Breakaway - Sadie Jacks Page 0,60

night with the woman of my dreams in my arms.

**

I woke up the next morning covered in long dark purple hair. It was what I imagined waking up in a spider’s web to be like. Luckily, I didn’t have to get bitten by a radioactive spider. Downside, I still didn’t have any cool superpowers. Just creepy spiders.

I shoved away the dark strands and sat up. My back was a little achy from ignoring my ten-thousand-dollar bed for the night. But as I looked down at my woman, I figured I could deal with it.

Maybe she’d even massage my back and neck tonight. After watching her work on Thane yesterday, I was willing to even make up excuses to get her hands on my body.

A low triple beep sounded again. Oh. That’s what must have woken me up. Considering I’d left my phone on the dining room table, it was probably a good thing the computer had started signaling.

I got to my feet, feeling like a decrepit old man as things popped and cracked that had never done so before. I stretched my hands over my head and rotated my neck in a couple circles before I made it to my bank of computers.

I clicked the button on the mouse to wake up the screen. Three faces appeared before me. Three faces I knew all too well.

Shit.

I got everyone up and around, gave Hols a set of my clothes as I pushed her towards the living room. The work week had officially started and we needed to keep up appearances.

“Spill the news, bro. I feel like I’m about to explode,” Tag snarled as he slugged back some more black coffee.

“Right. Yesterday while I was setting up the backdating autotasks, I set up some obscure terms for keyword searches here in Triport. Hollyn’s not a very common name, and I doubted her mother would have come up with it on her own. I was banking on it being a family name or some variation of same.” I took a drink of my fresh squeezed orange juice. “I got a firm hit on Hollyn spelled with two wildcards. Which, when paired with her last name, slimmed it down to a single name.”

“What are wildcards?” Hols asked as she drank her water.

“Basically, it tells the computer to look for all possibilities for the two vowels in your name. If you mother played with the sounds or the letters, the computer could search for those as well, even if we didn’t have the correct spelling.”

She nodded and took another drink.

“I don’t know your mother’s first name, but I did another keyword search looking for any women from ages fifteen to thirty-five with the last name of Parker from the United States. As you can imagine, there were a ton. Banking on genetics, I gave the computer a range for each of Hollyn’s main features. That slimmed the results, but not enough to make a huge difference.”

“Pinpoint it for us, Tove,” Thane said as he glanced at his watch for the tenth time. “I’m going to be running late as it is. I’m never late. This will be out of the norm. Hurry it up.”

“Right. Sorry. Ever heard of the Kavanaughs?”

Thane shook his head. “No. What about them?”

“Seems when this particular set of Kavanaughs immigrated over here from Ireland back in the day they were the tippy top of their clan. Teachers, judges, doctors, helped form laws and whatnot.” I smiled. “Sound familiar?”

“That’s what the reading said about druids. More than the magical side of things, they were considered to be the go-between of gods and men,” Tag said.

I nodded. “Super simplified, but yeah. Patriarch was Deaglan Kavanaugh. Had seven kids with his wife. Had another three with a mistress. Of those born out of wedlock, one Matthew Kavanaugh Cananach had three sons.”

“Matt’s last name was Cananach,” Thane said.

I nodded again. “Seems his name wasn’t really Mattias Kavan as Hollyn believed. But rather Matthew Kavanaugh Cananach the Second.”

Tag squeezed his eyes closed. “I’ve heard that last name before. Give me a minute.”

“You might recognize them from CanaTech and Security,” I said. “Biggest private military company in the US.”

“Shit. So we’ve got two heavy hitters involved in the background with Sweetcheeks’ life?”

I held a hand. “Just wait for the last one. Those two are in bed with a massive media company to help spin the magic their way. Care to guess who?”

“Christiansen. Fuck.” Thane scrubbed his hands up and down his face. “So if Matt knew Hollyn