Destroy Me - Ella Sheridan Page 0,3
him a moment. “If you’re relaxed right now, I’d hate to see what tense looks like. Might break a tooth.”
Instinctively Fionn loosened his jaw, eased the tightness around his eyes and mouth.
Deacon watched, his gaze knowing.
Fionn wasn’t even fooling himself; where his team lead was concerned, he didn’t stand a chance. A heavy sigh escaped as he dug his fingers against his closed eyes. “What are you wanting from me, Deacon?”
“It’s not what I want.”
“Well it sure as feck isn’t about what I’m wanting!”
Deacon ignored the flash of temper. “That’s exactly what you should be asking yourself.”
I’m wanting Lyse Sheppard’s scrawny neck between my brawny hands. “You know the answer to that, Deac.”
“Fionn, look…” Deacon took his turn sighing. “When are you going to accept that Lyse is long gone?”
Never. “Everyone is traceable; it’s just a matter of looking in the right place.”
“And maybe the right place to look isn’t out in the big wide world.” Deacon aimed a finger at Fionn’s chest. “Maybe what you need to be looking at is why you can’t let go.”
“Because I’m not after being an idiot, maybe?”
Deacon shook his head, eyes weary. “When it comes to that girl, you’ve always been an idiot.”
Fionn barely tamped down on the urge to gut punch his friend. Deacon knew it, too, because amusement flickered briefly in his eyes before going serious.
“She was in love with you.”
“No, she wasn’t.” She’d been too young for that, too naive. At least he’d thought so. A little hero worship, maybe, but not—
“She loved you. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can heal from what happened.”
He wasn’t after healing; he was after making her pay.
Deacon clapped him hard on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back.”
Apparently his friend had had his say. As Fionn watched him leave, frustration rode him even harder.
She was in love with you.
He was needing out of this fecking room. Maybe a workout. If he punched a hole in his office wall, Alvarez might suspend him permanently. He headed for the door.
Behind him the phone on his desk rang. A zing of pain shot through his jaw, confirmation of Deacon’s fears about him breaking a tooth. He eased the clenching as he turned to face the phone.
He wasn’t wanting to answer it. He wasn’t wanting to deal with whoever needed him at the moment. He wasn’t wanting to listen to more criticism about where his focus was or why his head wasn’t in the game or what the feck he needed to do to be letting Sheppard go. In that single moment, listening to another peel of the phone, he wondered why he was still after all this. Why keep fighting? He’d been battling the villains of the world in one way or another since his garda days straight out of secondary school. Almost two decades. All it had got him was loss and betrayal. If he couldn’t keep his friends safe, what was the fecking point?
Another harsh ring hit him like a hammer. He strode over, grabbed the phone, and brought it to his ear. “McCullough,” he bit out.
“Hey, Fionn.”
The hey was drawn out into three syllables by Tucker’s southern accent. Their new computer tech sounded like a hillbilly on weed, though he came close to Sheppard in the genius IQ department. Close, but not the same—no one beat Sheppard.
Except Fionn. He’d be beating her no matter what it took, genius or not.
He planted a fist on his desk. “What’s the story, Tucker?”
The sound of cardboard tearing came through the line. Tucker had a serious thing for Lemonheads; he kept boxes of them everywhere. Sure enough, his next words were mumbled around something in his mouth, making him even harder to decipher.
“Thought you might be interested in something I found this morning.”
His fierce mood left no room for a guessing game. “Spit it out.”
Tucker chuckled. Fionn used to be considered the most easygoing guy in the office. Not anymore. “So I was thinking about your problem while you were on vacation.”
Not a vacation. Fionn barely held back a threat involving Tucker’s stones and Fionn’s KA-BAR in close proximity.
“And I decided to set up a couple of honeypots in places of interest in the Dark Web to see if we could get any nibbles.”
“Honeypots?”
“Right.” Tucker’s accent and the teacher tone he sometimes adopted when his coworkers weren’t knowledgeable enough to follow him didn’t match. “A honeypot is essentially bait in a computer system of some kind. I set up some information I thought Sheppard might