Page 2 of Destroy Me
She clicked the mouse again, and the camera zoomed in just in time. Fionn’s face tightened. A soundless cry escaped him, his body jerking, emptying himself in the ultimate pleasure. Lyse watched, unblinking, until her eyes burned and her throat closed completely. Until the hard knot in her stomach grew so big, so full of bile and self-hatred that it rose up her throat and forced her away from the screen.
Thank God the trash can was close by.No puking on the keyboard, Sheppard.
When the heaving finally stopped—and when she could walk without her knees giving out—she carried herself and the trash can into the bathroom down the hall. The chilled water felt good on her flushed face, rinsing the bitter taste from her mouth. Hot tears mingled with the cold, but she pretended they weren’t there. Pretended she was okay. It was the only way to get through each day. Giving in to the pain didn’t help when it would only come back tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
Avoiding her reflection in the mirror kept the illusion of control intact for a few more, precious seconds.
She couldn’t even hate Fionn for what she’d seen. He was the resident lady’s man at Global First; everyone knew it. And it wasn’t like he wasn’t made for it. The man was an Irish god—one she wished she’d never met, most days. But then she wouldn’t be able to tear her heart out night after night, would she?
She walked back into the bedroom, grateful that whatever he’d done with the woman, she’d at least missed that part. Though watching him cradle her on his lap, his big hands running over her hair and down her spine, might be worse. Lyse could practically feel those long, rugged fingers on her skin. She shivered beneath the dream touch, then shuddered at her sick imagination.
The clang of water running through the pipes jerked her back to reality. Sean in the bathroom. Her next-door neighbor must have an early shift at the restaurant. Though their shared wall was insulated enough that they both had privacy, nothing could quiet the noisy pipes that ran through them.
She glanced at the clock display in the bottom corner of her computer screen to confirm the time, and relief flooded her. Time for coffee. It might be the middle of the night in Georgia, but here in Ireland the sun was just over the horizon. Though she didn’t deserve the reprieve, she clicked off her view of Fionn and began to cycle through her regular checks—Deacon’s property, Trapper’s apartment, the Global First compound—grateful when emotion began to ebb in favor of her critical thinking. Ones and zeros, observations didn’t require feeling. With anyone else she could shut it off, do the job. Retreat when the fuckup that was her life became too much to handle, which was exactly what she did now. Retreat. There was no shame in regrouping, right?
Right. Keep telling yourself that.
She rubbed at the ache in her chest, eyes on the screen.
The last house on her list wasn’t a team member; it was a house here in North Quigley Village. A quiet neighborhood off one of the main streets that bisected the town. The houses were small, cottages really, with bigger yards that allowed for plenty of the gardening that flourished in Irish country summers. The owner would be getting up soon, following her normal routine. Lyse paused her surveillance and rewound twenty-four hours, quickly scanning the video. Nothing unusual. Her finger tensed, about to close the program.
And that’s when she saw it—a shadow. Not near the house, but up on the street. The neighbors were all in bed, everything still, quiet in that way that only occurred in the dead of night. The dark, amorphous shape near the top-right corner of the screen didn’t cross in front of the house, simply lingered there near the hedgerow. Someone else might’ve thought it was a shadow cast by the full moon or a neighbor’s still-lit lamp, but Lyse had watched hours of surveillance on this particular house. She knew every branch of the trees, every nuance of the night hours as they passed. This shadow shouldn’t be there, but it was.
The emotional girl inside her retreated, allowing the intelligence-trained woman to take over.
An hour later her analytical mind and quick fingers had supplied a face, a name, and a trail that led her back to a part of Fionn’s life he’d kept a closely guarded secret from everyone but Mark Alvarez and Deacon Walsh. A secret she shouldn’t know and had prayed would never rear its ugly head—but it had.
She knew it and the shadow knew it, but Fionn didn’t. And now she had a decision to make: keep herself safe, or protect the one woman Fionn had always loved?
Chapter Two
The paper was thin, but the stack was thick. Too many pages telling him he’d failed again. The only satisfaction available was to ball up the report in his big hands, crushing and crushing and crushing until finally he had a missile he could aim. A hard whip of his arm sent the ball whizzing across the room.
Its wimpy impact on the opposite wall pretty much summed up his past two months.
“The latest lead didn’t pan out?”
Fionn jerked toward his office door. Deacon shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him.Getting soft, Irish?
He’d love to tell his inner bastard to shove those doubts up his tight arse, but the truth of the statement was leaning against his doorjamb, waiting for a response.
“The latest lead didn’t actually lead us to a fecking thing.” And he was running out of new ones. Lyse Sheppard had become a ghost, slipping through his fingers at every turn.
Deac grunted a response to that as he entered the office. His best friend looked good. Healthy, rested, happy. Having his new girlfriend—or fiancée; Fionn had heard that bit of news this morning—seemed to more than agree with him.
“How’s the wee one doing?” he asked, hoping to deflect any further questions about the trail that ran colder than a Guinness in the Arctic.
“Fine.” His daughter always made Deacon smile, but this time the man’s smile didn’t quite dispel the worry in his eyes. Worry Fionn knew had nothing to do with his best friend’s family and everything to do with him. “She missed you at the Halloween party.”
He’d been drowning himself and his anger in whisky, if he was remembering correctly. He’d been so wrecked, most of the night was still a blur. Sydney would’ve been a much sweeter companion. “Mm. And I was missing her as well.”
“How was vacation?”
Fionn shot his friend a sour look. It hadn’t been a vacation; it had been forced leave. Hence the whisky. He’d become obsessed with the Sheppard case, Alvarez said. Wasn’t thinking correctly. Needed to get his mind off work.
When was his boss—and everyone else around him—going to accept that they couldn’t rest, couldn’t be safe until Sheppard was brought to justice? Deacon kept pointing out that no one had been truly hurt. Fionn’s concussion didn’t count, he said, because he’d already had one, so what was a little harder bump on the head?
His friend didn’t get it; none of them did.
