Murphy’s Love: Murphy’s Law Book Three

by Michelle St. James

  MIS hadn’t ruled it out — Ronan had already started putting together a resource list for three surveillance teams in case they didn’t get another lead — but it wasn’t ideal.

  That was it. That was all they had.

  Elise had been blindfolded when she’d been moved from place to place, put in rooms that gave no indication of their location. She rarely came in contact with the other girls, and while she recognized the suited man on the deck of the Elysium, she couldn’t identify him with certainty as any one of the three suspects whose pictures were currently pinned to the Manifest board at MIS headquarters.

  “Hey.” Ronan’s voice coaxed her from her thoughts. “Where’d you go?”

  “Just thinking,” she said.

  He sighed and pulled her against him. “It’s frustrating, I know.”

  She sank against his side. “We haven’t gotten a single break since we brought her home.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Ronan said. “We know the guy onboard the Elysium, the smoker, is one of three men. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it takes us a step closer.”

  “We don’t even know who he is in the hierarchy. He could be anybody. He could be nobody.”

  “He’s not nobody. Manifest wouldn’t leave a nobody in charge of the girls during an auction, not with the firepower that was onboard the Elysium.” He shook his head. “Whoever they put in charge was somebody they trusted.”

  "Think they’ll find anything?” Julia asked. “The FBI?”

  “I don’t know,” Ronan said. “It’s hard to believe Manifest would have left anything incriminating onboard, but the fact that the boat was on fire in an out-of-the-way place means they expected it to sink, so you never know.”

  She remembered the control room she’d seen on the Elysium when she’d snuck down the hall toward the room where they’d held Elise. An entire wall had been filled with computer monitors, several men sitting at keyboards monitoring the auction.

  “They probably swept it anyway,” she said. “I don’t think they’d risk leaving anything recoverable.”

  “Maybe, but Manifest isn’t God. They’re just people — and people make mistakes.”

  She wanted to believe it, but her optimism was wearing thin. She’d been living in a state of limbo since they’d brought Elise home, since she’d found the photographs that were clearly meant to be a threat on the doorstep of their apartment.

  Since before that. Since Elise had gone missing.

  Now they were holed up in the Murphy house, forced to have one of the brothers with them even when they went to the grocery store. She loved Ronan, loved the house he shared with his brothers, loved Nick and Declan. They’d been nothing but welcoming and generous to her and Elise in the weeks they’d been staying there, but as long as they were hiding, it couldn’t feel permanent.

  What would happen when — if — they managed to take down Manifest? Would Julia and Elise go back to the apartment Ronan insisted on paying for, now that taking care of Elise was a full-time job?

  And what would happen to her and Ronan? She’d overcome most of the fear and doubt that had plagued her in the early weeks of their relationship, fear and doubt brought on by the strange set of circumstances that had prompted their meeting, by the extraordinary circumstances that characterized their time together since then.

  But it was still hard to imagine what their life would look like when it was all over.

  “She seemed good today.” Ronan spoke quietly and Julia didn’t need to ask to know he was talking about Elise, asleep in the guest room between Nick and Declan’s quarters.

  “She did. She’s still…” Julia hesitated, searching for the right words.

  “What?” Ronan asked.

  Julia sighed. “I don’t know. Different. She’s just different. I wish you could have known her before.”

  If he’d known Elise before he would know that it wasn’t like her to be so quiet, that the smile she only rarely managed to show was a shadow of her former smile, that her eyes didn’t used to be shaded with sadness, that she didn’t used to jump at loud noises and raised voices, that she didn’t used to shrink into herself.

  “I wish that too.”

  There was something unspoken in his words and she angled her neck to look up at him. “What?”

  “Sometimes I wish I could have known you before too,” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Aside from the obvious, I know this experience has changed you. I wonder sometimes what you were like before.”

  She reached out to brush a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “First of all, I can spare you the suspense and tell you I wasn’t that different. I was always this serious, this intense, and this stubborn.”

  He laughed. “Noted.”

  “Second of all, what’s the obvious?” she asked.

  He seemed surprised that she would ask. “The obvious is that I regret every second of my life that wasn’t spent with you.”

  She stretched to reach his lips with her own, lingering there as his tongue swept her mouth, heat blooming like a hothouse rose in her belly. She never stopped being surprised by the desire that overtook her when they touched.

  When they pulled apart, his blue eyes were liquid with need. “I think it’s time we go to bed,” he said. “What about you?”

  She tightened her arms around his neck. “Past time.”

  He lifted her into his arms and started down the hall.

  3

  Ronan sat back in his chair in the conference room and stared at the wall littered with pictures and notes, red string criss-crossing the names and images like a warning.

  Nick had been the one to start it, a remnant of his former occupation as a detective with Boston PD. Ronan had made fun of him at first. As a former Navy SEAL, Ronan had worked with technology most people didn’t even know existed. All of MIS’s data was digital and encrypted. He hadn’t seen the point in duplicating their efforts on the board, but in the end he’d had to admit that Nick had been right: sometimes it helped to see all the pieces laid out in one big visual.

  Players who’d once been at the center of the diagram — Seth Campbell, Congressman Moran, Davis Porter — had been moved to the side to make room for the three pictures now in the place of honor: Noam Ecker, Lee Corbyn, and Mark Gordon.

  One of the men had been onboard the Elysium, his image captured by Nora’s drone, but looking at their pictures, Ronan could understand why the facial recognition software — “borrowed” from the NSA by one of Braden’s contacts with a cyberlab in New York — couldn’t pinpoint one of them with certainty.

  They all had the same large head, the same wide forehead and flat features, the red nose that spoke of a potential drinking problem. They were all between five-eleven and six-foot-two, all broad at the shoulders.

  All rich enough to be potential members of Manifest.

  Nick entered the room, took a seat in one of the empty chairs around the conference table, and looked at the board. “See anything new?”

  Declan made fun of Nick for the hours he spent staring at the board, but Nick was a believer that sometimes the brain made new connections from old data.

  “I wish,” Ronan said.

  “Nothing from Kane?”

  “Not yet,” Ronan said.

  “Think they dry-docked the boat before they burned it?” Nick asked.

  “I doubt it,” Ronan said. “That would draw more attention than just stashing it somewhere out of the way.”

  “Hard to stash a three-hundred-foot Oceanco,” Nick said.

  “Not as hard as pulling it out of the water and paying for storage.”

  “Fair enough.” Nick’s gaze traveled over the board, lingering on the three pictures at the center of it. “Who do you think it is?”

  Ronan had thought about it constantly since the software had turned up the names of the three people on the board. Noam Ecker had a wife and two daughters and had been an Israeli soldier before going in
to private security for various high-profile figures in the Israeli government. Lee Corbyn was a British citizen and digital forensics specialist with a sketchy resume that hinted at possible work for off-the-books intelligence agencies. Divorced with a son in high school, it wasn’t impossible to imagine him working for Manifest, running their digital operations onboard the Elysium. Mark Gordon had been in the U.S. Special Forces for twenty years before retiring to open a private security firm whose name was only whispered by anyone with ties to the U.S. government or military. Viribus was known for taking on missions that couldn’t be sanctioned through bureaucratic channels, missions that might get the U.S. censured by the U.N., missions that might violate the Geneva Convention.

  “If I had to put money on it, I’d say Corbyn or Gordon.”

  “I agree,” Nick said. “After everything that happened to Elise, I’m not optimistic about the character of my fellow man, but I can’t see a guy with two daughters participating in the trafficking of women.”

  “My gut tells me the same thing,” Ronan said. “And Ecker’s doing high-profile security work. Not great for staying under the radar.”

  “Is it worth sending teams to surveil Corbyn and Gordon?” Nick asked. “It’s still a lot of resources, but two teams are easier to manage than three.”

  Ronan was tempted, but the temptation was pure emotion, the desire to shut down Manifest threatening to overwhelm logic.

  That wasn’t a good way to do business.

  “Let’s wait a couple more days, see if we hear from Kane on the forensics results from the Elysium.” Ronan hesitated. “Think it’s worth having Elise take another run at the photographs?”

  Elise had looked at countless pictures of Noam Ecker, Lee Corbyn, and Mark Gordon since they’d processed the drone footage, but she hadn’t been able to definitively identify the one who’d been onboard the Elysium with her. Some days she was sure it was Ecker. Others it was Corbyn or Gordon. After a while Ronan had stopped asking, both because it wasn’t getting them anywhere and because it upset Elise, which also upset Julia.

  He didn’t know what had been done to Elise when she’d been taken. It wasn’t his business to ask, and whatever confidence she shared with Julia was between the sisters. He tried to make sure Julia knew he was there if she ever needed to unburden herself, but beyond that he gave her the space to help Elise in whatever way she saw fit.

  “Why are you asking me?” Nick said, breaking into Ronan’s thoughts.

  Ronan eyed his brother. “Thought you might have a read on whether she’d be up to it. You two seem pretty chummy.”

  Nick sighed. “You’ve got it all wrong, man.”

  “What’s that?” Ronan asked.

  “I know that look,” Nick said, standing. “Do you really think I’d make a move on someone who’s been through what Elise has been through?” He shook his head. “Elise and I are friends. That’s all.”

  Ronan studied Nick’s face, looking for clues that he was lying — to Ronan or himself. He found none.

  “So you’re friends,” Ronan said. “Think it’s worth having her look at the pictures again?”

  Nick ran a hand through his dark hair. “Honestly? I don’t think so. She either doesn’t remember much or she doesn’t want to remember. I think it would just confuse things more.”

  Ronan nodded. “So we wait for Kane. If he doesn’t have anything in a couple days, we’ll put two teams together. Have Declan work on a surveillance plan for Corbyn and Gordon using the information we have.”

  “I’ll do a cost analysis,” Nick said.

  “I didn’t ask for a cost analysis,” Ronan said through clenched teeth. They’d been over this a hundred times.

  “We have to do it,” Nick said.

  “Not finishing this job isn’t an option,” Ronan said.

  “I didn’t say it was. But we can’t just spend money and time like they’re water,” Nick said. “It’s bad business to bury our heads in the sand. We’d do a cost analysis for surveillance operations on any job. I’m fine spending the money, but we have to know how much we’re spending.”

  “If we’re going to spend it anyway, what’s the point?”

  Ronan was long past the point of caring what it cost to bring down Manifest. MIS had plenty of money in its coffers, money earned over several years doing high-value hit jobs for rich clients who wanted to make someone pay when the law couldn’t — or wouldn’t.

  If Nick didn’t want to spend MIS’s money, Ronan would spend his own. Like Nick and Declan, he was a millionaire many times over, in part thanks to Nick who guided their investments when Ronan might have just stuffed it in a safe and been done with it.

  “It’s business,” Nick said. “We balance pro-bono clients like John Taylor against paying clients. That’s the only way the business is viable long-term.”

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  Nick was the bean counter. Let him count beans. Ronan was going to get the bastards who had taken Elise, who had dared to threaten Julia.

  He didn’t care what it cost.

  4

  Julia waited for Ronan to pull off the highway before cracking her window, her gaze pulled to the surrounding fields and forest cast in October’s golden light.

  “I can turn the AC on,” Ronan said, from the driver’s seat of his Audi.

  “I need some air,” Julia said. “It’ll be too cold soon.”

  The thought of another winter depressed her. The warmth of summer had been healing, a caress after the battle they’d fought to bring Elise home. It had been weeks of walks on the beach alone with Ronan and Chief, picnics and frisbee games with Elise and Nick and Declan, cookouts in the courtyard of the big house that had started to feel like home.

  She turned in her seat to look at Elise, staring out the window of the backseat. “You cold?”

  “I’m fine,” Elise said.

  Julia turned around and stared out the windshield. She still wasn’t used to this version of Elise: the one who spoke in short sentences, who seemed neither excited nor unhappy about anything, whose smile was rare and reticent.

  It wasn’t fair to expect anything else of her, not after what she’d been through, but Julia couldn’t help missing the sister she’d known, the one who’d breezed in between dates and parties, who’d laughed everything off and thought life was one big celebration not to be taken too seriously.

  They’d maintained their weekly dinners with Gramps, although Ronan still insisted on coming with them, or if he was occupied with work, on sending Nick. Julia hadn’t minded at first, but she was getting tired of having a private security detail, of watching Ronan’s eyes shade with worry anytime she wanted to go anywhere.

  She’d lost the last of her freelance clients in the weeks after they’d brought Elise home. By then, Julia had almost been happy to see the client go. Juggling work — however minimal — with Elise’s recovery and her own stress in the wake of the rescue operation onboard the Elysium had been impossible.

  She tried not to think about all that Ronan was doing for her — paying rent on Julia and Elise’s apartment in case they wanted to go back someday, covering Elise’s therapy, paying for their food and the roof over their heads, even giving them each a generous allowance to minimize the number of times Julia had to ask for money.

  She kept track of the money Ronan spent taking care of her and Elise, writing everything down in a notebook she kept hidden in her purse, determined to pay him back someday even though she knew it was the last thing he’d want.

  Her part in the rescue came back to her in her dreams: the long walk down the yacht’s hall on the way to the room where Elise had been held, the computer displays ticking the bids being made on the DarkNet for Elise and women like her, the man who’d grabbed Elise on their way out, choking her until Julia put a bullet in his head.

  But she didn’t wake terrified and trembling from the dreams — she woke calm and satisfied. She’d killed a man and could feel nothing but satisfaction. This
was the thing that kept her awake at night.

  She didn’t expect to feel guilt — the man she’d killed had been party to her sister’s kidnapping, to the selling of her like cattle to faceless men who would use her like she was a new toy and discard her just as easily when they were done— but surely she should feel something, some vestige of regret that she’d been forced to take a human life to save her sister?

  She didn’t. No matter how much she tried, she just didn’t.

  They pulled onto her gramps’ property and started up the winding dirt road leading to the house. She craned her neck to look up into the tress and caught a flash of the security cameras Ronan had insisted on having installed when Gramps refused his offer of personal security.

  Julia had been terrified when she’d found the photo of her mother, her grandfather, and herself on the porch of her old apartment — her gramps had just been pissed. A former Army drill sergeant, he wasn’t easily cowed, and he’d made no bones about the fact that he was more than capable of protecting himself and his property.

  Still, Julia had been relieved when he didn’t argue the cameras. So far he’d only used the monitoring software installed on his computer to watch the herds of deer — and once, a family of black bears — that crossed through the property, but she felt better knowing the system was in place.

  They emerged from the tree-lined drive and Julia’s gaze immediately landed on the beat-up green Chevy next to her gramps’ Ford.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Julia turned around to look at Elise. “Did you know about this?”

  Elise shook her head. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Of course, he didn’t,” Julia said as Ronan pulled behind her gramps’ car.

  He killed the engine and took her hand. “I can drive away now if you want me to.”

  She met his eyes, then let her gaze slide to her mother’s car. She was still getting used to the fact that Ronan knew her so well. That he knew her and still loved her, would still do anything for her.