Page 28

28

CONOR

I used her shower instead of going back to my room.

I didn’t know if it was an invasion of privacy, but by the time it occurred to me that it might have been, I was already soaping up with her shower gel.

So, I got myself clean, pulled on my jeans without my now-wet boxer briefs, dragged on my tee, and strode out after I selected one of three girly deodorants she had on her vanity—who needed so many?—and aimed a double pump of the spray at my pits.

As I walked into the living room and spied her chewing one of the candies I’d given her earlier, I declared, “ Now , I smell of fruit.”

I figured she’d be distant, the stirrings of dissociation coming to life, but as I’d intended, my statement disarmed her. “What changed?”

“Your deodorant.”

“You used my deodorant?”

I smirked at her. “It’s a spray. No cross-hygiene issues. Does it matter?”

“No. But it doesn’t smell of fruit. What the hell’s wrong with your nose?”

I wrinkled said appendage. “Nothing. It said ‘lychee’ on it.”

“It also says white blossom.” She hid a smile. “Come here.” Not about to argue, I obeyed for once, and she yanked my arm down then, surprising the fuck out of me, shoved her nose under my arm. “Oranges.”

“You’re doing it on purpose,” I accused. “I don’t smell of oranges.”

“I’m not saying you smell of shit,” she countered as I raised my forearm and smelled the skin. I could only scent soap. Her soap, at that. “Maybe if you scratch it, it’ll be like a ‘scratch and sniff’ sticker.”

Huffing, I flung myself on a seat beside her. “What are you doing?”

“Edgar came with a tray of cinnamon rolls and a package.” She pointed to the tray that I hadn’t spotted and I leaned over to grab a bun. “We should have waited. I’d have tasted like cinnamon for real.”

“If we waited much longer, my dick would have exploded.”

“I thought it did,” she said smugly.

“We’re talking annihilation.” I made a motion with my hands. “Boom.”

“Melodramatic.”

I heaved a melancholic sigh. “You just don’t care.”

She snorted then snagged the bun from my hand and took a massive bite out of it. I groused under my breath, but I was quietly content with how at ease she was around me, especially after anticipating the opposite.

As I reached for another one and began eating, she stated, “The package Kuznetsov sent was a phone.”

“Interesting. Whose?”

“A Sparrow’s.”

“Fuck, these taste good,” I mumbled once I finished chewing.

She nodded her agreement as I reached for the cell she tossed at me and flicked it on. “And I do care, by the way. I have a definite interest in your controlled explosions now.”

I laughed and almost choked on a pecan nut that decorated the top of the sweet treat.

“Jesus, you’re worse than Katina. Walking disaster area much?” she complained, slapping me on the back with more force than was necessary.

“I think you gave me a hernia,” I clipped, voice hoarse from choking.

“You can’t give someone one of those.”

“You can. Don’t talk about controlled explosions if you don’t want a response. Or , talk about them as much as you want, just expect to be a part of the blast.”

A small smile kicked up the corners of her lips, but she didn’t reply, just motioned at the phone.

“What am I looking for?”

“The calculator app, apparently,” she reasoned, picking up a letter that Kuznetsov had written her. A quick scan from afar told me it included the basics he knew about his son, Aleks’ death, in a car crash, and his granddaughter, Lyra, who disappeared in the same accident, as well as pertinent details about the app. “He says it’s a shadow app. You tap in a code and there’s a login page.”

As my mind focused on the fact her uncle had died in a wreck and her cousin had disappeared, I tapped the appropriate numbers—it really did lead to a login page.

The screen was black apart from the two white windows where the username and password could be entered.

“And he doesn’t have any login details?”

“No. While the Pauks managed to break the code to the app, they’ve failed to get any further. That’s probably why we’re here.” Absently, she sucked her fingertip to clear away a remnant of icing. At least, I assumed that was why she sucked on her finger and that it had nothing to do with trying to torture me. She appeared to be totally unaware that I was fascinated by the move. “So, the game plan I had in mind has shifted,” she prompted briskly. “I’m surprised he passed this along to us. Figured he’d make us wait until we gave him some answers.”

As I stared at the app, trying to see if it had any recognizable features amid the black soup of the login page, I drawled, “I think he wants you to like him.”

“ I think it’ll happen when hell freezes over.”

“Never say never. You don’t have much family left,” I pointed out softly.

“You were the one who said we can choose our families.”

“And you can, but what if he’s a nice guy and you and he could have had a great friendship? You don’t have to treat him like a grandfather to get to know him better.”

Her lips formed a moue. “I suppose.”

“Look, he could be an asswipe. But you stabbed him in the hand with a fork and he took that on the chin, didn’t he? That’s got to mean something.”

“You call that caterwauling taking it on the chin?”

Shaking my head, I laughed at her disgust.

“He also locked me in a bedroom?—”

“Literally a bedroom . With antiques. That you destroyed. All when you were trying to kill him. You said it yourself, the United Brotherhood is powerful. I’m sure there are plenty of places where he could have locked you up and tossed away the key.”

Like a shipping container in the Catskills .

She huffed. “Back to the game plan. Where do we start?”

“I think we actually start with a phone call to my brother.” I scratched my jaw. “Not a Brother. No capital ‘B.’”

“I can tell the difference,” she quipped. “Which one and why?”

“Eoghan.”

“How come?”

“I mentioned the name Kuznetsov to him before my flight and he had a story to tell.”

“About?”

My gaze darted from the notes Kuznetsov had left for us to her. “A car crash.” I lifted a hand to stall the incoming questions as I reached for Anton’s letter to her.

Star,

Here is a phone we procured from a now-dead Sparrow.

We believe the calculator is a shadow app. My Pauks have been working on this for months since the phone came into our possession, but they have uncovered very little other than the access code for the app that leads to a login page.

It’s all very complicated, but the Pauks warn that there’s some kind of threat to the hardware. Too many failed login attempts will damage the phone itself so be careful.

Please find their notes included in this envelope.

Your loving grandfather,

Anton

Though he was laying it on thick with that ‘loving grandfather’ bullshit, I read it, scanned the Pauks’ findings to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, then woke up my computer and logged in. A few seconds later, FaceTime had loaded and I was waiting for Eoghan to answer.

“Kid? You okay?”

Faintly, I smiled, just relieved he’d picked up. “I’m good. You?”

“Be better if you were in New York. When are you coming home again?”

“Dunno. You might be able to help with that.”

Eoghan, obviously fresh from the shower as he’d been dragging a towel over his head, paused. “You need me overseas?”

“No.” I grabbed the back of Star’s chair and hauled it nearer to my side so she was sitting within the webcam’s frame. “Star’s here. Star, this is Eoghan. Eoghan, meet Star.”

My baby bro narrowed his eyes at her. “You gonna keep giving Conor the runaround?”

“Maybe I like the runaround,” I retorted. “And be nice. I was nice to Inessa.”

“Inessa didn’t take off to Russia and ghost me.”

“He has a point, Conor,” Star said softly, then, to Eoghan, who was somehow the baby of the bunch and yet the deadliest of us all, promised, “I’m going to try not to repeat the runaround.”

My hand slipped up to her shoulder and I squeezed her gently. “We’re working together now.”

“Doing what? Bringing the Sparrows down?” he inquired, his curiosity tripped.

“That’s part of it. Remember I told you about Kuznetsov?”

“The guy who you said kidnapped Star?”

“Well, it was less kidnapping and more ‘holding in custody’ until she decided to stop trying to murder him.”

Eoghan shot Star a sympathetic look. “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”

Her lips quirked into a smile. “Yeah. It sucks.”

Darting a glance between them, I noticed the embers of camaraderie stirring into being.

Intrigued, I wondered if they might actually be able to help one another if they became friendly—Eoghan’s PTSD was getting worse and Star’s headspace couldn’t be considered ‘healthy.’

Trying not to get my hopes up when both made rattlesnakes appear cuddly, I said, “It’s too small a world for you two not to have come across one another at some point.”

“Is there a question in there?” was Eoghan’s cool retort.

“Have you met before?”

Star peered at me like I was crazy. “Of course.”

“Were you friends?”

Eoghan snorted. “No. We’re nodding acquaintances.”

“What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Star quipped. “He was in the class before me at sniper school. I followed his career trajectory, even after I was recruited by the CIA. Saw him crash and burn his position there with that dishonorable discharge.”

“Which I still don’t regret.”

“Why would you? Not like it hurt your career if you were enlisted overseas.”

“Oh, yeah, that was a real promotion,” he mocked before he muttered, “I should have just stayed out of things.”

Then, a thought occurred to me. “Wait a goddamn minute. You knew of him ?”

Star frowned. “Yeah.”

“Then why did you hack into his apartment on his freakin’ wedding day?—”

“Jesus, yeah. Why the fuck did you do that?”

Her shoulder hitched up in a half-shrug. “Because I could.”

Seeing as that was the most ‘Star’ answer in the universe, I just rolled my eyes, but Eoghan snapped, “You had that fucking woman waiting on my sofa with no clothes on, and Inessa and I—” He froze. Blinked. Rubbed his chin. “Huh.”

“Huh?” I questioned, unsurprised by his anger because I’d been pissed as fuck that day too.

A smile danced on his lips. “Nothing.”

Star and I shared a look—clearly she’d been waiting for the explosion to hit too. “I mean, it wasn’t just about being smug. I needed to rile ‘aCooooig’ too. Get his feathers bristling.”

I had to laugh. “It worked.” Glad that had lightened the mood some, I got the subject back on track. “Anyway, Eoghan, Kuznetsov’s actually Star’s grandfather.”

“How’d that happen?”

“When a mommy and a daddy decide they really love one another?—”

“Kid,” Eoghan grouched, his exasperation explosive. “I know how that happened. I meant which parent is related to him?”

“Her mom.”

“Okay, interesting. She worked for the CIA too, no?”

Star cleared her throat. “She was a plant and she worked as a double agent.”

“Taking her age into account… for the KGB?”

“No, for the United Brotherhood,” I answered him.

“Finn mentioned them.” My brothers were worse than the gossiping witches in the Old Wives’ Club—widows of dead mobsters that congregated for coffee. “I thought they were a bank too.” His brows lifted. “They infiltrated the CIA?”

I thought about my recent experiences with that agency. “You bet they did.”

“This is massive?—”

“Tell me about it. Anyway, that’s not why I called. Kuznetsov’s doing us a deal. We help him; he helps bring down the Sparrows. Legitimately .”

“How would he do that?”

“Interpol.”

Eoghan’s eyes widened. “Jesus, when he says legitimately, he means it.”

I nodded. “According to him, he’d start a specialized department there because the leaders are ‘people’ he can trust.” I included the air quotes because the whole thing was ridiculous but, bizarrely, believable.

That was when you knew you were living in a conspiracy, I thought, hiding a wry smile.

“You believe he can do it?”

“In my research on the United Brotherhood, I don’t think it’s outside of the realms of possibility,” Star mused. “They’re much bigger than the Sparrows?—”

Disconcerted, I ran a hand over my hair. “Really?”

She shot me a look. “Four times larger.”

“What?!” Eoghan and I yelled at the same time.

“Are you shitting me?” I muttered, quieter now.

“I wish I were.” She grimaced. “I stumbled upon their existence and that led to hunting down Kuznetsov. Every step I took, I realized just how large their operation is.”

I studied her as a thought occurred to me. “Who were Princes Ludwig and Edward and Ke Jintao to your grandfather?”

“His, I guess you’d call them, crew.”

“You’ve been learning how the Irish Mob works. Cute,” I teased.

She smirked. “I pick up shit along the way.”

“If you’re going to start flirting, I’m outta here.”

“Oh, fuck off, Misery.” I flipped Eoghan the bird.

Curiosity still piqued despite his disapproval over our flirting, he inquired, “I read about their deaths… You were the one who killed the princes and that Chinese politician?”

She shrugged.

He arched a brow.

No.

Was he…?

Yes, he was.

Eoghan was impressed.

Studying that raised eyebrow, I tried not to get excited about the two of them playing nice and maybe becoming friends one day.

Instead of being hella obvious, I prompted him, “Tell Star what you told me when I mentioned Kuznetsov’s name on the ride to the airport.”

“About the car crash?”

Star glanced at me. Nodding at her, I prompted Eoghan with a, “Yeah.”

Cell in his hand, Eoghan headed into the kitchen. The sound of the fridge door opening and closing rustled in the background, and it was followed by the popping of a can. After he took a sip of what appeared to be an energy drink, he stated, “Why?”

Dickwad.

Friendly. As. A. Cougar.

And Riggs said I used to act like a robot.

“Because he has a price.”

Eoghan rolled his eyes. “Only to be expected. What is it?”

“He said that someone murdered his son—” Eoghan’s gaze sharpened at that. “—and he believes his granddaughter is alive.”

“The little girl,” he mumbled under his breath. “They said she died though.”

Aggravated, Star straightened in her seat, snapping, “Can we start at the beginning?”

Eoghan, in an eerie tone, recited, “I’d just been approached by MI6 and they sent me to this specialist training corp in Scotland of all places. Lockerbie. There’s a POW camp up there, Hallmuir, and it was used as a base. Anyway,” he muttered, rubbing his brow. “Long story short, it was a waste of time. I could have taught them shit but they had this interesting segment on how jobs had gone wrong in the past and how they wanted them handled in the future.”

“That’s a weird way of making sure mistakes don’t happen again,” Star pointed out. “Classified info being released unnecessarily?—”

“The only way I’m getting out of MI6, Star, is with a bullet in my brain,” Eoghan said simply. “And they don’t have to fear me spreading the word of anything I’ve picked up because they’ll kill Inessa, Victoria, my brothers, their wives, and my mother if I even attempted to defect or to share classified intel.”

Star’s brow puckered. “That’s intense.”

“It’s an unusual division,” he dismissed. “I only shared this with my brothers because we’re a closed circuit. Or we used to be.”

Holding up a hand, Star promised, “I’ve been where you are. I won’t say dick. Anything you can share with me, I appreciate more than you know.”

He studied her then rumbled, “Just don’t hurt him.”

“I’m here, you know?”

Ignoring me, she bit her bottom lip. “I hurt everyone.”

Eoghan sighed. “Been there, done that. You can break the cycle, Star. You just need the right person.”

“Did you find your person?” she asked wistfully, and that wistfulness spread to her gaze. I saw it because she looked at me, a worrisome cocktail of hope and need, desire and love, buried deep within that glance.

It did things to me that I couldn’t even begin to describe. Mostly, I wanted to hug her. Other, less romantic parts just wanted to slide inside her and find my way home at long last.

“I did. My person came when I least expected it, at an age that still freaks me out, and she sure as hell isn’t what I’d have imagined for myself, but she accepts me,” he admitted. “Conor’s a good man. He’ll accept you. Flaws and all. If you let him.”

I flickered a look between them, well aware that Eoghan was probably doing more on my behalf in this one conversation than I’d managed in months of chatting with her.

Her head bowed in understanding, which prompted me to clear my throat. “She won’t say anything, Eoghan. This is too big.”

“You’re telling me. All our asses are on the line, Conor, if news spreads.”

Uneasily, I asked, “What if the agent who took out Kuznetsov’s son is killed as a result of this conversation?”

Eoghan pursed his lips. “Doubt it would be an issue. Everyone’s expendable.”

Star scoffed. “True dat.”

“I really hate that the government is supposed to be the good guys,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose.

Eoghan took another sip of his drink then, seeming to have come to a decision, sighed. “Okay, the story is that this Kuznetsov was some kind of emissary for Russia. He was driving from Ohio to New York, allegedly, but before he could even leave the state, the brake lines the agent cut failed as planned, but the location of the crash was badly calculated.

“There was a collision but they limped away from it by the skin of their teeth. I’m thinking Kuznetsov thought it was sabotage, so he ordered the driver to put distance between them and the crash site, to reconvene somewhere safer.

“The agent behind the job had to go in and manually end them.”

“Meaning?” Star questioned.

“Chased them down a hill until they’d picked up speed and crashed again. This time, it caused a pile-up. The driver was killed, as was Kuznetsov. His wife was strangled, and the kid ran off into traffic. That’s where her story ends. My division looked for her in the hospitals and in social services, but they didn’t find anyone fitting her name or description.”

“That’s weird,” I pointed out.

Star was frowning. “She must have turned up somewhere.”

“Apparently not. She never showed up in a morgue or with injuries at the local hospitals. CPS never placed her in the system.”

“That makes no sense.”

Eoghan shrugged at Star’s confusion. “I know. But that’s all I was told, and it was a ‘make sure that you don’t let this happen or else’ kind of example.”

“What happened to the agent behind the botched job?”

“I don’t imagine he or she is sipping pina coladas in Cancun, Conor. So I doubt Kuznetsov will get his revenge.”

“You think they’re dead?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Star grimaced. “I can’t imagine Kuznetsov was in the dark about any of this. Why waste our time and resources on finding the agent when we could just be focusing on the girl if he didn’t think the agent was alive?”

“True.” I focused on my brother. “Do you have anything we can use to pin this pile-up down, Eoghan? A date or a place?” I knew we could ask Kuznetsov but, in his letter, he mentioned neither, which kept us pretty much in the dark.

It wasn’t like we had the man on speed dial to pepper him with questions.

“I told you, they wiped the records clean.”

“You can’t bleach a pile-up away. Not a British spy agency in the US, at any rate.”

“Don’t be naive, Conor. My division makes the CIA look like kids playing tag around the globe,” was his flat retort. “If you don’t think they have leverage on key members of staff in the right places who can do as they say, you’re an idiot.”

I grumbled, “Nice.”

“Just telling you to keep your hopes low?—”

Star choked out, “Operation: Jorgmundgander.”

Eoghan’s tension was immediate. I cast a glance between them. “I’m assuming this has nothing to do with the MCU?” It was my turn to sound wistful.

“I thought it was an urban legend,” she breathed, staring at him with wide eyes.

Jesus, it was her turn to fan girl.

“I wish it fucking were,” Eoghan intoned grimly.

“Jorgmundgander is the world serpent in Norse mythology,” Star explained to me.

“Yeah, I know, babe,” I drawled, amused that she’d think I wouldn’t know my mythology. “He grew so large that he surrounded the earth and grasped his own tail in his mouth.”

“When he lets go of his tail, that’s when Ragnarok is supposed to start,” was Eoghan’s glum response.

“I’m assuming that Operation: Jorgmundgander’s purpose is to make sure he never lets go of his tail? Metaphorically speaking.”

Eoghan took another deep sip of his drink which, I figured, gave me my answer.

Sensing that I wouldn’t get much else out of him, I rubbed my bottom lip with the edge of my thumb. “Thanks, Eoghan. Appreciate you sharing that with the class.”

Eoghan hitched a shoulder. “Start in Cincinnati.”

“Thanks, bro.” A thought occurred to me. “ Is Inessa pregnant by the way?”

“No.”

He cut the line before I could reply, but I didn’t need to continue talking to him to know what he wasn’t saying out loud.

“Don’t have to worry about a long goodbye with him, do we?”

I shook my head. “Eoghan’s always been a man of few words.”

“He didn’t seem happy at the end. Did he want her to be pregnant?”

“I’d say unhappy is Eoghan’s standard state of being. But no, I agree. Knowing him, he’s relieved about her not being pregnant but also pissed that she isn’t.”

“And they say women are contrary.”

“They do. I think you, better than me, can understand why he’d be relieved and pissed. Especially after what he said.”

Her lips pursed. “A kid is another person to keep alive. To worry about being killed. But , that’s another person to accept you from the ground up and who’ll love you unconditionally if you don’t make a mess of everything.”

I nudged her in the side with my elbow. “You’re too hard on yourself.”

“You’re not hard enough on me.”

“Is that a complaint about what happened on the couch?”

Humor made her eyes light up. “No.” She shoved my shoulder. “Jerk.”

I just winked, glad to see her smile again. My tone turned more serious, however, when I asked, “You’ve heard of the team Eoghan works for?”

Her scowl was dark. “Heard of and dismissed as BS. There are always whispers, but the agents on that team might as well exist under smoke and mirrors.

“I’d be impressed that your brother is a part of it if it weren’t crazy that they exist at all.”

“I guess it means we have a basic idea of how Aleks Kuznetsov died, though. And we know that whoever wanted him dead worked for a secret team in British intelligence.”

Nodding, she mumbled tiredly, “I wonder why they shared details about a mission that went wrong. It’s one thing to give an outline, but it’s another to name names.”

She had a point.

Frowning, I wondered out loud, “Unless Eoghan’s division plants itself firmly against the Brotherhood?”

“Could be against Sparrows.”

“Nah. Eoghan would have said. He wouldn’t keep something like that from us.”

“He might not know he is.”

“True.” I rubbed my chin. “Question.”

“Answer.”

“Question colon. Not… Never mind.” I sighed. “If your mother was murdered, and we know she was a Brother, was she killed because she was a double agent or because she was a spy?”

“And whatever motive there was for her death, was Dagda a Sparrow or anti-Brotherhood?”

“He wasn’t a Sparrow. He hates them.”

“You say that like you know him.”

I hitched a shoulder. “I’ve spoken to him.”

Star froze. “He murdered my mom.”

“He murdered my da,” I said flatly. “Plus, I thought your mom was just a walking uterus now that you know she was a double agent?”

Her chair scraped back as she shoved away from the table. I half expected her to leave the room, but she didn’t. She moved over to the window. Then, she did the saddest fucking thing… The windows looked onto the ocean—the view was pristine even with the moody sky overhead—and she closed the blinds, tipping them so she could peer through them, then stood to the side as if evading a bullet.

God, what we did to our soldiers blew my mind.

Eoghan and she were so alike it was unreal.

I rubbed my eyes at the thought, but I refused to apologize for what I’d said. The truth stung. Our truths more than most.

Dagda should have been sent up for the murder of the First Lady and my da. He was walking around free and clear because my brothers and I had framed a traitor in the Five Points to spare him. Did I tell her that? Did I tell her we’d done that to force him into stepping down from the IRA-adjacent group, the éire le chéile go deo , so Aidan could take his place at the top of the tree?

Rather than feed the silence, I fed myself. Picking up another cinnamon bun, I chowed down as she stared out at nothing, evading bullets I knew wouldn’t be coming.

A couple emails came in and I dealt with them while she sulked. Then, God only knew how long later, she muttered, “Why didn’t he want us to avenge her?”

Her question had me blinking, but the only answer I was capable of was: “Huh.” Turning it over in my head, I eventually reasoned, “Either because the shooter is already dead and Dagda wasn’t behind the killing or because he doesn’t think she needs to be avenged.”

“Meaning she betrayed him too?”

“Perhaps.”

“Wouldn’t he lay the guilt on me?”

“Not unless he’s religious,” I grumbled. “‘Sins of the fathers’ and all that crap.”

Reaching up, she rubbed her temple. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

“That’s what you get for playing with spies, I guess.”

She snorted. “I was a spy.”

My lips quirked but I just asked, “I’ve gone digging for pile-up crashes in Cincinnati in the last ten years. There’s a lot to wade through, but maybe something will be of interest to us if we look for diplomatic plates.”

“Eoghan never mentioned diplomatic plates.”

“He did in the message he sent me.” I thought back to the conversation we’d just had. “He said they were an emissary for the Russian government.”

“Diplomatic immunity,” she breathed, something flicking to life in her expression that I couldn’t read.

“Star?” When she didn’t reply, I repeated, louder this time, “Star!”

She jolted. “What?”

“Why did that ring a bell?”

“N-No reason.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s really nothing,” she argued, sounding more annoyed this time.

“That clearly triggered some kind of memory.”

“A stupidly minute memory.”

“Stop being pedantic.”

“I’m not being pedantic. It’s impossible. Her father’s name was Bogdan Belyaev. Not Kuznetsov . ”

“Tell me where your mind’s at. And whose father?” I asked, confused.

She plucked at her bottom lip. Just when I was about to prod her, she demanded, “When I first took Katina in, she used to draw a lot. More than she does now?—”

“Traumatic response, I guess. Shay does that to deal with the stuff he’s gone through.”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I knew her father died in a car crash—” Her mumbled admission had me straightening in my seat. “But her mom…”

“What’s making you think of Kat, Star?”

“When I first got her, she had horrific nightmares. Used to wet the bed a couple times a night. The social worker suggested a therapist, but it didn’t really do anything for her. She just used to draw in the sessions, and she’d draw afterward, then she’d come home and the nightmares would be worse than ever. In the end, I said that it was doing her more harm than good and we stopped seeing the shrink.

“She got better. Hunter Lachlan, you remember him?” At my nod, she continued, “He came to stay for a short while, and he’s great with kids, so that took her out of her thoughts. She started doing normal stuff, and I let her go wild which she loved and, eventually, she stopped wetting the bed but the drawing continued until…” She frowned. “…six months or so before I attacked your security system that first time.”

“Okay, but what about the drawings?”

“Hell, it could mean nothing, Conor. Just a tiny, minute, bit of nothing on a kid’s drawing. Trust me, she’s no Picasso either. I love that kid but fuck, she massacres crayons with her art.”

“You’re trying to convince yourself,” was my flat retort.

She glowered at me but carried on, “Kat used to draw the crash scene I assumed her dad died in. You’d see the trunk of the vehicle she sketched, but the front was smashed to fuck. Always, always , on the license plate, she’d write the license number.” She plucked at her bottom lip now. “And it would always have this red strip along the top of it.”

My eyes flared wide. “Diplomatic plates?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “But it’s not related. He was Bogdan Belyaev.”

“Names can be changed. Lies can be covered up.” I peered at her. “Out of curiosity, can you remember that license plate?”

She shook her head. “No. At least, not without thinking about it. It’s been too long since I saw it.”

“How did you find Katina again?”

“Remember I told you about that shipping manifesto a while back?”

“Yeah.”

“Her mom was one of the women whose journey I followed. By the time I found her, Kat was already in the foster care system.”

“How long had she been in it?”

“I got her when she was five. She’d been in there for two years.”

“And she just turned ten, right?”

“Yes.”

“So the crash her father was in would have been seven years ago.”

“There was nothing in her records about her being involved in a crash though, Conor. Just her father. Her mom died before the accident that killed her father. It doesn’t add up.” She shook her head. “I should never have said anything. It’s dumb.”

“Dumb, but do you want to leave it at that? Don’t you want to look into it?” I prodded. “You’ve just come across your long-lost grandfather, a man you didn’t even know was long or lost… Who knows what forces put you together?”

“Kismet between me and you is one thing. This is different.” Before I could counter-argue, she hunched her shoulders. “I used a fake ID to foster her.”

“Knowing you, it would have been as authentic as a real one.”

“Yeah, but…” She released a breath. “I don’t know why my mind fixated on those drawings of hers.”

“We have a story that’s conjecture from Eoghan. Sure, it was used as a cautionary tale, but isn’t that like a game of telephone? The agent Eoghan thinks isn’t sipping pina coladas in Cancun could have told their CO anything they fucking wanted to make sure that they didn’t get their ass killed—” My mind was racing a mile a minute. Too fast. But shit was starting to come together. “—and you said the front end of the car was smashed up in her drawings. Not the back.”

“Yeah.”

“What if she was viewing the crash from the car behind her parents’?”

“Why would that make a difference?”

“Because it might mean that her parents were in the car in front and she was in the back. Whoever was driving her could have squirreled her away, which kept her off the system until they put her into it.”

“Eoghan clearly mentioned the wife was strangled. That’s a key?—”

“It could have been a girlfriend. Didn’t have to be the child’s mom.”

“This is stretching the truth,” she argued, her unease clear.

“Maybe,” I mumbled, scraping a hand over my head. “I’m going to look into it though. Just to knock it off the realms of possibility.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I guess that’s smart.”

Another thought occurred to me. Without waiting to ask her, my fingers raced over my laptop as I drew up the server we used to communicate on.

“What is it?” she muttered, stepping over to me as I went to work on finding keywords in our many, many conversations. She grabbed my shoulder when I didn’t answer. “Hey, you dragged that nonsense out of me, Conor. Your turn to pay the piper.”

“Don’t you remember?! The manifesto!!”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“You bought something else from that vendor. The login details that led nowhere,” I rasped, watching her eyes flare in astonishment.

“Oh my God, you’re right! It’s a long shot but we have to try.” She plunked her ass down beside me, watching as I flicked through the many mentions we’d had of the word ‘manifesto’ in our online conversations. “Wait,” she blurted. “I sent you those login details via email. Not on the chat.”

“Shit! You did.” Fuck, my brain needed to slow down if I was misremembering crap like that.

She woke up her computer and both of us were suddenly racing to uncover that information.

Moving over to the folder where I stored any and everything Lodestar had sent me, I rushed through the files and whooped when I came across it.

Opening it up, I grinned as I grabbed the phone Kuznetsov had left with us. When the screen switched off, I realized that it automatically kicked you out of the calculator after a set amount of time.

Tapping in the code once again, I found myself on the login page and I carefully input the username and the eighteen-digit passcode that was on my computer.

I jolted when Star’s hand seized my leg. Her nails dug in as she loomed over me, watching as the ‘loading’ circle went around and around, her breathing as ragged as mine as we waited what felt like a lifetime for anything to happen.

That was when the screen glowed white.

And a welcome message made an appearance on the screen.

‘Welcome, Justin DeLaCroix.’