Murphy’s Love: Murphy’s Law Book Three Read online

  Murphy’s Love

  Murphy’s Law Book Three

  Michelle St. James

  Blackthorn Press

  Contents

  Murphy’s Love

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Links

  Also by Michelle St. James

  Murphy’s Love

  Murphy’s Law Book Three

  * * *

  Michelle St. James

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Copyright 2019 by Michelle St. James aka Michelle Zink

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Cover design by Isabel Robalo

  1

  Ronan Murphy scanned the beach, his gaze taking in the details behind his sunglasses: a middle-aged man walking along the shoreline, carrying dress shoes, his jacket slung over the crook of one arm, two young men with tattoos and faces full of piercings sitting in the sand, a woman alone on a towel, her posture tense, like she was preparing to be grilled by a prosecutor instead of spending the day at the beach. He lingered over the woman, not wanting to fall into the trap of discounting her too easily.

  Women could be killers too.

  Chief barked up the beach and Ronan’s head swiveled to meet the sound, his hand creeping toward the gun holstered under his jacket. He dropped his hand when he saw the dog splashing in the surf, chasing a piece of driftwood in the water.

  “Good girl, Chief! Go get it.”

  Ronan watched as Julia walked toward the water, the waves lapping at the hem of her rolled-up jeans, washing over her bare feet as she approached Chief, now happily returning with the driftwood.

  His heart clutched in his throat as she bent to take the wood from Chief’s mouth, ruffling the dog’s fur and murmuring words of encouragement that were snatched by the wind.

  Damn, he loved her.

  He hadn’t thought it was possible for him to love a woman like he loved Julia Berenger. He hadn’t thought it was possible when he’d been sleeping around before he joined the Navy and went through SEAL training. He hadn’t thought it was possible when he came home and started Murphy Intelligence and Security with his brothers or when he’d kept a list of women he could call for a good time, women who would happily share their beds — he hadn’t shared his — for a night without expecting or even wanting anything in return.

  And he sure as hell hadn’t thought it possible the night he’d crashed into Julia in an alley when they’d both been looking for her sister, Elise.

  Now there was no denying it: she owned him body, heart, and soul.

  He slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the small, square box there, imagined the glittering ring nestled inside of it. It wasn’t the right time to propose. There was too much undone, too much they didn’t know about what was to come, but the one thing he did know is that he wanted Julia to be his wife. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life taking care of her and loving her.

  He would hold onto the ring until the time was right. In the meantime, just knowing it was there made him feel hopeful.

  She tossed the stick back into the water for Chief, then straightened and glanced at him, her face brightening when she saw that he was looking her way.

  She lifted a hand in greeting and he returned the motion before turning his attention to Elise a few feet behind Julia on the beach.

  There was a definite resemblance between the two sisters. Julia was shorter, her frame curvaceous next to Elise, who was as slender as a reed. Elise’s hair was a lighter shade of blond, her brown eyes a little darker than Julia’s, which were flecked with amber in the light, but they both had the same stubborn set to their chin, the same high cheekbones and elegant neck.

  Elise was standing about twenty feet away from Nick and Declan, watching as Nick caught the frisbee and sent it flying back to her. She hesitated as she reached for it, stepping back at the last minute and letting it fall to the ground.

  “That’s okay,” Nick said, clapping. “You’ll get it next time.”

  He’d always known his brothers were good men. Nick could be a pompous asshole and Declan had the attention span of a two-year-old and the libido of a sixteen-year-old boy, but they’d always been kind.

  And yet they’d surprised even Ronan with their tenderness toward Elise. In the two months since they’d rescued her from a secretive, high-end trafficking ring off the coast of Greece, they’d taken her under their wing, treating her and Julia like members of the family, hanging out with Elise in the living room of the house they all shared, watching reality TV instead of football, ordering takeout in a subtle attempt to get Elise to eat.

  The fact that she was on the beach, playing frisbee, even cracking a smile now and then, was a small miracle. For the first few weeks, she’d barely left the house, her eyes growing wide on the few occasions when someone rang the buzzer at the front gate even though it was usually just food being delivered.

  “Hey, you.” He looked down to see Julia approaching with Chief at her heels, the dog’s tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth. “I think she needs water.”

  Ronan took in Julia’s white T-shirt, nearly transparent with all the water Chief had splashed on her. He was torn between affection and desire as his body responded to the outline of her bra, the peak of her nipples visible through the thin fabric.

  “I feel like I should offer you a jacket.” Ronan grinned. “Or a trophy.”

  She followed his gaze and looked down at her chest, then laughed and slipped her arms around his neck. “Why sir, are you saying I could win a wet T-shirt contest?”

  He tightened his arms around her and touched his lips to hers. She tasted like the sea. She tasted like she was his. “I’m saying it would be no contest.”

  “I was just playing with the dog.” She pressed her body against his and looked up at him. “You have a dirty mind, you know that, Ronan Murphy?”

  “You have no idea.”

  He looked past her as the frisbee flew through the air from Elise to Declan. Ever since a set of photographs had been left in an unmarked envelope on the doorstop of Julia’s old apartment — photographs of Julia’s mother and grandfather, one of Julia right outside the apartment building — it had become habit to surveil the perimeter anytime they were out in public.

  The identity of the persons behind the pictures wasn’t a secret: Manifest, the shadowy organization of rich, powerful men who had kidnapped Elise, who had used her and other young women as assets in auctions catering to men who thought the r
ules applied to everyone but them.

  Ronan hadn’t really thought it was over when they rescued Elise onboard the Elysium, a yacht used by Manifest to conduct virtual auctions, the women who were their product stowed onboard as the boat cruised international waters with ambiguous or disputed ownership.

  That would have been too easy.

  But he hadn’t expected Manifest to issue a threat so quickly, and the photos of Julia and Elise’s family — of Julia — could be viewed in no other light. Ronan had deployed every resource MIS had to identify the men who had been onboard the Elysium and to track ownership of the yacht itself, but Manifest hadn’t stayed under the radar for nothing.

  They knew what they were doing.

  He tried not to show his frustration. Julia and Elise were safe. That was what mattered. But he couldn’t forget the locked doors on the Elysium, Elise’s assertion that there had been other girls onboard, that they’d all been drugged to keep them quiet until they were sold to the highest bidder.

  “Hey.” Julia laid her hand against his cheek. “Everything’s fine.”

  He looked down at her, forced his features into an expression of certainty, and kissed her forehead. “Of course it is.”

  The last thing he needed was for Julia to waste her energy worrying about him. She had enough on her plate.

  She opened her mouth to say something else, then closed it when his phone rang.

  “Let me grab this and we’ll head home and figure out dinner,” he said, reaching for his phone. He glanced down at her when he saw the name on the display. “It’s Braden.”

  “I’ll tell everyone to pack it up,” Julia said, heading toward the frisbee game still underway between Elise, Nick, and Declan.

  He waited until she was out of earshot to answer. Julia was focused on Elise’s recovery. Ronan tried to keep the details about their hunt for the men behind Manifest from her unless it was good news.

  “Kane,” Ronan said into the phone.

  Braden Kane was a former FBI agent gone rogue. He was also the man dating Ronan’s sister, Nora, also a former agent, in Southern California.

  “We got something,” Braden said.

  Ronan tamped down the hope that sparked to life in his chest. They’d had too many false leads over the past two months. “What is it?”

  “The Elysium,” Braden said. “It was found on fire off the coast of Turkey.”

  “On fire?”

  An international search for the Elysium had been underway since Elise’s rescue and their subsequent interviews with the FBI — all carefully worded in the presence of counsel to avoid incriminating Ronan, his brothers, and the business they’d designed to look like an investigative firm.

  The boat had been like a ghost since the night Ronan, Nick, and Braden had left it riddled with bullet holes and dead bodies, Julia hurriedly getting her traumatized sister into one of the motorboats strapped to the side of the luxury yacht.

  “Yep,” Braden confirmed. “In a quiet channel off Meis. It’s a miracle it didn’t sink. Someone was obviously trying to get rid of it. Some fisherman deviated from his usual route that morning and came across it burning. Called it into the SGK.”

  The SGK was Turkey’s coast guard.

  “They were able to save it?” Ronan asked.

  “What was left of it,” Braden said.

  Ronan’s gaze was pulled to the stretch of sea leading to the horizon. He could almost see the Elysium burning. “Anything onboard that will help us?”

  “Too soon to tell,” Braden said. “Feds are processing it but MIT and EYP are in the way.”

  Ronan cursed under his breath. Ownership of some of the waters between Greece and Turkey were disputed — it was probably why Manifest used them during their auctions — and the countries’ intelligence agencies were always up each other’s asses when something happened there.

  “What can we do to help?” Ronan asked.

  “Nothing,” Braden said. “I’m keeping tabs through my sources at the Bureau. I’ll let you know when they’re done processing everything.”

  Frustration threatened to choke him. He almost wished they could take another job, just to keep them busy, but he didn’t want to tie MIS’s resources up in another mission when they were waiting to move on Manifest again.

  “Thanks. How’s my sister?” Ronan asked.

  “Call her yourself and ask,” Braden said.

  Ronan hadn’t talked to his sister since they’d parted ways after the mission that had rescued Elise. “Fair enough.”

  The line went dead and he slid the phone in his pocket and turned toward Julia, Elise, and his brothers. Elise was folding blankets while Declan piled the frisbee and football into a bag with sunscreen. Julia and Nick picked up empty beer bottles and potato chip packages to dump in the trash and recycling cans.

  They were his family — all of them — and they wouldn’t be safe until Manifest was destroyed.

  That was his only mission now.

  2

  Julia sat on the sofa in Ronan’s living room and looked up at him. “Tell me.”

  They’d come home from the beach and ordered pizza and wings, all of them piled into the house’s main living room while they pulled slices out of the boxes, arguing over the day’s frisbee matches (Julia and Elise had beat Nick and Declan four games to three, but they wouldn’t cop to it). Julia had fed Chief meat from the pizza while Ronan debated plays in the Patriots game with his brothers and pretended not to notice.

  It had all felt normal and relaxing, but Julia had known something was up, could sense it in Ronan’s silence as they walked home from the beach, but she knew him well enough to know that if he’d wanted to talk about it in front of everyone, he would have said something.

  He was protective of Elise, careful not to reveal information that might take her by surprise or traumatize her. Julia had played along, eating more than her share of pizza and trying not to obsess over what Braden Kane had said when he’d called Ronan at the beach.

  But now they were alone in Ronan’s private quarters in the house he shared with Nick and Declan. Now she wanted to know.

  “They set the Elysium on fire,” Ronan said.

  “Manifest?”

  He nodded. “Fisherman found it off the coast of Turkey.”

  She chewed her thumbnail, running through the events of the past few months and the little they’d learned since Elise’s rescue. “They must have had it hidden all this time.”

  Ronan sat next to her. “That’s my guess: keep it out of sight until the heat wore off, then torch it.”

  She sighed. “So it’s a dead end.”

  He took her hand, his blue eyes bright. “I didn’t say that. That fisherman saved our ass. Kane says the guy doesn’t even usually fish there. He was able to call SGK before it sank.”

  “SGK?”

  “It’s the Turkish coast guard,” Ronan said. “They put out the fire and called the Feds when they realized it was the Elysium.”

  “Where is it now?” Julia asked.

  “Feds took possession,” Ronan said. “Forensics is going over it.”

  She forced herself to temper the hope that sprang to life in her chest. “How long until we know if they found anything?”

  “Hard to say. Probably a few days at least,” Ronan said.

  Chief came over to the couch and whined, stuffing her wet nose into Julia’s hand like she sensed that Julia was upset. Julia absently stroked the dog’s fur while she considered the development.

  They hadn’t gotten far since the rescue. Footage from the drone they’d used to do surveillance on the Elysium before staging Elise’s rescue had given them a few faces to cross-reference, but the images were less than perfect. Of the ones they’d been able to process, most of them had been gun-toting security guards doing rounds above deck. Ronan had called in a favor with someone in New York who had a state-of-the-art crime lab, but facial recognition software had revealed all but one of the men to be petty criminals w
ith a history of arrests for theft, assault, and drugs.

  The man who was different than the rest spent most of his time smoking at the railing of the Elysium, his wide face and flat features standing in contrast to the expensive cut of his suit. They’d pegged him for someone more powerful than the security guards, mostly because he hadn’t been wearing tactical gear and didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  The images of the security guards had been fairly straightforward. The facial recognition software had multiple hits on a couple of them — Braden said that sometimes happened when the images weren’t clear — but they’d been able to narrow them to the right names by cross-referencing multiple images. Most of those men had been small-time criminals with rap sheets involving theft, assault, and drugs.

  The other man, the one in the suit, had been more complicated. The software had returned ten potential hits. After doing background on the names, Ronan and Braden had narrowed that list to three possibilities — three men with enough power and money to make them candidates for Manifest leadership.

  But three wasn’t good enough. They couldn’t haul them all in for questioning based on a grainy photo taken at a thousand feet, and deploying teams to surveil all three of them was complicated by the fact that they were powerful men who moved freely all over the world.