Page 28 of Leaving Lando

Help Me

Breeand the band are tuning up when my work phone vibrates. The text, from an unknown number, says Back yard.

The skin at the back of my neck prickles. I ease back through the crowd gathering in the family room and slip outside. There’s no sign of anyone in the back, but I wait, in the shadows myself.

I’m listening as intently as I can, but I still don’t hear him until he speaks from just a few feet away. “Santiago’s got you in his sights.”

“Matteo.” My cousin, like a brother growing up, who dropped out of sight two years ago. Besides his twin brother Brando, I’m probably the only person in the whole family who has a damn good idea what he’s been up to.

He’s all but invisible in the darkness, only his outline faintly detectable. “What bug is up Santiago’s ass now?” I ask.

“The Adamos interfered with his takeover of the Callahan farm. He doesn’t forgive or forget.”

“We didn’t torch the place.”

“Doesn’t matter. You interviewed his lawyer, put law enforcement eyes on something he wanted to keep under the radar. The Adamos are officially his enemy number one.”

In the house, the band starts to play. I mutter a few choice curses. “Not a surprise, given that the man’s batshit crazy. Is there a particular reason you’re telling me this now?”

“You’re his first target. He hates cops almost as much as he hates Adamos.”

“Lucky me. Any idea what he has planned?”

“He’s going after your woman.”

Incandescent rage flares in an instant. “Fuck that. I will hunt him down and separate his head from his body with a rusty saw.”

“No, you won’t. Remember which side you’re on.”

“Fuck you. Where do you, of all people, get off telling me that?”

“Trust me, Lando. You don’t want that mark on your soul.”

His voice holds the chill of the grave, and for half a second I entertain the wild thought that my cousin is a ghost, come from the afterlife to warn the living. Then a twig snaps on my other side, and Quinn joins us.

She’s looking right at my cousin. It’s as if, after that first encounter they had at the farmhouse, her radar’s tuned to him. Matteo doesn’t speak, but the energy pouring off of him is that of a man who’s burning up for one particular woman. I know the feeling well; but in his case, it seems closer to the torment of hell than the heat of passion.

“Quinn,” I say. “What are you doing out here?”

“I knew you wouldn’t miss Bree’s jam session if it wasn’t something important.” She looks back at Matteo. “What’s your name?”

“Woman.” It comes out a furious, almost subhuman growl. “Stay away from me.”

Quinn smiles sweetly. “I’m not very good at doing what I’m told.”

Entertaining as this is, I have other priorities. Before Matteo can explode, I ask him, “Specifics? Timeline?”

“He’ll decide the details at the last moment and notify only the principals. Based on his past methodology, he’ll want to take her. Keep her. Torture you with the knowledge of what he’s doing to her.”

“Who?” Quinn says sharply. “Is he talking about Bree?”

“Quinn,” I say through gritted teeth, “get inside.” She glares at me, then at Matteo, then whirls on her heel and goes back to the house.

Despite Matteo’s earlier warning, I want to find Santiago and tear him limb from limb with my bare hands, and it does not feel at all like something that will scar my soul. “This can’t go on, Teo. We need to end him.”

I sense his attention shift back to me. He must have been staring at the house, where Quinn is now. “Brando called me that, a few months ago,” he says. “Hadn’t heard that name in a long time.”

I’m not sure why I used it, his old nickname. The man he’s become, with his scarred face and haunted voice, seems more than a lifetime removed from the boy I grew up with. “Remember that time we were out riding our bikes, the four of us” — me, Romero, Matteo, and Brando — “and we found that bird with its wing broken? You took it home, nursed it back to health.”

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