Page 99 of The Moments You Were Mine
Sparks zapped between us.
Keeping my voice as low as possible, I told her, “I can guarantee you’ll like me bossing you around.” And I was rewarded with a flush that covered her cheeks, aggravation twined with lust.
I stepped away to let Fallon get her update from Andie, pulled Chuck from his chair, and hauled him over to my teammates. “I need you to take a look at some pictures.”
Cranky brought up his phone and showed him the pictures of Ace and Jesus Lopez.
The teen shook his head. “These guys are way skinnier than the guy I met with.”
As he reduced the picture, the one next to it popped up. It was a mug shot of Ike Puzo I’d sent to my team when we’d been compiling a list of people with a grudge against Fallon and her family.
Chuck’s fingers stalled, and a buzz went up along my spine—intuition that I’d trusted more times than I could count in the field.
“He look like your guy?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Like I said, he always wore sunglasses and had that bushy beard.”
The Puzos had an entire clan of siblings and cousins who all resembled each other with dark hair, tanned skin, and dark eyes inherited from their Italian ancestors. I hadn’t grabbed a mug shot of Tony Cantori, the cousin who’d gotten out of jail earlier this year, but I was sure Dad had one.
I sent my father a text just as Fallon stepped out of the makeshift office with Andie and Kevin. Andie glanced down at the photo of Ike still open on Cranky’s phone.
“Is this the person doing all this?” she asked with a frown, pulling the phone to her before showing it to Kevin. “Isn’t this the guy from One-Eyed Frank’s who I turned down? Remember,he got kind of pissy and grabbed my arm? I was grateful you and Bess stepped in.”
Kevin scratched his chin. “That was back in, what? March? He left with that couple who were fighting. The scruffy guy and the tiny brunette.”
“It can’t be Ike. He’s in prison. But his cousin Tony got out in March,” I told them.
Fallon grabbed my arm, squeezing. “March? Parker… Mom…” She swallowed hard, eyes turning glossy.
Fuck.
My phone vibrated. Dad had sent an image of Tony Cantori like I’d asked, but it was his written reply that had that buzz spiking along my spine again. “Dad says Tony died in a house fire. Burnt to a crisp in May.” Jesus. May. Right when Puzo showed up in California. I looked up at Cranky and Sweeney. “If Tony went to work for a Mexican cartel, Puzo wouldn’t have taken that lying down.”
I turned my phone to Andie and showed her the picture Dad had sent me of Tony. “Is this the guy you saw in March?”
She looked from Cranky’s phone with Ike’s mug shot to mine. “They look a lot alike.”
But what, if anything, did this have to do with what was happening to Fallon now? The attacks on her seemed intensely personal. They’d set Fallon up to take the fall, not Rafe. And if it had been Tony who’d been here in March, why would he run Lauren off the road? Was this Ike Puzo pulling strings from prison to get revenge against Rafe and striking out against anyone related to him? Why not simply send someone here to kill Rafe ten years ago when he’d still been living at the ranch?
Did it really matter why? What I needed was for it to stop. So, I’d call Dad and have him pay a visit to Ike in prison as soon as it could be arranged.
When I glanced over at Fallon again, she looked impossibly paler than before. She needed to be in bed if she was going to heal.
“Can you take Theo to the truck?” I asked her. “Give me two minutes to finish here, and I’ll take you both home.”
Her gaze held mine for a few seconds, and it was a testament to how shaken up and tired she was that she didn’t even argue.She just looked down at Theo, gave him a small smile, and grabbed his hand. “Come on. You can tell me about the puppy Teddy gave you. What are you going to name him?”
My chest ached, and I almost growled my objection to the entire puppy idea, but instead, I bit my cheek and watched them walk out into the light. I followed them as far as the barn door, ensuring they made it safely to my truck.
They looked right together, like they belonged, but keeping Theo near Fallon was putting him in danger. When Dad had first called and I’d driven with Theo to the ranch, I hadn’t expected things to be this bad, to swing this out of control. The double-edged sword of responsibility and guilt dueled it out inside me again.
I needed to find and stop whoever this was, for both their sakes.
I turned back to my teammates and Fallon’s staff, saying, “She needs rest. If she doesn’t, she may have long-term impacts from the concussion. You all have my number. I’d rather you contact me instead of her for the next twenty-four hours. If I can’t figure out whatever you need, I’ll ask her, but she needs a chance to heal.”
“Is Rafe coming?” Kurt asked.
“I talked him out of it yesterday, and I’ll keep putting him off. The last thing we need is more of the family here and in danger, and I hope he’ll see it that way too.”
