Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64362 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 215(@300wpm)
He was silent for a moment. “Not enough. Not the way I do her.”
“You don’t think her not knowing is putting her in danger?”
“I’d never allow anything to touch her,” Eamon said with a growl. “I protect her.”
“This can’t go on forever. At some point, she’ll find out. Something will slip. Or happen. You think you’ll lose her if you tell her, but if she finds out that she’s been lied to, then she will walk out the fucking door.”
Silence.
I thought it was over, and the relief, mixed with possessiveness, churned inside me at listening to another man talk about Salem as if she were his to protect. Love. And she had been. But it didn’t make hearing it any easier.
“I won’t let her. If that day comes, I’ll find a way to keep her,” he finally said, sounding weary.
I’d assume living a lie was exhausting. That was essentially what he’d done.
“This is my favorite part,” Marlana said.
I shifted my eyes from the window I’d been staring at to her. She was looking at me with a smirk.
“What about the other man? The one you said she still calls out to in her sleep.”
I stilled, my eyes snapped to the phone, and my throat thickened.
“I shouldn’t have told you that. I’d had too much to drink,” Eamon replied in a thick Irish accent.
“But you said—”
“I know what I fucking said. And unless I am dead in a grave, he will never have her. He broke her, and I put her back together.”
“What if she still loves him?”
A pause…
“He doesn’t love her. Not enough. Not like I do.”
Silence.
Marlana tapped her screen, then sighed.
“I love a good drama,” she said happily, then swung her gaze from me to Liam. “That was recorded one month before Eamon went to the doctor for the symptoms that eventually killed him. It came from a CIA agent who had placed trackers in several of Eamon’s things, including his phone. Unfortunately for us, it was Eamon who had the trackers, and after his death, his brother found one, then did a clean sweep of getting them out of his house and destroyed his phone. Since then, he’s gotten a device that detects all trackers so that he can check everyone he speaks to about anything he doesn’t want the CIA hearing.”
Liam nodded, but I didn’t move. I was doing good to breathe.
Eamon Murphy’s last words replayed in my head. I hated a dead man. Loathed him. He had known nothing about me or how I felt for Salem. I’d loved her enough to let her go. He’d not loved her like that. It was his love that had been lacking. Not mine.
“I’m assuming Blaise has already heard this,” he said.
“Of course. It was sent to him immediately. I requested that I get to play it for Tex in person. Blaise agreed and thanked me for my help,” she chirped. “It was worth the trip back down here.”
I glared at her, realizing the quirky woman who came across as flighty was actually calculating. I’d not seen that in her until now. She wanted to punish me and was enjoying it. For the first time, as she looked back at me with a knowing gleam of satisfaction in her eye, I saw the DEA agent.
“To add more drama, the brother isn’t even supposed to exist. Until the CIA started getting recordings of Eamon Murphy’s phone calls to him, there was no record of a Brady Murphy or any sibling at all. No one knows what he looks like,” she said then wiggled her eyebrows up and done before turning serious. “What I am about to share with you is classified information. I could possibly be fired for this, but I do things rather regularly that I could possibly get fired for. So far, going with my gut has always paid off,” Marlana said, looking back at Liam.
He said nothing while he sat, waiting for her to continue. If this wasn’t about Salem, I didn’t give a shit, but it seemed I was going to have to stay and listen.
“We went through Salem’s apartment,” she began, and my attention was instantly snapped back to what she was saying. “When I say we, I mean me and one other. I didn’t want her things completely ransacked—and we’ve been known to do that when searching for something. So, I took the job and made sure to sweep the place but leave it as if we were never there.”
“Was that necessary?” I bit out angrily. “You have that recording.”
Marlana cut her eyes at me. “Yes, it was necessary. Just because she didn’t know who Eamon was doesn’t mean there wasn’t something there that could help us nail the Murphy family. A lead to the brother who is a damn ghost. Impossible to find. Anyway”—she shifted her feet and crossed her arms over her chest—“there was a tracker in every sole of her shoes, inside the lining of all her purses and all her coats. My first assumption was that it was Eamon who had done that. He’d want to know where she was at all times. That family has enemies, and since she was clueless about his drug trafficking, he couldn’t exactly send a bodyguard with her everywhere she went. I’m assuming he had someone trailing her though, and she wasn’t aware of it.