Page 46 of Still Burning

Anything. Fucking anything to lead me in a direction close to her would help. I needed something.

“Over a year ago, some of the larger dealers in the southeast worked a deal with a Travis Mitchell. He owned a trucking line out of Mississippi. The cocaine was coming from overseas, and when tested, it had a higher purity than from where they had been previously buying from, and it was the same price they had been paying. They made a deal with him and only had contact with him via a messenger.

“One of the men got suspicious and did some research to find the trucking line didn’t exist, and he could find no trace of this particular Travis Mitchell. He let it go because the product was selling for higher dollar and his profits were up. But he went through his security footage from his house, where he’d met the final time with the so-called Travis Mitchell, and pulled an image of him from the camera to keep since the man didn’t seem to exist, but the product still arrived at the designated time and place it was supposed to.”

Blaise picked up a file from the table and held it out for me.

Taking it, I glanced at Liam before opening it to see if there was any sign on his face that he knew what was in here. My eyes scanned the first paper, and I frowned.

“Is this a background check on Salem?” I asked, my eyes shooting back up to Blaise. I hadn’t asked for him to snoop into her life.

He nodded. “You need to know someone to find them.”

I closed the folder and handed it back to him. “I won’t invade her privacy. Her background won’t help us.”

Blaise took the folder, then opened it and turned to the next page and took out a picture. He held it up for me to see. It was a photo of a man I’d never seen.

“This wasn’t in her background check, but you need to see it first,” he said.

I glanced up at him, confused on how this was a lead. He put the photo down on the table before he took out another photo, then held it up for me to look at. My heart began to hammer in my chest as I stared at Salem in a wedding dress, looking like a goddamn angel. Fuck, that hurt. I swallowed hard through my tightening throat, then reluctantly shifted my attention to the bastard by her side.

“What the…” I hissed as I looked back down at the photo in my hand.

“As you can see, this is Salem with her husband on her wedding day. I have more recent ones, but I felt the younger version of Eamon Murphy resembled the man in the photo the most. Wilder did a test, and it is not the same man. There are differences, but looking at them, one would assume they were closely related. Brothers.”

I went and snatched up the picture of Brady Murphy. This was the bastard who had taken her. I had a face. The goddamn ghost wasn’t faceless anymore.

“While the Murphys are Irish, Travis Mitchell was a Southerner. Spoke with a Southern accent. Seems Brady Murphy can do more than just change his name. I’d venture to guess he can do many different accents and speak several languages. It would make sense. No one can live in the shadows as completely as he has been whispered to. He’s been walking in daylight all along, just as a range of different people.”

That made this more difficult. Fuck!

“You sure you don’t want to look through this file?” Blaise asked, holding it up.

I shook my head. “No.”

He shrugged. “It’s your choice, but it doesn’t hurt for a man to know the woman he loves.”

“She can tell me what she wants me to know about her past,” I told him. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her life with Eamon in pictures. That was a torture I could avoid.

“All right, I guess you know most of the younger years anyway. The uncle of hers that she was questioned about by the police—she said you were at home that night, helping her with homework,” he said with a smirk. “I’m assuming he did something worth you beating him to death with a bat.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You think it was me?” I asked.

It had been. When Salem had told me that her uncle had touched her inappropriately and her father allowed it, I’d been so blind with rage that I tracked him down and took my bat with me. His death wasn’t an accident. I’d gone there, wanting to kill him. A neighbor saw me enter the house and described me. A few days after they found his dead body sprawled out in the living room, I was taken in for questioning. I denied it. Salem backed up my story. There was no proof—they never found my bat—and I had been left alone.

Blaise looked amused. “That was revenge and rage. I know it well.”

He dropped the folder on the table. “I’ll leave it with you to destroy then. We have what we needed.”

I stared at it, not wanting the temptation there, but said nothing.

“Things would have played out differently for the two of you if it hadn’t been for the miscarriage, I imagine,” he mused.

“Miscarriage?” I asked, not sure what the hell he was talking about.

“I mean, I assumed it was yours. Maybe you shouldn’t go through that file after all.”

I was at the table, jerking open the folder and scanning the pages for medical history when my eyes locked on doctor’s notes from an emergency room visit one month after I’d shattered my soul and set her free. She’d been admitted for blood loss. It was the cause of a miscarriage. She’d been almost ten weeks pregnant.

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