Kiss a Frog (The Book Club Series 1) (11 page)

Something Tells Me, I’m Not Alone

Lily buried herself in work for the next week, training Abby and pretending that everything was fine. The truth was, nothing was fine, and everything was a wreck. Abby didn’t know jack shit about working in retail, and Lily was ready to strangle her.
Orange is not my color. Stripes are not my pattern, and jail will not be a friendly place for me.
She repeated constantly, and the words became her new mantra. Abby had crashed the register
again
for the third time in two hours.

“Abby, please, just go.” Lily pointed to the back of the store and her eyes flashed.

“But…” Abby argued.

“Either go or I will cunt punt you. I did it once, and I swear before everything that’s holy, I’ll do it again,” Lily hissed, turning her attention to the gawking customer. “I’m so sorry for her incompetence, how about twenty percent off?”

Once the store cleared, she walked to the back and called for Abby. “Come back and let’s try this again.”

Abby’s head hung low, and she sniffled. “You know I’m not good at this.”

“I know. I’m sorry for snapping at you. I know this is a big life change for you, and I’m trying to be supportive.” Lily hugged Abby and smiled. “Now, let’s try the register again.”

Olivia had never shown back up to work, much like Luca had promised, and it really left her in a bind. She convinced Paul to hire Abby, pretty much promising if she screwed up she’d lose her job. They were looking for someone else to help with things too, just in case Abby didn’t work out. Paul told her that she had another week to train Abby, and if she couldn’t get it by then, she was fired.

Lily took a slow breath and went through the training one last time for the register. She pretended to be a customer and had Abby ring her up. As Abby managed to stumble through the transaction without a hitch, Lily cheered.

“You did it!”

They high fived, and Lily sighed in relief.
We may keep our jobs yet.

Abby left an hour before closing, and Lily finished the night by herself. Being alone gave her too much time to think. Luca was a constant presence in her mind, and she hated that she thought of him so often. She wondered if he was okay, if he was miserable doing desk work, and she really missed Olivia. The younger girl had become a friend. Closing up the store, she locked up and left the mall. The night was cloudy and dark, and an involuntary shiver coursed through her.

She rushed across the parking lot and fumbled with her keys. Her breath came fast as she heard the sound of steps. Glancing over her shoulder, she scanned the mostly empty parking lot and saw nothing. But she could still hear the sound of someone walking toward her, a slow
click click
sound that left her breathless.

“Who’s there?” Lily called out.

No answer, only the slow clicking sound of someone walking closer. She jammed her key into the lock and opened her door. Before she could step into the car, a beefy arm grasped her and pulled her away from the vehicle. Lily screamed, and her sounds were silenced by a hand over her mouth. She bit at the fingers and the man hissed in her ear. “Stop it!”

Lily kept trying to bite him between screams as he dragged her away. Her pulse skittered in her throat, and she heard a door sliding open on a vehicle. Before she could scream again, she was shoved into the back of a black SUV and the vehicle pulled away. Lily screamed then, long and loud. “Don’t kill me!” she begged.

“Lily, stop screaming,” a calm man’s voice told her. “No one is going to kill you. We just want to talk to you.” He reached out with a pale hand. “Come sit on the seat and buckle in.”

“Are you the mob?” Lily squeaked out, her voice quavering. She backed up against the door and fumbled for the handle. Jerking it twice, she found it to be locked.
Shit.

“No. We’re the FBI. We need your help. You’re locked in until we release the child safety switch, and we’re not releasing it at this time.”

Lily eyed his proffered hand for a moment and finally shifted to accept it and clambered onto the seat beside him. She buckled her seatbelt quickly and turned to stare at the man. “Why should I believe you? Is Luca okay?”

“De Soros is fine,” the man replied. “You should believe me because I’m telling you the truth. We need your assistance. We’re trying to bring down the mob, and De Soros has screwed everything up. I need you to trust us, though. We want to send you inside. You’d be undercover and safe. We have a few guys in the mob now who are undercover. Some of them are CIA and others are FBI. They’ve been working for a few years to gain the mob’s trust. The mob knows who De Soros is, and they know he’s sniffing around. We were planning on using De Soros to lure them out and take them down from the inside. But now De Soros has screwed things up with you. We told him no dates, no connecting with people in town that they mob could use against him. The mob knows who you are, Lily. They’re watching you. They know where you live, where you work, and your favorite coffee, which by the way is a Frappuccino. They want to use you to bring De Soros in to kill him. We’re going to make sure that the two of you get to keep your lives. If we let things play out how they’ve planned, they’ll kill you both. But, if we let one of the guys we have in there ‘capture’ you, and you play the part, we can get De Soros in there and take these guys out.”

Lily gulped nervously. “Why should I believe you? You could be a bad guy.”

The man whipped out his badge. “Luis Franco, FBI.”

“It could be fake.”

“And tomorrow morning you could be dead. So who are you going to believe here? Me, who is trying to save your life, or them, who will kill you? These men also are targeting your parents. If you’re kidnapped, they will try to get money from them. It would be a perfect double whammy. Money for the mob
and
kill De Soros.” Luis slid his badge back in his pocket.

“No, it can’t go down like that.” She blew out a breath. “Okay, so what do I do?”

“We’ve already planted evidence that you’ve been captured by some of the mobsters. After Tony dragged you off, he made it look a little messy on the scene. We will take you downtown to a secure location and get you ready to become the kidnapped victim. I’ll pass you off to Jacobs, who is one of our undercover guys. We have a crew ready to make you look like you’ve been beaten. It’s amazing what some makeup can do. Once you’re roughed up and ready to go, Jacobs will take you to the mob house, and the plan is to call De Soros at the office from what they’re telling us. He is going to come for you. The man in all his years of being an agent has never, ever stepped out of line. He loves you. He
will
come for you. Jacobs is going to make sure that you are alive until this is over. When De Soros comes in there, guns blazing, things will get tense. The guys will shoot the mob boss, there will be shooting all around. To stay safe you need to stay low to the ground. Do you understand?” Luis asked.

“Does Luca know what the plan is?” Lily whispered.

“No. If he knew the plan, he wouldn’t let it happen. You’re going to be the bait, Lily. You’ll be the one to bring all of this down. You’ll be in the same room as Lorenzo Caprice, the biggest mob boss outside of New York. Do you think you can do it? We need to bring this man down, he’s killing innocent people. We need your help. There’s no other way to make this go down without a lot of people getting hurt.” Luis explained.

“I understand. Will Luca be safe?” Lily clenched the edge of her seat and panicked as they rode through the city.

“Luca will be safe, I promise.” Luis reassured her, and she could barely make out the man’s features in the dusky car. She couldn’t gauge his eyes and see if he was lying or not. She had to make a decision, and make it now. Help the FBI, and maybe, just maybe have a future with Luca, without the mob breathing down their necks, or never see him again and the mob kill her anyway.

“I’ll do it,” Lily blurted. “I don’t really have a choice, do I? They’ll get me either way.”

“I’d rather you be in the hands of the mob this way instead of them grabbing you off the street. We’re kind compared to these jerks. They are barbarians.”

Lily felt bile rising in her throat. “I’m going to throw up. Stop the car!”

“What? No! We can’t stop, we have to keep going,” Luis grumbled.

“Stop the car or I puke on you!”

“Stop the car!” Luis barked, and the SUV came to a shuddering stop, and she heard the child locks disengage. Lily threw open the door and puked on the pavement. She heaved until she felt empty and with a quaking hand, wiped her mouth.

“We can go now.”

“Uh, are you okay?” Luis muttered.

“I do that when I’m nervous. I wouldn’t make a good FBI agent or poker player.”

“You’re going to have to be scared,” Luis cautioned, and Lily cut him off.

“Yeah, that’s not going to be a problem. I can do scared, because I’m scared shitless. I’m going to possibly die,” she wailed.

“Stop it. You’re not going to die if we have anything to do with it. You’re going to be fine. When you hear guns go off, get to the floor. We have agents at the ready to swarm the building. This will all go down approximately around dinner time tomorrow. Luca will be called as soon as he’s in the office, and then he’s going to tear up to Boston and try to get you. We’ll be there to finish the job.” Luis calmly informed her.

“I see.” Lily managed, fear skittering up her spine.
What if something goes wrong and he dies? What if I die? What if I never get to see my pain in the ass parents again? Or Abby and Laura? What if I don’t get to eat birthday cake and grow old? Oh, God.

“Lily, we’re here.” Luis nudged her, and she jumped.

“Okay. What do I need to do?”

“Keep your head down, we’re going to get you inside and make the transfer to Jacobs.”

Lily blinked and opened her mouth to speak, but her words were drowned out on a squeak as she was pulled from the SUV.

“I’m Jacobs. You will not reveal my name when we’re in the house. You will not speak unless you are spoken to, is that understood?” Lily stared up at the tall, dark haired, broad shouldered man with steely gray eyes and nodded.

“I understand.”

“Good. I’m glad to have you on the team, Lily.” Jacobs smiled, unnerving her with his sudden good nature.

She was whisked to a chair and a team of makeup artists started their work, applying makeup and thin pieces of flesh colored material to her skin with some kind of glue that smelled like dirty socks. After some time they stepped back, and Lily caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The woman before her looked as though she’d been beaten to within an inch of her life. She had a blackened eye, a busted lip, and a nasty looking gash on her cheek.

“Holy shit,” Lily whispered, gently probing the faux cut on her cheek. It was so realistic she almost expected the cut to be damp with her own blood.

“It looks real, doesn’t it?” the artist asked as she packed up her makeup kit.

“It’s scary.”

“Well, see, back in the old days, they’d have to really rough you up. Nowadays, they just call us in, and we apply makeup. Be glad.” The woman walked away, leaving her alone with the creature in the mirror.

“Let’s go. Stand up, I need to tear your shirt and get some fake blood on you.” Jacobs ordered, and Lily jumped from the chair to do his bidding.

His large hands gripped her favorite green button up shirt and ripped the sleeve loose. “That was my favorite shirt,” Lily whined.

“Sorry, Lily.” Jacobs smiled sympathetically. “I need to rip a couple of buttons here…” He grasped the collar of her shirt and pulled them open. Three buttons pinged off and rolled away. “There, you look decent. Let’s get some fake blood on you.” He held up a small bottle full of very realistic looking blood.

“Ew,” Lily groaned as he uncapped it and began splashing it on her.

“It’s not real.” Jacobs chuckled. “Now, I want you to hit me.”

“What?”

“Yup, right in the nose. It can’t look like you didn’t get one good hit in. Go ahead, punch me.” Jacobs smiled reassuringly, and Lily balled up her fist.

“Are you sure?”

“It won’t be that bad. I’ve broken my nose several times. It will look good for the guys.” Jacobs winked at her, and Lily sucked in a slow breath.

“Okay…” She drew back her fist and aimed for his nose. She missed by several inches, popping his left eye instead.

“Yow!” Jacobs screeched, hopping back and gripping his eye. “Jesus Christ, I said my nose!”

“I’m sorry! I have bad hand eye coordination!”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that
before
you socked me in the eye?”

“I’m sorry, I thought I could do it. Are you okay?” Lily panicked, rushing toward the hulking man with her hands outstretched.

“God, don’t touch me again, next you’ll accidentally castrate me trying to kick me in the shin. Turn around and let me tie you up. You’re going to ride in the back of my SUV, okay?” Jacobs rubbed at his rapidly swelling eye again before turning to grab a coil of rope.