Page 64 of Taking Care of the Target

She wanted to look away, just lean back to where she couldn’t see the TV, yet she stood, transfixed, waiting to see what’d happen. The man with the gun pulled the trigger, and Cassie jumped.

The guy fell backward and hit the ground, a bullet hole in his forehead. Cassie saw an image in her mind, so similar…

Juice from the tomato squeezed between her fingers, and when she glanced down at the red running in streams, she saw blood.

A man pleading for his life.

Vince’s face.

The man’s head snapping back.

Blood. So, so much blood.

A skull with a hole blown out the back of it, so misshapen and wrong.

The man who’d pulled the trigger…

A sharp pain shot across her head, and then the memory barreled at her like it meant to pin her in place and never let go.

Carlo Rossi. The rumors about him being a mob boss were true. Her heart rate hitched up a notch, each pump sending a burst of fear through her.

And Vince. The one person she thought she knew. The man she loved. Betrayal turned the blood in her veins to ice, slicing them open and spreading it through her entire body.

He had been there, too.

Chapter Thirty

Jim hung up the phone and rubbed his burning eyes, bouncing between cautiously excited and exhausted. He downed the last of his cold cup of coffee and waved at Mancini. “Apparently one of the tech guys found something. Let’s go take a listen.”

Jim tried to shake himself awake. Ever since they picked up Dante Costa, he and Mancini had been pushing hard, pulling late nights. Dante toyed with them, not lawyering up until the last minute, then flipping them off as they officially charged him.

Looked like he was going to make bail, too. With the cat about to be out of the bag that the FBI was watching, it was time to make a Hail Mary pass. If they couldn’t bring Rossi in on something major, might as well screw with his livelihood as much as possible.

The bastard’s slipping through our fingers.That same worry was written all over his partner’s face. While the tech guys often got excited over tiny things that didn’t add much to the case, Jim decided to try on optimism for once.

Maybe this time they’ve found something incriminating enough to use against Rossi in court. Or at least lead to a stakeout that’ll take him down.

And then I’ll do a cartwheel down the hall, no worry about throwing my back out.

Jim paused at the door to the tech room, almost scared to go in, because it could be nothing again, and he and Mancini couldn’t handle one more day of nothing. They both thought they had Dante; they’d been so close.

Close counted in horseshoes but earned you jack shit in detective work.

Jim held the door open for Mancini and followed him in. “You have something for us?”

Kent, one of the tech agents, turned up the speakers to his computer. “We picked up this off Salvatore Esposito’s cell. It’s from earlier today.” He pushed play, and they listened to a conversation between Carlo and Sal that sounded suspiciously like a hit had just been ordered.

“How long ago did he make that call?” Jim asked.

The tech guy winced, and Jim knew it wasn’t going to be good. “We’ve got so many calls, and we’ve been focusing more on Carl—”

“The time, Agent.”

“It was around four.”

Jim glanced at his watch and swore. “We’ve got to get to Cassandra Dalton’s place. Mancini, call for back up.” He pushed out the door, checking that his weapon was in its holster, despite the fact that he never took it off while he was on duty.

“We can’t let that girl die,” he said as he and Mancini sprinted toward the building’s exit.

---