Page 17

17

Tex

The call to meet with Marlana Newbury at Pepper’s bar came before sunrise, but I hadn’t been asleep.

I rarely slept. The sheets that I refused to have changed no longer held her scent. It was the only way I could lie in that bed without her there. Knowing I could smell her. Now that it was gone, I couldn’t stand to get in it. I’d slept on the sofa during the little bit of rest I had managed for the past five nights.

There hadn’t been a word on any lead since Wilder Jones had contacted Liam to tell him he thought he might have something, but he needed some time. That had been over a week ago.

My days had become one endless nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. The nights I did fall asleep for a short time, I’d open my eyes to the realization all over again.

Salem was gone.

I battled with the fear to hope as I rode my Harley to Pepper’s bar. I didn’t think I could handle another lead that got us nowhere. Wilder not calling with anything wasn’t a good sign that what he’d thought he had was going to help.

Liam’s bike was parked outside the bar when I pulled up. He’d been in Ocala, so I hadn’t been expecting him. When he called I thought he was still in Ocala. Climbing off mine, I headed inside. I’d wanted to come the moment I got the call, not in two hours, like I’d been told. Waiting had been difficult, and I’d paced in my room for more than an hour.

Pushing open the door, I stepped into the bar, and my gaze swung to the bar. Liam leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest. I started to ask where Marlana was when my eyes shifted, and my steps faltered at the sight of Blaise Hughes. The Mafia boss was not who I’d expected to see here.

I looked back at Liam.

“Marlana won’t be here for thirty more minutes,” Liam told me. “Before she arrives, I wanted you to hear what Blaise has found out through his sources.”

I didn’t ask what sources. “Okay,” I said and turned my attention back to Blaise as he stood up from the table he’d been sitting at.

“I can’t promise you this is all completely accurate. The connections I had to go through were questionable,” he began.

Anything. Fucking anything to lead me in a direction close to her would help. I needed something.

“Over a year ago, some of the larger dealers in the southeast worked a deal with a Travis Mitchell. He owned a trucking line out of Mississippi. The cocaine was coming from overseas, and when tested, it had a higher purity than from where they had been previously buying from, and it was the same price they had been paying. They made a deal with him and only had contact with him via a messenger.

“One of the men got suspicious and did some research to find the trucking line didn’t exist, and he could find no trace of this particular Travis Mitchell. He let it go because the product was selling for higher dollar and his profits were up. But he went through his security footage from his house, where he’d met the final time with the so-called Travis Mitchell, and pulled an image of him from the camera to keep since the man didn’t seem to exist, but the product still arrived at the designated time and place it was supposed to.”

Blaise picked up a file from the table and held it out for me.

Taking it, I glanced at Liam before opening it to see if there was any sign on his face that he knew what was in here. My eyes scanned the first paper, and I frowned.

“Is this a background check on Salem?” I asked, my eyes shooting back up to Blaise. I hadn’t asked for him to snoop into her life.

He nodded. “You need to know someone to find them.”

I closed the folder and handed it back to him. “I won’t invade her privacy. Her background won’t help us.”

Blaise took the folder, then opened it and turned to the next page and took out a picture. He held it up for me to see. It was a photo of a man I’d never seen.

“This wasn’t in her background check, but you need to see it first,” he said.

I glanced up at him, confused on how this was a lead. He put the photo down on the table before he took out another photo, then held it up for me to look at. My heart began to hammer in my chest as I stared at Salem in a wedding dress, looking like a goddamn angel. Fuck, that hurt. I swallowed hard through my tightening throat, then reluctantly shifted my attention to the bastard by her side.

“What the…” I hissed as I looked back down at the photo in my hand.

“As you can see, this is Salem with her husband on her wedding day. I have more recent ones, but I felt the younger version of Eamon Murphy resembled the man in the photo the most. Wilder did a test, and it is not the same man. There are differences, but looking at them, one would assume they were closely related. Brothers.”

I went and snatched up the picture of Brady Murphy. This was the bastard who had taken her. I had a face. The goddamn ghost wasn’t faceless anymore.

“While the Murphys are Irish, Travis Mitchell was a Southerner. Spoke with a Southern accent. Seems Brady Murphy can do more than just change his name. I’d venture to guess he can do many different accents and speak several languages. It would make sense. No one can live in the shadows as completely as he has been whispered to. He’s been walking in daylight all along, just as a range of different people.”

That made this more difficult. Fuck!

“You sure you don’t want to look through this file?” Blaise asked, holding it up.

I shook my head. “No.”

He shrugged. “It’s your choice, but it doesn’t hurt for a man to know the woman he loves.”

“She can tell me what she wants me to know about her past,” I told him. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her life with Eamon in pictures. That was a torture I could avoid.

“All right, I guess you know most of the younger years anyway. The uncle of hers that she was questioned about by the police—she said you were at home that night, helping her with homework,” he said with a smirk. “I’m assuming he did something worth you beating him to death with a bat.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You think it was me?” I asked.

It had been. When Salem had told me that her uncle had touched her inappropriately and her father allowed it, I’d been so blind with rage that I tracked him down and took my bat with me. His death wasn’t an accident. I’d gone there, wanting to kill him. A neighbor saw me enter the house and described me. A few days after they found his dead body sprawled out in the living room, I was taken in for questioning. I denied it. Salem backed up my story. There was no proof—they never found my bat—and I had been left alone.

Blaise looked amused. “That was revenge and rage. I know it well.”

He dropped the folder on the table. “I’ll leave it with you to destroy then. We have what we needed.”

I stared at it, not wanting the temptation there, but said nothing.

“Things would have played out differently for the two of you if it hadn’t been for the miscarriage, I imagine,” he mused.

“Miscarriage?” I asked, not sure what the hell he was talking about.

“I mean, I assumed it was yours. Maybe you shouldn’t go through that file after all.”

I was at the table, jerking open the folder and scanning the pages for medical history when my eyes locked on doctor’s notes from an emergency room visit one month after I’d shattered my soul and set her free. She’d been admitted for blood loss. It was the cause of a miscarriage. She’d been almost ten weeks pregnant.

I placed both palms flat on the table to keep from my knees giving out. Grief punched me in the chest with a force so heavy that I needed to sit down before I collapsed.

“I don’t think he knew about that,” I heard Liam say.

I grabbed the nearest chair and sank into it, then buried my head in my hands.

She’d been pregnant—with my baby—and she’d lost it. Alone.

Wave after wave of anguish and horror hit me. Had she known when I broke it off with her? Had she been sick? Fuck! She’d have been terrified. How had she paid the hospital bill? Jesus, I’d fucking abandoned her.

I could hear the other men talking, but they were drowned out by the roar in my head.

How could she have forgiven me for that?

And the shit with Nixie! Motherfucker!

She still thought Nixie was pregnant with my baby. That had to be tearing her up inside.

Yet she hadn’t said one word about the miscarriage. How I’d left her to deal with it all alone.

Tears stung my eyes, and I fought the emotion strangling me. I had to fucking find her.

Dropping my hands, I stared straight ahead at the wall. Devastation clawing at me relentlessly.

“When we find her, you can spend the rest of your life making it up to her,” Liam said.

“She thinks Nixie is having my baby,” I replied. “Fuck, I’d been at a goddamn doctor’s appointment with her. Doing the shit I hadn’t gotten to do with Salem, and she didn’t get angry or hold it against me. She never even told me.” I paused and tried to take a breath, but my chest hurt so bad that it wasn’t easy. “It is ripping me to fucking shreds.”

The door to the bar opened, and my gaze swung to see Marlana Newbury walking inside. Her gaze shifted from Liam to me, then stalled on Blaise. A flicker of recognition in her eyes.

“I didn’t realize we’d have a crowd,” she said, looking back at Liam.

“I’ve got things to get back to. Just dropped by for a visit. They’re all yours,” Blaise said, then turned and gave Liam a nod before he started for the door.

“No rush, Mr. Hughes.” Marlana said his name with an emphasis as she raised a brow at him. She wanted him to know she was aware of who he was.

“Things are waiting on me, Mrs. Newbury,” he replied, not pausing to look her way. “But be sure to tell Anders I said hello.”

Marlana tensed and then took a deep breath before moving her focus on a retreating Blaise to us. She shook her head and pursed her lips.

She continued toward us as the door closed, signaling Blaise’s exit.

“Who is Anders?” Liam asked.

I sat silently, staring at her. Needing her to tell me something that would lead me to Salem.

“That would be my boss’s boss,” she replied in a clipped tone. “Anyway, did he have useful information?” she asked.

“Just a family visit to check on things,” Liam replied.

I hadn’t known we weren’t sharing this with her, but message received.

“I see,” she said, not looking convinced. “Very well. I was given this information by someone who wasn’t supposed to share it with us. It’s not DEA knowledge, but there are others looking for the ghost. Those who have the power to do something if they can find him and get the evidence they need to shut down his operation. They got close, and he turned into vapor again. But what they did get in their attempt was that there was a houseguest at the Murphys’ home in Birr. It’s not known who exactly because the staff is well trained not to talk. But one of the maids let it slip to a family member, who then unknowingly shared it with our contact.”

I stood up and jerked my phone out of my pocket and began typing like a man possessed.

“What are you doing?” Marlana asked.

“Finding the airport closest to Birr.”

“You can’t do that,” she snapped.

“Like hell I can’t.”

“You’d be shot and killed the moment you were spotted. And if dead, you wouldn’t ever see Salem again.”

I paused and looked up at her. “Then what the fuck do you want me to do? Stay here and wait some more? I can’t wait. I need her !”

She sighed. “Plan properly. Showing up in Birr? Hell, I doubt you’d get farther than the airport parking lot. They have people everywhere. It would get you killed.”

“Thank you,” Liam said. “If that is all, we can take it from here.”

She looked back at Liam. “Don’t do anything stupid. There is a chance it isn’t Salem.”

Liam nodded his head once. “We won’t.”

I could tell she wanted to ask what it was Blaise had been here to tell us, but she didn’t.

“That’s likely the best information I will get. It was a miracle that I got that,” she told us.

“We appreciate it,” Liam told her.

With a swift nod, she gave us a concerned frown, then turned and headed for the door. Neither of us spoke until she was gone.

“You’re not going to fucking Ireland. She’s right. You’d have a bullet between your eyes within moments of your arrival,” Liam said.

Gripping my phone tightly in my hand, I glared down at it. “I can’t just sit here and wait. I don’t know why they have her. If they’re mistreating her. And I need to tell her that no other woman is having my baby and they never will.”

“I know. And we will use that information, but I believe what we learned from Blaise was more helpful. We just need a plan to track down the fucking chameleon. What Blaise didn’t get to tell you before Marlana arrived was that Wilder is working through his system, using the one alter ego name that he has and attempting to link it to the others he has used. Once he finds a pattern, he can then use it to lead us to the source.”

“But if she’s in Birr, then how the fuck do we go get her, even if we track him down?”

Liam smirked. “We find out what port he is using to smuggle drugs into the States and take something of value from him. That will draw him out. Then we offer an exchange.”

“You are saying we take his fucking drugs and offer to return them for Salem?” I asked, not sure that sounded like a winning idea.

“No. We take his vessel and everyone on it.”

“How the fuck are we gonna do that?”

“That’s where Blaise’s men come in,” Liam replied. “Now, aren’t you glad my daughter married into the Mafia and we all became friends?”