Page 129 of Carnal Wagers

“Brody thought there was a good chance LK was gone again, and his woman didn’t want to wait any longer to meet.”

“And a week later, she’s dead.”

Liam pinched his lips and bobbed his head. “Exactly.”

“And you’ve been wondering why I haven’t left Alice’s side,” I deadpanned.

“Aye, well, it’s driving our brother mad. And you know Brody. Now that he’s gone and buried himself in his cave of computers, we won’t be seeing him till he figures something out or wears himself down.”

“We’ll make a schedule to take care of him. Force feed him if we have to.”

“Lord knows he’ll need it.” Liam leaned forward on the table on his elbows, and I cringed, imagining the stickiness of the table suctioning at his skin if he moved. “You know, Cranwell had some good information to share last night.”

“Oh?” I covered the table edges with napkins before resting my arms to grab my wrap.

“He made some inquiries through a friend at Interpol using the information we found on Fiona. Turns out her mother and her mother’s second husband, Fiona’s first stepfather, stayed married for eight years until he died. Now, this is the interesting part. He had a daughter from a previous relationship, same age as Fiona, a woman called Laoise Healy. After her father’s death, Laoise was shipped down south to Cork to live with her grandparents, but get this. She went missing two years later, only to surface as a witness when Fiona accused her third stepfather of assault at seventeen.”

I patted a napkin against my lips and beard, eyes flicking up to Alice, then back down to the leftovers of my food. “Where is she now?”

“Not in Ireland. Not anymore, that’s for sure. Hasn’t been a record of her there in almost twenty-nine years.” Twenty-nine years, that matched the timeline of when the Love Knot Killer murdered their first victim. “My guess, she changed her name.”

Liam finished his drink as the restaurant door chimed, announcing new customers. He then went to polish off the last bits of ketchup with his fries.

“And?” I urged.

“And what? That’s where the trail goes cold. Oh, by the way, Cranwell also showed us the exhumation report on Fiona. Couldn’t send it to us for our records, but it’s her, and she definitely had a kid before she croaked. His new theory’s that Laoise, or whatever her name is now, is avenging Fiona.”

“It would fit. Cranwell got any pictures of this Laoise?”

“I sent it over to you last night. If you’d been checking your messages, you would’ve seen it.”

I grunted and chucked down my food wrapper. “Last night just wasn’t the time. I got into it with Alice over exactly the same pile of shite you gave me earlier.”

“Makes sense.”

“What?”

“Women love the idea of being kept, not the reality of it.”

He shoved the remaining quarter of his gyro into his mouth and groaned, signing an explosive kiss to his fingers.

“I swear they put crack in these things. Deadly pick. I’ll have to come back here.”

I cringed as he licked his fingers and wiped off stray sauce with a mountain of napkins.

“You done?”

He hummed through a last lick of his lips and tossed his used napkins in the basket. “Any recent news from Sosa?”

In the last month, we intercepted six of the drug shipments Sosa had planned to sell within the Greater Boston area without O’Leary involvement.

“I told him over a week ago that if he wanted his six ‘misplaced’ shipments out for sale, our penalty fee for overstepping our hospitality and stalling negotiations has upped to fifteen percent on top of our regular margin. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Not a big loss. We all know his word’s worth seven shades of shite.”

“Won’t matter anyhow. With the funds from Alice’s products, we’ll finally pay him off and cut ties. I’m just waiting for him to reach out. I want him resigned.”

“Well, it helps his dealers now stick out like sore thumbs.” He waggled his fingers at me, and I snorted. “Devin caught another one of the fuckers the other day. Lad already lost one finger to us last month, and now he’s missing another.”