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Ava’s mouth parted slightly. “This is like a spy movie or some shit,” she murmured. “Except I’m not James Bond.” She pouted slightly at that, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.
“So how do we use me as bait?” she asked.
“You’ve had a guard or one of us with you since we rescued you from the McDonough mansion,” I told her. Ava let out a dramatic sigh.
“Is there a point to this somewhere?”
Her father chuckled. “They’re going to make it look like you’re alone, lass,” he explained. “Make it seem like he got the drop on us while our guard was down.”
“Great,” she agreed. “How are we going to do that?”
Liam leaned back in his chair. “Christian doesn’t know that Kenzi isn’t playing his game,” he told her. “He thinks she’s on his side.”
“That is where she’s been?”
I shrugged. “Sort of.”
Ava shot me a quizzical look. “If she is ‘sort of’ with him, then why doesn’t she just kill him?”
“Because she’s in contact with him, but not in person,” I explained. “Paranoid motherfucker.”
Ava took a deep breath and let it out. “All right.” She leaned forward in her chair slightly. “Break it down for me.”
* * *
I dropped Ava off at the clinic later that afternoon after we went through our plan on how to corner Christian. Kenzi would float her own plan to her brother about luring Ava away to meet her and reconcile over the past. Some undisclosed spot she would mention to him. He would be hiding with his men, and so would we.
My focus now was on finding Sheila and Remus. The pair had managed to somehow slip under the radar. Whoever they worked for had skills and deep pockets. Not even the dark web had been able to pick up a trace of them. I had thought that the organization started and stopped with Sheila, but my gut told me she was just another pawn in a game no one knew the rules to.
“From what I can find, Sheila McDonough was born Sheila Islandier, a native born Irish,” Bridget told me. She’d been leading the charge on Sheila and Remus McDonough, while Mark was set on finding the mole and Christian. “On paper, she was born in the late 1950s, lived and studied in Cork, and met Seamus McDonough at age eighteen. Had Katherine McDonough less than nine months later.”
“That is rather suspicious,” I sighed. “And what do you mean by ‘on paper’?”
Bridget clicked her tongue and shoved the small screen aside for another one.
“I mean that Sheila Islandier never existed.” Jesus, this family was complicated. “There is no proper birth record for her. The one on file is a fake and the worst but, it was the fifties, so.” Bridget shrugged.
“Who is she then?”
“Well.” Bridget blew out her cheeks. “When you told me about the creepy-ass human barn in Portland where you believe Marianne was kept, I did a little digging.” She paused to swipe left. “A lot of digging, actually, and there are things I cannot unlearn.”
“Like?” I was beginning to get impatient.
“A girl fitting Sheila’s description was reported missing by her family.” Bridget sniffed in disdain. “Except that they reported her missing a week after the authorities believe she was taken. Now, local police couldn’t tie anything back to the prominent family.”
“How prominent?” I asked, eyes narrowed at the screen.
“A senator with a very large gambling debt.”
Just like Senator Crowe. Except the daughter he had tried to sell was not his.
“Sounds like a theme.”
Bridget snickered. “Well, I did say to myself, ‘Bridg, if one disgusting baldheaded Senator sold his daughter for money, how many others did as well?’ And you know what I found?”
“The jackpot?”
“The jackpot,” she confirmed.
