Otherwise Unharmed

Chapter 12—Developing Plan

We spent the next three days just moving around the city. I hadn’t gotten any grand ideas on how I was supposed to home in on Greco, and I hadn’t heard anything from Trent or Rinaldo. Of course, I didn’t have a phone anyone could use to reach me, and I’d left at home the new laptop I had bought in the rush, but if either of them knew where I was, they’d definitely find a way to reach me.

So at the very least, I was staying a step ahead of them. I just wasn’t sure what that was accomplishing besides buying me a little more time.

Make that time with Lia.

As soon as we stopped at each motel where we stayed, I was on her and in her as quickly as possible. It was like sex with her was centering me—giving me the focus and purpose I hadn’t felt since I was first deployed to the Middle East. She seemed to either understand how badly I needed it, or maybe she needed it just as much as I did. Whichever it was, she never complained about anything other than being a little sore.

I bought lube, and she stopped complaining after that.

Without any other brilliant ideas on my part, we ended up returning to my Audi behind the goth-themed nightclub in Lincoln Park and then went back to my apartment. I knew we couldn’t stay in such an obvious place long, but there were things I needed. I also wanted to see Odin, so we picked him up at the doggie hotel on the way back to my building.

He was pretty excited to be back and spent about as much time bringing his bone back to Lia to throw for him as he did trying to lick my face and arms. I sat on the couch and watched her play with him for a few minutes before she decided she had played fetch enough for one night. Odin curled up in his doggie bed by the door to the balcony and watched us.

“It’s late,” Lia observed.

“You tired?”

“Yeah, I am.”

She looked it, too. All the running around was already getting to her, and it had only been a few days. I took her into the bedroom and let her get settled without jumping her bones for once. She was out almost as soon as she laid her head on the pillow.

While Lia slept in my bed—a sight I found insanely distracting—I started going through all my lists of people in Greco’s organization as well as contacts that might have some other connection to his organization. I was pretty much coming up with nothing after a couple of hours and was about to throw my laptop across the room when a thought occurred to me.

Nick Wolfe.

Nick might have been Rinaldo’s flesh and blood, but right before I had my little breakdown, he had started seeing a girl. Her name was Milena, and she was related to Andrey Severinov who was the figurehead in Chicago for a crime group along with Rurik Dytalov. They’d moved from Moscow to Azerbaijan several years ago to take a piece of the caviar trade, but they were small suppliers compared to Moretti’s outfit. I’d taken out Rurik’s cousin a few months ago when they tried to home in on Rinaldo’s caviar customers, but as far as I knew, Rurik didn’t know I was the one who pulled the trigger.

Milena had a brother, Micah. We’d met once when he was giving Nick some shit at a bar, and I put myself in the middle of it. I might have taken him out that night, but Nick didn’t want me to go after him. Out of respect, I didn’t, but he was still on my kill roll. I had planned to discuss it with Rinaldo before taking any further action but hadn’t gotten around to it before I went off the deep end. If I couldn’t get into Greco’s organization directly, maybe I could get in through the Russians.

It was the best option I had at the moment.

I picked up my phone and selected one of the contacts.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Eddie-boy,” I said, “it’s Arden.”

“Hey, LT,” a sleepy Eddie-boy replied. “You know it’s three in the morning, right?”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“No you aren’t,” he replied. “What can I do ya for?”

“Micah Severinov. I need contact info.”

Eddie-boy, the communications expert deployed with me in Iraq, was my key information guy outside of Rinaldo’s organization. He had come in handy on several occasions. He was military-loyal through and through, though he didn’t have much love for the law or the government. As his former commanding officer, he would have done anything for me.

“In Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

“No problem.”

He called back just a few minutes later with an address and cell phone number, and I wired him some cash.

“Hey, LT—you doin’ all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Oh.” There was a long pause. “I just heard…well, I heard you had a little trouble.”

“All a misunderstanding,” I told him. “Now the guys across the street know not to have such a loud fucking garage door.”

Eddie-boy laughed and hung up.

Now I had to figure out how to approach the guy and what to do with Lia while I was taking care of business. Unlike Odin, I didn’t think she’d be too happy with the idea of going to a boarding facility.

I snickered to myself at the thought.

Still, she needed to be close to me but not too close. Trent still knew exactly where I was, and I was going to have to change our living space for a lot of reasons. Rinaldo owned the building I lived in, and once he got wind of what I was doing, the apartment I’d lived in for the last couple of years was going to become a warzone.

I switched from looking at people’s information to looking at apartments for rent. There were actually a few decent options with nice, open balconies with good, tactical views of the surrounding area. I also checked into those that would have a good view for Lia because she wasn’t going to be able to go out much—too dangerous. I wrote down a couple addresses to check out the next day.

Odin snuffed and sneezed all over my boot then looked up at me expectantly. As soon as I started going toward the leash, he started running around in a circle by the door. I paused for a minute, not sure if leaving Lia asleep and alone was the best of ideas, but Odin hadn’t been out for a while, and I didn’t want to wake her. I’d only be in the park behind the building.

I snapped the leash onto Odin’s collar and quietly closed the door. I made sure it was bolted before heading to the elevator and down to Lake Shore East Park.

As soon as I walked into the green area, I glanced around a little to see if anyone was nearby. It was the middle of the night and no one was out, but I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would recognize me as the guy who shot up the place a month ago if they did see me. There weren’t any other people or dogs in the dog run, so at least I wasn’t going to meet up with the woman with the terrier I tried to shoot.

I took off Odin’s leash and watched him run around, sniff, and water the trees. He took a big dump right in the middle of the place, which I cleaned up with one of the plastic baggies from a dispenser on the fence before I sat back on the bench and lit a cigarette. I cradled the glowing tip against my palm to keep it less visible.

Being in the same area where I’d lost my shit not all that long ago felt odd, to say the least. My nerves were frayed, and I kept glancing all around me like I was waiting for enemies to pop out from behind one of the bushes and start firing. It was similar to the way I felt before the doctors at the military hospital put me on medication, and I didn’t like it at all.

I pulled my gun out of my shoulder holster and checked that there was a bullet in the firing chamber before putting it back.

“Whassup, brotha?” a familiar voice called out. “When did you start smokin’ again?”

I didn’t startle, but I was no less caught off guard as Jonathan Ferris walked around the edge of the fence and opened the dual gate of the dog park. He flipped his hair out of his eyes as he walked over and sat down next to me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Your phone ain’t workin’,” Jonathan responded.

“I think the cops still have it,” I replied. “Took my Barrett, too.”

“That sucks.”

I looked down toward the ground and took another drag of my cigarette. It occurred to me that the action made me look nervous, and I started to straighten up and get myself in check but changed my mind. It would be better at this point to be considered nervous in front of Jonathan, considering his source of income was the same as mine.

Jonathan was Rinaldo Moretti’s chief information man. He had been your typical bored and brilliant teen with a propensity for hacking into various computer systems around the world just to show that it could be done. Now he did the same for our boss, either to find out the things Rinaldo wanted to know, break into banking systems to help out with a little money laundering, or sometimes just to use his phone to get a seat at a busy restaurant without having to wait.

He was also about the only person in the world I would consider a friend.

Deceiving him wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I was going to have to try. Jonathan was a perceptive guy though most people’s first impressions dismissed him as a backwoods hick. He sounded like one, but behind the thick accent was an exceptional mind. I needed him to believe I was still pretty much off my game so he could report the same back to Rinaldo.

I kept my eyes down, blinked a few times, and took another drag without saying a word.

“I didn’t really think I’d find ya here,” Jonathan said. “I figgered you’d go back to your apartment, but not come out here.”

I moved my head slowly to look up at him.

“Don’t have much of anyplace else to go,” I commented quietly before looking back to my shoes.

“How ya feelin’?”

I thought about it and decided to answer him honestly.

“Like I’m waiting to start seeing shit again,” I said. “I’ll know it isn’t real, but I’m still waiting to see it, you know?”

Jonathan nodded. He’d been with me at the shooting range once when I started seeing images of insurgents coming out from behind the targets. I’d just stopped taking the meds the military doctors had given me, and I wasn’t completely prepared for the consequences.

“Did you see shit out here?” he asked as he nodded his head around the park. “I mean, when you decided to blow the place up?”

“Not really,” I said. “I was hearing a lot of stuff, and that fucking garage door kept going off and sounding like a perimeter alarm. There was already so much other shit in my head. I hadn’t slept, and I just…I dunno.”

“Cracked.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s all right, brotha,” he assured me. “Shit happens. Rinaldo understands, even if he is kinda being a dick about you.”

“How so?” I asked. I looked up at him because I had no idea what he was talking about.

Jonathan shrugged and shifted his position on the bench to bring one foot up on the seat. He took out another smoke, patted Odin’s head as he came by, and leaned back.

“He’s pissed you didn’t come to him first,” Jonathan said. “I told him it don’t work like that, but ya know—he feels bad he didn’t see it was coming that quick.”

“Feels bad?” I laughed.

“He does,” Jonathan said with a nod. “He’d take you over Nick right now, that’s for sure, with him datin’ that Russian bitch.”

I wasn’t expecting him to bring up Nick, and since I had just been thinking about him and his girlfriend’s connection to the Russians associated with Greco, I took the opportunity to plant a little more information in Jonathan’s head, assuming he’d take it back to Rinaldo.

“Yeah, I hadn’t gotten around to telling him about that night at Sweetwater. I could’ve taken her brother out then, but Nick asked me not to. He was already on my list, and I should have done it. The Russians are gaining too much control around here.”

“True dat, but you had other shit on your mind.”

“Yeah, I did.”

We sat in silence for a minute while Jonathan finished his smoke, and I lit another one.

“You sure did leave a disaster at the office,” he said quietly.

I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Killing Terry and Bridgett in the storage room at the bottom of Rinaldo’s office wasn’t so bad, but leaving the bodies behind instead of cleaning up my mess—that was a fairly serious faux pas.

“Is that new girl ya got a hooker, too?”

I flinched and turned to glare at him.

“She’s not a fucking hooker,” I growled.

“Easy.” Jonathan put his hands up in the air in a surrender gesture. “Just askin’.”

“Well, she ain’t.” Fuck, I was already picking up that stupid, contagious accent of his again.

I knew he was just posing the question, but the idea that anyone would think of Lia in such a way pissed me off. I went back to my smoke and hoped he would go away soon, but of course, he didn’t.

“You gonna treat this one better than the last one?”

“Fuck you!” I snapped as I stood up. He stood as well, and towered over my six-foot-two frame by a couple of inches. “She was feeding information to Greco!”

“Yeah, I ain’t talkin’ about takin’ her out—that needed to happen. Kinda surprised you did it yourself, but it still had to happen. I just meant in general. You treated her like shit and then took her around so everyone knew she was with ya. Might as well have just painted her with a fuckin’ bull’s-eye in case Terry didn’t get the hint.”

I was fuming, but where other people would have cowered under my anger, Jonathan stood his ground. I knew why, too—he was right, and he had no doubt about it. He must have also assumed it wasn’t a death-warrant kind of remark because he had to have known I’d be packing.

“She was a fucking hooker,” I reminded him. “It wasn’t a goddamned relationship.”

I chose my words intentionally—Jonathan hated it when people broke that particular commandment. He didn’t give a shit about most of the rest of them, but that one was a sore spot. I didn’t know why, but saying “goddamn” definitely pissed him off.

It did earn me a nasty glare, but he didn’t say anything about it—he just went right back to me and my issues.

“So the new, non-hooker—what’s that?”

“Fuck off,” I grumbled as I sat back down.

“Seriously, man,” Jonathan said as his voice softened, “you were locked up. Where’d she come from?”

“Arizona,” I mumbled without thinking. I should have realized someone as perceptive as Jonathan would put it together.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “She’s the pussy you got while you were out in the middle of nowhere? What’d she do? Track ya down?”

I closed my eyes and silently berated myself for giving away too much. This wasn’t information I wanted him to take back to our boss, and I had to try to play it down as much as I could. If I blew it off too much, he’d know I was hiding something.

“Something like that,” I said.

Jonathan let out an artillery-burst-like laugh.

“That’s custom!”

I rolled my eyes.

“Damn, bro.” He whistled and leaned back against the bench again. “So what are you gonna do with her?”

“I dunno yet.”

“Well, good luck with that shit.”

Odin lumbered by, and I attached his leash again. I’d been out a lot longer than I had intended to be, and Lia was still up there on her own. I didn’t want her waking up and freaking out when she figured out I wasn’t in the apartment.

Jonathan stood up as I did.

“So, you gonna take some time off?” he asked. “Fuck around and git yer shit together before comin’ back to work?”

I hadn’t thought about it, but it was as good a cover as anything else I had at the moment.

“Yeah, I am,” I said. “I dunno how long, but a while. I just need to get my head back on straight, ya know?”

“I hear ya, brotha.”

We parted without goodbyes, and I loaded Odin back into the elevator. On the way up, it seemed to take a much longer time than usual, which wasn’t helped by someone pressing a lot of the buttons on various floors to make the elevator stop. There was never anyone there, but the elevator kept pausing, opening the door, and then closing again before it would move on.

As it continued, I could feel my tension growing. I tapped my fingers against my thigh, stepped back and forth between my feet, and glanced at my own reflection in the mirrored back wall of the elevator.

I hadn’t told Lia I was taking Odin outside. She’d been asleep, and I hadn’t wanted to bother her. Now I was wondering how good an idea it was to leave her lying there, unprotected, while I was outside.

Was Trent still watching the place? Probably. Would he try to get to her, talk to her, or worse? I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past him. From what Lia had described to me before, the conversation Johnson tried to have with her was more of a stalling technique than actually wanting anything from her. I was still incredibly agitated by it, though.

When I finally got to my floor, I was as wound up as I could be. I tried to take a couple of calming breaths as I stepped out, but it wasn’t helping. When I moved into the hallway, I startled as my peripheral vision caught movement to my right—the opposite way of my door. I looked quickly, and my hand went instinctively to the gun in its shoulder holster.

It was a guy—a kid. He was maybe fifteen or so and just standing there, looking at me. His face was dirty, and his white clothes were covered in sand. He was holding his arms out at an awkward position, and I knew there was something under his shirt—something wrapped around his torso.

The kid was fucking booby-trapped.

I pulled out my Beretta, flicked off the safety, and aimed.

There was nothing there.

I rubbed my eyes, looked again, but there was still nothing.

“Shit,” I whispered into the corridor.

Odin snuffed at my shoe and then looked up at me expectantly. I was breathing quickly, and my heart was pounding. I shoved my gun back under my jacket and shook my head to clear it before walking back to my apartment and unlocking the door.

All was quiet inside, which just made me more nervous. I dropped the end of the leash without unlatching it from Odin’s collar and rushed into the bedroom to find Lia.

I had to wait for my eyes to adjust to the dark and started to panic when I couldn’t see anyone on the bed. I moved closer and could finally see the lump in the bed that was her sleeping form. Taking a few quiet steps, I made sure I could hear her breathing softly, let out my own breath, and rubbed at my eyes.

Still a fucking nutcase.

Fabulous.

Back out in the living room, I released Odin from his leash and made sure he had some water. I checked my laptop and found one more apartment to investigate before deciding I really did need to get some sleep. Quietly moving back into the bedroom, I ditched all my clothes in the hamper, placed my Beretta on the nightstand, and slipped underneath the sheets.

Lia was warm against my naked skin, and I wrapped one arm across her stomach and the other I snaked underneath her pillow so I could pull her against me. She made a little sighing sound in her sleep as she snuggled against me.

Nothing was wrong, and nothing had happened to her in my absence, but I was going to have to be more cautious. I couldn’t just leave her on her own now. Like Jonathan had said about Bridgett, and like Rinaldo had once told me about women in general—having one around was like screaming to the underground crime world “I’m vulnerable!” I had to protect her.

Breathing deeply to cover myself in her scent, I lay my head just over hers on the pillow and tried to make sure I was touching her as much as possible without actually waking her up. My arms around her tightened slightly, and everything seemed all right again.

She would keep me sane, and I would keep her safe.

“Neutral ground.”

Micah Severinov was hesitant to talk to me, to say the least, and with good reason. He knew exactly who I was though we had only been in the same room at the same time on one occasion.

“You can choose the place,” I told him. “Well, within reason. Anywhere public is fine. I told you, I’m not looking for a confrontation—I just want to talk a bit.”

He chose a place called Quay, right off East Illinois near the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile with a decent view of Navy Pier and the lake. The front part of the place looked like a regular restaurant, but in the back was a posh lounge area. The front part of it was definitely the kind of place that attracted tourists, but the back was nearly empty, quiet, and suited our purposes perfectly.

I decided to dress the gangster role and decked myself out in a dark pinstriped suit, red shirt, and black tie. There was little more intimidating than a buffed-up guy in an expensive suit. As long as the place he chose wasn’t a gay bar, no one would fuck with me if I was dressed like I owned the neighborhood. If it was a gay bar, I’d get mauled within a minute.

It wasn’t.

There was a collection of cushy couches and chairs arranged in the corner by the windows looking toward the lake, which is where I saw Micah sipping dark liquor from a glass. He was sitting at the table farthest away from any other patrons. As I walked in, I observed the significant exchange of looks between Micah and the bartender but saw only caution and ass-covering in it, nothing malicious. Nervousness, yes, but I didn’t get the impression I was going to end up with a bullet in my back.

Not yet, anyway.

I moved over to Micah without hesitation and took the seat with my back to the windows and at a slight angle next to him. It was a vulnerable spot, and I chose it on purpose to show him I didn’t give a fuck. If he had someone positioned outside to kill me, it could have happened from any angle. It would have been noisy though. The tourists out front would notice.

Micah tossed dark blond hair off his forehead with a flick of his fingers as he leaned back in the seat and placed his hands out of sight in his jacket pockets. I knew he had a gun in there just as I presumed he knew I would have one on me.

Perfectly predictable.

“You gonna play nice?” I asked pointedly. I let my eyes drop to his right jacket pocket where I knew the gun would be. He’d been drinking with his right hand, so his gun would be in his right pocket.

“Precautions only,” he replied.

I leaned back casually in the chair, crossed one leg over the other, lit up a smoke, and kept my hands in plain view as I puffed on it.

“There’s no smoking in here,” the bartender called over.

“Really?” I looked over at him. “Looks like there is.”

I turned back to Micah, who had the hint of a smile on his face.

“You’re kind of a dick, aren’t you?” he remarked.

“Sometimes.” I inhaled again and blew smoke off to the side. “You ready to hear me out?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

I glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to us any longer and then lowered my voice as I leaned into the table.

“I just got out of MCC,” I said. I looked down at the cigarette between my fingers and carefully tucked the lit end against my palm. I could feel the warmth, but it wasn’t close enough to burn. I took another hit off of it.

“Yeah, I heard. You blew up a park.”

I waved the hand holding the cigarette around dismissively.

“All a misunderstanding. Parking garage doors shouldn’t be noise violations. I just showed them the error or their ways.”

“Heh! Yeah, right. You made a fucking public spectacle.”

I tried to appear somewhat contrite.

“Well, and that’s the problem now,” I said. “That’s how Moretti sees it too. He’s ticked off, frankly, and wouldn’t even fucking do anything to get me out—just let me rot in there for days. I’m sick of his shit, and I’m on the hunt for new employment.”

Micah laughed.

“Am I supposed to believe that shit?” he asked. “From what I hear, you’ve been tight in his org since you came to town.”

“I’m tight with a fucking payout,” I corrected. “He paid the best because he knew he had the best. That’s where my loyalty resides—with cash in my fucking pocket for a job well done.”

“And now, what?” he asked as he leaned back against the cushion behind him. It started to slide a little, and he had to lean forward before he fell over. “Am I supposed to offer you a contract with my organization?”

“Fuck your piss-ant little Azerbaijan outfit,” I snarled. “You can’t fucking afford me. You might think your family is hot shit in the eastern block, but you’re nothing around here. However, Gavino Greco has the means to pay me what I’m worth.”

His eyes narrowed, and I hoped I hadn’t taken it too far. I needed him to think I didn’t give a shit about him—only Greco—or I wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. If I came across as too nice and compliant, he’d know something was up.

“So talk to him,” Micah snapped back. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

“Well, that’s exactly where you come in,” I informed him. I inhaled on the cigarette again, watching the red glow warm the center of my palm. “I need you to arrange a meeting. Neutral ground—like this place.”

“Why would I do that for you?”

“Well, ultimately I would say it’s in your best interest.” I sat back and tossed the cigarette onto the nicely polished hardwood floor before stomping it out with my boot. “If I keep working for Moretti, you’re going to move to the top of my list, especially considering your sister is banging his son. He’s not too thrilled with that, you know.”

Micah glared.

“He’ll probably add her to my roll as well,” I added. “Considering I killed off his secondary cleaner, I’d be the only one given the job. Without me, he’s a little paralyzed right now. If you don’t want to play nice, though, that’s okay. I’ll just do a couple more jobs for Moretti before I leave town.”

“You’ve made your point,” he snarled.

“Glad to hear you can be reasoned with,” I said with a smile. “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

I wrote my phone number on a napkin and tossed it to him before I stood up and left the bar. I took a deep breath of summer air as I walked back into the street and headed to the nearest bus stop.

Nothing could have made that go any smoother.