Not long after, Mason texts me to tell me he’s at the door. He’s just doing his job, I know, but the man is considerate. Elsie and I both train our gazes to the door, waiting for him to come in. And when he does, Elsie elbows me and raises her eyebrows.
“Now that’s what I imagined a mobster to look like,” she whispers. I just shake my head, not wanting to agree with her.What’s even worse is that my body reacts to the sight of that muscular man standing before us in gray sweatpants and a tight white t-shirt that shows off his biceps and tattoos.
“Did anyone follow you?” I ask, lips curving into a small smile.
Mason raises one eyebrow, clearly not finding any humor in my question. “No.” His eyes flit from me to Elsie then back again. “What does she know?”
“The truth,” I offer with a shrug and Mason just slowly inhales, crossing the little entryway and going to the windows on the other side of the living room. The curtains are drawn, not letting any light in or out. “I’m waiting for someone to get eyes on the target and then your friend is good to go home.”
“Am I safe?” Elsie asks again and annoyance crosses Mason’s face. He’s not annoyed with her, but with me for getting her involved. Though it’s not like I planned it.
We sit in awkward silence for a few minutes, pretending to watch the news. Then I get out my phone—my real one—and start looking through photos I took of the four of us tonight. Elsie is scared and needs a distraction.
“You take better pictures than me,” she laughs, swiping past one of them where her eyes are closed.
“Oh please. You have that classic American beauty thing about you with your blonde hair and blue eyes.”
“Funny since I got that from my Swedish mother.”
We laugh and keep looking at pictures. I pretend to be looking at the four of us besties, but really, I’m inspecting the crowd around us to see if Enzo was there. A while later, we pick the best group photo, do a little editing to enhance the lighting and brighten our eyes, and I post it to my Instagram stories. My latest reel talking about how Karen, my former mother in law, hid Cory and Noel’s affair, went viral. Which is amazing, ofcourse, but now a little bit of dread is starting to form in the pit of my stomach.
Because out of the two million viewers, who’s to say one isn’t Enzo? Yeah, he gave me a fake name and a totally made up persona, but something tells me he won’t like it if—or when—he finds out I did the same.
Chapter
Seventeen
MASON
“Let me know when you’re home safe,” Mira tells her friend, giving her a hug. She insisted we walk her down to the entrance and watch as she gets in the car. Enzo was spotted going into the Wrigley Building not long ago, and hasn’t been spotted coming out since.
Thankfully, I’m friendly with a handful of the Chicago Police Department, and they’re just as eager to get the Morettis off the streets as we are. I called a buddy of mine to do some off the books surveillance, making sure we knew a general location of Enzo before I had either Mira or her friend move.
“I’ll take you home,” I tell Mira and she looks a little surprised.
“I thought you’d want to talk about this.”
“We can talk in the car,” I say, already thinking about how I’m going to have to shift through the footage before anyone else sees it. My team has access to this safehouse so it’s not out of the question that I would have someone go there while I looked into something. But I don’t know what all Mira said to her friend and I don’t want to be surprised by anything. So for the sake of nothaving to make more work for myself, it would be easier to talk to Mira in my car.
She nods and follows me outside. I open the passenger door for her and then get in, turning on the car.
“I need you to tell me exactly what you told your friend. And don’t leave anything out.”
“Okay,” she says slowly, immediately looking defensive. “I’ll do my best, sir,” she adds pointedly. “I told her I’m working with the FBI to help get info on the Moretti family and you kind of forced me into working with you so I don’t get in trouble with the law for not having a PI license."
“Seriously? You do know I’m a federal agent, right? I didn’t force you to do anything.”
“I forgot,Agent Harris. It’s not like you remind me every chance you get.”
“You put your friend in danger by telling her the truth.”
“What was I supposed to do, lie?”
“Yeah.” I shake my head. “I didn’t think I’d have to explain the importance of a need to know basis on this.”
“No shit,” she fires back. “She needed to know why I was acting so suss and why we had to go to a freaking safe house to avoid some guy I supposedly went on one date with. If I tried to lie, she would have poked and poked and maybe even blown my cover, which is probably going to happen, by the way, because I did not sign up to go on more than one date with this guy.”
“Are you sure about that? Because you seemed to quite enjoy his company at dinner?”