Destroy Me (Southern Nights: Enigma Book 3)

by Ella Sheridan

  “I’ll try anything at this point,” Sean said irritably.

  “Try waiting a few days. That’ll work.” She clicked on the report and waited for it to compile. “Speaking of work, I’ve gotta get back to it.”

  She had to promise to come see him in the next couple of days, which she did. By the time she hung up, the list of transactions involving the aliases she’d dug up for Fionn’s dad was scrolling along her screen. She’d traced them not only through his and Ferrina’s company, but into the banks Robert had transferred through, then to international accounts and investment firms. But each transaction had one thing in common: every single one had been cashed out at the end of its line. Every single one.

  This money hadn’t been hidden in an obscure account somewhere, waiting for the right eyes. It was actual, physical currency piled up in an unknown location—that’s why it hadn’t been found before now. Now she just had to figure out where that location was.

  “Lyse!”

  Siobhan’s voice pulled her out of the maze of numbers and possibilities. Leaving the report behind, she hurried down the stairs to where Siobhan sat in the living room, a radio connected to the men’s mics in front of her on the table. Lyse could hear heavy breathing, shouts, gunshots. A woman crying. “What the hell are they doing?”

  This had been a no-contact mission. What had happened that they were now shooting at each other?

  “Mack said something about a woman,” Siobhan told her. “I’m not quite understanding what went wrong, but I was afraid to ask.”

  “Don’t.” She sat next to Siobhan on the couch, her gut twisting at the chaos coming across the line. “They need all the focus they can get.”

  They sat together, listening, waiting, worrying, for what seemed hours but could only have been twenty minutes or so. Lyse picked up bits and pieces of the action, but no matter how much her skin crawled with fear, she refused to interrupt until the men were safely away. Only when the sound of the car moving came through did she key the mic. “Mack?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lyse looked to Siobhan, who rolled her eyes despite the white lines around her mouth. Stupid laid-back males, that look said. Lyse agreed.

  “What’s going on?”

  The sound of a woman crying came across the line again. Who was she?

  “I’ll be bringing Fionn and Deacon to the house,” Mack was saying. “They can explain while I’m wrapping up loose ends.”

  “What—”

  But that was as far as Siobhan got before Fionn came on the line.

  “Just give us a few, Mam. I promise I’ll explain.”

  “Tell us everyone’s all right first.”

  “We’re all right, Mam.”

  Because it was obvious the men had their hands full, Lyse and Siobhan waited. To give herself something to do, Lyse went upstairs and printed the intel she’d compiled on Robert’s aliases. She’d been staring at the report blindly for what seemed like forever when she heard voices down in the living room.

  Fionn had returned. Her heart gave a funny little leap as she grabbed the papers and hurried downstairs.

  “She’ll be all right, though?” Siobhan was asking.

  “Who?”

  Fionn turned as Lyse spoke. The smile that lit his face was soft, glowing from his eyes like he was happy to see her despite whatever had gone on tonight. “One of the village girls. Mack has taken her to the station. We found her at Ferrina’s.”

  Mack had done a lot of follow-up at the station the past few days. She eased closer to Fionn, needing his warmth, the reality of his body, whole and unharmed, against her, but afraid to presume. “What did they do to her?”

  “She’d been abducted from somewhere in town.” Deacon’s voice was an angry growl as he paced the length of the room. “We got her away safe before they had a chance for anything else.”

  She was within reach now, but it still startled her when Fionn held out his hand and pulled her closer, his arm going around her waist. Lyse blushed, but that didn’t stop her from cuddling up against him. She noticed that Siobhan’s worried eyes warmed as she watched them.

  “Mack will be back soon,” Fionn said, “but we’ll need to talk about what to do next. Ferrina knows his base has been exposed. He won’t stay there.”

  “You think he’ll be moving on us then?” Siobhan asked.

  “I do. And he’s got the manpower to win, if what we saw was any indication.”

  Lyse agreed. There was no reason for Ferrina to wait, really. And if they’d started picking off villagers for their own amusement, it was better all around not to wait. She looked down at the papers in her hand. “If Ferrina is moving up his timeline, maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

  Fionn twisted to face her, his hand sliding to rest on her hip. “How?”

  She looked up, trying to read his expression. “Can we sit down?”

  When they were settled around the small coffee table, Lyse began laying out the report she’d carried downstairs. “I created a program to run algorithms that would help me track money going in and out of Robert’s investment company.” She tapped a couple of sheets. “Based on aliases I’d uncovered, I was able to account for quite a bit of the money he and Ferrina took.” Given a few more days, she could probably track every penny. “What I found was that he didn’t keep the money in various accounts like the investigators thought. He cashed it out.” She glanced at the others. “That’s how he was stealing the money right under Ferrina’s nose. He was emptying the accounts little by little without Ferrina’s knowledge.”

  Fionn frowned down at the figures lining each page. “That’s a lot of currency disappearing. He couldn’t have hoped to keep it in cash form without the serial numbers being traced.”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “Then what did he do with it?” Siobhan asked, looking confused.

  “He exchanged it for gold.”

  Fionn cursed. He knew as well as she did that small amounts, bought over time and stockpiled under various names, would make the money nearly impossible to trace. And Robert could convert the gold back to currency the same way, a bit at a time. The question was, where did he put the gold?

  Fionn rubbed his knuckles along the stubble on his chin. “That would be a shit ton of bars.”

  “It would be.” She almost grinned when she realized she’d picked up Fionn’s way of answering questions. Not yes or no, but repeating the verb in a full sentence. An Irish thing. “He’d need someplace secure to stash it, someplace no one would suspect.”

  “But the garda went through the house, his office, everywhere we could think of,” Siobhan said. “They found no trace, and nothing through the aliases they uncovered.”

  “Except they didn’t uncover all his aliases,” Lyse explained. “I’m pretty sure I have, or most of them. Gimme a few days and I’ll know for sure.” She pulled a page away from the others and laid it on top. “I was looking through the background intel on all those names, and one thing immediately stood out to me: this alias in particular owns an estate in Northern Ireland. Extensive land. Middle of nowhere. What was it you told me, Siobhan? That he would do anything for you, and what you wanted most was to move somewhere away from the city, away from Dublin?”

  The older woman’s eyes were round as she eyed the data on the page. Lyse wasn’t sure she was reading it so much as she was remembering Robert’s words, their conversations about the future, about their dreams. It killed Lyse to bring it up, but she had no choice. Finding that money was the only way to end this.

  “If I’m right, if this is what I think it is”—she tapped the paper—“we can find that money and turn it in, and end this once and for all.”

  Fionn’s gaze met hers, and she saw his resolve, saw that he’d already made his decision. It was the only way to keep Siobhan safe forever. There was something else there too, something she couldn’t quite put a name to. Excitement, maybe? “We need a plan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven


  “So,” Deacon asked, leaning against the doorjamb in Mack’s study, “how are you getting a message to Ferrina if he’s no longer at his base camp?”

  Good question. Fionn huffed a laugh. “It’s not like he’ll be having an email address we can access, like IrishCartel@ gmail—”

  “You might be surprised.” Lyse turned a grin on them, the sassy edge making him shift to give his fatigues more room in the crotch. “If it was that easy, y’all wouldn’t need me. But it isn’t, and you do, so…” She turned back to her screen, that tempting expression still on her face, and went back to typing. Her hands literally flew across the keyboard, the lines of text on the computer moving too fast for him to read.

  He hadn’t even been trying to read it, he realized. Somewhere along the way, he’d stopped expecting betrayal from Lyse. He’d shed the hurt and anger like dirty clothes, one piece at a time, until he’d stopped thinking about what had happened in the States every few seconds, then minutes, then hours. And now, after the nights and days they’d spent together… Who the feck could think about the past when the present was blowing his mind?

  He hadn’t told Lyse that, though. Did she still worry that he held a grudge? Was that stain on her soul still there under all the passion and pleasure? Maybe it was time to talk about the past and lay it to rest once and for all.

  “Then how are you doing it?” Deacon was saying.

  Dog with a bone, that was his best friend. Fionn grinned this time as he caught a glimpse of impatience in Lyse’s eyes.

  “The cartel, like any underground organization, is run under the cover of legit businesses,” she told him, barely glancing away from the screen. “Technically Ferrina owns a string of high-end foreign car dealerships. Exotic models.”

  “Luxury cars.” Perfect for high-dollar money laundering—and high-volume smuggling. Why hadn’t he considered that? Fionn shook his head.

  Lyse grinned. “Yep.”

  “And…?” Deacon asked.

  “And I’m issuing him an invitation to check out a model worth its weight in gold, tomorrow evening at a location in northern Ireland that will be disclosed to him in time for the meet up. Said model has been in North Quigley recently, but has since been moved.”

  Deacon groaned at the gold crack. “That’s so bad, Lyse. So bad.”

  “What can I say? Puns are good for the soul.” She winked at Fionn, making certain Deacon couldn’t see.

  That wink, this moment sparked a sense of déjà vu. They were slipping back into old patterns with each other, joking, teasing. That lightness had been missing from his relationships for the past two months, until he’d found Lyse. He hadn’t realized how much the anger had consumed him, burning away every good piece of him, until it was gone.

  As he watched them, something light and totally unconnected to the shit storm they’d found themselves in rose into his throat. Here, in this room, was the friend who always had his back. They were keeping his mam safe. And he had a clever wan. Life was back on the road to good.

  “Giving Ferrina a specific date and time should get him off Siobhan’s back,” Lyse said, completely unaware of the shift Fionn was experiencing. “We’ll have more freedom of movement and a set expectation for when the next encounter will be. Hopefully. If he takes the bait.”

  Her fingers paused on the keyboard, something he couldn’t read crossing her face. Or maybe he could. Lyse knew better than anyone that expectations and guarantees were two very different things.

  Mack entered the room, his expression going tight as he caught Lyse’s words. That look… Mack was as worried about Siobhan’s safety as Fionn was. Maybe more. When Fionn looked at Lyse, thought about her being the target of a crime boss with nearly unlimited resources, his heart did that squeezing thing that took his breath.

  “My commander is willing to take Siobhan and Lyse in,” Mack said, arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll be dropping them off, then Deacon and I will follow you north. I have a friend in a nearby town that we’ll stay the night with, stay off the radar until time for the meet. My captain agreed to contact the local authorities to come in and help at the right time.” Mack rubbed a hand down his face. “I didn’t let him know they’d be cleaning up a mess.”

  Mack hadn’t liked keeping his boss out of the loop. And unfortunately, the other guest Fionn had reached out to would make sure of the mess part. It was Fionn’s job to make certain Ferrina was no longer a problem after this. Ever.

  Definitely a mess to clean up.

  He hadn’t realized the clicking of the keyboard had stopped until Lyse spoke. “I’m not going with Siobhan.”

  That jerked his head around. “What?”

  “Lyse—”

  Deacon’s protest was echoed by Mack, but Lyse zeroed in on Fionn, ignoring the other two. Intensity shone from her eyes, burning into him, slamming his mouth shut when he normally would’ve shot down the idea as ridiculous. Deacon and Mack were stumbling over each other in their objections, but Lyse didn’t answer. She didn’t look away, and he found he couldn’t either.

  “Gentlemen,” he finally said, cutting them off, “could you be waiting in the hall?”

  The words broke the moment, and Lyse’s gaze dropped to the hands twisting together in her lap.

  He waited for the door to close behind Deacon, who gave him an unreadable look through the narrowing space, then clicked it shut. Fionn took a deep, calming breath.

  It didn’t help.

  “Fionn.” Lyse looked up again, and he could see her fear, her need to help. Sometimes he wondered if Lyse hadn’t come to love his mam almost as much as he and Mack did. “I’m going with you. Think about it—you can’t search the entire house and grounds on your own. The acreage alone… You need the extra set of eyes. And you need me to monitor Ferrina’s response. His movements. Send the second message. Keep up communications with the team. I can do all of that from anywhere on the estate. We’ll know where the gold is, where you need to meet by then. I’ll stay far away from any fighting.”

  Damn right she would.

  She stood, easing closer as if he was a wild animal she needed to tame. “I can help you.”

  He stood for a few minutes, arms crossed over his chest, thumb stroking the rough stubble on his chin over and over. Thinking. Weighing the odds. She was right, in a way. If things went as they expected, there would be time to move Lyse well before the meet up. But when do things ever go as expected?

  And yet he found he was wantin’ her with him. Something deep inside ached at the thought of leaving her behind. Was that what he’d have to do when this was all over, leave her behind? His original intent had been to bring her back to the States for prosecution, but now… He stared into the deep, pleading well of her hazel eyes. Now he knew what it was to hold her, to have her beneath him. He knew what it was to share his very breath with her.

  And he knew that, when the time came, when this was all over, he would be letting her go. His heart couldn’t take the thought of anything else.

  His heart. That’s what she was.

  He opened his arms. Lyse flew into them, her impact rocking him on his heels even as he pulled her close to the warmth of his body. She was so slight against him, yet too strong for him to break, in bed or out of it. She was unique. His.

  He clenched his jaw, determined to keep the feelings inside, to keep focus on the mission. One thing he did know, though—if this ended tomorrow, as they all hoped it would, then tonight was his last night with Lyse. The last night before he let her disappear. Now that the moment was here, it settled like a chain around his neck, choking him, hurting him, refusing to let him live past it. He needed her like he’d never needed another woman, and he didn’t know how he was going to keep breathing when it was all said and done and he watched her walk away.

  And no matter how much his mind told him not to put her in danger, his heart needed the chance to say goodbye. To be whole for just a little longer before half of it was torn out and left him beh
ind.

  “All right,” he said into the sweet pile of hair on top of her head. “Get packed.”

  Lyse ripped herself away and rushed out the door, leaving two men staring from the hall, their accusing gazes telling him he’d just lost his mind. He stared right back. “I’ll make sure she’s safely away before Ferrina shows up.”

  Deacon just shook his head. Mack glared a little longer, but Fionn could also see understanding in his eyes, however reluctant.

  “We need to get packed too,” Mack finally said. “Any word from your friend on the Continent?”

  “Yeah.” He moved to join the men in the hall. “He’ll be there.” Fionn never trusted anyone but his team, but in this case, the incentive for the man to show up was strong. “Let’s be moving out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Siobhan cried when they left. The sight of the woman Lyse had come to care about hugging her son, face red with tears, had been like a kick to the gut. She wanted to promise that Fionn would come back safe, that everything would be fine, but she knew better than most that there were no guarantees. So she’d stood back and watched the two of them silently before getting in the car with Fionn and driving away.

  That had been a half hour ago. Fionn hadn’t spoken since.

  She felt like she was walking a tightrope, not sure if the next step, the next breath, would be the one sending her over a hundred-yard drop. But she wanted to take that step, to reach out to him in some way, however small. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, she laid her palm carefully over Fionn’s fisted hand on the console between them.

  He threw her a look. She was relieved to see it was one of surprise and not anger. Some men didn’t like their emotions acknowledged. Her foster father had been like that, but Fionn seemed okay with it.

  “I’m sorry.”