Forced to Change

Chapter 39

I hacked into the security system at the Donnelly residence. Katie was all over the first images I received to my laptop. It made sense and drove home all my mistakes in the last week.

There she was, distraught—my fault—and in the hands of a diabolical man without a clue to the danger— definitely my fault. I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for omitting Donnelly's part in her kidnapping and I'd put her life in jeopardy again. Guilt wasn't a feeling I liked.

It was a stupid mistake, but just another when it came to Katie. If I'd told her about Donnelly's involvement she wouldn't have run to him. I hadn't been thinking clearly. She had no idea. She'd been so angry in Atlanta. It didn't matter even if she never wanted my help or to see me again.

I raced out the door without a clear mind. I returned to the apartment a moment later and flopped down into the desk chair. Running off half-cocked would only get me, or worse, Katie killed. I needed a plan. Find and kill.

First, I had to find Jorge Riaz. Joe had said that the information he gave me in Georgia lead directly to Jorge. I just needed to see what he'd seen. Was it just the connection between Donnelly and Lana or something else? Because of the Lana link did that mean that Donnelly knew the whereabouts of Jorge. Or was it just pointing me back to Lana Rios?

"Oh crap," I said as I read between the lines. Carter had been working on getting Lana out of jail the week prior. What had changed? A quick internet search revealed Lana Rios was dead. Dead didn't always mean dead in our business. What if she was alive and out of prison? What if Carter had extracted information from her that lead back to Jorge in exchange for her freedom? That tracked. It would be how CJ got involved and turned onto me.

Had she talked? Worse, who had she talked to her cellmate or directly with Carter? This is bad, I thought as I dialed Joe. I got no response.

Find and kill. Carter's cell phone. I still hadn't pulled up the information in it. I hacked the account online looking for Jorge Riaz's contact information. Jorge Riaz. I needed to take care of him first. Only there was no new information on Jorge to be found through Carter. Carter's cell only led to one person, Paul Donnelly Sr. Joe had meant Donnelly when he said he had a line on Jorge. He was the lynch pin to the whole operation.

Katie still hated me. I couldn't race over there to the Donnelly's without proof. Something I was still missing along was Donnelly's exact connection to it all. If I interrogated and then killed a man she thought had paid a lot of money to save her, she wouldn't understand why I was killing him.

I really didn't know what Donnelly wanted with her. It couldn't be anything good. I was assuming what he wanted from her based on my last conversation with her father. There was still a small chance he hadn't wanted her dead. So much money, too much money to get her rescued only to kill her now. There was still a portion to the whole that was missing.

"Fuck!" I said aloud. "Clusterfuck."

Where was Jorge hiding? I needed that answer before I could act. Maybe this was the better way to go? Just let her believe Donnelly had good intentions. Maybe he did. Maybe Carter had decided on her death and Donnelly's wishes had never mattered. But every instinct in my body said differently.

I was torn. I flashed through every moment of our time together all the way back to Cantana. I thought about Katie, how I'd watched her, how I'd tried to protect her. I saw the serial rapist in the grocery store last year, stalking her. She was clueless as that predator got her in his sights, copying down her license plate, following her home.

I killed him. After an hour of torture that included plucking out his eyelashes and fingernails I shot him in the back of the head and disposed of his body. One moment Kyle Morton existed, the next not so much. I had no regrets about killing him.

I did protect her, the only way I knew how to protect anyone. I did it because I loved her, had loved her from the first moment she spoke to me. Killing was what I knew how to do. It was second nature, like breathing. I didn't think about it. I just did it. Before Katie there were no feelings about it.

She would never understand that about me. She couldn't. Donnelly wasn't a danger in her eyes. Without the knowledge of his involvement in her past she could move forward. She wouldn't ever need to know, and Donnelly may have been pure in his intentions when he finally got her out of Cantana.

Only Kenneth's final warning set off alarm bells in my head. If instead of Riaz, Donnelly was the monster he meant me to protect Katie from, then she was in danger. Kenneth had caught or figured out Donnelly's part in the kidnappings and instead of reporting him or even telling me about it, he'd taken that secret to his grave to protect Katie.

"Follow the money" was the golden rule in killing. Money always leads to the target. It was the find part of the "find and kill" mantra I lived. For Donnelly it wasn't just the money. Donnelly wanted something from Katie that I just couldn't put my finger on. I could no longer believe that Donnelly was just a money man.

His son's death had provided the money he needed to get out of his creative bookkeeping. It would have made his life simple. Only instead of using it to cover his ass, he'd used it to rescue Katie. Life was never simple. It was complicated. Messy. I made the hardest decision of my life in one breath, processing everything faster than the speed of thought. It was the right thing to do, for her and for me.

Decisions made I grabbed my supplies and headed for the door. Joe stood in the doorway sans his ever present grin. Ice fingers gripped the back of my neck as we stared at each other.