Page 88 of Líadan's Code

“I fucked up,” I whisper. “I took away his and your choice from you. Jordan told us over and over again that he wanted to explore our relationship, and I threw him away.”

“I went along with it, so we fucked up,” Brendan reminds me. “Look what he did, baby.”

Shifting up so he can pull his phone out of his pocket, I watch as he opens a file on it. Once he hands it to me, I look through the list, seeing names that I recognize.

“What is this?” I ask. “I know the names, but not what it all means.”

“They were there the night you were auctioned,” he says softly. “Jordan found the non-disclosure agreement contracts in your dad’s files and was going to give them to you. We have the option to re-route them to another location for tomorrow if you want. Give the Banshee time to play.”

Taking a sharp breath, I blink furiously as I struggle with the force of my emotions.

“You keep saying ‘we’,” I say, my voice thick.

“Well, you’re not getting rid of me, so of course it’s ‘we’,” he says with a chuckle. “You’re my girl, for better or for worse, Lía. If you need vows and shit, there you go.”

Laughing through my tears, I lay my head on Brendan’s chest as I sniffle.

“Such a damn romantic,” I murmur. “The both of you. I miss him. My dreams are punishing me, and I’m afraid to sleep.”

“So we’ll find him after tomorrow and tell him. I think we also will be able to find Cormac too before our meeting,” he says. “There’s so much more intel in the files he sent me, Lía.”

“Show me. The meeting isn’t until the afternoon, so we can find Cormac and fuck him up,” I mutter. “I want everything he knows about the auctions and the warehouse. Future inventory drops, how they chose people, all of it. We are not trafficking humans.”

“Here,” Brendan says, showing me the next document with the information. Looking through the Google camera of the area, I move around until I see a building that could be where he lives.

“If you look, there’s a private entrance for this residence,” I show him. “No other apartments, even though the majority of this neighborhood appears to be apartment style homes. Cormac isn’t someone who would want neighbors. Let’s check this place out in the morning and then carefully canvas the area.”

Talking helps me calm myself down, and I just feel really stuffy now as I focus on things. Kissing my temple, Brendan gets up with me to move to the bed. Kicking off his shoes, he scoots us both onto the bed.

“There’s so many moving pieces,” Brendan muses as he shows me the rest of the documents. There are surveillance voice recordings of phone conversations, and Cormac’s smarmy voice as he makes plans, talks about having another auction to move the inventory he currently has, makes my skin crawl.

“If I think about it too long, my head hurts,” I tell him, smiling as Brendan hands me a tissue for my nose.

“Same,” he sighs. “We’re almost done, baby. A part of me is hoping Jordan won’t leave until after we’re done. Another part of me wants to find him immediately and tell him how sorry we are. I got all tongue tied when I spoke to him. It must be what he’s like at the record label. Jordan understands the masks we wear, because he does the same. It’s a corporate mask, but one just the same.”

“Fuck,” I say, realizing how much time went into this. “How did he even manage this?”

“He’s Jordan,” Brendan says with a small chuckle. Turning in his arms, I move so I’m sprawled between his legs on the bed, my legs intertwining with his. “Not all heroes wear capes, baby. He has a good soul, but is very willing to go dark to protect the people he cares about. Jordan made sure I understood that. Also, we can never go back to that restaurant if we don’t figure our shit out with him. The owner yelled at me.”

My lips twitch as I look up at him, eyes wide. “She’s so nice though,” I say. “ I guess she likes Jordan better.”

“She likes us just fine, when we aren’t being idiots,” Brendan says.

“I guess it’s time we got smart then,” I murmur, taking out my tablet and notepad. We had set up a text to go out to everyone with the address, but now we need to pivot. “Where can we divert these people and who can we trust to hold them there?”

“The Macdonalds would hold them for us I bet,” Brendan murmurs. “Jordan once showed me how to call people in a way to make tracing it harder…”

Pulling out the laptop, he makes a dummy number and calls Rory.

“Hello? Who the hell is calling me on a Wisconsin phone number?” Rory snarls, making me smirk.

I guess it works.

“Hi, Mr. Macdonald,” I say before he can hang up. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well this makes more sense. Are you two safe?”

It’s still surprising to me that anyone cares and I nod before I force myself to speak.

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