“Odd.”
“Yes, I agree. I think he switched to his cell and we don’t have the go-ahead to monitor that yet. Do you think you can contact his wife’s sister and see if she knows anything about this supposed delivery? We have a unit outside his house, and either O’Shea has slipped out of the house without us knowing or he went to bed and he’s not planning on going anywhere. The place is dark and we can’t see any movement inside.”
“He’s got a young kid—he wouldn’t leave her alone. Did you notice if Lizzy’s sister was with him?” I hated referring to Elle in that way, but the less the devil herself, Agent Meg Blanchet of the Drug Enforcement Administration, knew about what had transpired between Elle and me, the better.
Her laugh was abrupt, cold even. “He dropped the kid off at his sister’s earlier. But Logan, I would have thought you’d know the answer to the whereabouts of Lizzy’s sister before me.” She stressed Lizzy’s sister.
That’s when I knew I was fucked.
“I know you’re having a relationship with the missing woman’s sister. I’m not stupid. I just hope you’re not.”
With everything in me I wanted to tell her to fuck off, but then my father would end up in jail on the trumped-up RICO charges she was ready to pounce on. It was the ball she dangled over my head. The reason I was doing this in the first place. It was the reason she had me picked up four months ago. She’d hoped my bleeding heart over my father would persuade me to help her—and she was right.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act allowed the DEA to gather enough circumstantial information on my father for him to be formally charged for crimes not committed by him but linked to him through his assistance. The only way he would be spared from being charged was if I agreed to cooperate with the DEA and get them all the information they wanted.
God help me, Agent Meg Blanchet, the she-devil with her red hair, red shoes, and matching red lips, has been yanking my chain for way too long, and I’d just about had enough. But then I thought about my old man behind bars and knew I had to keep going. I’d done everything she asked of me in terms of cooperation—met with her at Molly’s every week to give her updates on my father’s “calls” for Patrick, or at any time she deemed appropriate. She wanted Killian, or more accurately the Mob-linked crime information that existed only in his head, to further her case against the Flannigan family.
With much hesitation, soon after the night she brought me in, I talked to my gramps. I told him she wanted names, dates, and facts—information he’d never want to give. “To be a rat!” he’d screamed.
I left there that night convinced he wasn’t going to do it, but in the end, he, like me, couldn’t stand to see my father go to prison. We both knew he’d never come out still breathing. He was weak and he’d be eaten alive on the inside. Because of this, and this only, Killian agreed to meet with the DEA and we both agreed to keep this task I’d been strapped with from my old man. He didn’t need any more bullshit to deal with.
The final provision of my agreement with the DEA, the one that would free my father, the one that I couldn’t wait to deliver, was the information on the next cocaine shipment. They wanted to witness the exchange between buyer and seller. With that, there would be enough solid proof that Patrick and Tommy Flannigan were running the biggest drug ring to hit the Boston streets in years.
The only reason I’d been doing this bullshit for the past four months now was because with Patrick and Tommy behind bars, both my father and I would be free. And now so would Elle and Gramps.
I couldn’t wait.
“Let me see what I can find out. I’ll call when I know anything.”
She tsk-tsked. “I’ll be waiting.”
The line disconnected and my foot slammed down on the gas. At ninety miles an hour, I was back in the limits of Boston by eight forty-five. I tried Elle’s cell but she didn’t pick up.
Taking a chance, I decided to hit up the boutique first. She was still staying with O’Shea, so if she wasn’t there, she had to be at work.
Whether or not she knew anything, I’d already decided I would have to come clean and tell her what was going on. She had to get to O’Shea and find out where the product had been delivered. The drop point was key in the investigation, and the place and people would be used as the link to O’Shea, and in turn to Patrick and Tommy.
O’Shea would be collateral damage.
I knew Elle wouldn’t want anything to happen to him, but if he were smart, he’d make a deal with Blanchet. That wasn’t my concern—my concern was my father, and now Elle.
Where Lizzy fit in, I had no idea.
The pieces were sketchy.
She was somehow involved with Tommy, but whether it was with O’Shea’s knowledge or not, I didn’t know.
My cell rang again when I was about a block from the boutique. It was my old man.