LITMIR.BIZ

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he was looking for. A side street let him duck through a strip mall’s parking lot and double back to find a parking space that let him watch the building. Bolan checked out security and studied nearby pedestrians for any sign that they were cops or mobsters.

      Both posed problems for him, one being a target, whereas the other was an obstacle. At the beginning of his lonely war, Bolan had vowed he would never kill a cop, regardless of the circumstances. Plainclothes detectives were a headache because they might shoot first without announcing who they were, and Bolan didn’t want to take a chance on dropping one of them by accident.

      But the building’s entrance was clear—as far as he could see—until three no-neck types emerged, marching a woman toward the street. She sagged between them, and they held her up by her arms, which seemed to be secured behind her back. As Bolan watched, a car pulled up to meet the four, and they deposited their captive in the backseat before climbing in to sandwich her and close the doors.

      Game change.

      As the sedan rolled out, Bolan gave it a block, then started following.

      Why not? If he could sting the ’Ndrangheta with a rescue operation, it was worth a shot.

      Besides, he’d always been a sucker for a damsel in distress.

      * * *

      “WHERE ARE WE taking her?” asked Dino Terranova, in the driver’s seat.

      “The boat,” Fausto Cortale said. “She’s going for a swim.”

      “Too bad,” Ruggiero Aiello chimed in. “Seems like a waste.”

      Cortale grunted in response. He had a date lined up for later in the evening, and he did not want to dawdle with their prisoner. Load her aboard the Mare Strega, cruise a few miles out to sea and leave her with a bullet in her head, maybe a gym bag filled with scrap iron tied around her ankles. By the time she floated up again, if ever, there’d be next to nothing left for lab analysis.

      And if she was identified someday, so what? A boss’s mistress disappeared and later turned up dead. Who cared? By then, her family would be extinct and life would have returned to normal, as it was before her brother had betrayed the family.

      Knowing who had wiped out the Natale clan was one thing; proving it was something else entirely. It was good for word to get around. Making examples was the best way to prevent prospective rats from talking out of turn.

      Still, now that he was sitting close to her, their thighs pressing together....

      “It’s a waste, all right,” Gitano Malara echoed, resting one of his hands on the prisoner’s other leg. “We ought to stop somewhere and have a little party, eh?”

      “You don’t mind, do you, bella?” Terranova asked, angling for a quick look in the rearview mirror.

      “She don’t mind,” Aiello said. “Lets her live a little longer anyway.”

      “That’s right,” Malara said. “I bet she’d be real grateful.”

      “Have you seen a mirror lately?” Cortale asked him.

      “Hey!”

      But it was getting to him, sitting close to her and hearing all the bawdy talk, knowing they could take her anywhere they wanted, make her do anything, as long as she still wound up feeding fish. Aldo would never know the difference if Cortale swore them all to silence under pain of death.

      They wouldn’t even have to deviate from Aldo’s plan. The boat was waiting for them. Once they had put out to sea, there would be nothing, no one, to distract them.

      Trying to keep it casual, he let his left hand come to rest on her right thigh. She tried to squirm away from him, but there was nowhere she could go, trapped with Malara to her left. She made a whiny noise but couldn’t even push his hand away because hers were tied behind her back.

      The possibilities aroused Cortale, inflaming him.

      “Hey, Fausto.” Terranova’s voice cut through his steamy thoughts. “I think we got a tail.”

      “The hell you mean, a tail?”

      “Just what I said. I’ve had an eye on this one Alfa, trailing us since we left Aldo’s.”

      They were rolling southbound, toward the coast, along Viale degli Angioini, and although the flow of cars was still substantial, Cortale knew they’d lost a fair number of the vehicles that had surrounded them as they were leaving Catanzaro.

      “We do something, you’d better be damn sure,” he cautioned Terranova. “It comes down to you.”

      “I’m sure,” Terranova replied.

      “All right, then. Lead him off on Via Solferino when you get there, and we’ll find a place to take him.”

      Cortale felt his rutting mood go sour, changing into something else—a killing frame of mind. And that wasn’t so strange. Weren’t sex and death closely related, after all?

      * * *

      BOLAN HAD NO idea where the mobsters were taking their prisoner, whether their destination lay somewhere in the open countryside south of Catanzaro, or if they were on their way to the coast. Either option offered places to dispose of a body—a shallow grave in some lonely field or a burial at sea. He was gambling that they wouldn’t kill her in the car and risk soiling their clothes or the upholstery, but even that could not be guaranteed.

      She could be dead already, maybe finished off with a garrote, as many Old World killers still preferred to do when it was feasible. No noise, no mess to speak of if you did it properly. There was a chance he couldn’t save the lady—that he might only be able to avenge her—but he kept betting that she’d be easier to handle while alive, up to the moment when they’d reached her final destination.

      Traffic was thinning as they pulled away from Catanzaro, with commuters peeling off toward their suburban homes, replaced by others on their way down to the seashore. Bolan hung back in the wake of the sedan, knowing they might have spotted him but hoping otherwise. If he was burned, they’d done nothing so far to indicate as much, but he could only wait and see.

      When the ’Ndrangheta driver started signaling a left turn just beyond a road sign for the village of Le Croci, Bolan kept his signal off and slowed down to let a van slide in between his Alfa and the car he was pursuing—just a little twist to calm suspicion if the hit team thought they had a tail. He’d follow them, but he didn’t want to tip them off.

      Bolan made his turn at the last minute, ignored a bleating horn behind him, and began to track his target on the winding two-lane road. No other vehicles were between them now. He let the mob car lead him by four hundred yards but still knew he was clearly visible behind them if they bothered looking back.

      The trick was to keep from spooking them but still be quick enough to intervene when they reached their destination and prepared to dispose of their prisoner. Hanging back a quarter of a mile delayed Bolan’s reaction time, but he’d alert his adversaries in a heartbeat if he roared up on their bumper when they’d stopped to drag the lady from their car. Moving too soon could get her killed. Likewise, moving too late could have the same result.

      The land around them now was mostly open, with large homes on multiple acres on the southern side. Beyond the houses, he glimpsed orchards, whereas the fields across the road stood fallow and awaiting cultivation. Not the best place for a firefight, but he was grateful for the open space and scarcity of innocents. If his intended targets led him to a better killing ground, he’d thank them for it.

      When the smoke cleared.

      And the lady? Bolan hadn’t thought that far ahead. He’d seen her and decided he would help her if he could. Beyond that, once he’d freed her from captivity, she could decide what happened next—up to a point. He wasn’t anybody’s nursemaid, and he had no time to care for the woman. If he could find someone reliable to take her off his hands, he’d go with that.

      If

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