Page 80 of This Moment

“Well, you weren’t around when I was growing up. I was bored living in that house all alone with no one but Sally. I started studying languages. I can speak Italian also, but not as fluently. Anyway, they were interested in me. I figured I wouldn’t go the lawyer route, so I figured I might as well see what they had to say.”

When he stopped talking, I asked, “And?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I work for the CIA, Kian. Even though I’m based out of Washington, DC, my job takes me all over the world. We came up with the structural engineer job so it would give me a good excuse as to why I traveledall the time.”

I took a few steps back. How was that even possible? How could my younger brother work for the government and I not know?

“Does Mom and Dad know?”

“Of course not. No one does; well, you do now.”

I shook the confusion from my head. “And why are you telling me?”

Mark looked around. “Are we alone?”

“Yes,” I said with a humorless laugh.

He exhaled and said, “A couple of days ago, a friend of mine in the FBI contacted me about a case he has been working on in Boston. There is a large, pretty powerful mafia family there. The Bellucci’s.”

My heart dropped and I was pretty sure the color drained from my face.

“They had the daughter’s house bugged since it was easier to access. They picked up a conversation between her and her brother, Michael. I guess he’s been searching for a woman he dated. Her name was Katy Reynolds. He said Katy up and left town without word about where she was going. Apparently, he stopped at her condo, and her roommate said she came home and found her gone with her cell phone left behind. No note, nothing. On top of what they learned from the bug, after digging deeper, we know that her bakery was sold pretty much right after she vanished, and all her money was taken from her account…and not by her, by someone in the CIA.”

The lawyer. Randy. I knew he was more than just a lawyer.

“Michael told his sister that Katy might have witnessed something, so she disappeared. The sister asked what she might have seen, but Michael didn’t say. He only said heneeded to find her on orders from their father, but he really didn’t want to find her. Clearly, he thinks this ex-girlfriend saw something the family didn’t want her to see. That led the FBI to do some digging of their own.”

My legs felt like they were going to give out. “Why…why are you telling me all of this?”

Mark raised a brow. “If they could track this girl to Moose Village, then so can this family, Kian, if he can pay the right person off in the FBI or CIA. I know the girl you’re dating; the one who works for Aunt Opal, is Katy Reynolds, now known as Cadie Waterford.”

I rubbed my temples. “How did they find her?”

“All it took was one traffic camera that got a good picture of her face. It wasn’t hard to match it to the Katy Reynolds who vanished. She wasn’t listed as missing; her family tells the same story. Katy needed a fresh start, and they haven’t heard from her or know where she is. The feds think she somehow got a message to them through a guy who works for the CIA agent who helped her escape. Anyway, they traced the car plates, and it didn’t take much work for them to realize she was here in Moose Village and how she got the fake identity. They just don’t know why her lawyer, slash CIA guy, didn’t have her go to the police. He was the one who arranged for her new identity and took care of the sale of her bakery and moved her funds. My buddy knows I’m from here, so he called to see if I could help with the case. Get close to Cadie, find out what she knows, and see if we can bring her in to testify against the family if she even saw anything. But, if she went through all the trouble to leave Boston, sell her bakery, and get a new identity, I’m pretty confident she saw something. When Macy mentioned themysterious woman who had shown up out of nowhere, I quickly pieced it together. I needed to do some surveillance and make sure this girl was the girl the FBI and the Bellucci family were looking for, so I told Macy I was going to Boston for a few days. I saw Cadie on her way into the bakery this morning and confirmed it was the same person. I knew you were dating her, so…here I am.”

“Did you tell your friend at the FBI?”

Mark shook his head. “Not when I realized you were dating her, and she was indeed working for Opal. Did you know about her past, Kian?”

I sat down on the sofa and scrubbed my hands down my face. I leaned forward, my arms resting on my knees. “Yeah, I knew. She told me, but only recently, and Opal doesn’t know. She knows she’s running from something, but has no idea how serious it is.”

When he didn’t say anything, I looked up and saw the anger on his face. “So you knew this woman witnessed something and that the mafia…the fucking mafia was looking for her, and you didn’t do anything? You just let her keep working at Opal’s bakery, putting her and everyone in this town in danger?”

I stood and pointed to my brother. “You don’t know a damn thing. Fuck, you don’t even know if she saw anything! Cadie wasn’t even sure the Bellucci family would be looking for her.”

“Well, they’re looking for her, and I’m telling you, Kian, they’re not going to be that far behind the FBI. She’s too fucking close to Boston. This is a tourist town; what if someone comes here and sees her? Do you have any idea how popular her bakery in Boston was?”

The sound of someone gasping caused us both to turn and look at the door. Cadie stood there with a look of pure horror on her face.

“Cadie,” I said as I walked toward her. Her eyes darted from me to Mark. “This is Mark, my brother.”

Her look of fear turned to confusion. “What?”

Mark took a few cautious steps toward Cadie. “Hi, Cadie, I’m Mark Carter.”

He pulled out a CIA badge and showed her. Cadie’s head whipped around to look at me. “Your brother works for the CIA?”

“I just found out,” I said as I held up my hands. “I swear to you, Cadie, I had no idea.”

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