Blow (39 page)

It was late when his phone rang. Without hesitation he reached for it. “Yeah,” he answered.

Silence.

“I’ll leave now.”

Logan tossed his phone aside and kissed me sweetly. “I have to go out for a bit.”

I grabbed for his wrist before he was fully out of bed. “Who was that?”

Opening a drawer, he pulled out a pair of jeans and answered while slipping them on. “Declan. He has a possible lead on your sister.”

I hopped out of bed and started to dress too.

Logan eyed me carefully as he pulled a long-sleeved shirt over his head. “What are you doing?”

Fastening my bra, I told him, “Getting dressed.”

Sitting on the bed, he shoved on a pair of Converse sneakers that had seen better days and asked, “Why?”

“I’m coming with you.”

Tying his second sneaker, he stood up.

I had my white shirt on now and was looking for my panties.

“Elle.” He was right in front of me, crouching down to meet my eyes. “No, you’re not.”

“She’s my sister.” My voice pulsed with anger.

“And I’ll tell you what I find out as soon as I know anything. This is a fishing expedition. I have no idea if the girl Tommy was seen with was even your sister. And I have no idea who is hanging around waiting for her. I don’t want anyone to suspect you are even looking for her. As far as the world knows, you believe she’s in rehab. Leave it that way.”

Not that he didn’t have a point, because he did. I just didn’t like it. “You’ll call me as soon as you know anything.”

He kissed me in that sweet way he had a few times now. “Yes,” he whispered, and then he tugged me toward him by the front seam of my shirt. “And keep this on. You look sexy as hell in it.”

My blood ran warm like a shot of tequila going down after the third one.

Opening a drawer, he pulled some money out, then grabbed his phone and started for the doorway. I followed him into the suite and watched as he checked his gun before tucking it behind him.

Logan looked at me one last time and then he was out the door.

I glanced around at the vanilla-colored walls and heard a pelting of sorts. When I turned my head toward the massive bank of windows, I noticed the doors were still open and I could see hail as it hit the terrace. My sister always said when it hailed that God was shooting bullets from the sky.

I hoped that wasn’t a sign.

DAY 5

LOGAN

T
he legend of Killian “the Killer” McPherson was like a shadow over me.

Mostly it was dark and looming, but sometimes it was a blessing in disguise.

Everywhere I went, if people knew me, they moved out of my way. If I asked a question, they answered. If I needed something, they gave it to me.

Tonight wouldn’t be any different.

I was certain of that.

Still, there was a taut awareness in every muscle of my body. I felt confident. Ready to do what I had to in order to find out what the fuck was going on.

Declan was sitting in the lobby of the Seaport Hotel. He couldn’t look more out of place in the regal yet stuffy hotel that screamed aristocratic affiliations. Not that I looked like I fit in much more tonight.

“What’s going on?” I asked him, slipping into the plush beige club chair beside him.

He wiped his hands on his worn jeans. “Miles Murphy, my buddy who works security, said he’s seen someone matching Tommy’s description coming in and out of here with a redhead as little as three or four days ago.”

My brows rose in confusion. “Days or months?” I asked in clarification.

Declan’s silver hoop earrings glinted off the light of the chandeliers that flanked the room.

It made me a little jumpy.

“Days.”

Something keen to excitement whirled in my gut. “Does he know what he’s been doing here?”

Declan shrugged. “I asked if he saw anything suspicious, but he said no. He’s pulling security tapes for me to look at.”

I was impressed. “When will he have them?”

“His supervisor goes on break at one thirty. He said he’ll slip me into the security office then to take a look.”

I glanced at my watch. In sixty minutes I might finally get some answers.

Declan shifted in his chair. “So, I saw Peyton.”

“How was she?”

“She said she’s fine. She told me what happened, and there’s no doubt it was Tommy.”

I nodded in agreement. I didn’t have to ask him if he’d kept his mouth shut. I knew he had.

“She told me you’d walked her from the boutique to the coffee shop and back. Someone must have spotted you with her and then watched her.”

An unease was in the air. Or maybe it was my guilt. “Yeah, I know.”

Tension lined his face. “The flowers that you sent were nice.”

I nodded. I owed her so much more.

“You know, that night was the night I decided to get out.”

My skin prickled at the mention.

“What they did to that girl you were with, it made no sense.”

Something attacked me. Guilt. So fierce and raw and hard that I couldn’t breathe. I clutched at the fabric under my fingertips and couldn’t contain my snarl. “No, it didn’t.”

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to. I saw what he was thinking in his eyes. He wanted to ask me why the fuck I would be seen on a popular Boston street with a girl after that night.

I’d been asking myself the same question, and stupidity was still my only answer. My head was so far up my ass worrying about Elle, no one else was on my radar. I couldn’t justify my mistake.

Time passed so fucking slow. For the rest of the time we sat in silence. Declan kept his eyes down, while mine scanned the area for any signs of Tommy or a drug trade operation. I saw neither.

“Hey, man, you ready?”

I jerked my head practically all the way around to find a guy in black security duds, built like a tank, rubbing his hands. He was definitely ex-military. From his haircut, to the frown on his face, to the type of boots on his feet.

Declan and I stood at the same time. “Yeah, let’s do this.”

The security guard’s eyes shifted to me and his nervousness was more than apparent. I was surprised, given his size, but maybe his worry was more about his job than me. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone along.”

Yes, definitely his job.

Declan cleared his throat. “Yeah, right. This is Logan McPherson. He’s the one looking for the dude I described.”

Implication—he’s Killer’s grandson.

I could tell the security guard was uneasy and I had two ways to go with this—intimidate the shit out of him or ease his fears. I wasn’t sure I could do the former and I preferred not to anyway.

It was late and the lobby was empty of visitors. I leaned over. “Show me what you got and there’s a grand in it for you.”

His shoulders straightened. “Follow me.”

We walked down a corridor, through a door marked employees only, and then down a flight of stairs. For a nice hotel, the offices were a shit hole.

Miles unlocked a door at the end of the hall and led us into an eight-by-eight room. There were a few monitors, a couple of computers, and large stacks of papers covering every inch of desk space.

“Over here,” he said. He sat in a rickety brown leather chair in the corner that creaked and punched a few buttons on the keypad in front of him. “Here—this is the footage from the last time I remember seeing him.”

On the screen, a black-and-white image just outside the entrance to the hotel presented itself. The date/time stamp informed me that this clip was taped this past Saturday at three ten
A.M.
My skin went a little clammy when I saw the prick. Tommy was the renegade supplier Patrick was looking for? Could it be? His limp was the first dead giveaway, followed by his short stature. Born with some disease that stunted his growth, he was always trying to make up for his physical impairments with his fists. Sure, he was tough, but that’s not what kept him alive. Everyone was afraid of what would happen if they dared touch him.

A few had over the years and it wasn’t them that suffered, it was their families—their sisters were raped, their fathers beaten, their mothers both.

I still didn’t know if it was Patrick or Tommy commissioning the warnings surrounding Elle, but I knew better than to attack Tommy in a physical way. I wasn’t afraid of what he’d do to me, but I feared what he’d do those around me. Especially Elle, if he found out about us.

Refocusing on the screen, I bit back the bile rushing up my throat. He hadn’t changed—dark hair bleached blond with roots the color of midnight, black bushy eyebrows, and beady eyes.

He was standing casually in the arrival area with a leg propped up against the limestone wall and a cigarette between his lips.

A cab pulled up and he dropped his cigarette and toed it out. A smile came across his lips as he started walking. A woman got out of the cab and he approached her. She was dressed in black, all black, but the red hair told me who she probably was.

Lizzy.

The angle of the camera only allowed me to see the back of her, though, so I couldn’t be certain. Tommy paid the cab driver and it was then that I noticed she had nothing on her—not a coat, not a purse—but she was holding something in her hand.

My mind rewound to the first night I met Elle. The perp in the bushes dressed in black with what I thought was a gun in his hand. Elle thought that the he was a she. Was she right?

“Can you pause it and zoom in on her hand?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure,” he said.

The image was blurry at best, but the metal clip and rectangular shape peeking through her fingers looked an awful lot like a garage door opener.

Everything started to make sense. That night it wasn’t Tommy or Patrick after Elle, it was her sister. And more than likely it was her sister in O’Shea’s house the following night. My mind seemed so much freer knowing Elle wasn’t on Tommy’s radar.

On the screen, the two walked into the hotel, and the image kept playing with little activity at that late hour.

“Okay, what else do you have?”

“I have some cuts from them entering the lobby, but that’s all I had time to find. I’ve seen him here quite a bit over the past months, but not her. It will take longer than a few hours for me to locate any more footage.”

“Show me the lobby.”

He hit a few keys and clicked his mouse. “This is a short clip.”

A different angle, a new camera. Tommy and the girl walking into the lobby and over to the desk. That’s all there was. A short view, five seconds at most. “Can you zoom in on her face?”

He rewound the footage and stopped when they first walked in. The image was clear. He was good. He zoomed in and I pulled my phone out and brought up the picture Elle sent me. I compared the two. It was her. No doubt about it.

“Do you know what room they’re staying in?”

“I asked the girl that worked reception that night. Since it was so late, it was easy for her to pull up the records of the encounter at the desk. Turns out he was checking out.”

Fuck!

“There’s a clip of them leaving and another of them getting into a cab. It shows nothing different from the other two. I can show you, but not now. I have to get you two out of here.”

I nodded in understanding. I didn’t want him to lose his job. “Thanks, man—that’s what I needed.” I pulled out my wallet and peeled off twenty one-hundred-dollar bills. Luckily, I had withdrawn ten thousand dollars before my grandfather sealed my access to my trust fund.

Miles was watching me with a cold sweat breaking across his forehead.

I handed it to him.

“That’s more than you promised.”

I picked up a pen and tore off a corner of one of the papers littered on the desk. I wrote my number down and my email. “The extra is for a phone call the minute you see either of them again. And if you don’t mind, email me whatever clips you can find.”

“Yeah, sure. Now, I need to get you guys out of here.”

We exited the same way we’d entered. He left us to walk down the corridor and into the lobby on our own. Exiting the hotel doors, I handed the valet my ticket.

Declan did the same.

The air was cold and the rain was coming down in sheets. I leaned back against the wall to wait.

“I want to help you with whatever you’re doing,” Declan said.

Exhausted, I turned to look at him. “You have and thanks. I can take it from here.”

He stepped closer. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I considered it for a moment. “I can’t do that.”

“I’m not afraid of him and I want to make sure what happened to Peyton doesn’t happen again—to her or to anyone else.”

It’s not that I didn’t understand where he was coming from, because I did. I just didn’t think it was the best idea to involve anyone else. “Watch over Peyton and I’ll call you if I need anything else.”

“I can help you. You know I can.”

The valet pulled up with my car. “I’ll call you after I get the videos.”

He nodded.

I slipped behind the wheel and took off. In the dark of the night, all I could see was Tommy’s face in my mind. I could hear his voice, “Watch this, McPherson.”

The level of fury building within me wasn’t going to help anything. I needed to stay focused, and waking the angry demon that lived inside me wasn’t going to help the situation.