“Jesus,” she muttered to her reflection. “Get a grip, Julia.”
She returned to the bedroom and slipped off her jeans. She sighed with pleasure as she pulled on the sweats, thick and soft, up over her bare legs, careful to ease them up over the scrape on her calf.
It was weirdly intimate, wearing the clothes of a man she’d just met, but she had a feeling he wasn’t going to move on to the conversation about Seth until he saw to her wound.
She was desperate to know who had hired him — or his company or whoever he was working with — to stake out Seth, but she already knew from the steely look in his eyes that he wasn’t going to tell her.
And yet she knew it had something to do with Elise, could sense it in all the things he’d left unsaid. Was there another girl missing? Someone else who’d been tied to Seth before she disappeared? Another girl who’d disappeared behind the midnight blue door online?
The thought made her skin crawl. She wasn’t naive. She read the news, knew women were abused and trafficked every day, even in supposedly civilized countries like the U.S.
But that knowledge had always been distant, the details so blurry and abstract that they hadn’t lent themselves to sustained thought. Now the reality was close to home, and closer still with the knowledge that the man whose sweats she was wearing might be tracking another girl.
She shook her head. She was getting bogged down in the details, and if she’d learned one thing during the two weeks Elise had been missing, it was to not get too far ahead of herself. All the maybes and what-ifs were enough to make her crazy, and crazy wouldn’t help Elise.
She folded her jeans, opened the door to the hall, and made her way into the living room. The man was tapping at a laptop on the kitchen island. He looked up when she came in.
“I don’t know your name,” she said, setting her jeans on the floor to avoid dirtying the pristine sofa.
“Does it matter?” he asked, his eyes boring into hers.
Her nod was slow. “I think it does. Besides, you know my name. It seems only fair that I know yours.”
He took so long to answer she thought he might deny the request.
“Ronan,” he finally said.
“Ronan…?”
A pained expression crossed his face in the moment before he answered. “Murphy. Ronan Murphy.”
She filed the name away for later. “I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but maybe I should wait until I find out why you were hired to watch Seth.”
He closed the laptop and came toward her. “I never said I was going to tell you why I was hired.”
“You will if you want to know what I know,” she said.
“What makes you think I don’t already know what you know?”
She laughed a little and shook her head. “We both know I wouldn’t be here if you knew what I know.”
He set his mouth in a firm line. The guy clearly wasn’t used to being out of the loop. “Sit.”
It was a command, and she had to resist the urge to argue just for the sake of arguing. She’d never liked being told what to do.
She took a seat on the sofa near the bowl of water and first aid supplies he’d stacked on the coffee table.
He kneeled at her feet and reached for her leg, lifted the cuff of the sweatpants up to her knee. His touch was a branding iron against her skin, his hands surprisingly gentle.
“This is dumb,” she said as heat bloomed in her stomach. “I can clean this up myself.”
He ignored her and reached for the dishcloth inside the bowl of water. After wringing it out, he rested it carefully against her skin.
She winced as it touched the scrape, and the dog named Chief whined and wagged her tail from a plush cushion in the corner.
“Are you a PI?” she asked, as much to distract herself from his hands on her leg as to distract from the sting of the water against her wound.
“No.”
“Former cop?” She was just covering her bases.
“No.”
“Ex-military?”
“What I am doesn’t matter,” he said, lifting the cloth off her wound and wiping carefully around the worst of it.
“Thought so,” she said.
Annoyance flashed across his features. “Who I am has nothing to do with anything. It’s time for you to do some talking.”
She wanted to argue the point, but he’d admitted to staking out Seth’s place, even if he hadn’t explained exactly why, and she was here, in his home, a display of trust for someone so tight-lipped.
Fair was fair.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“Why have you been watching Campbell?”
“I already told you: he was seeing my sister before she disappeared. I’ve tried confronting him directly, but he won’t see me, and he’s not exactly approachable to the masses.”
He leaned back on his heels. She had to force herself to look away from his muscled thighs stretching the denim of his jeans.
“Yes, but what are you hoping to gain by watching his movements?” he asked.
“I mean… I guess I was hoping he’d lead me to her.” She felt stupid saying it. Had she really thought Seth would make such a dumb mistake? That if he were keeping her sister prisoner somewhere, he’d risk leading someone to the location of her imprisonment? “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not thinking clearly,” she admitted. “It’s been a long two weeks.”
And a long thirty-two years, she thought.
“It’s not that far-fetched,” Ronan said. Was he trying to soothe her self-doubt? “If she’s…” He seemed to catch himself.
“If she’s alive,” Julia said.
He nodded.
“Believe me, I know it gets less and less likely,” she said. “You don’t have to pull any punches.”
He reached into the first aid kit and tore the wrapping off a square of gauze. “If she’s alive, he probably would go to her. What would be the point of keeping her alive otherwise?”
“That was my thought,” Julia said, relieved. “Especially because of…”
She didn’t want to give away all of her information without something in return, but she had a feeling Ronan Murphy knew things she didn’t.
He looked up at her. “Because of?”
“There are rumors,” she said. “About Seth and others, about the things they do to girls like my sister.”
His face tightened, his blues eyes darkening. “I’ve heard them.”
She wasn’t surprised. Ronan struck her as someone who did his homework. The question was: how much had he done?
“And you know about the website?” she asked.
“No.”
“I did some digging online. It took me almost two weeks, but I found a website that I think might be tied to the rumors about Seth.”
He placed the gauze pad gently over the scrape on her leg. “What kind of website?”
“I’m not sure.” She was still way too aware of his touch given the conversation they were having.
“What does that mean?” he asked, laying first aid tape around the edges of the gauze pad.
“It’s just a door.”
“A door?”
She nodded. “A door and some kind of logo.”
“Can you show me?” he asked.
“I’d rather not,” she said. “Not on your computer.”
“Seems safer than yours,” he said tightly.
So he understood. Or he understood enough anyway. Enough to guess that the website administrator was probably tracking traffic to the site.
“My computer makes sense,” she said. “I’m Elise’s sister. Seth knows I’m looking for her. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that I’d stumble on the site, especially given my profession.”
“And what would that be?” he asked.
She studied him. “There’s a lot you don’t know for someone being paid to investigate Seth Campbell.”
He stood, anger flashing across his features. “I’m no
t being paid to do anything. Not yet.”
“You said you’d been hired to investigate him.”
“I saw no reason to be more detailed during our earlier interaction,” he said.
“As much as I appreciate the first aid, I see no reason to be more detailed until you have something else to say. It’s your turn.”
He picked up their glasses. “Another drink?”
“No, thank you.” She had to get back to her car at some point, drive home. And she didn’t like the way this man made her feel, the way he somehow made her so comfortable she didn’t realize she was off-balance until she was tipping into his blue eyes again.
He poured himself another drink and sat at the other end of the couch. “Someone approached us. We haven’t agreed to take the job yet. My investigation of Campbell was preliminary.”
She parsed through his words, picking out the ones that mattered. “Us?”
“My firm.”
“Which is?”
“We do intelligence and security,” he said. “Among other things.”
“You said you aren’t an investigator.”
“I’m not.”
“Care to elaborate?” she asked.
“No.”
“Did the person who approached you hire you to find my sister?”
He hesitated. “Not exactly.”
“This isn’t helping,” she said.
He didn’t say anything.
She sighed. “Here’s the thing. I’m going to find my sister. I’m going to find my sister if I have to stakeout Seth Campbell’s house and place of business for the rest of my life. And there’s something else you don’t know about me: I’m in network security.” She caught the flicker of interest in his eyes. “Hacking doesn’t always go hand in hand with that skillset — and I won’t pretend to be world-class — but I get around well enough to find new leads. Well enough to be pretty annoying to someone who keeps ending up at the same place. So either we’re going to get real and share information here, or you should probably get used to seeing me around, probably at inconvenient times like tonight.”
She was almost positive she saw the shine of admiration in his eyes before it was replaced with annoyance.
He stood and held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your phone,” he repeated.
She picked it up from the coffee table and handed it to him.
He walked to the kitchen and put it in the microwave.
She rushed toward him. “What the fuck…?"
“Relax.” He shut the door on the microwave and turned toward her. “You’ll get it back safe and sound — after we, what did you call it? Get real.”
11
He was almost relieved to be annoyed as fuck. It was better than what he’d been feeling before. Attraction or lust or whatever the fuck it was that had possessed him while he’d been alone with her in his bedroom, while he’d been holding her bare leg in his hand.
She didn’t interrupt him, just let him talk laying out the kind of work they did at MIS, the fact that they’d been approached by someone who wanted to find Elise. And not just find her: punish whoever had taken her.
He didn’t tell her the prospective client was her grandfather. That was a breach of confidentiality he wouldn’t break, even if it meant tripping over Julia Berenger every step of the way — assuming MIS took the job at all.
When he was done, her face was flushed, her eyes bright with something he couldn’t define.
“Gramps,” she said softly.
“Excuse me?”
“My grandfather,” she said. “He’s the one who hired you.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that statement.”
She shook her head and stood, pacing the room, “I knew something was up. I knew it.” She turned to look at him. “I take it you’re not cheap.”
“We’re in no way cheap. Although this particular client did come prepared to pay a fee, this is a case we would take pro bono, if we agreed to take it.”
She would have to figure the rest out herself.
A spark of surprise passed over her features. She’d washed her face when she’d changed in his bedroom. The dirt that had been on her cheek since they’d gone down together in the alley had made her look almost impish, although still beautiful.
Without it, she was sheer perfection.
“Why would you do it pro bono?” she asked.
“Some of our clients are able to pay a lot for our services. Those fees allow us to take others — those we feel strongly about — without charging a fee,” he said.
She nodded. “And I’m guessing a former Army drill sergeant looking for his missing granddaughter might be something you felt strongly about.”
“It might — if that were the situation,” he said, determined not to give up John Taylor to his granddaughter. This was between them.
She sighed. “So your client — my gramps — wants you to find Elise and then punish the men who took her.”
“That was our client’s request, yes.”
“And you were staking out Seth because…?”
“Our protocols are our business,” he said.
What he didn’t tell her was that the people who hired MIS usually had proof of wrongdoing. That there were usually records of a botched investigation, a guilty person set free on a technicality, a man like Matt Dooley well-known to be hooking kids like Erin on drugs.
The less detail she had the better.
“But you said you were being hired to punish the people who took Elise, not just find her,” Julia said.
“That’s what I said.”
“So you’re, what? Some kind of vigilante?” she asked.
“This isn’t part of our deal,” he said.
“What?”
“Digging into my business, interrogating me about my work,” he said. “I’ve told you what I know about Campbell, which is less than you know given the fact that we’ve only started to dig into the case. I’ve got nothing left to say.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, then seemed to think better of it. “Now what?”
“Now you go back to your life and trust that we’ve got the situation under control,” he said.
“You haven’t even decided to take the job,” she pointed out.
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that we’re going to take the job.” And fuck him, they were going to take the job, because he couldn’t turn his back on Elise Berenger now that he knew about the website, and he definitely couldn’t turn his back on Julia Berenger knowing she was skulking around Campbell at all hours. If Taylor was right about Campbell being responsible for Elise’s disappearance, Julia needed to stay as far away from the man as possible. “Tripping over you isn’t going to do Elise any good. If you want us to find her, you need to stay out of the way.”
“Except for the website,” she said.
He took a deep breath. The woman was maddening. “It would help if you showed me how to get into the site. We’ll take it from there. We have very sophisticated cyber connections. They’ll be able to disguise their location.”
She seemed to think about it. Then she stood and walked to the kitchen where she retrieved her phone from the microwave.
She looked down at it. “Give me your phone number.”
“Excuse me?”
“Give me your phone number,” she said. “I’ll text you my address. You can come tomorrow. I’ll show you how to access the site.”
He gave her the number and waited for her to send him the address, an apartment less than fifteen minutes from the house he shared with his brothers.
She picked up her dirty jeans and headed for the door. “See you tomorrow.”
He was there before she had it all the way open. He slammed it shut with his palm, his arm forming a bridge over her head.
Her eyes were wide when she looked up at him, but there was no fear in their depths. He felt the same stirring he’d felt
when she’d bucked against him in the alley, the same roar of lust in his veins.
“You’re not walking back to Campbell’s,” he said, assuming her car was there.
“It’s not that far,” she said.
He looked into her eyes. “I’ll get my keys.”
12
When Julia opened the door the next day, Ronan was standing on the other side of it with a kid who looked about fifteen years old. He was a foot shorter than Ronan and wearing a messenger bag slung over his narrow frame, his face still marked with pinpricks of acne.
Ronan introduced the kid — who turned out not to be a kid at all — as Clay, “one of our freelance cyber experts,” and Julia let them both in and got them settled in front of her laptop where the web page with the blue door was still open.
By the time Ronan had dropped her at her car the night before, it was nearly four a.m. She’d avoided his eyes, not trusting herself. She was usually sensible — especially about men — but she was not in her right mind. An awkward pause had settled over them in the moment before Julia thanked him for the ride and got out of the car.
She’d taken a shower and tried to sleep when she got home, but her slumber was fitful, her dreams a montage of blue doors, her sister, and the blue-eyed man who’d been hired by her gramps to find Elise.
No, not just find Elise. Find her and punish the people who had taken her.
She wasn’t ready to think about that yet.
She’d ignored her twinge of disappointment as she made a fresh pot of coffee for Ronan and Clay. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Another private liaison with Ronan Murphy? That was a bad idea with a capital B.
This was a work meeting, which was as it should be.
By the time she brought the coffee to the kitchen table. Clay had a second laptop open next to her own.
“This thing air gapped?” he asked her when she set down the cups.
Air gapping a computer was a way of isolating it from outside networks.
She shook her head. “Too cumbersome for day-to-day use, and until recently, I had no reason to believe it was necessary.”
“You do network security?” he asked.
She bristled against the implied judgement in his voice. “Very low profile. More like I do network management and deal with security where it overlaps the standard network.” She glanced at his computer. “Is that gapped?”
Murphy’s Law: Murphy’s Law Book One Page 6