Chapter 23 - The Strategy SessionAn hour later, Marco sat at the kitchen table with a mug of hot black coffee, nursing his bruised jaw while Roman and Celeste mapped out their defense across the worn wooden surface.
"They won't come with a warrant, Marco," Celeste analyzed, tracing a finger across a printed topographical map of the coastline. "Gallo is dirty. If he brings you back legally, his superiors in Chicago will audit his jurisdiction. He’s going to come off-book. A quiet extraction. Two unmarked cars, four or five corrupt transit cops, working under the cover of the nor'easter rolling in tonight."
"How do you know that?" Marco asked, staring at her with a mixture of awe and residual fear.
"Because that’s exactly what Roman would have done five years ago," Celeste replied coldly.
Roman let out a short, humorless breath, a faint smirk touching his lips. "She's right, Marco. Gallo's predictable. He's ambitious, violent, and arrogant. He thinks because we left Chicago, we've gone soft."
"So what do we do?" Marco asked. "Surrender? Fight?"
"We dismantle them before they even reach the front porch," Celeste said. She pulled out a small, encrypted thumb drive from her pocket and tossed it onto the table in front of Roman. "You kept backups of Gallo's internal affairs file from the Chicago precinct, didn't you, Roman?"
Roman stared at the thumb drive, then looked up at his wife. "I burned most of my digital footprint when we moved."
"Except for the safe deposit box in Portland," Celeste reminded him with a knowing look. "The one you opened under an alias two years ago, just in case."
Roman blinked, then chuckled softly, shaking his head. "You checked my safety deposit box?"
"I'm an auditor, Roman. It's my job to check everything." She tapped the thumb drive. "Gallo’s dirty payroll records are on that drive. If we send them anonymously to the Maine State Police and the FBI field office in Boston simultaneously, with a timestamped release, Gallo's own department will issue an active arrest warrant for him before morning."
"And if they arrive here before the warrant clears?" Roman asked, his dark eyes turning hard.
Celeste walked over to the hallway closet, reached up to the high shelf, and pulled down a heavy, locked steel case that hadn't been opened since they left Illinois. She popped the latches. Inside, resting in custom-cut foam, sat Roman’s old Sig Sauer pistol, cleaned, oiled, and fully loaded.
May you like
She walked back to the table and set the case down in front of him.
"Then we remind them why they used to whisper your name in Chicago," Celeste said softly.
