Ronan covered his heart with his hand, feigning shock. “I don’t believe my ears.”
“Don’t get excited,” Declan said, heading for the hall that would take him to his wing of the house. “I have a date with the hottest blond I’ve ever seen tonight. Don’t expect me in at all tomorrow.”
“Thanks for breakfast,” Julia called after him.
Ronan stared at her, a smile creeping onto the corners of his mouth.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head. “What kind of magic are you working here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dec’s making breakfast, going into the office. What’s next? Monogamy?”
She laughed. “You give me too much credit. Monogamy for Declan is way above my pay grade.”
He took her hand and pulled her onto his lap. Not wanting to spook her, he chose his words carefully, mindful of the way she skirted any talk of their future like an animal steering clear of predatory territory, the way she held something back even when she told him she loved him, even when they were naked and intertwined.
“I like having you here,” he said. “Nick and Dec like having you here too.”
She smiled. “Thanks for letting me stay while I sort things out.”
He swallowed against the implication — that it was temporary, a product of Elise’s disappearance, of the memories dredged up by the apartment she and Elise had shared.
“You can stay as long as you want,” he said.
Stay forever. Never leave my side.
She touched her lips to his, pressing against him until his cock jumped to life in his jeans. Her mouth was soft and yielding, her hands trailing his chest, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a distraction — another way to avoid a discussion about the future.
He knew what was between them was real. He felt it in the way her body melted into his like mercury, the way the boundaries between them fell when he was inside her.
So why did it feel so tenuous?
4
Julia waited to slip from the bed until Ronan’s breathing was slow and regular beside her. His arm was heavy across her body as she eased carefully out from under it, cursing the fact that she couldn’t sleep, that the one night she’d gotten him to hand off the stakeout at Moran’s to Nick, she couldn’t even settle in and enjoy it.
She looked down at him as she slipped his T-shirt over her naked body. His arm was still flung across the mattress where she’d been a moment before, his expression serene. His thick hair was tousled from their lovemaking and she felt a rush of fresh desire as she remembered his mouth on her skin, his fingers and cock inside her.
Her lust for him still took her by surprise, the barrier she erected between them harder to maintain as he brought her to orgasm over and over again, as he probed her body like an eager explorer determined to leave no territory unmapped.
She considered laying back down, waking him with her mouth and hands, giving herself over to physical sensation again in the hopes that it would eventually lead to sleep.
She discarded the idea. Ronan spent most of every night holed up in his car, staring through the binoculars at their latest stakeout target in an effort to find a new clue that would lead them to Elise. It wasn’t fair to wake him just to keep herself distracted on the one night when he had a shot at decent rest.
Chief lifted her head from her bed on the floor and Julia raised a hand. Ronan had taught her that the signal meant Stay, and the dog whimpered and lowered her head back to the cushion as Julia left the room.
Her bare feet moved silently across the runner in the hall. She liked everything about the house — its rambling floor plan that was separated into private wings for each of the Murphy brothers, the communal living and kitchen areas that guaranteed she was never alone for long, the quiet of it at night.
Declan was usually out in the early part of the evening, but he almost always returned home to sleep, albeit with one of his conquests, and Nick was more often than not at home when he wasn’t at the office or playing rugby with the intramural team that seemed to be his primary source of activity.
Julia was comforted by the comings and goings of the three brothers, by their familiarity with each other. It reminded her of Elise, of the unique sibling bond that was familiarity and acceptance and just enough baggage to keep things interesting.
She took a seat at the end of the sofa and folded her legs under her body. It was hard to believe it had been four months since she’d first walked into the house, scraped up from her run-in with Ronan in the alley behind Seth Campbell’s brownstone, having no idea that her gramps had hired MIS to find Elise, having no idea that she would come to love the man with deep-sea eyes who had so tenderly dressed her wounded leg.
She’d fallen for him hard and fast. Too hard and fast, as evidenced by the fact that she’d been back in his arms shortly after the debacle in Dubai.
She hadn’t been able to look at him on the plane home, hadn’t been able to see anything but Gold, the long hallway of closed doors, an image of her sister behind one of them, waiting for Julia to save her.
But the anger had left her body as soon as Ronan dropped her at the apartment, his face a mask of restrained pain and regret.
In the cast of her family, Julia had always played the starring role of Doer of Things That Must Be Done. It wasn’t always appreciated, but she knew too well that someone had to do those things.
Someone had to say no when saying yes was easier. Someone had to save the money and pay the bills and keep the boat on an even keel when everyone else seemed determined to sink it.
Plus, she’d missed him. Had missed him with a fierceness she’d been afraid to examine too closely. When he’d appeared at her door with another apology — an apology for carrying her screaming from Gold, saving her life when she’d reached the point where she didn’t care about it at all, when saving Elise was all that mattered — she hadn’t even hesitated before letting him in.
She sighed, reaching for her laptop and forcing herself from the past.
Forcing herself from the future.
She didn’t know what would happen between her and Ronan long-term. She only knew that she loved him, that she was scared of how much she loved him.
She opened her laptop and the screen came to life, the browser still open to the page for Manifest, the dark blue door glowing like a mirage.
It had opened only once for her — when it had revealed the logo for Gold behind the stylized “M” that they now knew stood for Manifest. She had no idea why the people behind Manifest had invited her to one of their lairs after she’d been caught snooping at the Whitmore Club. She could only assume it was because she hadn’t been working with Ronan at the time, not formally anyway.
Had they thought she would come alone? Had they planned to take her like they’d taken her sister? Shut her up, keep her from asking questions, sell her to one of their clients on the Darknet as a bonus?
She didn’t like to think about it, about what could have happened if Ronan hadn’t been there to haul her out of the club. Maybe that’s why she’d forgiven him so easily. Maybe she knew deep down she would have disappeared into the black hole of money and corruption that had swallowed her sister.
Maybe she valued her own life more than she was willing to admit.
She swallowed her guilt at the thought. She would do anything to save Elise.
Anything.
She clicked on the blue door and was unsurprised when nothing happened. She’d tried more times than she could count, hoping for another invitation, entertaining the thought of accepting it without telling Ronan if it came, wondering if the only way she would know what had happened to Elise was to let it happen to her too.
5
Ronan watched the office building through the windshield, his eyes on the lights coming from the fourth floor. It was Congressman Moran’s floor, and Ronan knew he was still up there because he’d followed Moran back to the office a
fter a meeting at the Alibi Lounge inside the Liberty Hotel.
They’d had Moran’s daily schedule for the past two weeks thanks to Clay, who had a long and storied history of hacking calendars to help MIS on the job in spite of his assertion that it was beneath him.
The people behind the Manifest website were more worthy opponents, which was probably why Clay was still trying to hack his way in even though Ronan had given up the angle.
It was almost eleven p.m. but Moran’s car hadn’t left the parking garage since his return from the meeting at Alibi. Ronan had to give him credit: whatever else he was or wasn’t, the man worked long hours.
Ronan thought about Moran’s wife, a WASPy blond nicknamed Mouse. They had three kids — two sons and a daughter — all of whom attended Groton Prep. Mouse was from an old-money family with an inheritance that kept the family flush in spite of Moran’s congressional paycheck. They lived in an understated but valuable home in Beacon Hill, gave to all the right charities, and attended all the right events.
Ronan had seen plenty while staking out the board members of the Whitmore Club — affairs of every variety, prostitutes, kink clubs, and one particularly sad and quite large Senator who’s greatest vice was stopping at the Mobil gas station on his way home and stocking up on an assortment of junk food which he ate breathtakingly fast in his car, after which he wept over his steering wheel before finishing the drive home.
It was the only time Ronan could ever recall feeling guilty observing someone as part of a job.
Not all of the Whitmore board members had secrets — at least not that Ronan had uncovered. So far Moran fell into the category of those members who went to work, had an occasional long lunch, and sometimes stopped at their kid’s Little League game on the way home.
Were they all really upstanding citizens who also happened to be in seats of power at one of the clubs whose logos had appeared on the one page of Manifest’s website that Clay had been able to access?
Or were they just careful?
Ronan thought about Julia, about the way he’d woken up the night before to find her gone, her face lit by the glow of her laptop when he’d come upon her on the sofa in the living room.
She didn’t want him to know she was still stalking Manifest’s website, one of many secrets he knew she kept from him. He didn’t push. He had a feeling Julia had been holding things close to the vest for a long time, each of her secrets a piece of the Jenga puzzle that would come crashing down if she started examining them — or worse, talking about them.
She would talk when she was ready. In the meantime, he savored the times when they were in bed, the closest she came to giving herself over fully to him. It wasn’t total surrender. He still felt the missing part of her — the part she kept locked away in the innermost vault of her heart — like an almost invisible piece of a complicated puzzle.
He wondered how many people had settled for this much from her in the past. How many people had told themselves they were getting all of her.
He pushed aside the thought. He and Julia didn’t talk about their former lovers, and he had no desire to think about her in the arms of another man.
He straightened in the driver’s seat of his silver Audi as a limo pulled up like a long shadow in front of Moran’s building.
He reached for the binoculars on the passenger seat without taking his eyes off the entrance of the office building.
The limo idled for almost five minutes before the office doors opened and Connor Moran stepped onto the sidewalk.
He kept his head down as he strode toward the limo, slipping into the backseat so quickly Ronan might have missed the whole thing if he hadn’t been paying attention.
“Siri, call Clay,” Ronan said, still watching the limo through the binoculars.
“What’s up?” Clay asked by way of a greeting.
“You still have access to the DMV?” Ronan asked without identifying himself.
Clay snorted. “That’s like asking if I have access to Netflix.”
“I’m going to have a plate for you in a second. I need you to run it and give me everything you can find,” Ronan said.
“You’re the boss.”
6
Julia watched as Ronan taped a picture to the ever-evolving board of Whitmore Club members and their associates. They had a flow chart in the digital case file of Elise’s disappearance, something Julia had insisted she be given access to, but they kept the hard copies on the big board in the MIS conference room. It was easier to make connections when it was all laid out in front of you, when you could see how people were connected and how they weren’t.
Ronan had taped the new photo at the end of a red line drawn from Congressman Moran’s name and photo.
“Davis Porter,” Ronan said. “If he looks familiar, it’s because he’s the current head of the Federal Reserve.”
The man in the photo was at least sixty with silver hair, a long nose, and angular features.
“That’s who the limo belongs to?” Nick asked.
They were standing around the conference table, all of them too amped to sit.
“Not outright, but that’s where it leads. The car is currently requisitioned to his driver, and Porter has been spotted entering and exiting it on several occasions since I spotted it outside of Moran’s office.”
“What the fuck…?” Declan said.
Julia wondered if he was rubbing his temples because of the strange and unexpected break in Elise’s case or because of the brunette Julia had spotted leaving the house carrying her shoes that morning just after sunrise.
“He’s not on the roster of Whitmore Club members,” Nick said.
Ronan nodded. “Correct.”
“Then how do we know this ties into Elise’s disappearance?” Nick asked.
Julia was gratified to hear him use Elise’s name. It sounded personal, like she was real to Nick. Like he cared about her.
Ronan sighed. “We don’t. Not technically. But there are some… oddities associated with Porter as they relate to some of the Whitmore board members.”
“What kind of oddities?” Julia asked.
Ronan shrugged. “A few dinner meetings, some overlapping acquaintances, things that wouldn’t necessarily be unusual — except for one thing.”
“Do you want us to guess?” Nick said.
Ronan turned to the board and taped another piece of paper to it under Davis Porter’s picture.
Julia looked at the picture, an aerial shot of a massive stone building surrounded by trees, and in the distance, some kind of dome. “What is it?”
“It’s a private residence in Firenze, Italy, just outside Florence.” Ronan picked up the red marker and started drawing lines from some of the Whitmore members to the picture of the villa. She recognized the names, ticking them off as he drew the lines, starting with Davis Porter. “All of these men flew into Florence on March 21st. They all left the next day.”
“But Porter isn’t a member of the Whitmore Club,” Julia said, trying to figure out what Ronan was getting at.
“No, but when Moran got into his car I thought about Dubai, and about the page on Manifest’s website that seemed to be advertising meeting locations. I had Clay pull everything they could find on Porter, including his travel over the past six months. Then I cross-referenced it against the travel of the Whitmore board members to see if a number of them had been at the same place at the same time.”
“And you came up with Florence,” Nick said.
“I came up with Florence.”
“Who owns the villa?” Declan asked.
Julia wasn’t surprised to see that his eyes were suddenly sharp. When she’d first met him, she’d assumed he was the family fuck-up. Almost every big family had one.
But Declan had proven her wrong. He could make connections hungover and sleep-deprived that eluded her at her best. It was a mistake to underestimate him.
“That’s the other thing.” Ronan said. “Ownership of the villa looks
a lot like ownership of the Manifest website.”
Nick looked at Ronan. “Impossible to trace?”
Ronan nodded. “Shell companies, empty IDs, you name it.”
Nick walked to the wall, his gaze traveling over the photographs and the intersecting lines. “Anyone think of any reason why all these guys — all these rich, powerful guys — would converge on Florence at the same time? Some kind of financial or political conference? Anything?”
“I had Clay run it,” Ronan said. “It was midweek, and the only big conference in town was fashion-related.” He hesitated. “But once I made the connection, I had Clay run travel records for Davis and the Whitmore members going back two years, just to see if there had ever been another time when they all went to the same city at the same time.”
“And?” Julia felt like she was going to jump out of her skin.
“And several of them have made repeat trips to Florence, always on the last Saturday of every month,” Ronan said.
“The last Saturday of every month,” Nick repeated. “The same members every month?”
Ronan shook his head. “It varies, but it’s definitely the same core group.”
“What are you thinking?” Declan asked.
“I’m thinking these guys are all members of Manifest and the villa in Florence is home base for monthly parties,” Ronan said. “I’m thinking they can’t all make it all the time, but they get away when they can.”
Julia’s stomach turned over. “What kind of parties?”
Sympathy shadowed his eyes when he looked at her. “Your guess is as good as mine, although I’m sure we’re guessing the same kinds of things.”
Julia grabbed onto the back of one of the conference chairs as if that would help to steady her. Like that would stop the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake her. Like that would stop her from imagining Elise at the mercy of a bunch of rich assholes who thought they’d earned the right to use her against her will.
Murphy's Wrath (Murphy's Law Book 2) Page 3
