I scraped my chin, scratching at my cheek from where the stubble was starting to itch as my beard grew back in, before I mused, “It doesn’t narrow things down, like I said, but it makes it seem less organized. Less from one of the Families.”
“TheFamigliawouldn’t use someone who wasn’t on their payroll.”
“Who the fuck knows who’s on the payroll? They’re not like us. They have markers everywhere. Maybe that’s what this is. Someone they’ve called out a marker on.”
“I’ll need to look into a way of figuring out who would be able to compromise my code, then use that to filter back to theFamigliaand any ties there might be to them.”
“Is that doable?”
Conor shrugged. “It’ll be hard, but I know that code was strong, Eoghan.” His earnestness reminded me of when we were kids, and Da had whooped one of our asses and we’d defended ourselves to each other for back up. “There was no way even an excellent coder should have broken it.”
“Well, a marker out on them would probably make them work harder to excel even more. You know their markers are bound in blood.”
Conor’s gaze turned distant, and I knew he was thinking about just who could do it. Who could have broken his code.
I left him to it, left him to figure it out, because he needed to. Fast.
I didn’t blame him, not like Da evidently did, but Conor needed to get a handle on this situation quickly before one of us really did get hurt because of it.
So, letting him focus, and even though I knew the file front to back, I pulled it toward me and started reading through it.
It was an easy hit.
Some fucker had just been released from prison. He’d murdered a few women, tortured them, and yet was being released, thanks to a DNA lab tech who’d fucked with some of the evidence. In the end, it meant there’d been a mix up, where he’d been identified as a dead prisoner when he was very much alive.
With one of the two surviving victims dead by her own hand, and the other having run off to fuck knew where, Josiah Landers was about to pay his debt to society by becoming a corpse.
And I was more than okay with being his executioner.
INESSA
“He just letyou have the card, and that’s it?”
My friend’s surprise matched my own.
I showed her the list I’d snapped on my phone, and her brows lifted at the sight of all the things I had to buy… Essentially, an entire lounge and bedroom suite.
“Yeah, I know, right? And he wants them by Friday.” I shook my head. “I’m not sure if he thinks I’m a miracle worker or—”
“Maybe he thinks you’ll drop his name?” Lisandra whispered. “I mean, everyone knows the O’Donnellys. People will probably jump into a breakdance if you ask them to.”
Because the idea amused me, and I could tell she wanted to test it out, I snorted. “You sound jealous.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re one of them now,” she joked, elbowing me in the side as we wandered into a furniture store that, truth be told, I’d bought most of my bedroom furniture from when I’d been given the choice as a birthday present when I was sixteen. Of course, that had been to soften the news of the fact I was engaged…
That was probably the last time Father had tried to soften anything.
I’d grown up fast that day. My age in no way reflected how ancient I felt sometimes.
I’d seen more in my time than some eighty-year-olds did, and I was glad there were people who were spared the shit I had in my memory banks.
For a moment, I envied Lisandra, then I stopped it because she had her own woes, and at the moment, we weren’t deep in misery, eating our weight in Halo Top, we were shopping—her favorite pastime. Me? I wasn’t that big of a fan, but I liked doing it with her. It was the only time I felt normal.
Levigne’s had a lot of ethnic articles in their stock, more of a beach vibe than the city slicker stuff Eoghan had. But he shouldn’t have sent me shopping for him if he didn’t want my taste to reign supreme in our home, right?
Somehow, that thought had me freezing in place, long enough for Lisandra to step forward, then to look back at me when I didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” Her brow furrowed like she thought there was something wrong with me.