But De Fiore hadn’t shown an interest in hunting her after he’d ‘died.’ Not at first anyway. A couple of weeks ago, De Fiore had made contact with Alec, of all people, and told him he might need help with getting a new false ID once he killed the O’Kelly woman. De Fiore hadn’t been sure how things would play out here in Miami and wanted a backup ID in case the one he already had in place somehow got flagged.
Alec was simply going to flush pretty Tegan O’Kelly out if he couldn’t find her. Make the bitch come to him. Sometimes that was the only way to do things, to make your prey come to you. He couldn’t risk De Fiore getting to her first.
Once Alec was in the safety of his newly stolen car, he turned on the voice digitizer app and called her cell phone.
No surprise, it went directly to voice mail. “If you make me hunt you down any longer I’m going to start killing your friends. I’ll start with your whore boss and her son. I’ll record their deaths so you can watch them both beg and scream. I’ll do the kid first.” He ended the call and tossed the phone out the window. The phone was a burner but he wouldn’t be using it anymore in case the cops tried to track him.
He wasn’t actually going to kill a kid—he did have some scruples after all—but he knew the message would freak her out. It might make her scared enough to get sloppy.
He didn’t think the message would make her come out of hiding. Not yet anyway. He was going to leave more messages and make each one worse than the last.
The messages would put her on edge and guarantee she’d call her friends to check on them. From the little he’d watched Tegan he knew she was close with the woman who owned the bakery. A few more messages like that and Tegan O’Kelly would be compelled to call her friends. Once she did, he’d be able to get a location on her—because he was watching her boss’s cell phone, waiting for any call from Tegan. Soon enough he’d get a lock on her location. From there, he’d track her down and put a bullet in her head.
Chapter 7
Aaron stopped outside the entryway to his living room and eavesdropped on Tegan and Dillon. It had been almost two days since she’d talked to the Feds and so far neither they nor the Miami PD had been able to locate De Fiore. If he was even in Miami. Aaron knew they were exploring all leads on the bomber and so far all the cops had been able to find was a few images of a man in a hoodie heading down the street where the bomb had been placed.
They had a time frame for when they thought it had been planted. It had been early in the morning and the man’s image had been caught on multiple CCTVs. But the guy had disappeared into the parking garage of a hotel and from there they hadn’t been able to trace him anywhere. Without an actual face or fingerprints, they were hunting a ghost. It could be De Fiore or not.
“You don’t have to let me win, you know,” Dillon said.
“I’m not. I just stink at this game.” Tegan’s voice was matter of fact.
Dillon giggled, the sound music to Aaron’s ears. He might have screwed up by marrying the wrong woman, but he’d gotten Dillon so it was worth it.
“You really are bad. Not as bad as Daddy. We can play something else if you want.”
“It’s okay, it’s still fun. So your dad stinks, too?”
Dillon gave a belly laugh. “He can’t even get past level two.”
Tegan laughed loudly and Aaron risked peeking around the entryway. The Christmas tree twinkled in the corner, brightening the room. The two of them were sitting on the ground in front of the television, their backs to him. Kali was snoozing next to Tegan, her body stretched out as she lightly snored. Dillon was wearing his Captain America pajamas and Tegan had on a black party dress with a big puffy skirt that had sparkles all over it. It puffed out around her on the ground. Her hair was pulled up in a twist, revealing the smooth, pale skin of her neck and back.
He’d never really thought of backs as sexy, but everything about Tegan was.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t had much time alone together since the meeting in Carlito’s office. She’d been working on her website designs for the past day and a half, and he was pretty certain she’d been keeping him at a healthy distance after their almost-kiss. Much to his annoyance. He was patient, though. And determined.
“So…are you my dad’s girlfriend now?”
Tegan’s entire body jolted and he watched as the character on her side of the screen fell off a cliff. She cleared her throat. “Ah, no. We’re just friends.”
Unfortunately, he thought. He planned to change that soon, though.
“Yeah, that’s what he said. I just thought maybe…you guys might not wanna tell me.”
“I don’t think your dad would ever lie to you.”