On Her Master's Secret Service, Masters and Mercenaries, Book 4

by Lexi Blake

  He had his job, and he was damn lucky to have it. The boss didn’t have to trust him. Hell, no one else did. He had one shot at having any kind of a future, and he wasn’t going to let Alex McKay, world-class pervert, get in his way. He’d surely been right before. The tenderness he’d seen was an illusion. If the boss said he had to go, then he had to go.

  And then Jesse would be in. Then he would really be on the team, a true soldier again.

  He picked up the pace, his resolve hardened. He would put the woman down easy, but maybe he wouldn’t be so kind to the man.

  He had a little aggression to work out after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  “So you’re saying you won’t be here any time soon, huh, boss?” Adam asked, his voice clear as day as Alex walked through the front door of the condo. The balcony doors were open and a peaceful breeze came off the Atlantic.

  There was nothing peaceful about his best friend’s response. Ian’s voice cracked through the condo.

  “You invited Taggart here?” Kristen whispered, holding back as though the devil himself was in the room.

  Well, Ian had quite the reputation. He suspected there was a reason Kristen didn’t want Ian around. He would very likely take over. Of course as lovely and soft as Kristen was, Ian would also very likely try to get into her bed. He needed to get her to chill because he’d spent forty minutes listening to her bitch about Jake showing up. “I did not. And since he’s talking to Adam through a computer, it’s likely he’s not on his way.”

  Ian practically snarled over the connection. “No. I will not be getting on a plane any time soon because some motherfucker managed to get my name on a no-fly list. I swear to god, when I find Nelson I am going to kill him real slow.”

  Eve gasped a little beside him, rushing toward the dining room table where Adam had a monitor up.

  Kristen simply frowned and carefully walked around the mass of tech gear Adam had accrued. She was deliberate about not walking in front of the camera attached to the computer. “Are you sure you weren’t going to bring him in, too? I might as well just walk away for all you respect me. I have plans, and you’re going to screw them up.”

  “Oh, Ian. Did they detain you?” Eve asked, her voice sympathetic.

  “I didn’t ask him to come in,” Alex said quietly to Kristen. All her plans had been working, so he chose to placate her for now. The truth was he rather liked Kristen. “And I’m sorry I didn’t mention Jacob. The idea came to me late last night. He did his job and he’s out of it now. And it doesn’t sound like Ian’s going to make it out of Texas. I do respect you. I want you on this team. I know Eve respects you, too. She really wants to take a look at those files.” She’d mentioned it to him as he’d dried her off from their shower. His gut tightened at the idea of Eve getting deeper in, but he was going to honor her request. And he was going to get back in good with Kristen. He could be charming when he wanted to be. “I’m so grateful that you have the full files. My old partner is a slave to the rules. He couldn’t help me.”

  He could stroke her ego a little.

  A little smile curved her lips up. “Warren Petty. I’ve studied up on him. Interesting guy. His brother is about to be in a tough election fight.”

  Warren had always supported his brother’s campaigns. When they were working together, he’d always been so proud he had a brother in politics. “Hoping you get a story out of it?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, I hate politics. Talk about mired in scandal. No. I’ll stay out of Washington. Yeah, let’s not bring the feds in here. I can get us any info we need, though Adam has proven to not be a total nimrod.”

  “I’m excellent, thank you very much,” Adam said. “I could totally have those files in five seconds. Do you want me to prove it?”

  Ian’s voice came over the monitor. “No, asshole, I want you to prove that you can get my fucking life back in order. Nelson is screwing with me, and I don’t like it. I got more than detained, damn it. I got searched by two of Homeland Security’s finest, and by finest what I really mean is hairiest and least gentle with the body cavities.”

  Wow. “Nelson is playing hardball.”

  Adam snickered. “Or hardballs, as in Ian’s case.”

  Adam should be happy Ian was four states away.

  “I’ll get the files for you.” Kristen walked back to her office.

  “Holy shit, did I just hear that big brother got the slow hand from Homeland Security?” Sean wasn’t even trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah, well wait until Nelson decides to come after you, baby brother. We know he doesn’t like you either,” Ian said. Alex moved in front of the monitor. Ian was in his office, but somehow he made his presence felt despite the distance. “In the course of a few days, he’s managed to blow my whole damn life apart. I just got a notification that someone changed the ownership names on my properties to Hottie McHot Pants. I can’t sell those assets or change things or accept rent until I get this fixed. He is seriously fucking with me.”

  “I can figure it out.” Adam hid a smile behind his hand. “I can totally fix all of that for you, but it’s going to take a little time. I need everything that’s been changed and I can fairly easily change it all back. These are all simple hacks for an expert.”

  “Can you track him back? Can you use this information to figure out where he is?” Ian asked.

  Adam shrugged. “I can try. He’s escalating.”

  “I’m surprised,” Eve said. “This doesn’t sound like Nelson. He’s never come at us out in the open.”

  Nelson had been a pain in the firm’s collective asses for longer than any of them had imagined. Alex had thought their troubles with Nelson began when the CIA operative decided to sell corporate secrets to the Chinese and he’d tried to use Sean Taggart’s wife to do it. But a couple of months ago in London he had discovered that Nelson had been dirty for years and had very likely had a hand in killing Ian’s wife and sending Liam on the run. Alex wouldn’t put anything past the man, but he seriously doubted that Nelson was out there calling Ian Hottie McHot Pants.

  “He’s coming after us personally now.” Ian sat back in his chair.

  “He’s coming after the boss anyway.” Liam knelt down, nodding toward the monitor. “And I think we might have had a break-in a couple of weeks ago. Ian asked me to go through all the security records. Someone used my security code at 1:51 am exactly three weeks and two days ago. I checked my records. I happen to know I didn’t come to the office that night. Avery and I were in Austin for the weekend. The rest of you were working on a corporate case and you were all in Omaha. No one but the accounting girl was in the office, and she certainly wasn’t here at that time of night.”

  Why would Nelson sneak into their office? What could he hope to gain? He’d always tried to stay away from them. “Do we have him on video?”

  Ian growled. It was the way he’d communicated since they were kids. “I can’t find the things. I’m calling the company that programmed the backup system. I hope we still have the security tapes, but the way the rest of my fucking week is going, I’m sure someone taped soap operas over them. Can I borrow Adam for a couple of hours?”

  “Any idiot can run the pics we took today through a facial recognition system,” Adam said.

  Ian sighed. “Thank god. Then Sean can do it.”

  Sean flipped his brother off. Ah, brotherhood.

  “Fine, Sean can run the pictures. The GPS bugs we planted today will send us reports.” Alex wanted to get everything out of the way so he could spend some more time with Eve. He’d realized something today. He really only had the next weeks of this mission to convince her. When they got back to the real world, she would question everything and start putting up roadblocks. He had no intention of going backwards. He needed to use this time to bind her to him again.

  Adam slapped his hands together with obvious glee at getting to use his new toys. “I got the reports on the bugs already. I told you they would immediately sta
rt reporting back. You got two tagged. Way to go, Alex. I was hoping you could get one. The bad news is one of the bugs tracked right to a dry cleaner and now it’s dead. Apparently the dry cleaning process is hell on delicate but brilliantly crafted new technology. But the second one just landed at LaGuardia. It looks like we’re getting some movement.”

  “Well, really?” Eve asked, a satisfied smile on her face. “Now I wonder which one is still giving deeply helpful information and which one is dead?”

  “I can still spank you.” Damn it. She’d been right, but he stood by his rule. She could have gotten hurt. Just because she’d been right didn’t prove a damn thing. He’d already known she was smarter than him. Everyone knew it. Hell, he was pretty sure there had been a billboard taken out proclaiming it.

  “You like to spank me for no reason at all,” Eve said with the most adorable pout.

  He did. He would get his hands on her for any reason he could think of. “Get me the information, Adam. I need that information and anything Sean could find. Do we have a workable connection on Chazz’s cell phone? Jake gave me the signal that he’d tapped Chazz’s cell.”

  “All I’ve gotten so far is Chazz ordering pizza with double meat and trying to hook up with two of his servers. Someone named Bambi likes to say ewwww a lot and hang up on him. He’s very positive. He just keeps calling back,” Sean explained. “Why did I pull baby-sit the douchebag duty? Couldn’t Kris do this? She has a way better sense of humor when it comes to two idiots trying to hook up.”

  He had plans for Kristen. This was his night off so it would look suspicious if he showed up. “Kris is going back to the club tonight. She’s going to try to lift Chazz’s keys and make a copy of the key to his office.”

  Ian frowned. “Shouldn’t you do that yourself?”

  “She’s my best shot tonight.” They had worked it all out during the drive from St. Augustine to Palm Coast. “I don’t have any reason to be in the club until tomorrow night when Eve and I start our nightly performances. The club is closed for a private party for some of Chazz’s friends. According to Kristen, he likes to get really drunk. Jake didn’t get a shot at it last night, so Kristen is taking hers tonight.”

  “You’re putting an awful lot of trust in someone you don’t know,” Ian said.

  How did he explain Kristen? There was something deep in his gut that told him she was worth trusting. “I think she’s the best person to do this job. She’s been nothing but helpful up to this point.”

  “Eve, what do you think?” Ian asked, deferring as he often did to Eve. She knew people. She rarely screwed up.

  Eve glanced up, obviously looking for Kristen, but she hadn’t reappeared. “I think she’s hiding something, but I don’t think she means any of us harm. I truly believe she wants to do this job and catch Michael Evans. I don’t know if I completely believe her reasons for doing so, but I don’t sense anything from her that would make me distrust her. If I had to go off what I know right now, I would say she’s screwed up in the past. She’s looking for redemption and she goes about it by uncovering corruption and helping people. I would say she probably lives a fairly solitary life. Her parents are either dead or she has a distant relationship with them. She’s looking for a family, seeking to cobble together a group of friends to call her own. Earlier today, Alex did something that really pissed her off, but she still got to her knees to talk to me.”

  “Why were you on your knees?” Liam asked.

  The cutest little frown crossed Eve’s face. “Alex didn’t like how I handled a situation so he punished me by making me crawl across a dirty floor.”

  He felt himself flush. He wouldn’t have knowingly sent her to a dirty floor. “It looked clean to me.”

  Eve pouted adorably. “Well, you should have looked closer. Anyway, Kristen could have just walked beside me, but she got down to my level. She’s a little bit of a puzzle, but if I had to, I would bet that she is firmly on our side.”

  Ian’s eyes widened slightly, and a little grin curved his lips up. “He punished you? Like actual punishment, not something you decided on and manipulated him into?”

  Now it was Eve’s turn to blush. “It’s just for show.”

  “Like hell it is,” Alex muttered under his breath. “She put herself in danger, and she’s my sub. I’ll punish her as I wish.”

  Ian slapped his hands together. “Well, hell. At least part of the week is looking up. Adam, please get my identity back and find whatever fucker Nelson hired to wreck my life. I doubt he did it himself. We need to find him and then torture him into giving up Nelson, and then I’ll slice his balls off and feed them to him because I’m pretty sure he put my name on a bunch of mailing lists. I’m getting spammed like crazy.”

  Liam nodded, smiling in agreement. “Damn near took our systems down. He got five thousand ads for male enhancement and two thousand offering him forklift operator training. This is a serious matter, my mates.”

  Ian rolled his eyes and flipped his computer down, breaking the connection.

  Eve shook her head. “Are we sure this is Nelson? It seems so impish. Nelson would just come at him hard.”

  “Have you ever had a deep cavity search?” Sean asked, shuddering a little. “It’s sounds pretty nasty to me.”

  Eve’s eyes narrowed, and she let her sarcasm flow. “No, Sean. I’ve never had anything shoved into my body parts by some overly enthusiastic Dom. Yeah, no sub ever had to endure that.”

  And on that note, it was time to take his sub and make a few things clear to her. “You all have your assignments.”

  Kristen walked in, a stack of files in her hands. She gave Eve a little smile, but held back from the rest, and Alex wondered just how much she’d overheard. “I have the files. It’s pretty much everything I could get off the FBI’s site. Don’t hate me, McKay, but I got the SAC’s personal folders on all the victims. I know they were random, but I thought I needed to read their files. You know, they deserve that much.”

  He nodded and took them from her. “Eve can look through them later, but we’re going to have a conversation right now.”

  After the session in the shower, he knew he had to push through her barriers. She thought they were through, but they hadn’t even started yet. In order to let go of the past, they had to face it, finally.

  He reached down and took her hand.

  “I really would like to look at those files.” Eve’s eyes strayed to them.

  “After.” He tugged on her hand, pulling her along.

  “Alex.” Eve sighed his name. “We really should talk about what’s happening.”

  He walked her into the bedroom. “I don’t think so.”

  Eve pulled away. “We can’t just ignore it. We’re being truly intimate for the first time in years, but it’s not real.”

  “You’re right.” It couldn’t be real as long as they had so much of the past between them.

  Her breath caught just enough to let Alex know she was upset that he agreed. But she smoothed out her expression and was right back to being the logical one. This was the game she’d been playing for five years. It seemed to have become a habit. One he intended to break.

  If he hadn’t been watching her closely, he wouldn’t have seen the truth behind her mask. When had he stopped studying her every expression? When had he become lazy and so scared of losing her that he’d forgotten how to take care of her? “I’m glad you can be reasonable. Alex, we’re just holding on to what we know. We’re both afraid to let go of the past.”

  “There were a lot of things about the past that were pretty damn good, you know.” He closed the door behind them. This wasn’t a conversation that needed an audience. He placed the folders on the dresser, trading them for something far more important. He zipped open his leather kit, pulling out the lube and a pack of wipes and walking it over to the nightstand.

  Eve’s eyes widened. “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  He was sure of one thing. She would be underneath him
tonight. He would get balls deep inside her and then she wouldn’t be able to lie to him—or herself—ever again. “We had years and years of good.”

  He reached back into the bag and pulled out a length of rope. He had three lengths, each thirty feet. He’d learned that was exactly what he needed to tie up his pretty sub.

  Her eyes went to the rope in his hands. “I know we did. We should honor those years by accepting that we’ve changed. Alex, I don’t want to lose you as a friend, but you have to know that once we get back to our normal lives, all our problems are still going to be waiting there. This can’t work long term. This kind of passion burns itself out.”

  He unwound the first length, shaking his head the whole time. “It didn’t for me. I’ve been this passionate about you for fifteen years. I want another fifty more, and I’m willing to fight for it now. I can see where I went wrong. I thought you needed time, and one day blurred into the next until I just gave in on everything because I got confused. I thought I was appeasing you, but I was really appeasing the guilt I felt. Eve, we haven’t talked about those days, not really. Seven days. Seven horrible days and we’ve let them ruin the thousands of good ones.”

  She stared at the rope, her mouth turning down and her hands flexing, a sure sign that she was getting anxious. “We talked in therapy.”

  They had spent long hours talking, but it had been clinical and she’d skimmed the surfaces. After a while, they’d just stopped going and given up. “I hated those sessions. I said whatever I thought would get me out of those sessions as quickly as possible. I didn’t do the work to get us through this because it was far easier for me to concentrate on killing Michael Evans. Even after I found and arrested the bastard, I concentrated on his trial and my job.”

  “I know. I understand why you did it. You could control that aspect.”

  He’d made some mistakes, but so had she, and she was still making the same ones. “Strip.”