Married To The Mob. Ginny Aiken

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      “You! Did you go deaf or something?”

      Carlie shook herself. “No. I just had to…” He didn’t share her new faith, but with this latest development…He’d asked. “I had to pray.”

      “Okay.” He looked way uncomfortable. “Well. That’s fine. Ah…we’re going to have to pull over long enough for me to make some calls, get an idea what we should do next.”

      “Fine. What do you want from me?”

      “Ah…nothing. I just figured you’d want to know why I was stopping when we need to get away ASAP.”

      Carlie peered at her companion, but couldn’t read him, and she really did try. “Oh-kay, Mr. Secret Agent Man. I’ll be right here, seat belt on, ready for takeoff whenever you’re ready.”

      He gave her another of his exasperated looks. She had come to identify and catalog 37 flavors of weird looks Dan Maddox used on her—she would’ve preferred the ice cream. Pulling over to the side of the road wasn’t the smartest thing to do. And yeah, yeah, she’d figured Dan as the Boy Scout–type right from the start. He’d never cell phone and drive. But the New Jersey Turnpike was no lonely country lane. Anyone could come along here and pop the two of them with the greatest of ease.

      Ever since she’d helped Maryanne Wellborn, now Prophet, save her elderly father from dear brother Tony’s murderous intents, Carlie’s world had turned into a surreal series of images, each one weirder than the last. All because she’d agreed to testify against her father, her brother Tony and a bunch of their mob pals.

      She’d also acquired her intense, good-looking blond shadow.

      Carlie had never been so squeezed into a box. She’d called her father a tyrannical spoilsport during her high-school years. Then, after she married, Carlo gave her complete freedom—as long as she stayed out of his business.

      That business, the same as her father’s and brother’s, was what landed her smack in the middle of this mess. She’d done everything she could during those years of marriage to ignore the signs, the same ones she’d ignored at home. What woman wants to admit her family, and the handsome, debonair older man her father insisted she marry, were all mobsters?

      The driver’s side door opened. “Okay,” Dan said once behind the wheel again. “We’re on our way.”

      “On our way where?”

      “Some other place over in Pennsylvania.”

      “Could you be a little more specific? That covers a big chunk of ground, you know?”

      He gave her another of those worried looks. “It’s probably safer for you not to know too much about our plans.”

      “Oh, sure. I might telepathetically transmit the location to Dad’s pals. Give me a break. What do you think I’m going to do? Hop out of the car—while it’s zipping down a highway—flag down some unsuspecting soul, then run and tell on you?”

      “It’s telepathically, Carlie. And it’s safer for you not to know too much in case someone takes me out and they snatch you.”

      “I like telepathetically better. And what you just said made no sense. If they snuff you—that’s so cool! I feel like I’m reading the script for a TV cop show. Yeah, if they snuff you, don’t you think they’ll just grab me from the passenger seat? I’ll be no more than a memory.”

      His knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “Sorry. You’re right. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t usually get this rattled on a case. I guess it doesn’t help that I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

      “Are you an insomniac?”

      “No. Just working a tough case—you.”

      “Takes one to know one.”

      The corner of his mouth tipped up. “What is this? Elementary school?”

      “Beats me. It’s your game, remember? I’m just along ’cause you agency guys insisted I play. So where are you taking me? And I don’t mean that little piece of ground out on the back forty of New Jersey some call Pennsylvania.”

      “Lancaster County.”

      She turned as far as the seatbelt let her to better look at him. “Oh! Can we stop at the outlets? Please. I love shopping there. You get the best deals on just about everything with a label.”

      Another weird look from Mr. Intense. “A bargain hunter mob wife? One who’s become their number one target?”

      “Hey! They can get me just as easily in a store as in this car. And just because I could get my hands on Carlo’s and Daddy’s money, doesn’t mean I’m ready to pay more than I have to. That’s just stupid.”

      “Okay. So you’re a thrifty mob wife—”

      “Widow, remember? The hit on Carlo is what started all this.”

      “You think I could forget?” He clamped his lips shut, swerved to avoid a maniac driver who cut them off from the right, then, once the nut was far enough away, changed lanes back to the right. Carlie clung to her seatbelt for dear life.

      “By the way,” he went on. “What was the deal with that empty coffin you guys shipped to Italy? He was supposed to be inside, but when Italian customs agents X-rayed the thing, it was empty as…well, you get my drift.”

      She sure did. He’d probably been about to say “your head” or pay her some other similar compliment, but she let him get away with the near-smear this time.

      “There’s no ‘you guys,’ Dan. I never knew what went on day-to-day, and I absolutely, positively had nothing to do with the funeral home, the funeral and why or for what reason they shipped off the empty casket for an Italian burial. I just knew Carlo’d died. His uncle Louie handled all the details.”

      He shot her a look Carlie didn’t like. He didn’t seem to believe half of what she said, but there was nothing she could do about it. The guy was the most suspicious critter she’d ever met.

      He pushed the gas pedal, and the speed shoved her back into the seat. “What are you doing?”

      “Getting off the Turnpike. This rush hour traffic is not my thing.”

      “But you live and work in Philly.”

      “Doesn’t mean I have to like the traffic there.”

      Carlie studied his profile as they crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge. So far, she hadn’t found a thing Dan liked. What really threw her was that when he’d first been assigned to protect her, J.Z. Prophet, Dan’s usual partner at the Bureau, had described her shadow as an easygoing, laid-back kind of guy.

      This guy didn’t have a laid-back hair on his blond head. And she was stuck with him. At least, until the trial was over and the verdict came in. After that…well, she didn’t know what came after that, but she wasn’t about to give it much thought. She still had to live long enough to get to “after that.”

      “Then allow me СКАЧАТЬ