Page 3 of Montana Delta Rescue
Tony stood and pulled out a gun and pointed it at the shorter, nervous man.
Bang!
She jumped at the sound of the gunshot, even though she was watching through her phone, and her finger clicked on photo again before she froze, staring out the glass door.
Tony stood holding his gun pointed at the man who’d bent down grabbing his thigh, just above his right knee, where he’d been shot. Tony said something to him.
The nervous man frantically shook his head no in response, his expression begging, as he appeared to speak rapidly.
Tony asked him a question and the man raised his hands as if protesting.
Marilyn frowned deeper.
What in the world is going on?
Tony nodded at Cleo, handed Cleo his gun, and then turned away.
Cleo, moving fast for such a big man, raised his arm, pointed the gun at the short man’s forehead and fired.
The man dropped to the ground.
As the scene played out, fast and deadly before her, she’d frozen, horrified.
Now, she pulled her phone down away from her face, panicked they would see her and see her with her phone out, Marilyn pushed her phone into her purse, out of sight. She’d hit the button and taken pictures before she realized she did.
They can’t know I was here and saw them. Worse, taken pictures!
Chills ran up the back of her neck as the air conditioning in the house raised goose bumps on her bare arms.
Her boyfriend was a killer. That fresh knowledge chilled her through to the bone.
I have to get out of here. Now. Before they see me.
Tony glanced down at the fresh bloodstains on his new shirt, made a face of disgust and then pulled the shirt Marilyn had bought him off, fast, popping buttons as he yanked on it. He thrust the shirt at Cleo with a sneer. “Get rid of it,” he barked.
Marilyn hid behind the heavy curtain beside the sliding doors, praying they didn’t see her as she yanked off her high heels, turned and ran.
She fled barefoot, through the house and out to the street, then hurried to her car, which was parked in front of Tony’s next-door neighbor’s house. She’d parked there so she could surprise him.
As she unlocked her car and got in, images of what she’d seen flashed through her mind. She tossed her shoes onto the floor of the passenger seat and put her key in the ignition with a shaking hand. Finally, she started the car and drove away, still re-running the shooting in her mind.
She wished she could go back in time and unsee everything.
With a sinking heart, she wished she’d never met Tony Santoro.
He was wealthy and connected to powerful people who had businesses and jobs he never talked about.
She’d learned a few rules on their first date.
One. No questions about the family or their businesses and two, no pictures.
Now she had broken one of Tony’s rules. And witnessed a murder. Probably a mob hit. The thing she hadn’t wanted to know about him, the thing he never talked about.
She could not let him know that she knew. That she had seen.
Partially in shock, she drove, not knowing where she was going, as her mind tried to process and re-evaluate what she knew of her boyfriend.
They’d met at his restaurant, Santoro’s Red Gondola, where she’d gone to celebrate her twenty sixth birthday with friends. The restaurant sported a painted wooden gondola from Venice in the front of the restaurant which patrons often sat in to have their pictures taken. Tourists loved the place, and the locals loved the food.
