“Keep working it,” Ronan said. “Send me anything you find the minute you find it.”
Nick knew what he meant: they never sent anything through any channel but the encrypted information sharing system that served as MIS’s private communications network.
“And you’ll be in Dubai,” Nick said.
Ronan felt his brother’s gaze on his face, kept his own eyes trained on the water. “I’ll be in Dubai.”
Nick sighed, abandoning any attempt at changing Ronan’s mind. “Want reinforcements?”
Ronan thought about it. They had plenty of muscle on the payroll, men they called to serve as weapons and fists when the firm needed them.
But he had no idea how much the people behind Manifest knew. The invitation to Dubai had been extended to Julia. Were the shadowy figures behind the secret society having her tailed? Monitoring her communications? Did they know Ronan had stayed at her apartment?
It was too soon to tell, but walking into the situation with guns blazing wasn’t at the top of his list of options. Not yet anyway. He was still hoping to dissuade Julia from going to Gold, a club in Dubai he knew only from a single memorable run-in with an arms dealer from Algeria.
He’d had a feeling there was more to the club than met the eye, but MIS had a policy of avoiding scope creep: they did the jobs they were hired to do and got out.
If he could get Julia to back off, reinforcements might be in order. If not, he would need to use a scalpel, not a machete, and a scalpel meant going in quiet.
“Put the reinforcements on standby,” Ronan said. “I’m going to scope it out first.”
Nick nodded. “Ro?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
Ronan knew Nick wasn’t just talking about the job.
22
“Want to tell me what’s on your mind?"
Julia stopped turning the teacup in her hands and looked into her gramps’ eyes. “What makes you think there’s something on my mind?”
He scowled, making it clear the question was an insult.
“I’m going to Dubai,” she said.
She’d passed the drive out of the city trying out different ways of telling him, debating whether to tell him about Ronan, whether to tell him that she’d gone to the Whitmore Club and almost hadn’t made it out.
She didn’t want to worry him, but they didn’t keep secrets from each other, and she needed him to know what was going on, where she was going, in case she didn’t come back.
His brow furrowed. “Dubai?”
“I think Elise might be there.” He moved to stand and she looked up at him. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get my things together,” he said.
The words were an echo of the ones she’d spoken to Ronan that morning.
“You can’t come, Gramps.”
“I’m a seventy-eight-year-old drill sergeant,” he barked. “I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“It wouldn’t help for you to come,” she said. “I can’t… I can’t go into all the details, but if this really is a lead to Elise, they’re not going to let you in, and they’re not going to let me in if I’m with you.”
He stared down at her. “If you think I’m going to let my granddaughter — the only granddaughter who isn’t already missing — fly off to some godforsaken country alone — ”
“The UAE is actually glamorous now,” she said. “Or so I’ve heard. And I won’t be alone.”
He’d left her no choice. Ronan would just have to understand.
He lowered himself to the chair next to her at the table. “Who will be with you?”
She drew in a breath, forced the words from her mouth. “Ronan Murphy.”
She had to give him credit. There was only the tiniest flicker of recognition before he locked it away behind his drill sergeant face. “Who is Ronan Murphy?”
“I know all about MIS,” she said, “so you can stop bullshitting me. I know you hired them, and not just to find Elise.”
A shadow of uncertainty passed over his face before he leaned back in the chair, his expression resolute. “I did what I had to do.”
She reached for his hand. “That’s what I’m doing too.”
He slammed his fist onto the table and her teacup rattled against its surface. “I hired them to keep you out of it.”
“It’s not their fault. It was…” She shook her head, remembering the night in the alley behind Seth’s house, the slam of cobblestone under her body as she’d gone down, Ronan’s eyes staring into hers as he pinned her to the ground. “It was pure chance that we ran into each other.”
He scowled. “That doesn’t make any of this okay.”
She rubbed a drip mark on her cup. “For what it’s worth, he never told me it was you.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t much matter now, does it?”
“He’s a good man,” she said. “Ronan Murphy.”
Understanding lit his eyes. “Oh dear…” Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “I suppose this is why he’s going with you?”
“Not just that. You hired him to do a job. He’s doing it.”
“The man wouldn’t take a dime,” her gramps grumbled.
“You’ll have to talk to him about that.”
“I don’t like the idea of you involved in of this.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’ve been involved, Gramps. I’ll be involved until Elise comes home.” She paused, wanting to tell him what it felt like to walk past Elise’s empty room, remembering all the times they’d weathered together since they were kids, knowing that for all of Elise’s aimlessness, she would come looking for Julia if the roles were reversed. “I have to do this.”
“I suppose you’re not going to come out and say that I’d just slow you down?”
She smiled.
A troubled expression passed over his features. “You should talk to your mother before you go.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“She’s made mistakes,” he said. “But she’s still your mother.”
Julia thought of her mom, of the seedy little house in the suburbs she lived in with Ray, the newest love of her life. She wouldn’t understand why Julia had to go to Dubai, wouldn’t even want to know the details. Julia had learned to handle a lot of things from her mother, but after being at the Whitmore Club and hearing the rumors surrounding Seth Campbell, she didn’t have it in her to deal with her mother’s apathy about Elise’s disappearance.
“I don’t have the energy to deal with her right now. I’ll fill her in when I get back,” Julia said.
Her gramps nodded and lifted his eyes to meet hers. “I guess a man like Ronan Murphy, a man with a business like his, has a private plane?”
“It turns out he does.” She’d been surprised when he’d told her they would fly to Dubai on one of the two private jets kept by his company. He’d mentioned some of their clients paying a lot of money for their services, but he was so unassuming it had never occurred to her that he would possess private jet-style wealth.
“And will you be taking that plane to Dubai or flying commercial?”
She laughed. “That’s a weird question.”
“Well?”
“We’re taking the company plane,” she said.
He got to his feet. “Wait here.”
She took a drink of the English Breakfast tea her gramps had set in front of her when she’d first arrived at the house. It was cold, the tannins bitter on her tongue.
She heard him rustling around in the bedroom and looked up when he came back down the hall carrying a box.
He set it in front of her and sat down.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Open it.” She recognized the Sig Sauer handgun nestled inside as soon as she lifted the lid. It was the same weapon he’d used to teach her and Elise how to shoot when they were teenagers. “Take it with you.”
Her hands shook as she touched the weapon, not b
ecause she didn’t know how to use it — she and Elise had spent hours at the firing range with their gramps — but because this time they weren’t talking about targets.
This time they were talking about life and death. Hers and Elise’s, and maybe Ronan Murphy’s.
“I don’t need this,” she said. Ronan hadn’t implicitly said he’d be armed, but if she’d read the situation correctly — and she thought she had — he was essentially a high-priced vigilante disguised as a security consultant.
Her gramps looked at her. “Don’t count on anyone else to save you, Julia. Better to have it and not need it than the other way around, and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting it on board a private plane.”
She lifted the gun out of the case and tested the weight in her hand, re-familiarizing herself with the feel of it: cold metal, heavier than it looked, balanced and smooth, clean as a whistle, as all her gramps’ weapons were.
“There’s extra ammo in the case,” he said.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”
He touched her face, his skin papery and warm against her own. “Bring back our girl.”
23
Ronan watched Julia’s face as they banked over the UAE, glittering like a jewel in the middle of the ocean. He’d been to the country countless times over the years, had gotten used to the otherworldly pattern laid out over crystalline waters.
They’d boarded the plane less than twenty-four hours after the door on the Manifest site had opened for Julia, less than twenty-four hours after he’d made her his in the tiny bedroom of her apartment.
He’d had the plane moved to a small municipal airport outside the city and had borrowed Reilly from the office to drive them to the airstrip, with instructions to avoid a tail. It had taken Manifest less than six hours to contact Julia via the open door. Ronan could only assume they knew about him as well, and while they might expect Julia to accept their invitation to Dubai, there was no reason to make her movements — or his — easy for the organization to track.
He’d been glad when Julia didn’t make a big deal out of the plane. He’d never brought a woman onto one of the private jets, had never taken them to any of the properties owned by him or the company across the world, had never taken a woman on board the sailboat in Boston harbor or the yacht moored off Mykonos.
Ronan had never wanted any of it, but Nick had convinced him they needed the trappings of wealth in order to attract a wealthy clientele, reminding Ronan that the only way they could take pro bono work was if someone else footed the bill.
Ronan had gotten used to it, had come to find a modest enjoyment of the comfort luxury provided, but someone could have taken it all away and he wouldn’t have noticed. It was just stuff, and he’d never savored it like Nick, had never showed it off like Declan.
It was one way Ronan and Finn were alike, although Finn had taken his spartan lifestyle to the extreme by living with nothing but a backpack for the past four years.
As soon as they’d climbed over Boston and headed out over the Atlantic, Julia had curled up on the buttery leather seat across from his. She’d fallen asleep with her head on a memory foam pillow, a cashmere blanket pulled up around her shoulders, and he’d begun to see the appeal of money.
She was here, a private pilot ensuring their safe and comfortable arrival halfway around the world, sleeping in comfort instead of squeezed between two other people in economy.
He had nothing against economy class — he’d flown it himself plenty of times — but it wasn’t good enough for Julia. He didn’t know everything about her, but from the background they’d done on Elise, he knew enough: abandoned by their father, raised by a single mother who’d been married four times and was currently shacking up with an unemployed mechanic in the suburbs.
The rest he could guess. Julia, the rational, responsible sister, always looking after Elise, paying the rent when Elise lost her job (she’d been employed by nine different retail stores in the past three years), accompanying Elise when she went to the police station to file a restraining order (two in as many years) against the latest asshole in her life, trying to hold it all together while everyone else fell apart.
She deserved so much more and he was surprised to find that he wanted to give it to her. That he’d passed a fair amount of the time she’d spent sleeping on the plane thinking about ways he could help her.
It wasn’t just about Elise. He knew nothing else would matter to Julia if they couldn’t find Elise safe and sound, but after that, there were things he wanted to do, things that would make her life easier.
Of course, getting Julia to allow it was something else entirely.
The stress of the previous weeks had knocked her out cold. He’d tried to focus on something other than her by reading the report Nick gave him at the beach and doing his own digging on Manifest with some of their wealthier and more trustworthy clients.
It hadn’t been very enlightening. He’d had to tread carefully in order not to set off alarm bells, but the few clients who were willing to talk had little more to say than that Manifest was a private club of sorts, and while no one used the words secret society, the picture that emerged was more Eyes Wide Shut than uptown country club.
Julia had woken up more than halfway into their flight and they’d been served dinner and champagne. Other than the two hours they’d spent exploring each other’s bodies the night before, it was the first time they’d spent together that hadn’t been focused on Elise and Manifest. The conversation had proven what he’d already suspected: Julia was quick-witted and astute, with a wicked sense of humor and no reluctance to challenge his views.
They’d made small talk about their respective pasts, their families, and Julia’s work while they ate. Afterwards the attendant brought coffee and Ronan told Julia what MIS had learned about Manifest.
He’d expected her to be upset by the implications: if Manifest had Elise, she hadn’t been kidnapped by a rogue dirtbag or even a small group of them, she’d been taken by a secret organization with far-reaching power. Instead she’d listened without any sign of emotion, asking questions about the information they’d gathered, what they suspected, what they needed in order to bring the organization to the attention of law enforcement.
“Excuse me, sir.” Ronan looked up to find a young man with pale hair and skin, one of the flight attendants they kept on retainer, standing at his elbow. “We’re being given instructions to enter a holding pattern. Air traffic’s a bit backed up.”
“Thank you.” It wasn’t uncommon in the UAE. It was a playground for the rich and famous, private jets coming and going in droves. Ronan suspected it would outgrow itself in under ten years if it kept developing at its current pace.
“Everything okay?” Julia asked as the attendant headed for the galley.
“Routine delay,” Ronan said. “There’s always a lot of traffic in the air here.”
She smiled. “I guess you’re a pro at this luxury travel thing.”
He laughed. “Not as much as you’d think. My brother Nick is the one who talked me into the planes. For the record, he was right. I can’t count how many times they’ve gotten me out of trouble by flying me in or out of somewhere at the last minute.”
She hesitated. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”
He’d known it was coming. He’d glossed over MIS’s work when they’d touched on it before, and while he had no doubt she’d gotten the gist, after what had happened between them — what was happening between them — she would want to know more.
She deserved to know more. To know the truth.
He picked up her feet, covered in thick socks, from the seat next to him and put them in his lap. He wanted to touch her while he told her. Wanted her to know the man who killed people for a living wasn’t a monster.
“I should start at the beginning.”
“Okay,” she said.
He concentrated on rubbing her feet, pressing his thumbs into the delicate arc
hes. “My sister died,” he said. “Od’ed when I was barely twenty.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and he knew from her voice that she was, that she understood because she was on the precipice of losing her own sister.
“Thank you.” He hesitated, not wanting to bog down the truth with excuses. “She was still in high school when the man who hooked her on heroin got ahold of her. She didn’t really stand a chance.”
“You wanted to hurt him,” she said.
He nodded. “But I was willing to wait for the legal system to do its thing — until I realized it wasn’t going to do its thing.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He looked up at her, looked back down at her feet when he saw the pain in her eyes. “Absolutely nothing. He was a pusher, but without evidence, they couldn’t do anything. My father tried to call in some favors — he’s retired from the BPD — but the most they could do was pick him up on a possession charge. His lawyer painted him out to be some kind of sad, misguided addict. He was sentenced to thirty days in rehab and community service. My little sister was dead."
“I take it he wasn’t a sad, misguided addict?”
“I did my own recon before I decided to go after him. I wasn’t going to take the law into my own hands if he was really lost like Erin.” He looked up again. “He was a dealer, and not a small time one. He was pushing the worst of the worst — crack, heroin, meth, fentanyl, you name it — and he was intentionally targeting kids like Erin.”
She fell silent and he wondered if she regretted asking, if maybe she didn’t want to know these things about him.
“What did you do?”
Ronan looked at her. “I killed him. Strangled him in his apartment after he got out of rehab and went back to his suppliers, picked up right where he left off, on the corners near every high school in the city.”
“Did it…” She stopped, as if she couldn’t find the right words.
“Bother me?” he asked. “Keep me up at night?”
Murphy’s Law: Murphy’s Law Book One Page 11
