As I pivoted to see if the coffee was ready, I noticed a door just under the staircase that most likely led to the basement. It had a lock on it but it wasn’t engaged, and as I moved toward the refrigerator, I casually crossed over to the lock and turned it. I eased back and opened the fridge, where I spotted a bottle of creamer. I poured two cups of coffee and brought them, along with the creamer, to the table.
“Sugar?” I asked, like it was my house. Like I knew where it was. Like I was Martha fucking Stewart. I rolled my eyes at what this girl was doing to me.
She shook her head and then covered her face with her hands.
Distress emanated from her. Without a second thought, I sat beside her and pulled her hands away. I couldn’t help but notice how soft her skin was and how much I liked the feel of it. “What’s going on?”
She straightened her shoulders. “I honestly don’t know. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out if that was my sister or just my imagination.”
Looking for answers, I asked, “What makes you think it was your sister?”
My father told me Elizabeth O’Shea was MIA. Was the intel wrong?
“Nothing. It’s just . . .” She stopped and rubbed her hands together in a nervous gesture.
“Go ahead. Tell me.”
She shook a little. “I’d been having dreams about her all night when I finally gave up on sleep and decided to get up, I looked out the window, and I swear I saw her. But now that I’ve thought about it, I’m not so sure if it was my sister or my imagination putting her face on whoever it was.”
I pushed her coffee closer to her. Her face was bare of makeup and her hair wild. She looked utterly beautiful and vulnerable at the same time. The vulnerability scared the shit out of me.
Focus.
I had to focus on finding out what I could, in order to keep her safe. “How about we back up. Why would your sister be lurking around your house in the middle of the night?”
With both hands around her cup, she glared at me. “How about you tell me what you and your father have to do with Michael?”
Well, that was an abrupt about-face. I put both elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Elle, I want to help you, but I can’t do that if you won’t talk to me.”
Lifting the cream, she poured some in her cup and handed the bottle to me. “Why should I trust you?”
I tipped the creamer and added a small amount to the jet-black liquid. “Because I’m sitting here. Because I care about what’s going on. Because I want to help.”
“Tell me what you and your father were doing at Michael’s office.”
She was suddenly all business.
Assessing the situation, I leaned back in my chair and stretched my legs as I tried to decide the best way to go about this. I looked at her. At my cup of coffee. And back at her. “My father is legal counsel to a man involved with Michael and he came to brief Michael on a . . . situation.”
Her eyes bore into mine. “You mean the drug issue?”
My nod was hesitant, but enough that she knew the score.
Elle drew in a deep breath. “How does a boy from New York get involved in a Boston drug ring?”
“If you’re talking about me, I’m not involved.”
She raised a doubtful brow. “Who is this man who sent your father?”
Hesitation furrowed my brows.
“Tell me.”
“Patrick Flannigan,” I said, not really sure why.
Nothing registered. She didn’t know him.
I sipped my coffee. She really knew very little and that was how it should stay. I felt the need to clarify something. “Elle, there are some things you are better off not knowing.”
She held her hand up. “I’m tired of hearing that. My sister was into something illegal and if dangerous people are involved, I have a right to know.”
Ruffled, I ran a hand through my hair. “You’re right. I don’t disagree. At the same time, I’m here because I want to help you, not hurt you. But you need to let me do that.”
She gave me a slight nod. “Fair enough.”
The blanket had fallen off her shoulders and tiny nipples were protruding through the thin fabric of her top. My cock hardened, and I had to shift in my seat and reset my focus. “So tell me about your sister.”
She pulled the blanket up. “First tell me who you think that was. Were they trying to hurt me?”
With a jerk forward, I had a strange urge to grab her hand. “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. And I’m finished with you firing questions at me. I want to be honest with you, but I need you to talk to me first.”
Annoyed, she wouldn’t let up. “I will. After you tell me who you think that was.”
My temper was flaring and I took a moment to calm down. “Straight up?”
She gave me the barest hint of a nod.
Ready or not, it was time to lay it on the line. “Your tire wasn’t just flat, it was slashed. I hate to say this, but I’m almost certain it was deliberate.”
Elle gave me another nod, this one no more certain than the last, and she shivered at the same time. Tough shit—there was no time to sugarcoat the truth, not that I would have done so anyway.
“It just seems way too coincidental that with everything going it was some random perpetrator. Whoever it was must have been here to leave a message.” As soon as I said the words, the knot I felt in my stomach prevented me from forging on. Clint Eastwood sounded great, but in reality the Dirty Harry thing was wearing thin. I didn’t like to see her in this state. She looked way too vulnerable for my liking.
Frowning, she circled her finger in the air. “Go on.”
Did she just give me an order?
And had I just said
vulnerable
?
Composing myself, I told her what I knew. “He came here to scare you in some way. That’s about the only thing I’m one hundred percent certain about.”
“Buy why?”
“More than likely to send Michael a warning through you.”
Her inscrutable countenance gave little away.
Frustrated, I cast her a wary look. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me why you think it might have been your sister.”
Elle’s bravado seemed to deflate as soon as I put the conversation in her court. With a hand on the table, she stood up and went over to the couch, still wrapped in the blanket and carrying her cup with her. Once she settled herself, she looked over at me and I could see the gloom on her face. “My sister’s missing. We don’t know where she is. I lied to you earlier. She’s not in rehab.”
I nodded. I already knew that, but I was glad she’d come clean. “Why the lie?”
She drew in a breath. “Michael is worried that if he reports her missing and the police find her, they’ll figure out she’s been involved with illegal activities and arrest her.”
“So, he claims to be protecting her, but what if she’s in trouble? What if that was her?”
“I don’t know. I have to trust Michael on this. I haven’t seen my sister in fifteen years. There’s a chance I might not even know her if I saw her. But talking to you earlier tonight opened up some old wounds, and she has been on my mind more than usual. Like I said, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I really don’t believe it was her.”
Feeling like an asshole for pushing, I stood and walked over to the sofa, sitting on the opposite end. “Do you have any idea where your sister is now?”
She pulled the blanket from her shoulders. “No. My only guess is that things got too tough for her to handle and she ran off.”
I tried not to look at her sexier-than-fuck body, but my own body had a mind of its own and I could feel my blood coursing hot through my veins. “Tell me what you know.”
Elle turned sideways to face me and pulled her legs up, covering herself with the blanket again. “Not much. Almost four months ago I got a call out of the blue from my sister. I have no idea how she got my number, though we do have a mutual acquaintance in California. Like I said, we hadn’t seen each other or spoken in fifteen years. When she called, she told me that she thought she was in trouble.” Elle took a deep breath.
“Go on,” I prompted.
With a slightly hesitant nod, she did. “She asked me to look after her baby if anything happened to her.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. I wanted to wipe it away but I didn’t. “Did she say what she thought might happen to her?” I asked.
Elle folded her hands together. “No. I was in shock that she was even calling me and even more shocked by what she was telling me. I would never have guessed she’d be married, let alone that she’d have a child. Before I knew it, she was telling me she’d be in touch and then hung up before I could get any further information out of her. When I tried to reverse the number, I couldn’t. I had no idea what part of the world she was in. Our friend in California couldn’t give me any info. So I did nothing.”
“What else could you do?” I asked.
“Something. Anything. Look for her. I don’t know,” she said tightly.
My mouth opened, then shut. I wasn’t sure what else I could say.
“You probably think I’m heartless.”
Again, I resisted the urge to reach for her hand. “I don’t think that at all.”
Her face went a little blank, like it had in the car. Silence filled the space between us and I let her have a moment. If she was anything like me, memories had surfaced that she didn’t want to remember. Finally, she took a breath and spoke. “It’s just . . .” She waved her hand in the air. “Lizzy disappeared from my life and never looked back. When things got tough, she left.”
“Were you close?”
She looked a little lost. “Yes and no. For so long she’d been the big sister, the protector I needed, but then as we grew older, she rebelled against my father and just kept getting into so much trouble. She was three years older than me, but sometimes I felt like the older one. Still, we’d shared so much in our childhood that I thought we were connected forever. I was wrong, though. She knew I needed her, yet she left, and after that she never called or told me where she was. I never heard from her until that day.” She paused for a moment to gather herself.
My muscles went stiff as I watched the pain she felt flash across her face.
A few seconds later, she put a finger to her lips as if trying to quiet herself down.
The gesture made my heart pound like that of a wounded animal. It killed me, but there wasn’t anything I could do to ease the pain of the past. This I knew all too well. All I could offer her was my ear. “It’s okay, Elle. Go on.”
As if determined to brush off the feelings, she lifted her chin. “One day I got a phone call from Michael. He told me who he was and asked me if my sister had been in contact with me. I guess he’d found my number among her things. I told him she had, but nothing else. He asked if she was with me and I told him no. That’s when he told me she had left the morning before and never came home. She was missing and he was worried about her. I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to come to Boston. And once I did, once I met Clementine, I couldn’t leave. It wasn’t until after I decided to stay that Michael told me what she had been involved in and explained why he hadn’t involved the police. It made sense, then, anyway. Now I’m not so sure.”
Elle’s bare toes were sticking out of the blanket and her fingers were clutched around her knees. Her nails were glossy but she wore no color. They were short but shaped. I could tell she didn’t care about the shit that didn’t matter. In New York, I’d spent so much time around artificial beauty—boob jobs, plumped lips, fake nails, haute couture. In Boston, I never even looked at women. She was like a breath of fresh air.
Focus, asshole.
Focus.
“What does O’Shea think happened to her?” I asked.
“We’re being honest with each other, right?”
I nodded.
“According to Michael, she was running some kind of white-collar drug op. He said as far as he knew she had been clean since Clementine was born, but then started up with the coke again. Something happened and her last deal went bad. He thinks she’ll come out of hiding sooner or later. Or he’s hoping.”
“Where was she getting the coke from?”
If I had to guess, I’d guess Tommy was involved or that there was some connection to him. My guess is that although Patrick didn’t condone it, Tommy was much more involved in the drug market than his father had a fucking clue about.
“I don’t know. All I know is that according to Michael, she was selling to Michael’s colleagues and connections before she disappeared.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure it was her and not O’Shea?”
I didn’t have a fucking clue who it was. Up until the point that my gramps went into a home last year, Patrick kept my father on the easy shit—his role, as counsel, was to make sure Patrick’s businesses used for money laundering looked legit, liquor licenses were granted, real estate issues were taken care of, prostitution charges were avoided, and payoffs were made. Nothing to do with the drug side. The side that Patrick liked to think didn’t exist. The side that Tommy ran.
It was still no surprise Pop had been ordered to make contact with Michael, though. My father had also always been sent to deal with the more influential people of Boston. He had the finesse, my gramps used to say. So at first, when he was told to pay O’Shea a visit, I thought it was no big deal.
Hell, I even volunteered to drive him there.
My false assumption had been that either Michael had reneged on a gambling debt and needed to pay up or did some damage to one of Patrick’s girls and had retribution to pay. Or who knew—it could be any other kind of bullshit that Patrick wanted to flex his ego over.
It was a common thing.
It wasn’t until we were on our way to see O’Shea that my old man told me it had to do with 250 kilos of missing cocaine. Five million dollars was no small chunk of change for anyone. But a total outstanding debt of ten million—the drugs and the money used to purchase them—was obscene.
Yeah, I choked on that.
“It was her,” she said, refocusing me. She was angry now. “Michael didn’t know anything about it until she told him the day before she disappeared. She put their child in jeopardy.”
Scrubbing my jaw, I asked, “Do you know O’Shea is out there trying to make deals?”