Page 57 of Mob Star

“Is the jet ready?”

“Yeah. We can go, Finn. I know you have stuff going on here.”

“She’s not stuff. And I’m not shirking my duties. If Thea and I have a future, then we need to see if we can get through these things. If we can’t…” I shrug. The guys might let me off this time, but I can’t quit my obligations forever.

I’d rather be with Thea than taking a late-night flight to Bean Town. Being away from her is another thing I’ll punish Rowan for. My goal is for this to take only three days. Tomorrow is getting the lay of the land. I need to scout things and meet with my informants. The next day is action. We’ll decimate them. Anything less means they’ll have resources to attack again. The third day is clean up and my flight home. I pray it’s truly that simple.

“I’m headed to the airfield, then. The sooner I get there, the sooner I can finish. I need you guys to keep an eye on Thea. I already spoke to Joey. He and his brothers have a few days off this week. They volunteered to keep an eye on her place. I didn’t ask. They volunteered. But that’s not enough. I need her to have a shadow.”

“Why?” Shane’s brow furrows. “Don’t you trust her?”

“I do. But someone put a brick through her window tonight. She claimed it was a bird. I pressed, and all she would commit to is it’s a family matter. I won’t strong-arm her into telling me the full truth, but no one puts a brick through your window without following up. I don’t want this mystery fecker to have the chance. If there’s more than one, the leader goes to the station. Shoot to kill the rest of them on sight.”

The station. It’s an abandoned rail station in the Bronx that’s been out of service for more than a decade. It has a subterranean level that we’ve made virtually impossible to access. Only the people who know can find it. We did some renovating and retrofitting. We have a kitchen, showers, and a bunkroom. Sometimes we’re there for days at a time. It’s our controlled location. We have another place, a house, on Staten Island where we can hold people until we’re ready for them at the station. It’s not ideal having to transport people more than once, but sometimes it’s a necessity. Once a person goes to the station, they aren’t walking out on their own. Ash or sludge. That’s how they leave.

The other families think their places are secret. The Italians have a garage in Queens, and the Russians have a warehouse there too. The Colombians have a vacant bodega in the same borough. We stay the fuck out of Queens. We all grew up there. It’s too fucking obvious. Their places were simple to find.

Everyone shuts off their phones miles away from their place. We track them, so we know everyone usually turns off their phones five miles out. You mark the circumference from that radius and work your way in. Whatever’s large, usually close to a river, appears abandoned, and will mask sounds— screams —is the place. The other families think we have a storage facility. We do, but that’s not our place. They think we used to use a fake storefront. We never did.

I say goodbye to Shane and head to the town car. Joey’s still at Thea’s, so I have a different driver. In the privacy of the backseat, it tempts me to text or call Thea. But we said our goodbyes. It’s better to leave without prolonging the agony. When Cormac and I spoke, I thought I’d stay in NYC. But that’s not an option now. I made it sound like I was staying here. If I call or text her, I’m going to feel guilty not telling her I’m headed to Boston.

I don’t want to tell her more lies, and I don’t want to cause myself a fresh wave of longing and missing her already.

Ridiculous.

We’ve gone on two dates. But a day is a decade in this world. A decade is a lifetime. Knowing I could die at any time, day or night means hyper vigilance. It means we must decide in the space of a couple seconds. Anything more gives your attacker the upper hand. That’s death.

I’ve thought about Thea practically every free moment I’ve had. I think about how much I like her. I think about the danger I’m bringing her into. I think about the things I can share, and the things I’ll always keep hidden. I think about whether or not that makes me too emotionally closed off. I think about what a future would look like coming home to her every night. I weigh all the options over and over.

I think about worst- and best-case scenarios with every permutation I can come up with. It always leads to the same place: I won’t walk away unless she tells me to. And it’s not confirmation bias. It’s not me wanting that so much, it’s the only conclusion I can come to. I have a shite ton of doubts about this. I have a nearly suffocating fear I’m making the wrong decision. But I can’t imagine not being with her now that I know her.

I’m thinking about this as the plane takes off. When we get to our cruising altitude, I force myself to get my laptop out. It’s barely more than an hour flight, but I pull up the program I created to track cell phones with a remotely downloaded feature in their operating system. We all have it. We wear trackers built into our watches, but it’s a secondary tool if something happens to one of us, and our trackers don’t ping. If the phone is on, I can locate it without using any government or law enforcement connected satellites.

It’ll be two a.m. when we land, so Rowan is enjoying his last night of sweet dreams. I’ll check into a hotel because they will discover I’m here. It’s not where I’m staying. We have a house in south Boston. It’s a shithole like the rest of the place. But it’s also where the Irish dominate. Embarrassing that they’ve been relegated to the shittiest part of the city. I don’t care that my accommodations won’t be luxurious like they’d be at the hotel. I often sleep beneath a rail station for fuck’s sake. It’ll make it faster when I strike. Rowan holds court at a bar near Dorchester.

I get to the house, and my guys— five of them came with me —rack out. We’re all exhausted. We had cars waiting for us at the airfield, so we didn’t have to wait around, and no one saw us. As far as the FAA is concerned, we never landed there. We have a false registration for that jet. They know the plane is there, but they don’t know it’s our plane. I’m asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.

“What the feck is he doing?” I mutter to myself.

Rowan is standing on the sidewalk talking to some motorcycle club leader. The guy is huge, but you can see his arrogance from a mile away. That’s his weakness. At least, it’s the most obvious right now. Size won’t protect him from the stupid decisions arrogance causes.

Rowan and this guy swap envelopes with no discretion. He wants any and everyone to see them doing business. What’s he got this guy doing for him? I pull my phone out and focus my camera from the car we’re sitting in half a block down. The windows are tinted, but not so much they draw attention.

I like nice things, but I don’t have the highest end of most stuff. My cars aren’t flashy, but they’re fucking expensive even before all the aftermarket parts. My cars’ lights and horn do nothing when I lock or unlock them. The dome lights don’t come on if there’s a bomb. The frames are reinforced, and the windows are bulletproof. I have a few occupational hazards.

My watch isn’t flashy since I don’t need some fuck nut thinking I’m a good target to mug. It’s also where my tracker is hidden. However, my phone is. I have shite programmed in no one will find, but it also has the best camera on the market. I got it for days like this. No one’s carrying some hefty Nikon for the world to spot. I snap some pics and enlarge them. They’re high resolution, but we’re just far enough away that the photos don’t show as much detail as I want.

I recognize the biker when he turns toward me. “Tom, hand me the binoculars, please.”

I’m in the front passenger seat. I lean forward and focus them. It’s just who I thought. Corey Byrne. Fucking sack of shite. He drives around on a piece of crap bike. He thinks the noise intimidates people. He needs to compensate for a micro penis. He rides down to NYC periodically, but he knows to stay the fuck out of our neighborhoods. He knows if we catch him, we’ll— at the very least —beat the shite out of him. If he thinks of doing any business in our neighborhoods, we’ll kill him. Utterly worthless.

Corey strides over to his bike and lugs his fat arse onto the seat. He uses his size to terrify people, but he hasn’t been in a fight in like twenty years. His goons do the manual labor. He has five of them today. He acts like they’re his enforcers. They’re his bodyguards because there are a few hundred people who would off him if they had the chance. He revs his bike and takes off.

Rowan checks the contents of the envelope he received. He appears satisfied with whatever’s in it. After a quick glance in Corey’s direction, he heads to his car. When he pulls out of his driveway, we follow. We make sure we stay three cars back. We only got a few hours of sleep because I wanted to be here before sunrise. Peter, my senior-most guy on this mission, slipped a tracker onto Rowan’s car. If we wind up losing him because we need the three-car buffer, we still know where he’s going. I have my laptop open on my lap, and his car’s signal flashes a dot as it turns right at an intersection. We see the car in time to follow without needing the tracker, but he’s merging into morning traffic.

It takes no time to realize he’s headed to warehouses they have in Lynn, which is four miles north of Boston. Lynn, Lynn, city of sin. You never come out the way you came in. Jaunty little ditty. We’re almost to an industrial park when we pull off. We can watch the parking lot from here. Once he’s inside, we’ll creep closer. Fucking move your arse. He’s standing outside on the phone.

“Are we close enough to get a heat signature?”

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