For Love & Bourbon by Katie Jennings Page A

laptop. Marco followed him into the room, prowling around the office with the cigar tucked between his teeth.
    “Her family is indirectly responsible for the deaths of two Americans,” Cooper reminded him, slipping on his glasses. His system was on overdrive from having her there, invading his space. He swore he could still smell her, spiced apples and rich vanilla. “And we still don’t know for sure that she’s not involved.”
    Marco waved off the thought. “Please. If she knew, she wouldn’t be trying to get answers out of us. She’s clueless.”
    “Or she’s playing dumb so we’ll trust her enough to let something slip.” He dug back into Ty’s emails, scouring for any correspondence from Ned.
    “Well, she won’t get anything outta me. I can’t say the same for you.” Pulling the cigar from his mouth, Marco inspected it. “I saw that look in your eyes when she turned up the heat. You like her.”
    Cooper snorted. “I do not.”
    “And I spotted that bottle of 101 in your room. I damn well know you don’t like the stuff. You want to impress her.”
    A deleted email from two days earlier caught Cooper’s attention. He opened it, read the brief but troubling message, and frowned. “Hey, come look at this.”
    “What?” Marco skirted around the desk and leaned over Cooper’s shoulder. His brows furrowed as he read aloud. “‘I know she’s with you.’ What’s that about?”
    “No idea.” Cooper rested his chin in his hand, tapping his fingers against his cheek. “It’s not from one of Ned’s known email addresses or his sons’, but I can trace where it came from.”
    “Could be completely unrelated.” Marco straightened and folded his arms. “We’re looking for money requests and mentions of the IRA. I don’t think this fits.”
    Cooper pulled up the IP address, ran a search on it. “It came from an ISP in Ireland. This might fit more than you think.”
    “Ned’s been careful to cover his tracks before. Why let this one slip through?”
    “Not sure. Doesn’t look like Ty responded to it, though.” Cooper did a search of the address in Ty’s emails, came up empty. “He’s never received anything from this email before. Think he knew who it was from?”
    “Maybe. He went to some effort to hide the email. If he didn’t know what it was about, why bother?”
    “True.” Adjusting his glasses, Cooper glanced up at his partner. “I wonder who our mysterious ‘she’ is.”
    “Might not be a person at all. Could be a code for something.”
    “Or a threat.” The thought left Cooper’s mouth subconsciously, surprising him. His eyes glazed over as he ran with it, his pulse kicking up. “What if Ned knows we’re investigating his cousin? He might have tried to access the Swiss account only to find it’s locked up. So he creates a new email account, gets this message over to Ty as a way to acknowledge that their business arrangement is over.”
    “I guess. But that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Ned knows the shit he kicked up by killing those two Americans. Surely he expected this.”
    “Or maybe he expected Ty to handle it better. It’s only a matter of time before we have concrete proof that Ty knew the money he was depositing into the Swiss account was going to fund the IRA. We’ll be able to shut him down and Ned’s income stream will dry up. He’s got to be pissed. This is his threat telling Ty he knows the FBI is here and to figure it out.”
    Marco nodded. “Only Ty has no idea what to do. All he cares about at this point is protecting his wife and kids from the backlash.”
    Cooper let out a rush of breath. “I don’t think he’ll be able to. Ned’ll do whatever it takes to keep that money coming in. He may try and make another contact within the family, start fresh after Ty’s arrested. We need to screen the family, see if any of them have allegiance to the Irish side.”
    “That might be tough to do without revealing what we’re looking for,” Marco