Barefoot Bound: A Barefoot Bay Undercover Prequel Read online

  “You don’t actually think he had anything to do with that fire or…”

  “Of course not. But she’s setting him up, and he has to know it, right now.”

  Vivi gasped softly, pointing down the street. “Gabe, look!”

  The navy blue Jaguar was barely hidden between two oak trees a few houses away. “That bitch is here,” he hissed.

  He swung the car into the long, sloped driveway of the family’s house, the headlights bathing the asphalt and acre of lawn beyond it to the lake.

  A shadow darted out of the beam, running behind the stacked cord of wood they used for the fireplace.

  “Did you see that?” he asked.

  “She’s hiding back there?”

  Gabe shut off the car but kept the headlights on. “Go check on Nino. I’ll take care of our company.” He reached under the seat and grabbed the weapon that was kept there.

  Vivi shot out and headed to the front door, but Gabe walked down the rest of the driveway, sensing there was no need to run. After all, how fast could a sixty-some-year-old woman actually go? Her car was behind him, in plain sight, and her only other escape route was the lake. Where she deserved to be—the bottom of it.

  Without making a sound, he reached the side of the garage, inching slowly around to see clearly into the space under the wooden patio off the dining room. There were doors from the basement leading out to the yard and the stack of wood. And…a gasoline can?

  Blinking at it, he knew it had never been there before. His father was meticulous about this area, and anything like that would be stored neatly in the work area of the garage. They didn’t have random gasoline cans around…but someone who started a fire might have planted it there as evidence after her husband conveniently fried in a fire with Nino’s knife on him.

  A foot scraped over stone, telling him exactly where she was hiding—on the fieldstone path around the other side of the house. Holding his weapon down but ready, he followed the sound, and then another. A sniff. A sob. A woman crying.

  He found her rolled up in a ball, leaning against the house next to the trash cans, her head dropped between her knees, her shoulders shaking as if she couldn’t quite cry hard enough.

  “Please don’t shoot me,” she snuffled, not lifting her head.

  Still not trusting her, Gabe didn’t move. “Give me one good reason.”

  “Because I want to talk to Nino once more before I’m arrested.”

  Gabe swallowed a smartass retort. “What do you want to say to him?”

  Slowly, she lifted her face, ravaged by tears and pain. She looked old now, makeup smeared, wrinkles showing. “I’d say I’m sorry.”

  “Then just tell me and not him.” Nino’s voice came through the screening of the darkened porch, as full of pain as the woman’s.

  She didn’t even turn, but closed her eyes and dropped her head again.

  “What are you sorry for?” Gabe prodded.

  “For marrying a horrible man,” she mumbled. “For staying with him for security.” She lifted her head. “And for using you”—she turned to the blackness of the screened porch—“as a way out of my mess. I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was stupid.”

  “So was I,” Nino said, his voice cracking.

  “It’s okay,” Vivi whispered, the brush of fabric in the dark telling Gabe his cousin had most likely put her arms around him. “We all make mistakes, Uncle Nino.”

  In the distance, a siren cut through the night.

  “I called JP,” Vivi said, referring to their oldest brother, a cop. “He probably sent ten squad cars.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” the woman asked.

  Gabe reached to give her a hand up. “An ordeal. C’mon.”

  “Oh, God, it seemed like a good plan, an escape, but…” She stood, grunting with the effort, then took a few steps toward the screening. “Nino?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “For what it’s worth, you’re a wonderful man.”

  “He went inside,” Vivi said. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

  Gabe led her around to meet the cop cars that poured into the driveway.

  Chapter Eight

  Vivi came into the basement, a grim look on her face. Her brother, Zach, leaning over a pool cue, straightened slowly, adjusting his black leather eye patch.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vivi said. “But I’m guessing really freaking bad. She won’t let me near her. Just gave me the hairy eyeball and waved me back down here.”

  “Aw, man,” JP, Gabe’s oldest and truly most annoying brother, growled under his breath and slammed his beer on the table. “I didn’t come all the way out here today for this.”

  “Stuff a sock in it,” Zach snarled at him before taking his shot.

  “I’m about to stuff something that tastes like a sock in my mouth at the dinner table,” JP joked.

  “It can’t be that bad,” Gabe’s sister Nicki said, ever the middle-child peacemaker.

  And, of course, Marc nodded in agreement, since he was always the voice of reason and sanity in a family that rarely had either one. “Guys, we’re not going to die.”

  Vivi slid him a look. “There is a distinct possibility that we may.”

  “At the very least, we’ll have to get Taco Bell later,” Marc said.

  “Really?” Devyn, Marc’s wife, leaned forward on the sofa. “She’s really that bad? Nino’s cooked every meal since I married into this family.”

  “Otherwise you’d be out of this family,” Marc assured her.

  The siblings and cousins all shared a look and a few snorts of laughter.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Gabe finally said. “You won’t die from my mother’s cooking, but you will discreetly spit discarded bites into your napkin. And good luck getting rid of them, because, as you know, she breaks out the cloth for special occasions.”

  “And Gabe’s ‘last supper’ is a very special occasion,” Vivi added. “So we all suffer in silence.”

  Colt pushed up from his chair and put an arm around his wife. “Maybe someone should try to talk to Nino again.”

  “C’mon, Gabe.” Vivi looked hard at him. “You’re the obvious choice.”

  “Ask your brother,” Gabe retorted, pointing to Zach. “Nino loves his one-eyed ass.”

  “He loves your smart ass,” Zach fired back. “Plus, Vivi’s right. This is your ‘last supper,’ not ours. Go ask him what it’ll take for him to get Aunt Fran the hell out of the kitchen and make us a decent Sunday dinner.”

  It was a travesty.

  “I saw him outside a few minutes ago,” Chessie said. “He was in the garden.”

  Gabe blew out a breath and looked from one to the other, shaking his head at the barrage. “You all know what’s going on with him. Leave him alone. He needs some air and sunshine.”

  JP snorted. “Gabriel Rossi, purveyor of sunshine for everyone.”

  “Screw you, JP,” Gabe said.

  Vivi put her hand on Gabe’s arm. “Maybe he’ll listen to you now, Gabe. Maybe he’ll…go.”

  He knew what she meant, and she was right. And it was time to try once more to get Nino to make a move. Except for giving statements to the police, he’d essentially holed up in his room for days and refused to talk to anyone.

  Despite the October chill, Gabe didn’t bother with a jacket, sliding the door open to the backyard. Nino was wandering around his barren garden, stopping to pluck a leaf or snap a branch. As he reached the edge of the tilled land, Nino kneeled down to pick a dead pepper from an old plant, shaking his head.

  “You know this place I’m going to in Florida?” Gabe asked.

  Nino didn’t look up. “I’m not interested in sun and sand, Gabriel.”

  “The bungalow where I’m going to live and work isn’t on the beach. It backs up to a little farm that helps to feed the resort. You’d love it. All kinds of vegetables and greens. Flowers, too. You can grow shit all year long down
there.”

  Nino stilled for a moment, then pushed himself up, crushing the pepper in his enormous, gnarled hand. “You want to know the worst part?”

  Gabe just lifted a brow.

  “Not that she’s a felon or liar or cheat who wanted to use me to kill her husband.”

  “There’s something worse than that?”

  “I fell for someone else’s wife.” He practically spat the word as he tossed the broken vegetable on the ground and wiped his hand on his old work pants. “I was played like a fiddle, and I feel like a fool.”

  “She’s the one who should be ashamed, Nino.”

  “Oh, she is.” He ambled forward, huffing out a breath that could be seen in the cold, pain etched on every line of his well-worn face. “I shouldn’t have told you about being lonely.”

  “But you did, and now I know your secret and will use it against you.”

  Nino snorted a laugh and gestured for them to walk toward the lake. “So, what, you sucked the short straw?”

  Gabe frowned, not following that Ninoism.

  “They sent you to talk sense into me.”

  “No straws were drawn or sucked.” They reached the bench and sat down side by side. “I wanted to talk to you. I want to ask you—”

  “I’m not going!” he barked back. “I don’t want to start over! I don’t want to pick up my sorry old backside and bruised heart and go dancing on the sand and have coconuts drop on my head. I can’t help you. I can’t be anything but a burden and a pain. I’m too old to try to change my life. I tried that and look how it turned out! It blew up in my face. So there’s no way I’m getting in a car with you and taking off like…like…like some kind of Selma and Louise. You got that?”

  Gabe fought a smile. “I was just going to ask if you’d save us all from a trip to the ER or Taco Bell and go cook some damn food.”

  He crinkled his old eyes at Gabe. “Give your poor mother a little credit, will you?”

  “I give her plenty of credit, but, dude, are you going to eat wet noodles with frozen vegetables buried in that sawdust cheese that comes from a green can?” Gabe challenged.

  “No, and neither are you.”

  “’Fraid I am because I love my ma, and if I’m not at my own ‘last supper,’ she’ll make my life a living hell.”

  “Welcome to the world.”

  “My world,” Gabe corrected. “The saying is ‘welcome to my world,’ and yours doesn’t have to be a living hell, Gramps. Come with me, and I’ll actually teach you how to speak twenty-first-century English.”

  Nino gave a long, drawn-out huff, studying the orange and yellow leaves surrounding the tree-lined lake. For a moment, Gabe actually thought he was considering the offer. Then he turned, his eyes damp. “You don’t need me, Gabriel.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Gabe closed his eyes and felt his whole body go numb, the way it did every time he handed a piece of sensitive information to someone—information that could save or cost lives—and hoped to hell he could trust that person. “I need…someone. Someone who can cover for me.”

  Nino inched back. “I thought you were covering for other people. Isn’t that what the business is all about?”

  “It is, but…” Gabe blew out a breath. “I’m going to be doing some other stuff, too.” He scratched the back of his head, looking forward, waiting for Nino to respond.

  “What other stuff?”

  “I can’t really say.”

  Nino stared at him.

  “But when I need to disappear with no questions asked, I need someone to cover for me. Someone I can trust completely.” He put his hand on his grandfather’s arm. “There’s no one in the world I trust more than you.”

  After an interminable pause, Nino shook his head. “I can’t do that, Gabriel. My judgment is obviously impaired.”

  Gabe opened his mouth to argue, but Nino held up one of his beastly hands. “Let me stay here and watch the leaves change.”

  He wasn’t sure if he meant let him stay there on the bench to watch the leaves, or something more poetic and metaphorical. Or he was just butchering another idiom. Whatever, Gabe respected the request, standing and taking a few steps away.

  But then he stopped because something Nino had said was stuck in his heart like a thorn. “You know what else you’re wrong about, old man?”

  Nino looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “You’re not a burden, Gramps. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I’m gonna miss the holy shit out of you.”

  Nino’s eyes filled, but Gabe didn’t stick around to see him cry.

  * * *

  By the time Nino’s homemade wine was poured and Dad said a prayer, the aroma that filled the dining room brought about a distinct sort of…shock.

  “You made this, Mom?” Chessie, sitting to Gabe’s left, asked as she lifted a scoop of red sauce, also known as gravy, for her pasta.

  From her seat at the end, ol’ Fran gave a tight smile, her eyes twinkling like she might have been tapping a different kind of sauce while she cooked.

  Nicki opened the bread basket, and the scent of rosemary floated out. “And baked this bread?”

  Mom just nodded, lifting her glass for another sip.

  “And this caprese salad?” Vivi asked, on Gabe’s other side, gesturing toward her plate. “It’s gorgeous.”

  Francesca Rossi shrugged a shoulder and looked straight across the table at her husband, who beamed back at her.

  “I pronounce this delicious,” Dad boomed, sounding as if he missed the gavel he used to use on the bench. “My compliments and love to the chef.”

  Several pairs of eyes shifted from one to the other, a few resting on Nino’s empty chair and place setting.

  “And where is the chef?” JP demanded.

  “She’s sitting right here,” Mom said, holding her arms out. After a second, she burst out laughing. “Nino taught me how to make three meals. He’s a great cooking teacher, you know.”

  The news got the expected reaction of raised voices and congratulations, and plenty of questions, including why the man who’d lived and cooked in this house for twenty-five years was finally handing over the reins, at least partially.

  “I certainly hope it’s not because Nino thinks he’s getting old,” Marc said.

  Mom shook her head. “He just wants to have a Sunday dinner backup in case…” She glanced at his empty chair. “In case his life changes, is how he put it when he started teaching me.”

  In case he married his girlfriend, who turned out to be a rat. They were all thinking it, but even heartless JP didn’t say it.

  On Gabe’s right, Vivi lifted the carafe over Gabe’s glass, but he swiped his hand to turn the wine down.

  “No bug juice, V. I’m driving tonight. If I time it right, I can beat the morning traffic in DC and crash somewhere south of there, and make it to Florida the next day.”

  “You’re leaving tonight?” Mom asked, her voice rising with that same underlying panic he used to hear before he took off for some godforsaken spook assignment, unable to tell her where he was going.

  “He’s going to some tropical island, Mom,” JP said, obviously hearing the same note. “Not the bowels of a terrorist prison cell.” After a beat, JP added, “We think.”

  “You’re right,” Gabe confirmed, looking him straight in the eye.

  Mom let out a sigh. “I know, and from what you’ve said, it’s a wonderful business and the perfect place to have it, but…” She smiled through teary eyes. “I like having you all here on Sundays.”

  “And I like being here,” he said, looking around the table to give a pretend sneer to Zach. “Mostly.”

  His cousin laughed easily. “We’ll miss you,” he said quietly, leaning closer to Sam to rub her belly. “You’ll have to come back to meet your niece or nephew.”

  “I will, when I have time.”

  “Do you have a paying client down there yet?” Dad, ever practical, asked Gabe.

&n
bsp; “First one arrives as soon as I get set up.”

  “Who is it?” JP asked.

  Gabe just smiled. “If I told you…”

  They all groaned, and laughed.

  “Can’t you tell us anything?” Nicki asked.

  Gabe savored a bite of rosemary bread dipped in hot oil. Nino was a great teacher, but he suspected Mom had been letting her father-in-law do what he loved to do all these years, feed the brood. “I can tell you my first client is someone who needs a new identity and future, and while I set that up for him, he’ll be off the grid in BareAss Bay.”

  “That is not the name of the place,” Chessie said with a laugh, elbowing him hard, while Marc gave him a sharp look and angled his head toward the toddler boys who were draping spaghetti over the two trays in front of them.

  “How’d you get this client?” Zach asked.

  “Through a family security business connection.”

  A whole bunch of curious glances landed right on him.

  “And how is it we don’t know about this client you got through the Angelinos?” Vivi demanded.

  “A different family security business.”

  Vivi’s jaw dropped. “You don’t mean—”

  “The Bullet Catchers,” he confirmed.

  Next to him, Chessie gasped, but Vivi almost shot out of her chair, speechless.

  “They’re not family,” JP said calmly.

  “Actually, you may have forgotten this, but one of their top guys is Johnny Christiano, who is our…” Gabe threw a questioning look at his mother.

  “Third cousin, once removed. But still blood.”

  Vivi was steaming like a teapot about to boil over. “You’re working with them? You know that woman Lucy Sharpe wouldn’t hire Zach because of his eye.”

  “I’m over it, Viv,” Zach said, giving a casual tap to his eye patch. “And you should be, too.”

  “No real Italian gets over anything.” They all turned at the sound of Nino’s voice as he stood in the entryway, the argument instantly changing to a chorus of gentle, and genuine, greetings.

  Relief washed over Gabe at the sight of Nino, whose color looked strong, his eyes glinting for the first time in days. He’d weather this storm, Gabe thought. And be stronger for it.