Destroy Me - Ella Sheridan Page 0,2
that way that only occurred in the dead of night. The dark, amorphous shape near the top-right corner of the screen didn’t cross in front of the house, simply lingered there near the hedgerow. Someone else might’ve thought it was a shadow cast by the full moon or a neighbor’s still-lit lamp, but Lyse had watched hours of surveillance on this particular house. She knew every branch of the trees, every nuance of the night hours as they passed. This shadow shouldn’t be there, but it was.
The emotional girl inside her retreated, allowing the intelligence-trained woman to take over.
An hour later her analytical mind and quick fingers had supplied a face, a name, and a trail that led her back to a part of Fionn’s life he’d kept a closely guarded secret from everyone but Mark Alvarez and Deacon Walsh. A secret she shouldn’t know and had prayed would never rear its ugly head—but it had.
She knew it and the shadow knew it, but Fionn didn’t. And now she had a decision to make: keep herself safe, or protect the one woman Fionn had always loved?
Chapter Two
The paper was thin, but the stack was thick. Too many pages telling him he’d failed again. The only satisfaction available was to ball up the report in his big hands, crushing and crushing and crushing until finally he had a missile he could aim. A hard whip of his arm sent the ball whizzing across the room.
Its wimpy impact on the opposite wall pretty much summed up his past two months.
“The latest lead didn’t pan out?”
Fionn jerked toward his office door. Deacon shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him. Getting soft, Irish?
He’d love to tell his inner bastard to shove those doubts up his tight arse, but the truth of the statement was leaning against his doorjamb, waiting for a response.
“The latest lead didn’t actually lead us to a fecking thing.” And he was running out of new ones. Lyse Sheppard had become a ghost, slipping through his fingers at every turn.
Deac grunted a response to that as he entered the office. His best friend looked good. Healthy, rested, happy. Having his new girlfriend—or fiancée; Fionn had heard that bit of news this morning—seemed to more than agree with him.
“How’s the wee one doing?” he asked, hoping to deflect any further questions about the trail that ran colder than a Guinness in the Arctic.
“Fine.” His daughter always made Deacon smile, but this time the man’s smile didn’t quite dispel the worry in his eyes. Worry Fionn knew had nothing to do with his best friend’s family and everything to do with him. “She missed you at the Halloween party.”
He’d been drowning himself and his anger in whisky, if he was remembering correctly. He’d been so wrecked, most of the night was still a blur. Sydney would’ve been a much sweeter companion. “Mm. And I was missing her as well.”
“How was vacation?”
Fionn shot his friend a sour look. It hadn’t been a vacation; it had been forced leave. Hence the whisky. He’d become obsessed with the Sheppard case, Alvarez said. Wasn’t thinking correctly. Needed to get his mind off work.
When was his boss—and everyone else around him—going to accept that they couldn’t rest, couldn’t be safe until Sheppard was brought to justice? Deacon kept pointing out that no one had been truly hurt. Fionn’s concussion didn’t count, he said, because he’d already had one, so what was a little harder bump on the head?
His friend didn’t get it; none of them did.
Sheppard hadn’t killed a person. She’d killed their trust. One of their own had put them in danger. That, he would never be forgiving.
But he pulled out his trademark grin as expected. “Full of plenty o’ sleep and plenty o’ women. Just the way I like it.”
Deacon crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the edge of Fionn’s desk. “Liar.”
About the sleep? Sure. About the women? He never lied about women.
“I think there’s a brunette with a very willing mouth that would argue with you,” Fionn countered. The release she’d given him last night had been as meaningless as every other one he’d had since Sheppard disappeared, but that wasn’t the point.
Meaningless? That’s what that fantasy was, imagining it was Sheppard kneeling between your knees, taking you for a ride, instead of the hot, willing woman in front of you? That was as far from meaningless as your sorry arse could get.
“Then why don’t you look rested?” Deacon eyed