Page 45 of In Her Blood
His lips twitched. “We really gotta work on your depth perception.”
She pulled herself closer and lowered her voice, despite that they were alone. “You may need to take me somewhere more private for that, husband.”
Cristiano groaned and forced himself to set her down—slowly, by dragging her against as much of him as he could. Then he reached past her and pulled open the passenger door. “Get your sexy ass in the car before I bend you over the hood.”
Felicity was still lowering herself into the seat, another laugh trailing between them, when his phone started buzzing in his pocket.
He made sure she was settled and that he’d gotten the door shut before he yanked the offending device free. A scowl bent his lips as he glanced at the screen. Who the fuck would be calling him from Indiana? It’d probably been at least four years since his last trip there.
He accepted the call anyway, just in case it was important. “Talk.”
A male voice he couldn’t immediately place cleared its throat nervously on the other end of the line. “Ah, forgive me … is this Cristiano De Salvo?”
Cristiano ducked into his seat and tugged the door shut, but he refrained from making another move. “You called me.”
“Right, right. It’s just, it’s been a few years since you gave me this number, I wanted to be sure.” The man cleared his throat again. “This is Raul Campo, from Fort Wayne—”
Recognition dawned and Cristiano grunted. “I remember. Been a while. I assume you aren’t suddenly calling me to shoot the shit?” He put the phone on speaker and reached for his seatbelt. He didn’t care if Felicity overheard whatever the old ex-military detective had to say. He didn’t keep secrets from his wife, and his cousins didn’t expect him to.
Felicity, for her part, had already buckled in and tended to reflexively stay quiet when someone she didn’t know was on the phone. Unless she had a strong point to make.
“No, no,” Campo said quickly. Something made a clacking sound in the background on his end of the line, but his tone held no indication of concern. “I’m calling because something just came to me that I figured your family would want to know.” He drew an audible breath. “A woman was in here a couple of minutes ago inquiring for my services…. She wanted me to track down Eleonora De Salvo and pass along all relevant contact information, as much as I could find.”
Cristiano flexed a hand over the wheel. It had only been a couple of days since he’d heard there was someone poking around for information on Mama El. But Mikey’s digital trail had led back to Chicago. He sucked in a hard breath and rolled the engine over. “Tell me everything you remember about this woman, and everything she said. Be specific.”
Chapter fifteen
Misfit
Evelina pawed through Kat’stravel bag, a strange urgency blending with the lingering guilt in her chest. A toilet flushed in one of the two stalls behind her, followed by her friend’s tired moan.
Kat’s morning sickness was hardly Evelina’s fault, but still, she couldn’t help but feel like somehow this precise experience could have been avoided. Her failed attempt tohire a PI had wasted more than an hour of the day. It didn’t matter that Kat had insisted she was in no rush to head home anyway, and had seemed perfectly content to occupy herself for that short while.
Evelina found the baggie with Kat’s toothbrush at the same time as another round of nauseating-sounding retching filled the air. It kind of made her want to throw up, too.
Her other hand brushed over something distracting, and she pulled the unfamiliar device out for a clearer look. It was a phone, but it was definitely not Kat’s abused three-year-old smartphone. The device in her hand was a spare—a burner.
Why the hell would Kat have a burner?
A text message came in while she was staring at the darkened screen, suddenly filling her vision and further derailing her focus. The message was identified only by the number of the sender, but at first glance, it was the words on the screen that caught Evelina’s eye.
Is it done yet?
That was such an ominous, generic, ridiculous question. Evelina told herself to put the phone back, that it wasn’t her place to snoop if her friend wanted to have a little privacy. But another message immediately followed.
And for fuck’s sake, just answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’
A spark of irritation snapped through her, fueled by the sounds of her friend’s misery. Who the hell was the assholespeaking so rudely to Kat? If it was someone from the bar, she’d fire them on principle.
Then Evelina suddenly remembered how awkward Kat had been about confessing her pregnancy and a terrible, revolting thought occurred to her. Kat hadn’t truly shown excitement until after she saw Evelina’s response. Was her baby daddy—whichever guy it was—not being supportive? Was it possible Kat had lied about not having told him, because the guy was pushing her to get an abortion instead?
Driven by the anger of this possibility, Evelina quickly extracted the toiletries she had actually gone digging for and swiped her thumb across the screen. As she’d hoped, Kat’s security skills remained limited to ‘swipe for access.’ The screen lit up, revealing a generic photo wallpaper and a few standard apps. Among the apps was the one for the text messages, with a small two at the corner.
Evelina tapped it open, her thumb immediately going to the thread already at the top where the messages she’d glimpsed were. She briefly noted there was, in fact, only one other conversation. But her thumb was already lowering over the thread she wanted, until her gaze followed suit. Again, she froze.
This time, her eyes were glued to the number the messages had come from. Sheknewthat number. But there was no way. She couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility of them knowing each other, but well enough to be in contact? Kat had been her friend for years. Kat would have told her. The more likely explanation was that she was remembering a digit wrong.
Yet a tendril of fear had woven into the anger within her as she finally tapped the message thread, and that fear explodedinto a full-blown panic when she saw the thread was larger than a handful of messages. She scrolled up a bit, enough to see she didn’t have time to read them all, then scrolled back down for the recent messages. Just the ones from that morning. And she got the full, shattering view of the current conversation.
