Did the prick not know who the feck he was messing with? “Get out of here. Don’t show your face tomorrow, either. It won’t end well.” I fought the urge to grab hold of his tie. To wrap my hands around his throat for making my sister miserable. For somehow taking advantage of Da.
Had my father lost his mind to invite the bloke to my wedding?
At the feel of Anna’s hand on my back, I shifted my attention over my shoulder to observe her.
Concern flashed across her face. Exactly what I didn’t want on the eve of our wedding. “Can you give me a minute?”
“Uh, sure.” She left my side, retreating slowly toward the guests surrounding the open bar we had set up post-dinner.
“How’d you manage to snag a woman like her?”
The guy just wouldn’t let up.
I grabbed hold of his shirt and bit down on my back teeth. “Get out of here. Now.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Sean was on my left now, and I glanced at him without losing my grip. “Why the hell are you here? Haven’t you done enough?”
“I was just asking him to leave,” I seethed and returned my focus to the arsehole in front of me.
“I’m staying.” He winked.
The fucker actually winked at me.
“Ask your father. See what he says.” Callaghan peered at something behind me, so I turned to follow his gaze. Da was there and talking to my buddy Marco.
When Da’s eyes strayed from Marco to us, he almost immediately looked away.
“What do you have on him?” I finally let go.
He smoothed his hands down his shirt before stroking his reddish-blond beard. The son of a bitch was probably only a few years older than me. “Your father’s getting old. I guess he’d prefer to sell off his company than leave one of you gobshites in charge.”
“I advise you to shut your bleeding cakehole,” Sean rushed out, and I observed him out of my peripheral view, noticing the hard clench of his jaw beneath his day-old stubble.
My twin was always clean-cut. Never a hair out of place. But since the Callaghan situation had turned our family business upside down, he’d been out of sorts.
“I’m not leaving.” Callaghan reached for a flute of champagne off a tray when a server walked by us. “You better get used to me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Like hell you aren’t. Not if I have anything to do with it,” I said as I caught Anna’s eyes from across the room and a band of discomfort stretched across my chest.
I couldn’t let this man ruin our night or add any pre-wedding stress to my bride-to-be.
So, as much as it pained me, I walked away.
Holly blocked my path to Anna, and she rubbed her forehead. “I should’ve ended this the other night.”
“What are you talking about?” I reached for her shoulder.
“I had a chance to force Callaghan to back off, but I was too afraid to make the move.”
I needed to know more—to hear more, but when I saw Anna striding our way my heart worked into my throat. “I can’t do this tonight,” I said to my sister, hoping she’d understand.
“Of course.” She followed my gaze. “The timing is horrible. I’m sorry.” She patted my shoulder and averted her eyes to Anna.
I reached for Anna’s hand and laced her fingers with mine, trying to lower my heart rate from nuclear to normal. “Sorry about that. There’s nothing for you to worry about, though.”
“Just business stuff,” Holly came in for the save. “It’s fine.”
“You were grabbing his shirt.” Anna bowed her head as if in silent prayer. “You were ready to pulverize him.”
Truth or . . .? I looked to my sister, trying to find the words to make this night okay. To fix everything.
“Our father may sell MAC,” Holly sputtered which had Anna’s gaze snapping back up. “We’re not in favor of the deal, and having that man here tonight of all nights—”
“Is he who you were texting the night of the bachelorette party? The reason why you were upset?” A form of clarity dropped over Anna’s face, and Holly nodded.
“But we don’t need to worry about the company this weekend.” She reached out and squeezed Anna’s hand. “Promise me you won’t stress?”
I was almost surprised by my sister’s gesture. I owed her one if this alleviated any of Anna’s nerves.
“I’m not a bridezilla,” Anna said with a smile. “You don’t need to handle me with kid gloves.” She turned toward me and lifted her palms to my cheeks. “I love you. You do what you have to do.”
“And what I have to do . . . need to do . . . is marry you. And that’s all I care to think about.” I let go of a heavy breath.
“That’s my cue to leave,” Holly said.
My lips hovered before Anna’s, and all my problems slipped away as I focused on her emerald-green eyes. “Marry me?”
“That’s my plan.” Her nose wrinkled and my lips closed in on hers, and I kissed her, my tongue flicking with hers.
Tomorrow she was going to be my wife and nothing in the world could stop that from happening.
Chapter Eight
Adam
Present Day
“Anything suspicious you remember from the last few days or weeks?”
My fingertips buried into my palms as I focused on the eyes of the detective. A memory catching in my mind. “A guy hit on her the night of her bachelorette party,” I said slowly, guilt crossing through me. “And the morning after when we were walking, she said she thought she saw him again.”
Could I have stopped this? Saved her?
“What club?”
I cleared my throat. “I—”
“I didn’t see the guy at the club,” Holly said, and I glanced over my shoulder to look at my sister in the hotel room. “But the club owner did. He, uh, rescued Anna from the jerk at the bar.”
“Feck.” My fingers tore through my hair as I lowered my head, trying to get a handle on everything.
Hours had already passed since I knocked on Anna’s door. She could be anywhere. She could be . . .
No, I couldn’t think of any alternative other than getting her back.
“We’ll talk to the owner and pull the feeds from his club and see what we can come up with,” Detective Grady said, his tone firm. “Where were you when she thought she saw the man again?”
“Grafton Street. Near the entrance to St. Stephen’s Green. Around ten, maybe.”
He took a note before his eyes traveled back to mine. A lot more than a flicker of concern as he studied me. Like he didn’t think we’d be getting her back.
My stomach tucked in, grief carving out a hollow point.
“What about Brian Callaghan?” Holly came up alongside me.
“He got Da to agree to sell, so I can’t imagine he’d have anything to do with this,” I said.
“Yeah. Okay. He just creeped me out, so . . .” She rubbed her arms, goose bumps crisscrossing her skin.
“Callaghan?” There was something in the way the detective said the name that had my heart slowing.
“You know him?” I asked.
“We’ll talk to him,” is all he said, but there was more to it than that. I could bloody feel it.
“What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t say more.” Detective Grady looked at me. “If Callaghan has anything to do with this, though, we’ll get to the bottom of it.” His jaw briefly clenched. “You have my word. Everyone will be considered a suspect until we find her. Okay?”
“Callaghan’s staying at a hotel nearby,” Holly said, and I focused on her. “But he lives in Cork.” Her lips pursed for a brief second. “He’s staying at Sebastian Renaud’s hotel, actually. Renaud owns the club we were at.”
“I’m familiar with him.” The detective’s brows drew inward, and a darkness shadowed his eyes.
I resisted the impulse to grab him, to beat the information out of him.
He rolled his lips inward, his m
ustache going with it before he lifted his eyes to mine.
“Is this Renaud guy a suspect, too?” My heart raced. My pulse climbed. I was ready to tear out of the hotel to talk to Renaud myself.
“We’ll look into him.” He nodded. “Like I said, we’ll look into everyone.” His throat moved with a hard swallow, his Adam’s apple rolling beneath the skin.
“They’ll find her.” Holly reached for my arm but nothing would steady my pulse.
“We checked Anna’s room for prints. Same with her mobile.” Detective Grady shook his head to let me know they came up empty. “I have my people going through her contacts, but if you can make a list of everyone she saw regularly—especially recently, that’d speed up the process.”
“Of course.” I lifted my mobile from my pocket, my hand trembling a touch. “Why hasn’t anyone called yet? If this is for a ransom wouldn’t they have called by now?”
“We have to give it time,” he said. “But we know Anna got out of this room somehow. Our team’s analyzing the security feeds now. Whoever messed with the cameras is a pro, that’s for sure.”
His words sure as hell didn’t make me feel better.
The detective’s eyes winged to Holly’s face before connecting with mine again. Additional worry lines added to the wrinkles on his forehead. “If you don’t get a call within twenty-four hours, this is probably not a ransom situation.”
This wasn’t a fecking situation. This was the love of my life.
“Get me that list.” He nodded. “I have to make some calls. Be back in twenty for it.” He left the room, and a few other officers trailed behind him.
“I’m so sorry,” Holly said softly.
“I can’t sit around and wait for them to figure out where she is.” My hand converted to a fist. “I should go to the club. Talk to Renaud. Callaghan, too.” The sound of my mobile ringing had me dropping my words, and my heart stammered.
I hung my head at the sight of the familiar number.
Not a ransom call.
“It’s Marco. His friends must be here.”
“Friends?” She cocked her head.
“Hey,” I answered.
“We’re in room twenty-one-ten. Can you come down?” Marco asked.
“On my way.” I ended the call. “Marco has some people who might be able to help,” was the only explanation I offered before rushing out of the room, assuming she’d follow.
“The detective won’t like this,” she said once we were alone in the lift.
“I’m sure the detective’s good, but we need all the help we can get.” My eyes met hers in the mirrored lift doors. “I can’t . . . I can’t lose her.” My voice wavered as emotion cut through.
“We’ll find her.” She reached for my arm and squeezed. “I promise.” She released her hold once the doors parted, and we headed to the hotel room.
Marco already had the door open, waiting for us at the end of the hall. He ushered us inside, and my stomach lurched at the sight of computers and weapons unpacked in the room.
This was all too real now.
A brunette was at the desk with two laptops in front of her, and my heart skipped into my throat at what was on the screens. She’d managed to access the hotel security cameras already.
“This is Alexa Ryan,” Marco said, and I assumed she’d once been the MI6 officer, given how deftly her fingers moved over the keys.
She peered at me from over her shoulder, her hazel eyes catching mine without breaking stride from her work. “I’m so sorry about what happened.” Her lids fluttered closed briefly before she looked at me again. “We’ll get her back.”
“Thank you,” I said as she refocused on the screen.
“Jake Summers.” A guy approached with an extended hand, so I turned to greet him. “Alexa’s my fiancée, and she’s the damn best at pretty much everything.” He was American. Southern by the sounds of it.
His dark-brown eyes thinned as I shook his hand. I contemplated a response, but the words remained lodged in my throat, so he shifted his attention to my sister.
“Holly McGregor.”
“Sorry to meet you under these circumstances, ma’am,” Jake said.
“I’m just glad you can help.” Her gaze flitted to Marco standing tensely in the room by the door as if he didn’t know what the hell to do.
That made two of us.
“That’s Xander.” Jake jerked a thumb toward a man crouched in front of a duffel bag.
“I worked with Alexa for Her Majesty,” Xander said. “And now—well, we do this. Bring down bad guys. Help people.” He was British like Alexa. And if Xander had been in a suit, he’d look like James Bond. And I needed a hero right about now. “We’ll find her.”
I nodded my thanks.
Xander’s gray eyes swept over to Holly for a brief moment, and he gave her a quick smile.
“Maybe you can start from the beginning,” Jake requested, and I focused back on him as he crossed his arms and observed me, a visible strain to his jaw.
The guy looked military. Probably once was. And I was glad I had these people in my corner. Well, in Anna’s corner.
Marco motioned for me to sit, but I didn’t budge. I felt immobile. A fixture of the hotel room.
I’d never felt so fecking horrible in all my life.
And I couldn’t begin to imagine what was happening to Anna right now.
My lungs burned, and I fought to keep it together. I was on the verge of losing it as tears formed in my eyes.
Men weren’t supposed to cry, were they?
But this was Anna.
Anna was everything to me.
“I know this is hard, but every detail you can provide will help us track her down,” Jake said, and I suddenly realized I recognized this man from the news.
Jake had helped foil a massive terrorist attack back in 2017. He was a former FBI agent and once a special operations Marine.
I dragged my palms down my face, the texture not as rough since Anna had insisted I fight with gloves to keep my hands and knuckles in decent shape for the wedding.
“From the moment you met Anna to this morning—don’t leave anything out.” Xander was now on his feet alongside Jake.
I blew out my cheeks and released the breath. “Well, it all started when she came to Dublin to work at my company as an intern . . .”
Chapter Nine
Adam
“He looped the feeds to cover his tracks,” Alexa said shortly after I returned from meeting with the detective. “He had a ball cap on and hid his face from every camera in the hotel.”
“That doesn’t sound easy to do,” Holly said, standing off to my left.
“It’s not. In fact, he was so damn good at it, I almost missed it,” Alexa said.
“Which means the man has off-the-charts tech and cyber skills,” Jake noted. “That’s an important detail when we’re creating a person of interest list.”
I couldn’t get any words out—my eyes were glued to Alexa’s screen when she displayed a man exiting the hotel room pulling a large rolling duffel bag behind him.
The red fabric had my chin dipping as I took measured breaths, trying to stay calm when all I wanted to do was throw my hand through a wall.
“Oh, God.” I peered over at my sister after she’d spoken. “Anna’s in that bag, isn’t she?”
The idea of Anna’s body being in the luggage . . . it was as if the tips of knives slowly scraped up the center of my body and a final cut across my throat was imminent.
I felt like death was on the verge of eclipsing my life. Stealing the soul I now knew I had because of Anna.
“He brought her out of the hotel in that suitcase,” I echoed my sister’s line of thought before anyone had answered her.
When I focused my attention back on the computer, my stomach did a full-on freefall. A much worse gut-punch sensation than the time my main parachute had failed when I jumped from a plane.
“Looks that way,” Jake said as fast as poss
ible as if the taste of the words burned across his tongue.
“But was she alive when he put her in that bag?” I had to ask, but damned if I didn’t want any answer other than yes.
I gripped my chest, wanting to squeeze my heart, to rip the organ from my body.
“We believe so,” Xander said. “If he, uh, killed her first, I don’t think he would’ve gone to such lengths to hide the fact he was there.”
“Unless he wanted you to think she ran away for some reason,” Xander said. “But I doubt it.”
Xander’s words produced a hard look from Jake. A warning shot. A near knock-out punch with only his eyes.
Jake wanted me to keep it together, and if I already thought she could be dead . . .
I turned from everyone in the room and scrubbed both palms down my face, trying to maintain a sense of calm. The calm before the storm.
“This guy had to be on-site when he did this. He couldn’t have screwed with the footage like this from somewhere else. He had to be near the servers in the hotel to pull this off, which means he came back into the hotel after he took Anna out,” Alexa said, and her words had me looking back at her. “It’s possible he covered all of his tracks, but I’ll comb through every feed to find any anomalies.”
“I assume the cameras outside the hotel aren’t of any use?” I asked after gathering my focus, willing the pain to take a back seat so I could find my fiancée. “Or the cameras at Renaud’s nightclub?”
“I’m also working on traffic cams,” she began. “But as for the club, the guy talking to Anna at the bar kept his back to the cameras. The lighting is shit, but he’s got the same build as our guy exiting Anna’s room.”
“So, it could be him?” I asked as she switched camera angles to showcase the outside of the club.
Anna was standing in line with her bridal party, and my chest tightened at the sight of her.
“We don’t know for sure,” Jake said. “But we do know Brian Callaghan was outside the club the night of her bachelorette party.”
Dublin Nights Series Box Set: On the Edge & On the Line Page 34