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 be interested in, to see if I could lure her in, at least get her poking around.”
“But wouldn’t that mean other hackers might be able to get to the information as well?”
“No worries. None of it’s real. Plus I used a unique access similar to what we have here, knowing she’d designed it. Without her personal knowledge, no one is getting past my firewalls, trust me.”
Sounded like Greek to Fionn, but whatever. He was better with his body than he was with a computer. “Al’right.”
“Okay, so…” The click of keys came through the line—Tucker typing. “I set the traps last week, and early this morning…I got a nibble.”
“A nibble?”
“Right. Someone tried to access the data. I tell ya, she’s good. I mean, I knew she was, but still I almost missed it.”
A crunch sounded in Fionn’s ear, followed by chewing. Fionn didn’t even flinch. “You’re saying Sheppard might’ve slipped up? I’m not buying it.”
“Hey, I can’t vouch for motive. All I can do is pass on info.”
“Tell me you’re after getting a location.”
“Still running it, actually. The woman knows how to bounce, that’s for sure.”
That much Fionn could decipher—Sheppard was bouncing her signal so they couldn’t be tracing it.
“But it looks promising,” Tucker was saying around crunches. “You might wanna come down here. Shouldn’t be too much longer before I know something definite.”
Sheppard was too smart for this. His gut didn’t trust it. Not leaving a trail was intelligence training 101. But this was also the only trace of hope he’d had in the past two months. Was it worth the risk, knowing it might be a trap?
He glanced around the office that had grown into more of a cage than the home it used to be. Trap or not, it was worth risking. “I’ll be right—”
“Hold it.”
Fionn waited, pacing restlessly through a pause, more typing and crunching. A beep sounded in the background.
“We have a winner!”
He reached for his desk drawer to retrieve his keys. “Where?”
Tucker hummed over the line. “Someplace called North Quigley Village. Hey, that’s Ireland, looks like.”
“Where?” No. No no no no. Fionn forced himself to be thinking, to breathe, to not open his mouth and let the man on the other end of the line know exactly how panicked he suddenly felt.
“Is that anywhere near your former neck of the woods, Irish?” Tucker asked. “It’s not a big country, is it?”
No, not really. But it was big enough that Sheppard had hundreds of places she could be without picking the one town no one connected with him should be knowing about.
“No, not my neck of the woods.” He had to be heading out of here. “Listen, e-mail me the intel, all right? All of it. I’ve got to head.”
“Sure, but—”
Fionn hung up before Tucker finished his response; it was either that or drop the receiver, the way his hands were shaking. Sheppard was in North Quigley Village. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
It wasn’t. He knew it, deep down in his gut. Lyse Sheppard was hiding in the one place he’d vowed to never go, near the most important person in his life. The person he’d promised to protect no matter the cost, nearly two decades ago. Could he honor that vow and still bring in the woman who’d betrayed them all? Betrayed him?
He clenched the keys in his fist till they threatened to break through his skin. Think, Fionn.
