Page 8 of Sweet Deception (Irish Kings #4)
Usually, I tell her everything, and in this moment, I’d kill to have a friend to confess all my sexual sins to, but this isn’t the time or the place.
How am I supposed to admit to her that while I should’ve been focused on extracting the info I needed to help Lucy, I was drowning in sweat and lust with a deadly, dangerous, and devastatingly handsome mafia man who doesn’t even know my name?
And the award for Worst Friend of the Year goes to…
“I’m fine. I’m just tired and sore and so ready to get back home.”
“It’s definitely been a long time since you waited tables. Or wore heels.”
Ha! I wish that was all I was sore from.
It almost sounds like Maya’s smiling, but I know she’s not. She hasn’t smiled one single time since Lucy’s abduction.
“How are you?” The decryption software’s seventy-five percent of the way there. “How’s it been since you left the hospital?”
“Okay…” She blows out an exasperated breath. “Though these crutches suck ass.”
Fury flickers inside me like candlelight.
Maya waited for Lucy outside that ill-fated audition.
When she saw a man snatch her sister, she chased after them on foot, screaming bloody murder.
Maya was so terrified that she ran out into the street and bounced off a cab, injuring her leg.
Luckly, her wounds proved to be minor, and she suffered no broken bones.
“I’m so glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I’d lost both of you in the same day.”
“…Yeah.” Maya’s voice thickens with emotion.
The decryption software finally loads. “I’m in. Hang on.”
I toggle into the locked folder. Darren’s phone data. Inside, I see rows and rows of files with strange code names. But as soon as I click one, another lock screen pops up.
No way. I’m still not through all the walls of encryption.
“Anything? What do you see?” Maya’s anxiety twists the knife in my gut, even as I check the other folders in the list. Each and every one of them uses individual encryption.
“I cloned his phone, but…” My voice trails off as I stare at another notification. “There are additional layers of security I wasn’t expecting. It’s going to take some time to crack this. How are things on your end?”
“Still nothing.” Her voice shrinks through the phone. “The detective keeps suggesting that my eyes were playing tricks on me and labeled Lucy as a runaway.”
“What an asshole.” I minimize the decryption program running on Darren’s phone data, my fingers trembling with anger. Behind that window, a secure chat feed sits open on my desktop.
“Lucy doesn’t deserve this.” Maya chokes back tears. “She hasn’t had it easy. None of us did when we were younger.”
“No, we didn’t.” A small silence follows as we both recall our days at Evergreen House. “At least we found each other.”
“But now she’s gone, Nika.” Maya’s voice cracks on my childhood nickname. “Did you learn anything at the wedding?”
My mind reverts back to Darren, his intensity…those blue lasers he calls eyes.
“Nothing of interest to us, if that’s what you mean, but I’m working on it. I just need time to crack this encryption.”
We’re both quiet for a moment.
“Remember when you taught us how to make hot chocolate in the contraband kettle?” Maya sniffs. “Lucy still prepares it exactly like that to this day. Three marshmallows, stir counterclockwise…”
“Because clockwise lets the bad luck in,” I finish her sentence softly, my fingers flying across the keys as I initialize a new round of decoding. The progress bar begins its slow crawl forward.
On another window, faces of missing girls stare back at me.
I only started using my IT skills to help women escape dangerous fates and create new identities two years ago.
And I’ve never tried to find someone who’s gone missing.
Someone who was abducted. Stolen right out of her own life.
I’ve never gone after dangerous people before—not traffickers and certainly not the mafia. Not until Lucy.
“She’s all I have left, Nika.” Maya’s voice trembles. “She’s my Lucy-Lou. After everything…the group homes, the split placements, getting her back…I can’t lose her.”
“I promised you, Maya. We’ll find her.” I glance at the progress bar again. “This phone data might give us everything we… Bozhe moy !”
I break off in the middle of my sentence because of the message boxes popping up on my computer screen that alert me to even more layers of security.
“What is it?”
“I’ll have to get back to my equipment at home to crack these encryption barriers…”
I save everything to my secure cloud storage while trying to ignore how my skin still tingles with memories of Darren’s touch.
Focus on the mission.
Focus on Lucy.
Not on how great it felt to completely lose control for the first time ever, or how part of me already craves that experience again.
“I’ll figure this out,” I promise Maya and myself. “Just give me time.”
After grabbing a lightning-fast shower—which somehow does nothing to remove the imprint of Darren’s hands on my body—I trash my cocktail dress, change into my comfortable travel clothes, grab my bag, and head for the airport.
Time to hack the encrypted data.
Time to forget how good it felt to be in his arms.
Time to remember that men like Darren Kelly are why girls like Lucy Marlow disappear.