KNOX: Volume 3 by Cassia Leo Read Free Book Online Page B

is always cooking or she keeps a small space heater on in the kitchen to keep it warm enough to rise dough. She bakes her own bread using the grain from an experimental wheat crop planted two years ago. At some point today, she’ll complain about the short growing season or the wild caribou crushing her wheat stalks.
    “I just took a loaf of sourdough out of the oven. Take it with you, dear,” she says, grabbing a round loaf of bread covered in a light checkered cloth off the table.
    She tries to hand it to me and I chuckle. “No, thank you, Mrs. Raine. I’m here to pick up John, and that’s all. If I eat all that bread, I’ll go soft in the middle.”
    “You need to live a little, Mr. Savage. Life’s not all about business you know.”
    She says this with a wink as she leads me toward the shiny oak door under the stairs that leads down to the basement. Mildred Raine spent a good portion of her life savings to visit me in my Manhattan office three years ago. Her son was on the run. The Canadian authorities and the DEA wanted him on suspicion of drug trafficking. He could feel the net closing in on him and he was staring down forty years to life in an American prison if he was extradited.
    I don’t know or care if Mildred’s son was guilty. All I know and care about is that, by helping Mildred’s son get to a safe house in Brazil, I gained two very important allies in the Raines. And they’ve been paid handsomely to harbor John for the past five months. The checks they’ll receive in the coming years to ensure their silence will more than make up for a bad wheat harvest.
    I step into the stairwell and John is already standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me.
    “Boy, it’s good to see you.” He pulls me into a bone-crushing hug and slaps me hard on the back. “I’ve been going stir crazy down here.”
    I pull away and take a step back to look at him. His skin is sallow from the lack of sunlight and his belly looks a bit soft from all the bread Mildred’s been feeding him. I don’t say it aloud, but I’m worried that he’s not ready to take on Tony and his goons tonight.
    “It’s good to see you too, John. You ready to go?”
    “As ready as a Bronx whore.”  
    I thank Mildred and Joshua for their assistance and Mildred sheds a few tears when she hugs John goodbye.
    “Who’s going to eat my homemade pizza now?” she laments as she latches onto Joshua for support.
    “Throw a little grass on there and the caribou will eat it,” John shouts as the helicopter starts up.
    She waves off this suggestion and John and I wave goodbye as we hop into the chopper. The helicopter is too noisy for us to talk. But as soon as the jet takes off from St. John’s Airport, I begin mentally preparing myself to talk to John.
    “You look nervous,” John remarks as the flight attendant hands him his lemonade. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look nervous.”
    “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should let me do this on my own. I don’t want to know how it would affect Rebecca if you got hurt.”
    “Rebecca hasn’t spoken to me in four years. She wouldn’t know if I got hurt unless she read it in a fucking newspaper.”
    “Yeah, that’s exactly it. She hasn’t spoken to you in four years and she still wants to help you. That’s gotta tell you something.”
    I don’t want to press too hard, but I really don’t think it’s a good idea for John to be tagging along on dangerous missions like the one we have planned for tonight.
    “Look, Marco. The bottom line is that she’s my little girl. And I’m not going to let a lowlife criminal like Tony Angelo use my little girl in his scheme to take over the neighborhood. I’m gonna take that motherfucker down myself. Understand?”
    I nod as I take the glass of water from the flight attendant. No alcohol today. I have to keep a clear head until Rebecca is back in my bed where she belongs.
    “John, I want to ask you something.”
    He continues to