Page 24 of Monsters in the Dark

“I don’t think that at all,” I assured him. “I’m just telling you that I refuse to eat or drink anything that your boss sends my way.”

“Hey, it’s no skin off my nose if you want to do this the hard way,” he said, sounding bored.

If the man only knew.

Luckily for me, he didn’t.

Chapter 15

Declan~

“What the fuck, Declan?” Noah asked as he walked into the office, carrying a folder with him.

I chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not sure what to make of her, either.”

After setting the folder down on the desk, he said, “It’s all there, but it isn’t much. Kevin went as deeply as he could without getting flagged, but she might as well be a ghost.”

I looked away from the cameras that I’d been watching ever since I left her down in the basement. As predicted, she had immediately started trying to free herself, but I had made sure to tie those ropes tight enough to ensure that she couldn’t escape. Nevertheless, to her credit, that hadn’t stopped her from trying. She had even stood up a few times, then banged the chair against the block wall, trying to break it into pieces. Unfortunately for her, that chair had been built to withstand grown men trying to shatter it against the stone that made up the basement.

Opening the folder, it really was bare. There was no record of her attending any schools, though it showed that she had graduated from high school, suggesting that home schooling had been a part of her childhood. Her birth certificate showed her father as a Cian O’Connell, but nothing on her mother, and that gave me pause.

“Why is her last name Collins?” I mused.

“There’s no record of a marriage or divorce on file for her, so I don’t know,” Noah answered. “However, if you look at her entire background as a whole, it feels…I don’t know. I’d say fabricated. It just has too many holes in it when you hold it up to the light, Declan.”

I flipped through the pages, and I could see what he meant. “So, she was home-schooled, had no mother, has a different last name from her father, and even though she’s already thirty-two, her work history didn’t start until only a few years ago.”

“That about sums it up,” Noah agreed. “Besides her age, weight, and standard stats, she rents an apartment, and the only thing that she owns in her name is her car.”

“I think it’s time we hired a real hacker,” I muttered, not happy that her file wasn’t really telling me anything.

“We can always play nice with da Sartoris if yer da interested,” he drawled out sarcastically.

I shot him a look. “I’m done playing nice with the Sartoris.”

Noah grinned. “From ye lips ta God’s ears.”

Glancing back at the computer screens, Keavy was still trying to free herself, but I was really interested in how she was going to react when Taylor went down there to take her something to eat. Though she didn’t realize it, the sedative that Lochlan had given her had been enough to knock her out for over twelve hours. It was coming upon dinner time, and she had to be starving now that she’d been awake for a while.

“What’s the plan, Declan?” Noah finally asked. “What are you really going to do with her?”

I looked back at my cousin. “What do you suggest?”

“If you’re not going to kill her, then I say you put her to use,” he replied.

“How?”

“Well, you weren’t wrong about her owing you two men,” he said. “So, I suggest making her a deal.”

I leaned back in my chair as I looked up at him. “What kind of deal?”

“A job for her freedom.”

My head reared back in surprise. “What kind of job?” Honestly, though Keavy had already proven that she could take care of herself, the idea of putting a woman in danger bothered me.

“There’s only one job that we haven’t been able to get close enough to, and it’s because we’re men,” he said, and I immediately knew where he was going with this. “I say you put her on Cooper Donaldson in exchange for her freedom.”

“You want to set up Donaldson, so that Keavy ends up killing him in self-defense?”

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