The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,71

or summon a dog who’d run off. To the crew, it was Paddy signaling Giulia.

Within moments, a plume of smoke began to rise near the street. The crew offloading liquor noticed, and they pointed it out to each other, but they continued working.

That is, until a female voice cried, “Help! Someone help!”

Every head snapped toward the sound, including the lads who knew damn well it was Giulia.

“Somebody help!” she cried. Then she appeared at the end of the marina, taking rapid, tiny steps in those shoes and flailing her arms as smoke rose on the street behind her. “My truck is on fire! Help!”

The men on the boat exchanged glances. Then, just as Giulia had predicted they would, they bolted toward her.

“It worked,” Peter whispered. “I can’t believe it worked.”

“Not quite.” Bernard pointed at the boat, where a lone crewmember stood guard. The man was craning his neck, clearly trying to see what was going on as he hung back with the loot.

“I’ve got him.” Francis broke away from the group, crept past the trees, and made his way down to the dock. The crewman gave him a glance, but his attention was mostly fixed on the scene his men had gone to attend.

Francis strode up behind him, and before the man could react, Francis put a pistol to his back. He said something to him that Danny couldn’t hear, and the man put up his hands and nodded. Then, at Francis’s direction, he let himself be led onto the boat and out to the stern.

“Let’s go!” Danny said in a harsh whisper, and he and the crew sprinted toward the dock. The carts were heavy and difficult to maneuver, but with some effort and swearing, the lads pushed the liquor closer to their trucks. Then they quickly loaded the cases into the backs of the trucks, whistled to let Francis know they’d finished, and drove away as fast as they could.

Bernard circled back to pick up Paddy, and then they left town, heading for Manhattan. Danny meanwhile came back around to pick up Giulia, who had slipped away from the men trying frantically to put out the truck’s fire, and Francis, who had let the crewman go and hurried back to the street.

Twisting around to look back, Francis said, “They fell for it?”

“Of course they did,” Giulia said proudly.

“And they didn’t even recognize the truck?” Danny asked.

“Not yet.”

Shaking his head, Danny chuckled. He had to admit—the plan was brilliant. Sooner or later, the crew would realize their liquor was gone and the burning truck was their own, but Danny and his lads were already long gone. Even when Mathew, Tommy, and Liam returned hours from now, the other crew would have no idea they were connected to what had happened.

“We won’t be able to do that often,” Francis said, “but it worked tonight.”

“Oh, we don’t have to do it often.” Giulia grinned. “There’s plenty more we can do.”

Danny glanced at Francis, and…

Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Don’t you be looking at her like that.

And don’t you be looking at him like—

He suppressed a groan as he faced the road, and he glanced skyward.

Lord, I know we ain’t really being angels right now, but could you distract this bozo from the lady before he gets us all killed?

There was no keeping Francis and Giulia apart. The crew thought it was hilarious, especially since it was impossible to make Giulia blush, but Francis turned bright red at even the slightest implication about what they got up to when they were alone. Even Danny had to admit it was funny, and it was kind of cute, and he might have been a little jealous because it wasn’t him flirting and swapping saucy winks with one of the Battaglia siblings.

And despite their endless flirting and occasionally disappearing belowdecks during runs on stolen boats, they were still focused on the job when they needed to be. Giulia sometimes joined them at Daisy’s too—not every night, since she couldn’t risk one of her brother’s associates figuring out what she was up to—and helped formulate their wild schemes for obtaining liquor.

Tonight, while Francis and Giulia murmured to each other in the back of the truck, Paddy and Danny rode in the front, following a map to an old barn that Peter and Bernard had figured out was another crew’s stash. Every now and then, when the conversation in the back conspicuously went quiet, Paddy would deliberately hit a pothole, and he and Danny would laugh for