Cowboy looked at me.
“Someone with connections to the Sabatino family was there,” I answered for him.
“So?”
“Not the best place for former agency and current DHS,” Cowboy responded.
“Got it.” Sloane looked at something on the menu and then back at Cowboy. “Who was it?”
“Um…” He looked at me.
“Cadillac DeLuca,” I answered for him a second time.
Sloane looked at me and then at Cowboy. “Would you please excuse us?”
“Of course.” He got up and went back into the other room and sat at the counter.
“Who was it, Tackle?”
“I told you. DeLuca.”
Sloane threw her menu on the table. “Take me home.”
“What? No. You need to eat.”
“And I will. At home. And not with someone who’s lying to me.” She shook her head. “Good job, by the way. You made it almost twenty-four hours before pulling another stunt that makes me unable to trust you.”
Explaining why we’d avoided DeLuca meant I would have to divulge the connection between him, Caruso, and ultimately, Nick. Sloane would think I’d lied because I had some kind of involvement with her. I’d have no chance to explain the situation between Nick and her husband or what role I’d played in their lives.
“Please reconsider at least eating.”
Sloane rested her forearms on the table and leaned forward. “You have three choices. Either you take me home, Cowboy takes me home, or I call a car service.”
I stood and pulled her chair out.
“Good decision,” she muttered.
Neither of us spoke on our way from the restaurant back to her place. Anything I might chance saying would only make the lie worse.
“Don’t get out,” she said when I pulled into the driveway.
“I’m coming in with you.”
“No. I don’t want you to.”
“You passed out less than thirty minutes ago. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Take me to my parents’ house instead.”
I eyed the outfit she was wearing; it didn’t do a thing to hide her tummy. “How do you plan to explain that?” I pointed to her midsection.
“That isn’t your concern.”
“Can we please go inside for a minute?”
“I’m going inside; you aren’t.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping I wasn’t making an already bad decision worse.
“Cadillac DeLuca is the head of the Sabatino Crime Syndicate, who Dan Caruso, Claudette Caruso’s husband, works for.”
She looked at me with scrunched eyes.
“Nick.”
Sloane didn’t hesitate. She got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She raced to her front door, but I got there ahead of her.
“Let me explain.”
“Too late.” She took her keys out of her purse. “Get out of my way.”
I didn’t want to have this conversation out in the open, but she was giving me no choice.
“He beat her up. That’s what the deal was when she came into Max & Millie’s the day you, Halo, and I were there for lunch. She asked for my help.”
“Your help. There was no one else she could go to? The police, for example?”
“Sloane, please, I don’t want to talk about this out on the front stoop.”
She hesitated, but opened the door, and I followed her inside.
“Caruso is a bad dude, and Sabatino is worse.” I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for something to eat.”
“Help yourself. What’s mine is yours.” She had a disgusted look on her face and shook her head.
“For you.”
“I’m perfectly capable of finding my own food.”
I ignored her, took a jar of raspberry jam out of the fridge, and opened cabinets until I found bread, peanut butter, and plates. I made two sandwiches and handed one to her.
While she ate, I explained that I’d put Nick up in an apartment so she was safe and how I’d gone to K19 for help in getting her protection. I also told her how Razor Sharp had somehow gotten enough on her husband to get him picked up and put in jail.
“I have no idea if DeLuca knows anything about it, and if he does, whether he gives a shit. According to Razor, his plan was to set it up so Cadillac believed Caruso planned to turn state’s evidence.”
“What’s your involvement with this woman?”
“I have none. We dated a few times in high school. That’s it.”
Sloane shook her head. “Doesn’t add up.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Why she came to you.”
“Everyone we know, knows I worked for the agency. Some know I don’t anymore. It isn’t a stretch to think she’d come to me, Sloane.”
“Knox thought she was the woman you were talking about when you said you weren’t sure the person you were interested in was as into you as you were them.”
“We’ve covered that. You were that person.”
“Right. And I believe you because you haven’t lied to me before.”
“That isn’t fair. I didn’t lie to you.”
She went into the kitchen and made a second sandwich. She pointed to the bread. “Want another?”
I ate the one I had in four bites. “Yes, please.”
“This is why I was being watched. Caruso knows you helped his wife, and you being around me, puts me in danger.”
“I’m not sure he knows, and I stayed away until I believed there was no longer a threat.”
“Now you think there’s a threat from DeLuca?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to leave.”
“Sloane, come on. Don’t do this.”
“Until you know whether you’re putting me and our baby at risk by being here, you can’t be around us.”
I understood. I didn’t like it, but she was right. It was the reason I’d stayed away in the first place. “I don’t like you being here on your own with Halo out of town.”
“I’ll go to my parents’.”
“I’ll take you.”
“Good idea. That way, I won’t be safe there either, and neither will they.”
“Okay. I won’t take you, but I will be arranging for more detail.” I had another idea brewing in the back of my mind, but until I had everything in place, I wouldn’t bring it up to Sloane. “If you’re going to tell them you’re pregnant, I want to be there.”
“I wasn’t there when you told your mother.”
“Are you going to tell them I’m the
