Page 29 of His Kidnapped Irish Mafia Virgin

“Turns out they had one thing in common.” He placed the page in front of me. “A burner phone.” I studied the list without interrupting him. Michael reached across the table and pointed toward two entries highlighted in yellow.

“This number appeared outside the bar on the same evening that man started asking questions about Nora.” His finger moved lower. “It appeared again within range of the street where she was almost taken.”

For several seconds nobody spoke. I read the number twice before looking back at the surveillance photographs lying beside it. On their own, none of them meant very much. Together they painted a picture I didn’t particularly like.

“They were watching her together.” That answer was good enough for me. I leaned back in my chair, letting the information settle while my eyes moved from one photograph to the next.

Somewhere between the first man asking harmless questions about Nora and the group that had tried to kidnap her, somebody had been following her routine closely enough to know exactly where she would be and when to strike.

“They didn’t choose her because an opportunity presented itself,” I said quietly, more to myself than anybody else. “They created the opportunity.”

“Exactly.” Michael turned the laptop back toward me and brought up a digital map of Boston. “We kept pulling the phone records after we found the connection. Whoever owned the device knew what they were doing, because it stayed dark most of the time. It wasn’t being used for conversations. It only appeared briefly before disappearing again, but then it made one mistake.” He enlarged the map. “Yesterday afternoon it connected to a cell tower for less than a minute.”

Paddy picked up the explanation without missing a beat. “Forty-seven seconds. Long enough to trace.”

Several markers appeared across the map before narrowing steadily until only one remained. The flashing point settled near the old industrial district by the waterfront—an area full of abandoned warehouses, empty loading yards, and buildings that had outlived whatever purpose they once served.

I stared at the location for longer than anyone else in the room. Something about it bothered me. Not because it was impossible…because it was almost too convenient. Paddy must have noticed the expression on my face because he folded his arms and spoke before I could.

“You think it’s bait.”

“I think somebody who’s spent months covering their tracks doesn’t suddenly become careless enough to reveal their location.”

Nobody argued. Around this table, instinct carried almost as much weight as evidence, and mine had kept enough people alive over the years that nobody dismissed it lightly.

“So what do we do?” Michael asked. I kept looking at the blinking marker on the screen while the answer settled in my mind.

“We go without a team. A team will take too many vehicles and announce we’re coming before we even arrive. If somebody really is waiting for us, I’d rather they underestimate how many people they’re dealing with.”

“You still think there’s a chance the phone is genuine?”

“I think there’s a chance somebody wants me to believe it is.”

The room fell silent again. Paddy sighed softly before reaching for his jacket. “I had a feeling you’d say that. I’ve been trying to keep you alive for too many years not to.”

***

The moment Michael showed us where the phone had last connected, my instincts had already started pulling in the opposite direction. Whoever we were dealing with had shown too much patience to make a mistake that obvious, if it was a mistake at all.

Neither Paddy nor I wasted time talking during the drive across the city. There was nothing left to say.

The investigation stopped being about theories and became about whatever was waiting for us at the other end of the journey. We would find answers inside that warehouse or discover that someone had gone to considerable trouble to make us believe they were there. Either way, a conversation wasn’t going to change the outcome.

The industrial district looked abandoned. Many warehouses stood empty, shoulder to shoulder, their windows broken, surrounded by weeds which had long since claimed the cracked concrete. Paddy parked two streets away from the phone’s last location. We climbed out, closed the doors as quietly as we could, and continued the rest of the distance on foot, moving with the kind of caution that had become second nature after years of doing this together.

Neither of us carried a weapon where it could be seen, but both of us kept a hand close enough to reach one without thinking. My attention never remained in one place for more than a second. The warehouse Michael had marked stood near the end of the street, with one side of its door hanging crookedly from broken hinges while the other remained attached by a single chain that scraped lazily across the concrete whenever the wind found it.

There were no fresh tire marks outside, no discarded cigarette butts, no footprints leading in or out that suggested recent activity, and yet none of that reassured me. If anything, it made the entire place feel deliberately staged. Paddy stopped beside me and studied the entrance for a few seconds.

“Do you still want to go inside?”

“I didn’t come here to admire the architecture.”

We crossed the remaining distance without another word, slipping through the half-open doorway into air thick with the smell of damp concrete. I found myself slowing down without consciously deciding to. Everything appeared abandoned, yet nothing felt abandoned.

Then I noticed the phone.

It rested on the concrete floor near the middle of the warehouse, where it would have been impossible to miss, and that made me suspicious enough to stop walking. Instead of approaching it directly, I crouched several feet away, beside an old oil-stain, and examined the layer of dust covering the floor.