No Love Lost (Masters and Mercenaries: The Forgotten Book 5)

by Lexi Blake

“Not much. I’d been told it was highly classified and I wasn’t allowed to discuss it. I did not know who the original handler was. It was odd but not unheard of. It was stranger that Beck knew about the op. I should have gone straight to my boss and made a report, but I didn’t want to get my brother-in-law in trouble. That was my fault. If I had, we likely wouldn’t be in this position.”

  “No recriminations are necessary,” Tag announced. “I think we can all agree that putting Solo on that headset was part of Levi’s plan at the time. He had to have known what was going to happen.”

  “Like I said before, it was an ambush. He had to have planned it,” Ezra agreed. “I know at one point he argued with our CO. I think Green was worried we were about to turn on him. That’s the trouble with mutually assured destruction. It only works as long as one party isn’t willing to actually kill the other and set himself free of that worry.”

  “According to Solo’s report, the communication system malfunctioned. How much did you actually see of that op?” Charlotte asked.

  He hadn’t gone into the office with her that day. He’d spent the night at a cheap motel because of the fight they’d gotten into when she’d refused to call off the next day’s op. He hadn’t seen her again until he’d come home that night and she’d given him the news that Ezra was dead. He’d walked out and hadn’t seen her again for months. He’d shipped her divorce papers and refused to take her calls.

  He hadn’t even considered her feelings. She’d cared about Ezra, too. She’d loved his whole family and he’d barred her from his mother’s funeral.

  He’d been so fucking selfish, and he didn’t know if he could ever make it up to her.

  “Did you know that day that Ezra was alive?” Liam asked.

  “It doesn’t matter when she knew,” Beck said quickly.

  A gentle smile turned the corners of Eve’s mouth up. “It does for our investigation.”

  “I didn’t know until he called me two days later,” Kim admitted. “By then there had been a fire, supposedly set by the jihadist group that ambushed the unit. The whole area was considered too dangerous to go into for a week.”

  “I got hit, but I managed to hide.” Ezra continued his story. “Like I said, I’d been a bit away from the group. There was a lot of confusion at the time. We really were in a bad area. One controlled by rebels. We were in unfamiliar terrain and when the shooting started, everything was confusing. I was hit and dragged myself behind a rock. I passed out at one point and it was all over when I woke up. Someone must have come out later and set the fires to cover what happened. I was found by some local who took me in, patched me up and hid me for days until Kim sent someone to get me out.”

  His brother had come so close to death. “And who was that?”

  “Brother Francis Bruno,” Ezra said, his eyes shining in the lights from overhead. “He was with a group of surgeons risking their lives in the area to help people. So many people risked their lives and their careers to help me. The brother got me through rehab. He helped me learn Italian. Between him and Kim, they got me the documents I needed to stay in Italy and go to seminary. Turned out, I was really good at that. I’m a better priest than I ever was a soldier. And that is all I know about what happened that day. I beg forgiveness every day for my cowardice, and I’m ready to stand up now.”

  But if he did, he would lose everything. “You would likely go to prison.”

  His brother nodded. “And there is good work to be done there, too.”

  Emotion threatened to choke him because it was overwhelming. His brother was sitting right in front of him. Was he putting on some kind of act?

  He suddenly couldn’t stay there a second longer. He pushed back his chair and stood. “I need to make a phone call.”

  He strode out of the room without another word because he wasn’t sure what he would say.

  Self-loathing was an old friend, and it bubbled up inside him. He’d been the cause of a whole lot of this. While he’d been telling himself he was righteous, he’d left his wife to deal with problems that should have been his, problems that he couldn’t deal with because he hadn’t been kind.

  He slammed the door shut to his office and sank down onto his chair, his eyes catching on the picture on his desk.

  “Liar.” Kim had quietly opened the door.

  “I needed a moment. That was a lot to take in. I’m sorry I didn’t do it privately.” He’d been warned and he’d arrogantly walked right into it and forced them all down the path with him. “I’ll apologize to my brother later. I promise.”

  She sighed and closed the door behind her. “Hush. We don’t do well when we talk.” She closed the space between them and eased herself onto his lap. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. But just hush and hold me. You had a rough morning.”

  She offered him comfort, and it made his eyes water. He wrapped his arms around her and let his head find her shoulder.

  “Was he serious?” Beck asked.

  “Ezra Fain is the kindest man I’ve ever met. If he says he’ll go to prison and find meaning there, I believe him. And I believe he loves you.”

  He sat there, accepting her kindness, and something eased inside him, something that had been tight and uncomfortable for a very long time.

  “I love you, Kim.”

  She was silent but she didn’t leave.

  He would say it until she believed him again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Two hours later Kim found herself standing in front of the desk outside of Ian Taggart’s big office. The name plate stated that the desk belonged to Geneva Rycroft and there was a picture of a woman with dark hair holding a toddler girl with a big bow in her hair, a smiling young man, and a dude with a beard who had to be the dad standing behind them gleaming with pride.

  But it was a frowning Tasha sitting at the desk. She looked up from her phone. It must have been a different one because this one was smaller and had no bling on it at all. She slid the phone into her backpack and her spine straightened. “Hello, Ms. Solomon. How can I help you?”

  There was definitely an iciness coming off the Taggart’s eldest. She was starting to wonder if the teen didn’t have a thing for Beck. She couldn’t blame her. Beck was still hot and looked younger than his years. And he seemed kinder than he’d been before.

  “I’ve got a meeting with your dad. I think your mom was coming, too.”

  The door came open and Charlotte waved her in. “We’re here. Adam’s coming up in a minute.”

  She walked through the door and into Tag’s office, which was a monstrosity compared to Beck’s. She’d thought his was nice, but Tag’s was larger than her Paris flat and Manhattan apartment combined. He had a whole sitting area and a wall covered in pictures of his family.

  “Is Beck all right?” Charlotte asked.

  Big Tag was sitting on the couch, the remains of their lunch in front of him. “I would like to point out that I was not all for the family group therapy session we went through. I have enough of that with my own family. The boys have PTSD after the pranks Kala pulled last Halloween. We had a couple of sessions after that and now the boys have stopped trying to kill every clown they see.”

  “It made kids’ parties very interesting for a while there,” Charlotte admitted. “We were banned from one neighborhood entirely. I’m not joking. The watch group had our faces on posters and everything.”

  She was so glad Roman was a calm child. “Beck’s all right. He needed a minute to process, that was all.”

  Why had she followed him? When Ezra had admitted he was all right with going to prison, that he was ready to pay any price he had to pay, she’d noticed how pale Beck had gone and she’d realized it had just become real for him. What had happened to his brother, how he’d changed and the years between them, had hit Beck with the force of a locomotive.

  That wasn’t true. She knew exactly why she’d followed him. She’d expected to catch him putting his fist through a wall. She’d wanted to see
it, wanted to know that anger was still Beck’s fuel of choice, that he was talking a bunch of bullshit about changing.

  All she’d seen was regret on his face, a terrible sorrow as he’d sat there, and she hadn’t been able to walk away from him. After what Charlotte had told her this morning, she’d wondered how long it had been since he’d had any comfort at all. Beck had always been a physical creature. When they’d been together, he’d loved holding hands and sitting with his arms around her. He could hold her for hours.

  She’d had their child to hold, had someone to pour all her love into. Who had Beck had? A sad, single photograph? So she’d dropped herself onto his lap and waited for him to kiss her or let his hand find her breast. She’d been willing to give him that comfort and honestly, to take it for herself.

  But he’d simply held her and breathed like he had to concentrate to do it. He’d laid his head on her shoulder and they’d sat there for the longest time.

  I love you, Kim.

  The words had damn near broken her heart because she couldn’t say them back. Not because she didn’t feel them. There would always be love between them. They had a son and she was eternally grateful.

  She couldn’t say them because she’d wanted nothing more than to surrender everything to Beck and tell him they could be a family. She’d wanted to lay right down and pretend nothing had happened, but she’d just relived the worst part of her life. While they’d talked, that time had played out in her head and she could still hear him cursing her.

  She could still hear him saying she’d killed his brother and he would never forgive her.

  When he’d decided to drive Ezra back to Sanctum himself, she’d been relieved.

  “I’m glad you could be there for him,” Charlotte replied as Ian handed her the plastic containers she packed in a tote bag she’d carried their lunch in. “I’m sorry to put you through that but it’s important we have an idea of what happened then.”

  Ian sat back, crossing one leg over his knee as a big arm relaxed along the edge of the couch. “Tell me something, Solo. Are you going to be happy letting Levi ride off into the sunset?”

  “I don’t know that I’d put it that way.” A bit of guilt bubbled inside her. She wasn’t the only one Levi had hurt. He’d affected them all in ways, and giving him more power wouldn’t make him less dangerous. “I guess I want it to be over, and I could pretend when I was in Malta. I could sink into being nothing more than Roman’s mom, and now I have to think about a hundred different things.”

  “You would always have had to come out of that cocoon,” Charlotte said with a sympathetic smile. “Roman would have started asking questions. He’s a smart boy. Kenzie and Kala told me he knew more about the volcano experiment than the teacher, and he explained to my youngest in no uncertain terms why he shouldn’t eat the magma even though it was nontoxic.”

  “That boy doesn’t have a brain in his head,” Taggart said. “But yours does, and at some point he’s going to want to do something that requires real ID. Have you and Beck talked about changing his last name? Right now his paperwork is all under Roman Bruno. You can go back to your real name. Are you changing Roman’s to Solomon?”

  She knew what Beck would want, and it wasn’t like she was deeply attached to her last name. It had so often brought her trouble. “I don’t know. I suppose we need to talk about it.”

  It was odd how numb she felt today. Even as she’d sat in Beck’s lap and let him hold her there had been a distance she wasn’t sure he’d felt. She had. She’d held herself apart from him.

  She felt like she was walking through her life but looking at herself from the outside.

  “You probably have a lot to talk about.” Charlotte sat down on the couch, and her husband’s arm moved around her shoulders.

  What would it be like to know the man she loved was a couple of doors down and that she could get a hug whenever she needed it?

  There was a brisk knock and Adam Miles entered wearing a slick suit, his hair cut in the latest style. He was a stunning man and he’d kept himself very fit. She knew him only by reputation. And his wife’s books. She’d loved his wife’s romantic books all those years ago. Now she only read nonfiction and children’s books.

  She’d given up on everything but Roman seven years before. Did she want to live that way the rest of her life?

  “Hey, you said you needed me?” Adam strode in. “Tell me it’s not about Tris. What did he do? Because the last time he was showing off for Carys he broke his damn arm.”

  “That’s because he was trying to show up Aidan on a skateboard, and he’s nowhere near as coordinated,” Charlotte said. “He needs to stop trying to be Aidan and start playing up his strengths.”

  “His strengths include hacking computer systems, so I’m going to challenge you on that.” Adam sighed. “The last thing I need is the feds to show up on my doorstep.”

  “They’re always on your doorstep,” Ian pointed out. “You work with them constantly.”

  Adam pointed his way. “Yes, so they will probably be watching my young, wanna-be anarchist. I long for the days when I didn’t have to worry about hormones. So what do you need?”

  “I need you to keep track of Levi Green for me.”

  Adam groaned. “Damn it. You’re going to get me arrested, aren’t you?”

  “If I do, I’ll go in with you,” Ian promised.

  Adam snorted. “At least you’ll protect me.”

  Ian grinned. “Nah, I’d sell you for cigarettes, buddy. I don’t smoke. Ramen noodles. I’ve heard those are premium items in the joint.”

  Adam’s eyes rolled. “So you want me to use my incredibly superior surveillance techniques on a CIA operative? I’m only saying yes because he’s such a fucking asshole.”

  “I’m only asking because right now Jax and Hutch are working on it, and Jax needs to go back to Colorado soon. I’ve got an assignment for Hutch coming up in a couple of days,” Ian explained. “I would put it on someone else and keep him here, but it’s for an old friend of mine.”

  “Anything I can help with?” Adam asked.

  “I think Hutch is the best person for this particular job,” Charlotte replied.

  “She’s plotting.” Ian slid his wife a sidelong glance. “The client is a friend’s daughter, and she’s adorably dorky. And single.”

  “And she would look so cute with Hutch. They’re both a little nerdy and sweet, and I heard she’s into baking.” Charlotte’s eyes sparkled as she played matchmaker. “Hutch has a big old sweet tooth. I think it’s going to work out. I can feel it.”

  If only it were that simple. “I’ve actually got something I wanted to ask you all about. I meant to talk to you about this earlier, but I got sidetracked.”

  “That’s what we call it, too,” Tag snarked.

  She ignored him. She wasn’t about to tell him nothing had gone nasty between her and Beck in his office. It had been sweet. It had been emotional. It had been so fucking scary. “The day Levi showed up at my store I got this weird package. It was sent via courier, but it was nothing more than a single piece of paper. Remember, remember the fifth of November, and then a line that told me to look for Reva. Honestly, I didn’t think about looking into it with everything that’s gone on, but it had my name on it. K. Solomon. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems a little coincidental to me that I would receive a message sent to my store the same day Levi showed up.”

  Tag was on his feet. “It’s not a coincidence, and I think that message should have been sent here.”

  Adam was groaning. “I don’t think Hutch is going to make it to his assignment.”

  “What’s going on?” Kim watched as Tag threw open his door. “Hutch! Don’t you hide. I see you. You cannot get away from me. I know all your hidey holes. Get in here, now.”

  Greg Hutchins walked into the room, a grimace on his face. He was a stunning man in his early thirties, with golden brown hair and a lean, muscular body that he somehow kept even though the
rumor was the man loved candy. “Hide? I would never hide, boss.”

  “Who is Reva?” Tag asked.

  Hutch started to turn. “I take back what I said. I’m hiding.”

  Charlotte intervened, catching Hutch’s arm. “Come on, Hutch. We know you’re not active.”

  “Do we?” Tag asked, looking every bit like a dad who would get his kid to talk. “Do we?”

  Kim turned to Adam. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “I think Hutch’s past is coming back to haunt him,” Adam said. “When Hutch was a kid, he got involved in a group called the People’s Revolution. They were a bit like Anonymous back in the day, and they were way too invested in a comic book series called V for Vendetta.”

  “Which centered around an anarchist in a Guy Fawkes mask.” She knew that much. “I think I remember a bit about them. They were a hacktivist group, right?”

  “We were trying to do good things.” Hutch seemed to be resigned to his fate, and he took a seat.

  “You were releasing private paperwork and hacking citizens’ computers.” Tag stared at Hutch.

  “Only to point out hypocrisy and to catch criminals.” Hutch turned his blue eyes Kim’s way.

  Tag patted his shoulder. “Hutch, are you still working with them?”

  Some of the tension left the room as Hutch rolled his eyes. “No. But I do check in on them from time to time. Especially Reva.”

  “So this Reva is a real person?” Kim asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve known her since we were kids. And by know, I mean online,” Hutch admitted. “But she’s not in the business anymore. She hasn’t worked with the People’s Revolution for years. She’s married with two kids.”

  “She told you she’s no longer working with the group?” Adam asked.

  “I believe her. Look, I haven’t actually messaged her in a couple of months. Some of the old crew checks in every now and then.” Hutch pulled out his cell phone and offered it up to Adam. “Here. I’ll let you go through everything I have.”

  Tag shook his head. “I believe you. I wasn’t really upset. I think I have resting dad face now. I called you in because Solo got a message a couple of days ago to look for Reva.”