“Umm.” Ava shifts in her seat uncomfortably. “What do you mean searching for me?”
“Keywords mostly,” Seamus explains. “We believe that whoever set the virus in motion before the explosion had our information being filtered through a program that searches out specific keywords.”
Ava still looks confused.
“It’s similar to putting words into a search engine,” I explain to her. “Like ‘red hair’ or ‘Dashkov.’ Any time their program picks up keywords they entered into their parameter filters, it alerts them.”
“That’s not creepy.” She wrinkles her nose. “Wait,” she looks around, “are they watching us?” She turns a fresh shade of red. “Like in your office or…” The twins exchange mirrored looks of amusement and disgust.
“No, Red,” I assure her. “My office doesn’t have cameras, and your father’s system is completely separate from ours.”
“But—” Kiernan chimes in, “we believe they’ve been tracking you using CCTV footage as well.”
Ava’s mouth parts slightly. “This is like a spy movie or some shit,” she murmurs. “Except I’m not James Bond.” She pouts slightly at that, and I can’t help but smile a little.
“So how do we use me as bait?” she asks.
“You’ve had a guard or one of us with you since we rescued you from the McDonough mansion,” I tell her. Ava lets out a dramatic sigh.
“Is there a point to this somewhere?”
Her father chuckles. “They’re going to make it look like you’re alone, lass,” he explains. “Make it seem like he got the drop on us while our guard was down.”
“Great,” she agrees. “How are we going to do that?”
Liam leans back in his chair. “Christian doesn’t know that Kenzi isn’t playing his game,” he tells her. “He thinks she’s on his side.”
“That is where she’s been?”
I shrug. “Sort of.”
Ava shoots me a quizzical look. “If she is ‘sort of’ with him, then why doesn’t she just kill him?”
“Because she’s in contact with him, but not in person,” I explain. “Paranoid motherfucker.”
Ava takes a deep breath and lets it out. “All right.” She leans forward in her chair slightly. “Break it down for me.”
I drop Ava off at the clinic later that afternoon after we go through our plan on how to corner Christian. Kenzi will float her own plan to her brother about luring Ava away to meet her and reconcile over the past. Some undisclosed spot she will mention to him. He will be hiding with his men, and so will we.
My focus now is on finding Sheila and Remus. The pair have managed to somehow slip under the radar. Whoever they work for has skills and deep pockets. Not even the dark web has been able to pick up a trace of them. I had thought that the organization started and stopped with Sheila, but my gut tells me she is just another pawn in a game no one knows the rules to.
“From what I can find, Sheila McDonough was born Sheila Islandier, a native born Irish,” Bridget tells me. She has been leading the charge on Sheila and Remus McDonough, while Mark is set on finding the mole and Christian. “On paper, she was born in the late 1950s, lived and studied in Cork, and met Seamus McDonough at age eighteen. Had Katherine McDonough less than nine months later.”
“That is rather suspicious,” I sigh. “And what do you mean by ‘on paper’?”
Bridget clicks her tongue and shoves the small screen aside for another one.
“I mean that Sheila Islandier never existed.” Jesus, this family is complicated. “There is no proper birth record for her. The one on file is a fake and the worst but, it was the fifties, so.” Bridget shrugs.
“Who is she then?”
“Well.” Bridget blows out her cheeks. “When you told me about the creepy as fuck human barn in Portland where you believe Marianne was kept, I did a little digging.” She pauses to swipe left. “A lot of digging, actually, and there are things I cannot unlearn.”
“Like?” I am beginning to get impatient.
“A girl fitting Sheila’s description was reported missing by her family,” Bridget sniffs in disdain. “Except that they reported her missing a week after the authorities believe she was taken. Now, local police couldn’t tie anything back to the prominent family.”
“How prominent?” I ask, eyes narrowed at the screen.