Page 63 of Home Team Advantage
She did manage to get in a few good kicks against the doorframe though. Go her.
No soft couch for a landing pad this time. Bright white lights burst through her vision as he flung her onto the floor face-first. Her right cheekbone and supraorbital ridge—the bone above her eye socket—took the brunt of the impact. Then, his knee was on her back, one hand around the back of her neck, pressing her into the floor with so much weight and force that she couldn’t breathe.
“You don’t think this is one of the first things they teach us at the police academy?” he growled.
Right. He was a cop.
A swift, sharp vibration came from beneath her, like the hard end of a broomstick meeting the ceiling below.
“Manny! Manny Falco! What are you doing up there? It’s the middle of the night!”
Manny leaned down so his mouth was at Anna’s ear. “Don’t fucking make one sound, or I’ll drag her up here and kill her right in front of you. Understand?”
Part of her said she should scream for help anyway. The woman below obviously had a keen sense of hearing. Maybe she’d make good on that 911 call threat. But who would she call? Manny was the police.
Anna tried to nod and couldn’t, but he didn’t seem to care about her answer anyway. His heavy weight lifted enough to grab both arms and yank them behind her hard enough that she felt a tear in her shoulder. After securing her wrists with zip ties, he rolled her over and slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth, then went to work on her ankles. She tried kicking at him again—without success.
“You are a feisty little thing—I’ll give you that,” he muttered. “You know, maybe I’ll keep you for myself. I’ll send pictures to DiGiorgio though. Maybe we can set up a payment program until I get tired of you, and then I’ll go back to my original plan—kill you or leave you somewhere and let him take care of you as he sees fit.”
Anna couldn’t let that happen. If DiGiorgio found out she was alive, then he’d figure out Luca was alive too. She hadn’t stayed away from her brother for ten years to be the cause of his demise now.
She just didn’t know how she was going to stop it. Especially when she was trussed up like a pig with her face on fire and her vision fading in and out.
She was vaguely aware of Manny moving around in the apartment. In his bedroom. In his bathroom. It sounded like he was gathering things. Her theory was confirmed when he returned to her field of vision and leaned a duffel against the door.
“Guess what, princess? You and I are going to take a little trip,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
MATT
Manny Falco lived in an older section of town. He rented the second story of a boxy craftsman house, the kind built in the early 1900s from Sears mail-order catalog plans. The entrance to his unit was an outside staircase, which led up to a narrow, covered porch.
Matt sat in the black Range Rover with Kieran, across the street and down half a block. Behind the tinted windows, he had high-powered binocs trained on the house. Nothing was happening on the upper floor that he could see. The windows were fitted with blackout shades. No one had come in or out.
An older model SUV sat around the back of the property. The tires had mud in the tread, the same kind they’d encountered along the riverbank.
“She’s in there,” Matt said quietly. “I can feel it.”
Kieran smiled.
“What?”
“I thought so.”
“You thought what exactly?”
“You think I can’t sense when your mother is around? It’s like this hyperawareness. Nothing specific. We just know. Like some primal part of us recognizes our croie.”
Matt scowled at him. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, right, I forgot. My bad.”
“Remind me again why breaking down his door and shooting him in the face is a bad idea?” Matt asked. He could be in and out before the guy knew what hit him. Bonus: he wouldn’t have to sit here and convince Kieran that Anna was nothing more to him than she was to any of them—a woman who needed their help.
Which was, of course, complete and utter bullshit.
Chuckles sounded over the comm sets.
