by Lexi Blake
Ten might be gorgeous, but he had nothing on Ian.
“You can’t blame a guy for trying. It’s a long flight and I don’t read magazines.” He turned his chair around. “How about you, sweetheart? Why don’t you come sit on old Ten’s lap and we can talk about all the things we can do at thirty thousand feet.”
“Touch her and I’ll kill you,” Simon said. “If you need some relief, Yank, I suggest you have a wank in the loo.”
Chelsea faced forward in her seat, her shoulders up around her ears.
Ten glanced Charlie’s way, sitting back in his chair and giving her a little wink.
Yes, it was going to be a very long flight.
* * * *
“What the hell is going on, Sean?” Ian closed the small curtain that separated the cabin from the kitchen.
If Sean was intimidated by his very dark voice, he didn’t show it. It sucked because it was the same voice he used to use on his kid brother to get him to do his damn homework. No one was intimidated by him anymore.
“It’s time to kill Nelson. I’m coming with you.” Sean set down his bag. “Everyone has scattered. Li and Avery are going to our safe house on the East Coast and Jake and Adam are taking Serena, Grace, and Carys to the west. Alex and Eve are headed to Canada.”
Sean was smart enough to not say more. Ian didn’t care that Ten had watched his back on multiple occasions or that Damon Knight had been one of his mentors when he first started working. No one needed to know the locations of his team. No one. Alex and Eve were making their way to Toronto where they would fly to Saint Petersburg on Canadian passports and visas that allowed them to sight-see. They would report back on Denisovitch’s movements.
But he’d meant to keep his brother out of this. “You can’t come with me. You have a kid.”
“And you have a wife. I don’t see what the problem is, brother. Grace has always known that if you went after Nelson, I would go with you.”
“She’s not my wife. Not really.” But the words sounded stubborn and dumb even to him.
His baby brother’s eyes rolled in frustration. “You can keep saying it but I hope like hell you wake up before all this is over. Nothing you say is going to get me off this plane. Adam worked up my visa and I managed to get a bunch of shots. What’s up with that? Can’t Nelson pick a country with less contagions?”
He didn’t have time for Sean’s complaints. “I can have you hauled off this plane.”
“You could try. You might even succeed, but I’ll hop the next flight to India and I’ll be on your doorstep a couple of hours after you get there. Don’t think I can’t find out where you’ve set up shop. Adam might be afraid of you, but Serena craves my enchiladas. Who do you think wins that war, big brother?”
Ian’s fists clenched in frustration. “I don’t want you hurt, Sean.”
“And I don’t want you dead.” He stepped up, leaving very little space between them. “I know you are always going to see me as your snot-nosed kid brother. I know that deep down you’ll think you’re responsible for me until the day you die. And I know that I haven’t done the one thing I should have done for all those years you treated me like a brat kid and bossed me around.”
Fuck, he didn’t want to have it out with his brother. He’d spent the last year and a half trying to make up for choosing Sean over Grace when his brother had asked him to protect the woman he loved. Sean couldn’t know how much the distance bothered him, how much he missed his brother. “What is that, Sean?”
Sean put a hand on his shoulder, his face grave. “Thank you, brother. You didn’t have to take over after Dad left. You could have watched out for yourself but you took over and made sure I had what I needed. Don’t think for a second I don’t know who bought my birthday presents or made sure I had school supplies.”
Ian looked down at the man he’d raised. There was six years between them. It didn’t seem like much now, but when their father walked out on them, Sean had only been ten and then it was a chasm. Their mother had been depressed and barely functional. He’d had to grow up at sixteen. He’d had to take control. He remembered that first night when he sat waiting and hoping that his father would come home. And then he’d gotten up the next morning, begged his mother to get out of bed so she could go to work. She’d stayed in bed for a month. He’d gotten a job working after school until midnight at the local grocery. His childhood had been over. “It’s not a big deal, Sean.”
Sean shook his head. “It’s a big fucking deal, Ian. I know our relationship has been strained, but I’m done with that. I love you. I admire you. If anything happens to me and Grace, you should know that we’ve left Carys in your care.”
That shocked the fuck out of him. “I thought you would leave her to Alex and Eve.”
“No. It was never even a thought in our heads. You’re her uncle and I happen to know that you’re damn good at raising a kid. I hope like hell you get your head out of your ass and start raising some with that crazy bitch in there because she is your match, man. Charlie is everything you need.”
Somehow he didn’t mind his brother calling her Charlie. It bugged him when other people did it. Charlie was his name for her, but when Sean called her that it was an acceptance, a brotherly front. But he didn’t want to think about this right now. He wanted to live in the damn moment for once in his life. “I’m not kicking her out.”
“Ian, you can’t honestly believe she’s here to hurt you. What does your gut tell you?”
“My gut was wrong before.”
“No, it wasn’t. You said you knew something was wrong with her. What does your gut say now?”
“My gut isn’t in control. My cock is and my cock doesn’t give a shit. Do you understand, Sean? My cock doesn’t care that she could have slept with Nelson. She could roll out of his bed and into mine and my cock would be ready to go. I don’t care that she might have slept with half the syndicate, that she had her father killed, that she nearly got me and Li killed. I don’t care. I just want to get inside her again. If you told me this had all been a lie, that she was walking me into a trap, I would probably go into it willingly because I don’t know that I can survive losing her again.”
A smile crept over Sean’s face. “I think we call that love.”
Yep, the vomit was right there at the back of his throat. “It’s stupidity, Sean.”
“You say potato, I say true love. I know you. I know you’ve played through every horrible scenario in your head. I know you’ve gone through all the ways she could be tricking you and everything she would gain by betraying you, but have you thought through the fact that she just loves you and wants to be your wife?”
The plane jumped a little. He was out of time to get his brother away unless he wanted to toss him on the tarmac. “That’s not the likely scenario.”
“You can’t play this on percentages and chances, Ian. Did you read Eve’s work-up on her? Did you read about the way she behaved, the things she did when you weren’t around?”
He glanced into the cabin. Charlie was looking out the window while Ten seemed to be staring down her shirt. And he was sitting in Ian’s fucking seat. What did she really do when no one was watching?
Ten reached out and put a hand on her arm, pointing at something outside the window. Ian felt a low growl start to build in his chest. But then Charlie frowned at him, removed his arm, and seemed to give him a good talking to.
The raging jealousy that had been inside him since the moment she’d walked back in eased a little. Charlie wasn’t interested in Ten. As far as he could tell she hadn’t looked at another man, and Eve had said she was perfectly celibate in Florida. It had been her reputation there.
Why was he believing a pathetic piece of trash assassin over her?
“You know she sent a bunch of information to the Agency? She stopped a couple of terrorist plots in their tracks. That wasn’t Chelsea. That was Charlie. When I sat down with the Agency, they didn’t want to torture her."
“Th
ey wanted to hire her,” Sean surmised.
“I didn’t tell her that.” He didn’t want that life for her. He was allowing her to believe that he’d saved her from torture when he might be keeping her from a job she would love.
“She wouldn’t go. She is right where she wants to be and that means you have some decisions to make.” His brother slapped him on the back, a manly gesture of affection.
He might have to choose between her and Sean because she would still be wanted, still be under the syndicate’s kill order. “Sean, if I run with her…”
“Slip me a postcard every now and then. Let us know you’re okay. You should always know that we’re here if you need us. You have to choose her now. If you love her then you have to pick her over me, like I picked Grace. Let’s finish this and then you run with her. Your job is done. I’m fine. Better than fine. We’re all happy, Ian. You played a part in all of us finding what we need. Your little family is set. So you can run and know that we’ll be fine. You have a new family now.”
Charlie’s eyes came up, finding his. She gave him a smile and mouthed the words “save me” and pointed at her erstwhile suitor.
Save her. It was all he’d wanted to do back then.
Knight’s voice came over the system. “This is your pilot. We’re about to take off. If you want to keep your ball bag in the right place, you’ll sit down and buckle up.”
So he was set. He was going to meet with Eli Nelson and his brother was at his back.
And he kind of wanted to keep his ball bag where it belonged, but Ten might lose his. He strode down the aisle. He wasn’t going to fight with Ten. He didn’t need to.
He took the seat across from Ten. “Charlie?”
She didn’t need more than that. She unbuckled and immediately moved to sit beside him without a backward glance.
Sean settled in across from Charlie, a smirk on his face.
“Buckle up, baby,” Ian said.
It might be a long flight, but at least he liked the company.
Most of it.
* * * *
The sun beat down on Nelson’s head, the heat nearly unbearable, but he stayed in position, watching the massive yacht in the distance.
He was getting too old for this shit. He was starting to envy the king and his carefree world. Kamdar didn’t have to hustle, didn’t have to worry that every day might be his last.
He was a little naïve to not worry about that last bit since Nelson’s job was to make sure the king didn’t have a good many days left.
The king was lying back on a chaise as his harem lounged around him. Beautiful women in bikinis that barely covered anything at all. They were all there awaiting the king’s pleasure. Including the new blonde he’d picked up when he’d refueled yesterday.
It had been the simplest thing for Nelson to get his own pretty blonde on board. His attempts at getting close to the king himself had met with failure. The king, he’d been told, was on vacation and not meeting anyone for business.
It would be so simple if he could just murder the fucker, but until he figured out where the research documents were stored, Kash Kamdar had to be kept alive. The last thing his bosses wanted was the research being made public. He needed every copy either in his hands or destroyed.
Hopefully Olga would do her work and do it well. She simply needed to get into the king’s bed and then wait until he made a mistake.
Or if he took too long, then Olga was not only magnificent in bed, she was also a well-trained torturer. She could lick a man’s balls and then make him wish he’d never been born with them.
He just wished she would get on with it. The shit in Russia was getting to be a pain in his ass. His employers didn’t understand that the pipeline raids were a delicate balance. He had to keep both the syndicate and the insider he’d placed at Malone Oil happy. The young engineer he’d found spied for him and let him know when security was weak, and then Nelson let Denisovitch know where to strike. All his bosses wanted was more profit. They didn’t understand that the minute Malone Oil found his spy, they would likely find him and figure out that rival oil companies were using the mob to weaken their competitors.
The world was changing. Governments controlled very little now. Oh, they made a good show of it, but they no longer had real power. Nelson had seen it coming a long time ago. The Agency paid shit, and they weren’t known for their loving care of retired employees. So when The Collective had first recruited him, it had been a godsend. The Collective understood how the world worked. They also knew how to keep an employee happy. Money. Profit. That was what The Collective traded in. He’d found his place.
Until fucking Taggart had ruined everything.
He’d been valuable to The Collective when he had CIA entrée. Now he had to hustle like the rest of them and hope he satisfied the men in power.
Corporations were the new kings, and they liked their warfare waged quietly.
He just sometimes had to convince them to be patient.
His cell rang—the private one he always had to answer. He put down his binoculars just as the king started in on a pretty Asian woman. It looked like he was branching out from his usual blondes.
“Yes.” No need for “hello” or “this is.” They knew exactly who he was and they didn’t care for pleasantries.
“Why was the Agency and MI6 swarming Dallas?”
Fuck. He hadn’t exactly explained to his contact that a round of assassinations had been part of his deal with the syndicate, but then he was awfully good at deflecting blame. “Denisovitch found his niece. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to convince him of her worth.”
Like he would try. He wanted the bitch dead, too.
“I explained to you that The Collective believes she could be an asset.”
“I brought your concerns to the syndicate, but I’m afraid they believe in revenge more.”
His contact’s frustration was clear in the tightness of his tone. “Try harder. We want the girl brought to us. She’s proven to be smart and capable and willing to get her hands dirty.”
They didn’t understand Charlotte Denisovitch the way he did. “Then why did she tip off the Agency about Al-Qaeda plots?”
There was a small chuckle over the line. “The fact that she knew about those plots at all makes us interested in her. We’re not terrorists, Mr. Nelson. We’re capitalists. There was no money to be made off anarchist plots. We stood to lose billions if the Euro dropped, so in our minds she’s quite the hero. We expect you to keep the syndicate in line.”
Yeah, because that was an easy job. “Denisovitch can be unreasonable.”
“Then maybe he shouldn’t be the head of the family anymore.”
Fuck. He was going to have to off another mobster. He’d been lucky last time. If he got caught, it wasn’t like The Collective would send the cavalry in. They would just find another agent to take his place and move on.
“Finish the job in India. If you can kill the project and bring us all the research, there will be a rather large bonus in it for you. Then you can handle the Russian problem and we can discuss your retirement from the field. We think it might be time to move you to management.”
Those were the magic words that kept him dangling on a string. Oh, he knew he would never really be out of The Collective, but he could move out of the field. He could move into recruitment and training and stay for months on his island.
He would be able to enjoy it because Taggart would be dead. He could always claim that Denisovitch wouldn’t listen. Everyone knew the man was insane. He would let the syndicate do his dirty work and then get rid of the head and install someone more reasonable.
It could work out for everyone.
“Of course. I’ve placed a spy inside the king’s household.”
Another chuckle. “You mean you put a whore in his bed. That man has the stamina of a rutting bull. Don’t let her kill him until we have that research. Is the site rigged?”
At least he’d managed to do
one thing right. “I have more than one spy. I managed to find one of his employees with a gambling problem. I think I’m almost ready to move. And yes, the research site is rigged to explode when I choose. I have to make sure I get the research out of there before I blow it if I can’t get Kamdar’s copy.”
“It might be easier to take it from the king than to get it from the site. Make sure the scientists are inside when you pull the trigger. We have our own who can continue the research or quash it, whatever we decide.”
Because The Collective ran the world and they didn’t like anyone else interfering. Technology, research, innovation had to come from The Collective and no one else. Whether they bought it or stole it, all knowledge would come from them.
“Absolutely. Perhaps the next king won’t be so disagreeable.” The Collective would likely make sure of it. Nelson already had several candidates in mind. After all, it was always in their best interests to install their own leaders.
“We shall see, Mr. Nelson. Now, listen closely. I have it on good authority that you have some visitors on the way.”
His whole body tightened with dread. “Who?”
“Well, let’s just say your old friends aren’t in Dallas anymore. Good luck to you. You know what happens if you fail.” The line went dead.
If he failed he would very likely find himself answering questions he didn’t want to answer. And his retirement might be from life and not the field.
How had that fucker found him?
Unless sweet Charlotte had been keeping tabs on him and wanted to please her dipshit husband. Otherwise, Taggart would have taken his bait and been looking for him in Russia.
He should have known assassins couldn’t take down Taggart himself. Now Tag would want revenge for more than Grace’s near death during their first real meeting.
