Spies in Sandals [Book Four]

Chapter Thirteen: The Night Turns Into a Real Cliffhanger

Happy Easter!! I leave tomorrow for Toronto so I wanted to update for you guys. Finally got the rest of the book mapped out, I think, so that's positive. Hope you all have a great day...I saw the new Disney movie Zootopia today and it was SO GOOD, I died laughing the whole time. Disney is amazing, you guys. Go watch it. Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter! Comment to let me know if you so please :)

Also, on a side note, I accidentally updated this into SiStilettos the first time around...it's late, okay, I was tired lol, how embarrassing. Hope no one was confused! Thanks for understanding.

Gracias! <3 vb123321

Chapter Thirteen

The Night Turns Into a Real Cliffhanger

Arriving at our destination happened in a blur.

I staggered through the dark night into some old house with creaky floorboards and dusty chairs and found myself enveloped in a huge hug. It said something about my mental state that I didn't even question who it was, just laid my head on her shoulder and accepted the motherly embrace. When I registered Sofia Carboni speaking sharply, guilt jolted through me.

"Angelo – I'm sorry – it's my fault Costa has him –"

"No, no, honey." She immediately squashed my anguished apologies. "It's not your fault. I'll be having words with my son about where he takes girls in the future, don't you worry."

Beneath her reassuring demeanor, as I did my best to laugh, I could sense her worry mounting that matched the fire kindling in her eyes. When this woman caught up with Costa, he was screwed, that much I knew for sure.

I sat with Jack and Patrick at a table in some dimly-lit back room, where they informed me that Sofia had supplied this house for us; I didn't question how. Their conversation from the car, vague in my memory, kept floating through my mind. Zach's tracker. Costa and Mary O'Malley. Jer moving to DC.

At some point I fell asleep again, my head drooping on the wooden tabletop, and I woke up alone some time later with a sweater draped over my shoulders, my contacts sticking to my eyelids, and voices ringing in the hall. Blearily I blinked back my vision and pulled my chilled arms into the sweater's sleeves, assumedly Sofia's since it smelled like a bakery.

"I just need to check in on Nat before we head out again," came Jer's voice from the hall, above everyone else's as usual, and I got out and walked to the door. He headed toward me at once, one hand landing on my shoulder. "You okay there, Nats? Sorry I ditched you."

"M'fine." I glanced around him to see Patrick and Jack standing on a staircase in the front hall, trying not to watch as Mary O'Malley stood in the doorway of the house and stared at Sofia, whose back was to me.

"So you're back?" The Italian woman's voice emerged brusquely.

Mary O'Malley shrugged one shoulder. "Our sons got themselves in trouble again."

Sofia stayed quiet for a long, tense moment, and then her back relaxed and the edge fell off her voice. "What else is new?"

And then somehow the two women were hugging each other and crying a little, I think, and Jer ushered the rest of us into the back room with a supremely uncomfortable look on his face. He and Patrick sank down into wooden chairs, surprisingly alike in their exhausted frustration, and within ten minutes I'd been expelled from the room so they could talk business.

Jer told me to go upstairs and try to get some rest, but the thought of sleeping in some rickety old bed belonging to some unknown entity wasn't really up my alley, so instead I sat on the middle steps of the stairs and tried to listen in on them. Unsuccessful, I leaned back against the step and wished I'd asked for more ibuprofen; my side throbbed.