Murphy’s Love: Murphy’s Law Book Three

by Michelle St. James

  Julia sat in her car, staring through the rain-spattered windshield at the store looming under cloudy skies. It seemed to get colder by the day as they inched closer to Thanksgiving, a holiday Julia had no desire to celebrate.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful — Elise had been brought home alive, and she had Ronan and Nick and Declan in her life — but her gramps was gone. There would be no quiet dinner at his house, a fire blazing in the hearth, the smell of his famous orange-and-maple turkey permeating the house, Julia and Elise arguing over the best way to roll out pie crust.

  She felt like a part of her had died with her gramps. The part that still believed there was room for a happy ending, the part that remembered what it felt like to be young and innocent, who could find refuge in a tiny house in the woods and home-cooked food and the smell of her gramps’ cardigans.

  She saw Ronan looking at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice, saw the worry in his eyes. She wanted to comfort him, to tell him she was fine, that she just needed time.

  But she couldn’t lie to him, and that’s what it would be: a lie.

  She wasn’t fine. She was so full of rage she could feel it leaking from her skin like poisonous gas. She wished she could feel sadness. That would be so much easier, so much more natural, something she could handle.

  The fury that swirled inside her like a whirlwind was something she couldn’t control. It swept away everything in its path, leaving behind a wasteland that was unrecognizable to her.

  It wasn’t just that she wanted to make Manifest pay: she wanted to make them hurt. Wanted to pull apart the landscape of their lives piece by piece, slowly, so they could watch it all fall away.

  She hadn’t been lying to Ronan when she’d told him about her idea to bring down the organization — it just so happened that the best way to take them down would also be the most satisfying. The people behind Manifest, people like Yael Dohan, valued money and power above all else. She was willing to bet they valued those things above even their own lives.

  What was the point of being alive if you couldn’t be rich and powerful?

  That’s how men like that thought, what they valued.

  If her plan worked, they would be besieged by the media, their most depraved activities exposed to their associates, their families, the whole world. They would be relentlessly investigated. Their assets would probably be frozen. If it was allowed to play out, they would probably go to prison.

  Julia wouldn’t let it play out to that point — she would kill them first, or at least kill Dohan — but they would see the writing on the wall.

  They would know it was coming, would get to witness the slow-motion demolition of their lives in living color on cable news.

  It was what they deserved. It was what Elise deserved, what her gramps deserved.

  The rain picked up, a steady patter on the roof of the car, the cold creeping in since she’d cut the engine. She pulled up the hood on her jacket, stepped out of the car, and hurried for the front of the drugstore.

  She blinked against the fluorescent lights and glanced around to get her bearings. She didn’t know many people in Ronan’s neighborhood, but she’d driven to Belmont anyway, just in case.

  It had been difficult getting away from the house without Ronan or Nick or Declan, all of whom still watched her and Elise like hawks, but she’d finally put her foot down, telling Ronan she just needed to go for a drive alone before their meeting later that day to discuss their new plan.

  He must have seen something in her eyes, because he’d relented, making her promise to share her location until she got back and to keep her eye on the rearview mirror for a tail.

  She spotted the section she was looking for at the back of the store and made her way down the narrow aisles, past face washes and lotions, vitamins and makeup. She hadn’t had time to think about the errand before now — she’d been too focused on getting out of the house alone — but now that she was here, she was nervous, her hands clammy.

  She removed them from her jacket pockets and wiped her palms on her jeans, her gaze traveling over the boxes of pregnancy tests on the shelf in front of her. There were so many, way more than she could have expected.

  She felt dumb and immature, like a teenager looking for condoms for the first time, but the truth was she’d never taken a pregnancy test before. Her sexual trysts had always been short-lived, marked by extreme caution in both the emotional and physical departments. Until Ronan, she hadn’t had regular sex often enough to have a scare like this one.

  Was it a scare? She didn’t know. Her feelings were complicated on the subject, dominated by the question of whether it was true as opposed to what to do if it was. She’d realized her period was late just before the fateful dinner at her gramps’ house and had assumed it was stress.

  It was true that she and Ronan weren’t always careful, but an unplanned pregnancy had felt a little bit like a plane crash — something that only happened to other people, but if her calculations were correct, she was three weeks late.

  She couldn’t wait any longer.

  She picked up one test and read the back, then another. By the time she’d hit four different brands, she’d gathered they were more or less the same and chose one that had three tests in one box, just in case she made a mistake and needed to repeat it.

  She made her way to the register, averting her eyes from the teenage cashier as he rang her up.

  She paid quickly, picked up the bag, and hurried back out to the refuge of her car, stuffing the bag deep inside her purse. A glance at her phone told her she had two hours before they were scheduled to meet at MIS.

  Plenty of time to take the test — if she could muster the courage.

  27

  Ronan made his way up the narrow front porch, still immaculately painted and swept, and hesitated in front of the door before knocking.

  It was the house he’d grown up in, modest and filled with love, the house where his mother had woken them up for school every morning before heading to the kitchen to make them breakfast, the house she’d died in when she couldn’t fight the cancer any longer.

  It was the house where he’d been a kid with Nick, Declan, Finn, Nora, and Erin. The house where Erin had been a little girl with pigtails, a gap between her front teeth, and a lisp that hadn’t entirely gone away until she was in middle school.

  And yet Ronan had never understood why his dad decided to stay. The house had felt weighted down with tragedy since Erin’s overdose, the atmosphere thick and suffocating. Memories had lurked around every corner, reminders of all they’d once had, all they’d lost.

  Ronan had avoided the house for a long time. It was easy when he’d been deployed, and after he’d come back to Boston, he’d almost always managed to meet his dad out for a meal or a beer on those occasions when he didn’t come to the house Ronan shared with Nick and Declan.

  Now he realized he’d probably been in the house less than ten times since Erins’ death. Guilt hit him like a hammer. He’d been selfish.

  The door opened and his dad stood blinking on the other side of the screen like Ronan was a ghost.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Ronan.” He opened the door. “Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Ronan said. “I just wanted to… I’m sorry I haven’t been by more often.”

  His dad stepped back to let him enter the house. It smelled just the way Ronan remembered it, like lemon oil and floor wax and coffee.

  He shrugged off his coat and hung it on the hook that had been by the door for as long as he could remember.

  “How about a beer?” his dad asked, closing the door.

  “Do you have any coffee?” Ronan asked.

  “Always have coffee. Come in and sit down.”

  He followed his dad through the living room to the kitchen. The old house didn’t feature an open floor plan, custom cabinets, or granite countertops. The rooms were small, the doorway leading to the kitchen barely big enough for
Ronan to get through without turning sideways. The formal dining room was rarely used anymore, Ronan’s dad taking most of his meals alone at the tiny Formica table in the kitchen.

  But it was still home.

  His dad pulled a mug down from the cupboard and poured coffee into it from the pot sitting on the counter, then added some to the mug he’d obviously been drinking out of that morning.

  He passed one of the cups to Ronan and took a seat at the table. Ronan sat across from him, feeling like a giant in a dollhouse.

  He took a sip of coffee. “You always did make good coffee.”

  “And yet I’m assuming you didn’t come here for the coffee,” his dad said over the rim of his cup.

  Ronan shook his head. “I came to ask you for something.”

  “You in trouble?”

  Ronan shook his head, then sighed when he realized that because of MIS, he was always in some kind of trouble. But there were restrictions to his conversations with his father, necessary because of their differing views on law and order. He couldn’t talk to his dad about business, and that’s not why he’d come anyway.

  “It’s not that kind of something,” Ronan said. He looked down at the flecks of gold in the table’s ivory surface. “I came to ask you for Mom’s ring.”

  His father didn’t seem surprised, just took another drink of his coffee. “Is this for Julia?”

  His dad had only met Julia once, when he’d come to the house before they’d gone to Italy. Ronan had promised to come by after things calmed down, to have a beer or take the boat out for a day of fishing, but hunting Manifest and protecting Julia and Elise had taken every bit of his spare time and he’d never made good on the promise.

  His father hadn’t always been perfect. His support hadn’t been unconditional. But Ronan was beginning to see that his dad wasn’t the only one who’d made mistakes.

  “Yes,” Ronan said.

  “She seems like a nice woman. Are you sure?” his dad asked.

  “I’m sure.” Ronan hesitated, wondering how much he wanted to divulge. “I bought her a ring actually, a new one.”

  His dad lifted his eyebrows. “That right?”

  Ronan nodded. “It doesn’t feel… right. I’ve been thinking about Mom’s ring. I remembered you kept it in case one of us wanted to make use of it someday.”

  “And that day is today,” his dad said.

  “I think so. Mom was…” Ronan swallowed the lump that rose in his throat. “I was just a kid when she died, but I remember that she was strong.”

  “She was that,” his dad said.

  “She was warm and generous, but she had a temper too. Remember that time Finn and I tracked mud on the new carpet?”

  His dad chuckled. “Nobody had a temper like your mother had a temper. It was part of why I loved her so much. She was fiery in everything she did — the way she fought and the way she lived and most of all the way she loved.”

  Ronan thought of Julia, of her determination to find her sister even when it meant risking her own life, of her devastation since John’s death. She wanted everyone to think she was cold, but really she just felt things so deeply she didn’t trust herself to let it all out.

  “I remember all that about Mom,” Ronan said, and for the first time in a long time, he did. He remembered not just the pain of losing her but the joy of having her in his life at all, of calling her Mom in the years before she left them. “Julia would have loved her. She’s a lot like Mom was. She takes care of people.” Ronan was surprised by the tears that stung his eyes. “She takes care of me.”

  His dad stood. “That’s all your mom would need to hear, son. Sit tight.”

  He left the room and a few seconds later Ronan heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  Ronan took a few slugs of coffee while he waited, trying to clear his head of the unexpected emotion that had expanded in his chest when he’d talked about his mother, when he’d talked about Julia.

  It was all true: they would have loved each other, would have conspired to protect the Murphy clan as it grew into something even bigger and more all-encompassing.

  “There you go.” His dad set a box in faded blue velvet on the table. “You may have to get it sized, and maybe cleaned too.”

  Ronan picked up the box and opened it. His mother’s ring shone, a simple diamond solitaire set on a solid gold band that would probably seem unfashionable by today’s standards.

  He had a flash of his mother’s hands, the ring glinting on her finger as she made them peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, as she helped them out of the bath, as she placed Band-Aids on every cut and scrape.

  He could see it on Julia’s hands. It might be when she ordered takeout or when she playfully slugged Declan or even when she picked up her weapon, but somehow it felt right just the same.

  He looked at his dad. “Thanks, Pops.”

  It had been years since Ronan used the endearment, but somehow, that felt right too.

  His dad nodded. “I’m happy for you.” He paused, dropping his eyes to his almost empty coffee cup. “I probably didn’t tell you and your brothers and sisters enough, and god knows I didn’t tell your mother enough before she got sick, but this family has been the most important work of my life. It’s hard when you’re young — you’re working, trying to pay the bills, keep everybody happy. It’s easy to feel like it’s hard, but looking back…” he glanced up to meet Ronan’s eyes. “Well, looking back it’s the important thing I’ve done in this life, and that’s true regardless of what you and your brothers — and your sister — choose to do for a living. I want you to know that now.”

  It was the first time his dad had made reference to Nora’s new line of work. He’d been so proud of her when she’d graduated the FBI Academy and so disappointed when she’d left. Nora hadn’t come out and told him about the kind of work she was doing now, but they’d both agreed he probably knew it wasn’t on the up-and-up.

  “Thanks,” Ronan said. “For what it’s worth, the older I get, the more I realize how lucky we were to have you and Mom.”

  His dad shook his head. “Your mother maybe…”

  Ronan reached out and touched his father’s forearm. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d done anything other than shake hands. “No. You too, Pop. You took good care of us.” He smiled. “And we were quite a brood.”

  His dad cracked a smile. “You were a bit of a handful sometimes. Had your mother’s fiery temper, my own stubbornness. It made things interesting.”

  “I think I’m coming to the conclusion that interesting isn’t a bad thing,” Ronan said. His phone dinged and he pulled it out and saw a text from Julia saying that she was at MIS, ready for the meeting about their next steps with Manifest. He stood. “I have to go, Pops.”

  His dad stood and held out his hand. “Fishing soon?”

  Ronan walked around the table and embraced his dad, clapping his back. He felt smaller than Ronan remembered.

  Human.

  “Fishing soon.” He meant it.

  28

  “How many do we have?” Nick asked, leaning over to peer at the list on Julia’s computer.

  She counted the list of names, all high-profile independent journalists with large followings on social media plus the handful of traditional journalists they’d decided to include in the operation.

  “Thirty-seven,” she said.

  “And that’s not too many?” Nick asked.

  “No such thing. Some of them won’t pick it up, and we want to increase the odds of it gaining traction. The more people digging and buzzing about it, the better.” She looked at Clay, his eyes glazed over as he stared at his computer screen, fingers skipping over his keyboard. “How are we coming with the travel logs?”

  Clay had been working to put the incriminating travel data together in an easy-to-read format. Anyone interested in a story would find it more than a coincidence that so many high-profile men had traveled to Florence at the same time, that the ownership of the hou
se there where Manifest had its parties was so well-hidden.

  “Putting the finishing touches on it now,” Clay said.

  Julia leaned back on the couch and Chief jumped up to lick her face until she was forced to smile. She stretched and rubbed her eyes, dry from so many hours staring at her computer.

  They’d been working on the digital packages almost round the clock in the forty-eight hours since they’d agreed to flush Manifest out with the press. It hadn’t been easy to get everyone on the same page, mostly because of Declan who’d clung fast to his desire for quick and satisfying revenge at the end of their weapons. But he’d come around eventually, in large part because Nick had helped to sell him on it, and because of Clay’s enthusiasm for the tactic of using data instead of violence to bring down Manifest.

  She looked toward the kitchen at the sound of the door closing. A few seconds later Ronan appeared in the living room. He leaned down over the back of the couch to kiss Julia and came around to perch on the edge of the sofa.

  “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going,” Julia said. Her stomach fluttered at the sight of him, the pregnancy tests — three of them — flashing in her mind, each one with a telltale plus sign. She’d been grateful for the overwhelming amounts of work over the past two days, the endless days and nights with Nick and Clay, ordering takeout and commiserating over the details. It had been a welcome distraction. “How was the meeting with Damian?”

  “The people on the list are clean,” Ronan said.

  Relief bubbled up in Julia’s chest along with a little dose of hope. Ronan had asked Damian Cavallo, leader of the New York Syndicate, to use the Syndicate’s cyberlab to run background on all the journalists who would be getting the digital packages.

  Normally Julia wouldn’t have been a fan of the privacy violation, but they had to be sure none of the journalists had ties to any of Manifest’s known members. It was too easy to shut down an investigation when it was in its early stages. They needed to make sure the only people who got packages were those who would dig, not suppress, or worse, alert Manifest, before the story got out.