Page 37 of Still Burning

“NO!” I roared.

Anson’s voice came over the phone, asking what was wrong. If I needed backup.

Fury, anguish, and fear crashed together, and I’d never felt so fucking helpless in my life.

“Tex, man, are you okay?” Anson asked frantically.

No, I wasn’t okay.

“She’s been taken,” I said through my teeth, then ended the call and immediately pressed Liam’s number.

My heart felt like it was going to beat through my damn chest. I’d left her, never thinking someone could breach our security and take her.

If I couldn’t find her…

FUCK! I couldn’t think like that.

I’d find her and kill every son of a bitch who got in my way.

14

Salem

I said very little as I listened to Brady talk about his family and their business. The flight attendant offered me every drink imaginable and kept coming out with new things to eat. But I had no appetite. I finally agreed to water in order to make her leave me alone.

All the business trips that Eamon had taken to Ireland over the years to handle his family’s real estate firm, it hadn’t been for real estate. He’d been smuggling drugs into Ireland from Morocco on luxury liners. Hash and cocaine, to be exact.

My husband had beentheIrish drug cartel.

How had I lived with him for fourteen years and never once suspected anything? Was I that naive? God, why hadn’t I seen something?

I ran through things in my head that I might have missed, but nothing seemed like an overlooked red flag. We’d had a good marriage. I’d thought we were normal.

“The real estate firm in Boston is real. I’ve been there. I’ve gone to galas it hosted,” I said, not able to fit what I was being told into our life.

Brady nodded. “Yes, it’s very real. Murphy International Realty handles the selling of high-end commercial real estate to those who need a location to funnel their money through. Just like we use the realty firm to funnel our profits through.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Wait. You’re telling me that its purpose is sell real estate to drug dealers?”

He threw back his head and laughed. Nothing about this was funny. I wished he’d stop being so freaking jolly.

“They’re a bit more grand than drug dealers, Salem. They’re the buyers who then distribute to the drug dealers and they need a business to launder the money through.” He pointed at himself. “Wearethe top of the food chain. We’ve had a few test runs in the States, and they went well, except the feckin’ CIA has connected some strains of hash as being the same as what we supply in Europe. They’ve heard of Rí but they can’t pin anything on us. That’s why ye had to leave,” he said, then took a drink of whiskey from his glass. “Ye should be thanking me. They’ve already gotten into yer close circle of friends once. They can do it again. I can’t have ‘em finding out any more than they already know.”

“What? Who? There is no one in my circle of frie—” I stopped.

Marlana. Holy crap.

He raised an eyebrow. “I see ye remember th DEA agent. They can’t touch us but they’ll help the CIA if they can.”

“But she was after Kendrix. Not me. She was my friend.”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “She manipulated the entire thing. She’s the reason ye found out about the job and applied. Kendrix was a fucking mouse. She wanted the lion. Ye were married to him.”

Was there anything in my life that was real? Had everything and everyone in it been a lie?

Feeling the ache of sorrow, I knew there had been one truth. Rome. He was my only real.

Brady leaned back and pointed at my earrings. They were small sapphire studs that Eamon had given me for my birthday several years ago. I’d had them tucked in my purse, and when Liam had Micah take my purse because of the tracker in it and he left thecontents of it for me, I didn’t realize the earrings were in there. I thought I had lost them. Not wanting to lose them again, I’d put them on and left them on.

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