Kiss Shot (Dublin Mafia: Triskelion Team, Book 2)

by Zara Keane

  She’d barely had time to sit down when Flash woke up and padded over to lie at her feet. Shit. She needed him to stay quiet. A quick search of the dog’s basket revealed a couple of toys. She gave them to the puppy, and he seemed content to chew on them as long as he was permitted to hang with her. As long as the dog stayed quiet, Ruthie could roll with having a canine witness to her crime.

  With unsteady hands, she opened the laptop. Her heart was in her throat, and a wave of nausea rolled over her. All she had to do was walk away. Walk back to the bed and to Shane and pretend this was a bad dream. Seize the moment and take a chance on happiness and stability. Her stomach churned. Who was she trying to kid? The Jarvis Agency wasn’t likely to let her walk away without consequences. She’d signed a contract. And whatever about Travers and company, the Kowalskis weren’t about to forget Kevin’s debt. Without Ruthie’s help, he’d have no choice but to ask their father for the money. She squeezed her eyes shut. Dad had looked happy tonight, dancing with Siobhan. Theirs was a fledgling romance that should be nurtured. Ruthie had vowed that she’d look after the boys and Dad after Mum died, and she’d already broken the promise by leaving. She didn’t intend to break it again.

  The flash drive slipped into Shane’s laptop without protest, but hacking into the computer took thirty tense minutes. Ruthie blinked when the machine decided to perform an unprompted restart. This wasn’t a good sign. She bit back a groan of frustration. Fifteen minutes and two restarts later, she was finally in and browsing through Shane’s files.

  She drew her brows together to form a frown. Why did he have so few folders and applications on the laptop? Did he store all his stuff in the cloud, or on an external drive? While she could imagine him backing up files on an external hard drive, he struck her as too paranoid to trust cloud storage. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, searching for anything related to Shane’s research into the attack at The Lucky Leprechaun. Finally, she struck gold. She clicked on a file labeled “Lucky” and bit back a curse when a GIF of a leprechaun danced across the screen. What the hell?

  “Didn’t find what you were looking for?” asked a deep voice.

  Ruthie’s heart leaped and she spun around to face Shane.

  He stared back at her, expressionless, his arms folded across his chest.

  Oh, shit.

  “I…can explain,” she stammered. But she couldn’t. She had no words to explain away the treachery of hacking into his computer while he slept.

  “I’m sure you can come up with a clever excuse on the fly,” he said, the tenderness from earlier replaced by a note of steel. “You’re smart enough to invent a thousand plausible stories on the fly. Only they’d all be lies, wouldn’t they?”

  A ball formed in her throat, making it difficult to breathe. “Did you suspect I’d try to break in?” she asked. “The folder—”

  “It wasn’t set up for you in particular.” Shane moved closer, and she slid the chair back until it hit against the desk. “I don’t trust anyone, Ruthie. Did you really think you’d be able to hack into my files that easily?”

  She took a shallow breath. “Shane, I—”

  “Can explain?” He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “You’ve said that already. If you do intend to tell me why you’ve been using me to get information on what I’ve been investigating, say it fast before I lose my temper. Or worse—” he leaned in, and she felt his warm breath on her face, “—call my father and Lar. Seeing as they’re the people I’m doing the investigating for. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  Ruthie wracked her brain for clues. Learning that Lar had done a deal with Irish intelligence had come as a shock, but she couldn’t recall anything else in his uncensored file that could indicate what Shane was referring to, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to open Shane’s complete file. What she was afraid of finding in the file, she couldn’t say. Perhaps her trepidation lay in not wanting to violate Shane’s privacy any more than she already had. And now she was paying the price for her cowardice. “Wait,” she said. “I’m confused. Are you saying you work for both your father and the Triskelion Team? I thought that joining forces with Lar and Dan was supposed to be a fresh start for you?”

  His bitter laugh sent a shiver down her back. “That was the idea, but it didn’t go according to plan.”

  He didn’t elaborate.

  Ruthie exhaled in a shudder. Any chance she’d had of saving her brother’s arse from the Kowalskis had been shattered to smithereens. She’d have to tell Dad. Her limbs turned to ice and her mouth wouldn’t cooperate. “Fine,” she said hoarsely. “Call Frank. Call Lar. Call whomever you damn well like. It makes no difference now. I tried and failed, and you caught me. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty more to say.” He moved closer, lethal as a panther. “I want answers.”

  “I can’t give you answers,” she said in a broken voice, staring at the man she’d slept with and betrayed. “I signed confidentiality agreements.”

  His snort of laughter grated on her frayed nerves. “Fucking confidentiality agreements. They’re haunting me.”

  So he knew about Lar. Was that why there was tension between the cousins? Aloud, she asked, “Why are you not getting on with him? Is it because of his…arrangement?” She was cautious in her word choice in case he didn’t know.

  Shane’s nostrils flared. “Never mind my cousin. I want to know whose pocket you’re in. Who’s paying Kevin’s debts?”

  She met his glare but didn’t reply. There was no point in denying that she’d sold her soul to bail out her brother. Shane wasn’t stupid.

  “I asked you a question.” His voice was harsher now, and the hurt showed on his face. “Who hired you to hack into my computer? Was it the Kowalskis?”

  “What? Oh, no. My only contact with them is over Kevin’s debt.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he said smoothly. “What concerns me is the deal you struck with them to repay the second part of Kevin’s debt. Are you paying in cash or information? Have you told Reuben that I helped Kaylee and the boys hide?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I would never put Kaylee and her sons at risk.”

  Shane shrugged. “So they hired you to dig for information of a different sort.”

  “Why would the Kowalskis want to know what you and your family do?” she demanded in exasperation. “I thought Frank had an agreement with them.”

  “He does. However, I wouldn’t put it past them to hire you to spy on us. Reuben is psycho, but Adam is ambitious. Expanding his little empire is exactly the sort of thing he’d try to do. And now that Jimmy Connolly is out of the way, I hear Adam has struck a deal with Connolly’s sons. His next logical move is to try to encroach on my father’s territory, deal or no deal.”

  Shit. Much as she’d love to make the Kowalskis the fall guys for her current predicament, she couldn’t in all conscience risk a misapprehension sparking a turf war in Kilpatrick. Innocent people would get hurt. “Shane, I can’t tell you who asked me to hack into your computer, but I will say it wasn’t the Kowalskis.”

  He took a step back, nostrils flaring. His fingers curled into fists. “That leaves only one other possibility. Lar.”

  Ruthie did a double take. “Why the hell would he want to hack into your computer? You work for him. Surely he knows what you’re looking for.”

  “If he’s discovered I’m spying on him, he’d have every reason to want to return the favor.” Shane’s mouth twisted. “Him or his MI6 girlfriend.”

  “Okay, hold on a sec.” She put a palm up to stop him when he opened his mouth to interrupt her. “This is getting out of hand. Lar didn’t hire me.”

  Shane frowned. “My cousins in Boston? Max in Berlin?”

  “No,” she shouted. “None of your family or friends had anything to do with me hacking into your computer—or trying to hack in.” She regarded the laptop pensively. The mad leprechaun was still dancing across the screen, showin
g her his arse.

  “That makes no sense. Why would a total stranger spy on…” He trailed off, and she could see the wheels turning in his head. “The police. Or Irish intelligence.”

  Closer, but no prize.

  He bounded over to a drawer and drew out a gun.

  “Whoa,” she said, heart pounding. “Simmer down.”

  He turned to her, and she read the hurt in his eyes. “This has got to be Lar and Gen.”

  “I have no idea why you keep thinking they’re involved…”

  “The intelligence connection,” he said in a rough voice.

  “They didn’t send me here, Shane. Listen to me, for heaven’s sake, before you rush off and cause a family feud. Lar and Gen had nothing to do with my being sent to Dublin. The Kowalskis didn’t hire me. In fact, no one in Kilpatrick hired me. Beyond that, I can’t say any more.”

  “Because it’s confidential?” He sneered and pushed past her to the laptop. “Let’s see how far your hacking got you.”

  His fingers flew over the keyboard, and the contents of the flash drive appeared on the screen. Ruthie gasped and reached for the flash drive, but Shane was too quick for her. He pinned her wrists behind her back. “Why do you have files with my name and Lar’s?”

  The uncensored file with his name on it that she’d been too shit scared to read. “No, Shane—”

  But it was too late. He’d clicked on the file icon.

  “What the hell?” He drew back as if he’d been electrocuted. “What is this shit? They’ve got every fucking part-time job I ever did listed here, legal and illegal.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know what’s in your folder. I read Lar’s, but I didn’t look at yours. I was supposed to, but I…I couldn’t do it.”

  He rounded on her, breathing hard. “Did your conscience get to you, Ruthie? What the fuck is this file? Did the Kowalskis ask you to plant this crap on my computer?”

  Ruthie pushed past him and scanned the screen. And frowned. The first page of Shane’s file listed a date and place of birth and all the other basic facts she’d expect to find. Something nagged at her memory, some piece of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit. “Wait a sec. Your birthday is in January. Why does this say you were born in April?”

  “It also says I was born in Kildare. That’s bullshit. I was born at the Rotunda hospital in Dublin. The Kowalskis, or whoever put together this nonsense, are idiots. Or they’re trying to fuck with me.”

  “May I?” Ruthie took the mouse and scrolled down the file. Page Three contained a scanned copy of Shane’s birth certificate. She frowned. “Weird. The birth certificate they scanned also gives your date of birth as the fourth of April. Did they scan someone else’s birth certificate by mistake? Your father’s name is correct, but they have your mother down as Theresa Delaney, not Chantelle.”

  Shane’s tanned face turned chalky white. “What the fuck? Let me see that.”

  Ruthie stepped to the side to give him a better view of the screen. “See? The name is wrong. Unless your mother chose to go by Chantelle instead of Theresa. Can’t say I’d blame her. Your father’s name is correct, though. Maybe that’s where the mistake occurred.”

  Shane stood frozen, his features immobile.

  “Shane?” Ruthie prompted. “What’s up?”

  “Theresa was Lar’s mother,” he said in a hollow voice, “and Francis Malachy is not my father’s name.”

  24

  Shane stared at the screen, unseeing. Malachy was his biological father? Malachy, the person who’d offered him refuge whenever things got bad at home.

  Ruthie stared at him, her brow creased in confusion. “Your dad’s called Frank. Did they get his middle name wrong?”

  Shane swayed before regaining his balance. After taut seconds of silence, he said, “All the boys of my father’s generation had Francis as their first name, but only Francis Michael was called by his first name.”

  “Francis Michael, not Francis Malachy?” Slowly, realization dawned on her face. “Oh my God. The priest.”

  He pinned her in place with a glare. “How accurate is the rest of the information your source gave you?”

  She fiddled with her rings, twisting and turning them in a frantic fashion. “I’ve never found a single mistake.”

  “In that case, I have to assume the birth certificate is correct.” His exhale of breath was audible. “And if that’s true, Malachy has a lot of explaining to do.”

  “Assuming the Theresa Delaney listed is Lar’s mother,” Ruthie said, “that makes him your half-brother.”

  Shane nodded stiffly. “If this is accurate, yes.”

  “Where does this leave us?” Ruthie asked and shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Us? There is no us. Everything you told me was a lie.” He slammed his fist down on the desk, relishing the pain that shot through his arm.

  “Shane, you’ll hurt yourself.”

  He rounded on her. The rage burning its way through his body must have been reflected on his face, because she blanched and took a step back. Shit. He flexed his shoulders and uncurled his fingers. No matter what lies Ruthie had told, no matter what she’d done, Shane didn’t harm women. “I don’t care if my hand hurts,” he ground out. “The pain feels real, unlike your bullshit stories and all the lies my so-called uncle and cousin have told me. Was any of it true, Ruthie? Were you a virgin? Did you even come, or did you fake that too?”

  “Yes,” she said in a small voice, “I was a virgin, and I didn’t fake orgasm. Almost everything I told you since we met in Power’s Pub was the truth.”

  “Ah, yes. Our meeting.” He sneered at her, not bothering to disguise his contempt. “How convenient for you to bump into me like that, just when Lenny had canceled our night out. Lenny, who hadn’t been in touch with me for ages.” Shane’s jaw hardened. “How much did you pay him to arrange to meet me?”

  Her expression was a mix of guilt and anguish. He didn’t give a fuck. Her hand fluttered to her throat. “Yes, I asked Lenny to arrange for you to be at Power’s that night. I figured I’d bump into you at some point, but I needed to speed it up.”

  Shane crossed his arms across his chest. “Why? I want the truth.”

  She sighed. “As you’ve guessed, I was paid to ferret out information on you and your family. In return, I’d receive the money to pay off the rest of Kevin’s debts.”

  “The Kowalskis. I’ll fucking kill them.”

  “No. I told you it’s not them.”

  “Then who?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Won’t say, you mean.” He pointed to the door. “I want you to leave.”

  “Shane, please—” Her tears only hardened his resolve to see the back of her. He’d never dealt well with crying females, and Ruthie meant more to him than any other weeping woman.

  “Just go,” he growled, “before I do something we both regret.”

  Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Ruthie gathered the rest of her stuff and went to the door. She hovered in the doorframe. “I know this is lousy timing, but I love you, Shane Delaney. I’ve loved you since I was eight years old. I’ve fucked up big time, but I’m going to find a way to make this right.”

  In that instant, his rage deflated, replaced by resigned regret. “There’s nothing you can do to make this right, Ruthie. I’m done caring about people who stab me in the back. First Lar, then Malachy, and now you. All I want is for you to get out of my life and stay gone this time.”

  Her look of devastation cut through him like a knife.

  After she closed the door, he slumped onto the sofa. Flash took this as an invitation to join him and leaped onto his lap. The puppy nuzzled Shane’s chest and whimpered.

  “Come here.” Shane cradled the dog in his arms. “You wreck my apartment and cost me an arm and a leg in vet bills, but you don’t lie to me. You can stick around.”

  He drummed his fingers on the edge of the sofa and glanced at his watch. Malachy had still been
at Siobhan’s party when Shane and Ruthie had left. The priest would probably be home by now. Shane got his feet, decision made. Time to pay his beloved “uncle” a visit.

  Malachy answered his front door on the second ring. “That was quick. I only called the taxi— ” He broke off and stared at Shane. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

  Shane crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the priest. “Hello, Uncle. Or should I say, Father?”

  Malachy’s craggy features froze in a snapshot of horror. “Did Francis tell you?”

  “No.”

  The priest drew his bushy gray eyebrows together. “Then how did you find out?”

  “Does it matter? Fact is, I know. What I don’t know is why you’ve lied to me all these years.”

  Malachy looked up and down the street and then stepped aside. “You’d better come in.”

  Shane marched into the house and almost brained himself by tripping over a suitcase in the hallway.

  “Sorry.” Malachy rushed to move it out of the way. “I was on my way out when you rang the bell. I thought you were my taxi.”

  “At this time of night? Surely you don’t need a suitcase to give someone the last rites?”

  Raw pain flickered across Malachy’s face before his protective shutters slammed down concealed his emotions. “I have to go to a conference. My flight leaves in a couple of hours.”

  Had it not been for his initial expression, Shane might have believed him. He eyed the man skeptically. “Funny, you never mentioned leaving for a conference at the party.”

  “We didn’t have a chance to talk much there. I was trying to keep my sisters from tearing each other’s hair out, and you were busy flirting with Ruthie Reynolds. How did that go, by the way?”

  Fantastic…until the night imploded in lies and deceit. Shane unclenched his jaw. “Don’t change the subject. I’ve just found out you’re my father. I want answers.”