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“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“You kind of are. And you’re not wrong. Sneaking into that club yesterday… I was totally out of my element. Hell, I was half expecting one of those guards to spot me for what I was and take me out back for a Mob-style beatdown. You, on the other hand, you were fucking fearless. I can’t believe you snuck into the employees’ area like that. I’d say you had balls but, you know.”
I chuckled. “I like to think I’ve got spiritual balls.”
“Whatever it is, you’ve got them.”
“I’m glad we’re seeing eye-to-eye on this. The way I look at it, if there’s going to be danger, the fewer of us that have to get sucked into it the better. And this doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep you in the loop.”
“You’d better. I’m not just worried about Kat now; I’m worried aboutyou. These people are dangerous, and if you keep poking your head around…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to.
“I know. And I’ll be careful.”
Once the call was over and I was back to working on figuring out the next step, I decided to devote the rest of the day to finding out as much as I could about Connor O’Leary.
I dressed in some leggings and an oversized Yale Law hoodie before taking some cold takeout from the fridge and plopping in front of my laptop. Rain poured down outside as I conducted my research, trying to find out about him, his family, his boss, whatever I could.
Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much. Connor O’Leary was born in Dublin, Ireland, on August 15, 1987. There was no information on his family, other than that his father wasn’t in the picture and that he’d come to the US when he was a teenager with his mother, Bridgit, and his little brother, Kellan.
That was it. There were no school records, no college records, not even a criminal record. Connor, despite being associated with the Irish Mob, had managed to maintain a squeaky-clean rap sheet.
That was no small thing. I’d spent enough time working with criminals to know that there were two basic types of guys that made a career out of breaking the law. The first were the hot-headed, low impulse control types, the kind of guys who became career criminals because they were the sort of violent, lowlife predator types who couldn’t or wouldn’t make it in the normal world.
These guys didn’t last long. Most of them met their ends before they hit thirty; either finding themselves in a jail cell or six feet under. They made up the majority of criminals—the thieves, the purse-snatchers, the corner guys, the murderers.
Then, there was the other type. This second kind of career criminal was smart and canny, one who could make plans and follow through on them. This was the sort of crook who, in another life, could’ve made millions in the white-collar world. This type was few and far between, but they were out there.
And they were the scariest kind of criminals there were.
There was no doubt in my mind that Connor was part of the latter group. No other way would he have been able to make it to his mid-thirties without getting tagged for so much as a parking ticket. I couldn’t quite prove it yet, but I was sure that he knew something about Kat’s disappearance.
After finishing my glass of wine, already well into the evening, I closed my laptop and looked out of my big living room window, the evening city alive with bright lights that cut through the stormy darkness.
Connor O’Leary. Whatever was going to happen with finding out about Kat, I had a feeling he was going to be at the center of it. And as if the situation weren’t complicated enough already, I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d done that day, how good his body had felt on top of mine.
I wanted more—no matter what the cost.
Chapter 15
Connor
Icouldn’t get the damn woman off my mind.
It was Monday morning, and I was in my office with my feet on the desk, a cup of coffee close at hand. I’d always loved coffee, but I’d been really getting after it that day. Something about my meeting with Claire had left me tied up in knots, thinking about things I hadn’t considered in a long while.
Truth be told, I felt crazy.
Claire hadn’t just wowed me with her beauty, she’d wowed me with everything. She was gorgeous and smart and ambitious, all traits that I found irresistible in women. It’d been a long time, if ever, since I’d met someone like her who embodied them so perfectly.
The impression she’d left on me was so intense that I found myself thinking about things like… settling down. My dirty secret was that I’d been itching to get out of the business for a long while. The violence, the brutality… it wasn’t for me. Never had been. But I’d been able to keep those feelings stowed away. Last thing I wanted was for Eddie to find out that I was looking for a way out.
I was the second in command, after all. And the Mob wasn’t a business where you could just put in your two weeks and retire to Boca. Once you were in, you were in for life.
There was also the small matter of how I’d looked Claire dead in the eyes and lied. I knew damn well where Kiki was. In fact, I had her phone in front of me, having taken it from her personal belongings that we’d boxed up when we’d brought her in for questioning. Byron, our twenty-two-year-old tech whiz, had poked around in it, reset the password, and turned off tracking.
Naturally, I’d taken the opportunity to find out a little more about Kiki and Claire. Kiki’s socials were the usual—lots of selfies and random pics. But there had also been several photos of her and Claire.
With her first and last name, I’d hit the ground running looking up her information. Turns out she was a defense attorney at Benson & Silver, one of the top firms in the city. Before that, she’d done her undergrad at Penn State before finishing up at Yale Law. She’d made a name for herself in the meantime, gaining a reputation as one of the toughest, most tenacious defense attorneys in the city.
