Shay Savage - Otherwise Unharmed

“I don’t usually do it.”

“You’ve had a cigarette in your hand pretty much the whole time since the last time you made that statement.”

“I’m trying to remember what it’s like.”  I gave her a goofy smile, and she shook her head again.

Lia was quiet while I smoked, glared at the gang-bangers as they went in and out of the store for cheap liquor, and waited for the cab to show up.

“I was thinking I might retire,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Lia asked.

“You know—like you were saying before.  You asked what we were going to do after all this.  When I was in jail, I thought maybe…well, maybe I’d just see if you wanted to...um….”

Shit, I sounded like a fucking idiot.

“I was thinking maybe you and I could leave Chicago, you know—together.  Go someplace where no one is likely to try to track me down.  I have to take care of all this other shit first because Trent will definitely be on my ass until it’s done, but afterwards, we could just leave.  I’ve got plenty of money to get us by for a while.”

“What?  Someplace like that cabin where I first met you?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“And do what?”

I gave her a half smile and a raised eyebrow.

“Alternate between taking you up against a wall and taking you from behind.  We could throw in a few other variations, of course.  Those are just my top picks.”

She didn’t seem amused.

“I’ve missed a whole year of school tracking you down,” she said.  “I still have two years left before I get my degree.”

I was struck again with how little I knew about her.  I hadn’t even been aware she was in school.

“What are you studying?” I asked.

“Nursing,” Lia replied tersely.  “Don’t change the subject.”

There was a sudden burst of a memory from a couple Christmases ago when Rinaldo’s wife got ticked off at him for sneaking cookies from a tray she was preparing.  She had shaken her finger at him as she yelled, and all his attempts at diverting the topic had been unsuccessful.

I smiled.

“Is this funny?” Lia snapped.

“No,” I said, but I couldn’t stop the grin on my face.  “Would you hit me if I said you were beautiful when you’re angry?”

“Maybe.”

“I won’t say it, then.”

“Good call.”

I leaned in to kiss her, and she let me though she didn’t open her mouth or push for more.  I stopped after just a couple of light touches to her lips and then leaned back a little to look at her.

“You wouldn’t have to go to school,” I told her.  “I can take care of you.”

“I want to go to school,” Lia said.

Her tone left no room for discussion even if I was a little inclined to try to persuade her to try the easy life.  She would never have to work as long as she was with me, and the places we were likely to end up weren’t likely to have a lot of universities in the area.

“Can’t we work out the details later?”

“If you are saying that when all is said and done, we’re not going to stay here, and you aren’t going to continue with your current occupation, then yes, the details can wait.”

I nodded, hoping the gesture looked sincere.  I wasn’t completely sure if I could live up to the whole idea—there were too many uncertainties.  I didn’t even know if I’d survive this little endeavor into Greco’s organization, and even if I did, there was no way to know if Rinaldo would just let me walk away afterwards.

Lia didn’t need to know that though.  If she did—if she even suspected it—she might change her mind and walk out.  I still wasn’t sure how politely I was going to respond to that, and I needed to stop it from happening.

“You’re not going to leave?”  I needed the confirmation.  I needed to hear it.

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“God, no,” I said with a sharp breath.  “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.  I don’t want you to go anywhere.  I want you to stay with me.”

“But after all of this,” Lia said as she waved a hand around in the air, “all this shit with the federal agent and all—after all of that is done, we leave, right?  Just take Odin and head to wherever you want to go.  Then we’ll figure the rest of it out when we get there.”

“Yeah,” I said with a nod as I stared straight into her eyes.  “We’ll leave—just you and me and Odin.”

Nothing was going to stop me from making good on that statement.

We spent the next three days just moving around the city.  I hadn’t gotten any grand ideas on how I was supposed to home in on Greco, and I hadn’t heard anything from Trent or Rinaldo.  Of course, I didn’t have a phone anyone could use to reach me, and I’d left at home the new laptop I had bought in the rush, but if either of them knew where I was, they’d definitely find a way to reach me.

So at the very least, I was staying a step ahead of them.  I just wasn’t sure what that was accomplishing besides buying me a little more time.

Make that time with Lia.

As soon as we stopped at each motel where we stayed, I was on her and in her as quickly as possible.  It was like sex with her was centering me—giving me the focus and purpose I hadn’t felt since I was first deployed to the Middle East.  She seemed to either understand how badly I needed it, or maybe she needed it just as much as I did.  Whichever it was, she never complained about anything other than being a little sore.

I bought lube, and she stopped complaining after that.

Without any other brilliant ideas on my part, we ended up returning to my Audi behind the goth-themed nightclub in Lincoln Park and then went back to my apartment.  I knew we couldn’t stay in such an obvious place long, but there were things I needed.  I also wanted to see Odin, so we picked him up at the doggie hotel on the way back to my building.

He was pretty excited to be back and spent about as much time bringing his bone back to Lia to throw for him as he did trying to lick my face and arms.  I sat on the couch and watched her play with him for a few minutes before she decided she had played fetch enough for one night.  Odin curled up in his doggie bed by the door to the balcony and watched us.

“It’s late,” Lia observed.

“You tired?”

“Yeah, I am.”

She looked it, too.  All the running around was already getting to her, and it had only been a few days.  I took her into the bedroom and let her get settled without jumping her bones for once.  She was out almost as soon as she laid her head on the pillow.

While Lia slept in my bed—a sight I found insanely distracting—I started going through all my lists of people in Greco’s organization as well as contacts that might have some other connection to his organization.  I was pretty much coming up with nothing after a couple of hours and was about to throw my laptop across the room when a thought occurred to me.

Nick Wolfe.

Nick might have been Rinaldo’s flesh and blood, but right before I had my little breakdown, he had started seeing a girl.  Her name was Milena, and she was related to Andrey Severinov who was the figurehead in Chicago for a crime group along with Rurik Dytalov. They’d moved from Moscow to Azerbaijan several years ago to take a piece of the caviar trade, but they were small suppliers compared to Moretti’s outfit.  I’d taken out Rurik’s cousin a few months ago when they tried to home in on Rinaldo’s caviar customers, but as far as I knew, Rurik didn’t know I was the one who pulled the trigger.

Milena had a brother, Micah.  We’d met once when he was giving Nick some shit at a bar, and I put myself in the middle of it.  I might have taken him out that night, but Nick didn’t want me to go after him.  Out of respect, I didn’t, but he was still on my kill roll.  I had planned to discuss it with Rinaldo before taking any further action but hadn’t gotten around to it before I went off the deep end.  If I couldn’t get into Greco’s organization directly, maybe I could get in through the Russians.

It was the best option I had at the moment.

I picked up my phone and selected one of the contacts.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Eddie-boy,” I said, “it’s Arden.”

“Hey, LT,” a sleepy Eddie-boy replied.  “You know it’s three in the morning, right?”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“No you aren’t,” he replied.  “What can I do ya for?”

“Micah Severinov.  I need contact info.”

Eddie-boy, the communications expert deployed with me in Iraq, was my key information guy outside of Rinaldo’s organization.  He had come in handy on several occasions.  He was military-loyal through and through, though he didn’t have much love for the law or the government.  As his former commanding officer, he would have done anything for me.

“In Chicago?”

“Yeah.”

“No problem.”

He called back just a few minutes later with an address and cell phone number, and I wired him some cash.

“Hey, LT—you doin’ all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Oh.”  There was a long pause.  “I just heard…well, I heard you had a little trouble.”

“All a misunderstanding,” I told him.  “Now the guys across the street know not to have such a loud fucking garage door.”

Eddie-boy laughed and hung up.

Now I had to figure out how to approach the guy and what to do with Lia while I was taking care of business.  Unlike Odin, I didn’t think she’d be too happy with the idea of going to a boarding facility.

I snickered to myself at the thought.

Still, she needed to be close to me but not too close.  Trent still knew exactly where I was, and I was going to have to change our living space for a lot of reasons.  Rinaldo owned the building I lived in, and once he got wind of what I was doing, the apartment I’d lived in for the last couple of years was going to become a warzone.