Chapter 8 Helpless
EIGHT
Helpless
LOGAN
I glanced down at my phone and picked it up the minute I saw Lucien’s name pop up.
Lucian: Ferraro, Calista. Need a full workup.
A woman. My brother who was just as anti-relationship as I was wanted me to check out a woman. It had to be a joke, and that was exactly the tone I used when I messaged him back.
Logan: Am I vetting your Tinder matches again?
Lucian: She’s a target.
Well, fuck.
Lucian was used to living in the shadows and fulfilling hits the criminal underground took out on one another.
For some reason, my brother needed the little trips he took on the dark side to dispatch the souls who did something bad enough to earn a death sentence.
He didn’t mind being the executioner. In fact, the asshole thrived on it.
None of that was unusual. What was strange, was that he almost never asked for me to run a check on someone before he popped them.
Whether he realized it or not, he was having second thoughts about killing this woman.
Still, I had to keep the communication going as I input her name and started to search.
Logan: Figured
Lucian: Well?
Logan: It’s been seconds since you first texted, asshole.
Lucian: You’ve gotten slow.
I rolled my eyes and laughed as I dove a little deeper into the life of Calista Ferraro for him. I was stumped when it didn’t turn up anything that might make a person a target.
Logan: Fuck you. And I’m already halfway through her data.
As I pulled more and more information on Lucian’s latest target, I quickly realized why my brother might have a hard time pulling the trigger on this one. His target being a woman made no fucking difference to him. Her being a damn saint might, though.
Logan: You sure she’s a target? This one’s got nun energy. She runs a homeless shelter. Has no debt. No savings. No criminal record. I think the last person she killed was probably a spider.
Lucian: There’s got to be something.
Logan: Then it’s deep. I’ll need time for that.
Lucian: Like I said, you’re slipping.
I sent him back a middle finger emoji and slipped my phone back in my pocket as I tried to dig up more information on my brother’s latest hit. There was no way someone wanted this woman dead. Not unless…
I was distracted by a ping on the laptop.
The laptop.
The one I kept running in the background with one specific search on it. There was never a ping. It had remained quiet for twelve fucking years.
“It can’t be,” I said to myself as I rolled my chair over to the lone desk across the room and started to scan the data that was being analyzed when information was flagged.
A picture.
After twelve fucking years, I finally had a picture of the girl who got away.
Aoife.
I would know her face anywhere, even if she had filled out a bit since I’d last seen her. Miranda Bradford was the name that popped up associated with her image, but I knew better. The woman staring back at me from that picture was Aoife Quinn, the only woman to ever capture my heart.
The organ in question ran a race against itself inside my chest as I zoomed in on the picture.
Her hair was darker. Rather than the light strawberry blonde of our youth or the slightly darker, almost peachy-orange hue of our teen years, it was now dark enough that in low lighting it might have been mistaken for a light auburn or mousy brown.
It was unmistakably red in the image, though. The other distinctive element of the photo was the sparkling diamond on Aoife’s finger. I glanced down and read the caption.
She’ll hate me for posting her happy moment, but my friend deserves her time to shine in the spotlight, along with that absolute sparkler on her left ring finger!
#MirandaBradfordIsGettingMarried
I felt sick to my stomach. There was no way my Aoife was marrying anyone else.
It wouldn’t even be possible, considering she’d never bothered to legally change her name.
The only way for her to follow through with it would be if she trusted the man she was about to marry with her real identity.
Did she trust him the same way she once had faith that I would save her from the fate her father had in store for her?
My chest ached. I couldn’t stomach the thought of her putting the same faith in another man that she’d once had in me. I fucked it up when I let another woman come between us and I could only imagine what some other schumck might do when faced with Bill Quinn.
I already had the post and image screenshotted and saved the minute it popped up, and thank fuck for that because it was deleted off Shaina Carmine’s profile feed moments later as I stared at the first image I’d seen of my long lost best friend in twelve years.
She was out there, and now that I had a thread to follow, it wouldn’t take long to find her.
All I had to do was find Shaina Carmine or any trace of Miranda Bradford.
Considering how well-hidden my girl had been up until now, I figured Shaina was my best bet.
I called the only man in my circle I trusted with this knowledge.
“Miles, need you in my office.”
“Now?”
“Yesterday, if you can time travel,” I said and hung up the phone.
Miles didn’t even need to see what was on the screen, just that I was seated in front of the infamous laptop. “Holy shit! You found her?”
“I did. We need to make sure no one else got wind of her friend’s post before it was removed.”
“Someone outed her?”
I shook my head. “Not on purpose. Looks like someone in her circle wanted to share Aoife’s happy news.”
I turned to see pity plastered on my friend’s face. “What happy news?”
“She’s engaged.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that sums it up. I need you to run down Shaina Carmine for me. I want every fucking detail you can find about her.”
“Is that her new name?” I shook my head. “Friend who posted?”
“Yeah, Aoife’s apparently going by Miranda Bradford now.”
“Miranda Bradford?” Miles asked as he seemed deep in thought. “Is that name significant in any way?”
“Not that I know of, but if it triggers something for you, I need to know that, too.”