, as if she were appalled.

“Silva was extra-positive of those,” Abigail said firmly.

Mercer pursed her lips. “And not a single De Salvo?”

“It turns out my so-called informant was a plant, sent to us when Coughlan learned the FBI was investigating the idea of local organized crime, with the intention of purposely misleading the investigation.” Abigail took a calculated breath. “I made sure to include his name on there as well. Peter Marchesi.” She knew they wouldn’t find him, so including him made the entire thing appear more genuine. “Marchesi was a former employee of Dante De Salvo’s, who had been let go and was resentful of it apparently. So since his only instruction was to aim us at someone else who held power and influence, that was his choice.”

---