by Blake, Lexi
Hutch had an answer for that. “Traffic cameras. You didn’t switch cars after the initial pickup. It would have been hard because not every intersection has a camera, but we know they’ve got some people on DPD, so they could track you and figure out where you stopped.”
“It’s probably how Adam did it,” Chelsea explained. Her face went white. “Oh god.”
Ten frowned. “Hutch, take over. Simon, she doesn’t need to see this.”
But he did. He nodded at Jesse, who had Chelsea pulled back as fast as he could get her up and out of her seat. She was shaking, but Simon had to see for himself.
It was a video playing on a loop. There was a woman kneeling in what looked like a hospital room. White and sterile, Simon could almost smell the bleach. But the man who entered the picture wasn’t a doctor. He was dressed in a suit with a mask covering his face. He stepped up to the camera.
“Mr. Krum, you missed your deadline. I believe we promised you a penalty.” He stepped back from the camera and it was all over in an instant. The man placed his pistol at the woman’s temple and pulled the trigger. Her body slumped over and the floor wasn’t white or sterile anymore.
“We want the files you stole and we want them now. You have four hours. We have your sister, too. She has four hours to live.”
The video went blank and then the man was on again. This time he was alone and someone had cleaned up that room.
“Miss Dennis, I’m sorry for the shock. I’m sending you this video so you understand the history of our interactions up to this point. Unfortunately, that woman’s four hours were up a long time ago. So were her mother’s when our very reasonable request went unmet. Apparently our employee, Albert Krum, has mistakenly sent you a package that belongs to us. The bombs you discovered are meant merely to show you that we do mean business. We know where you live, where you work, where you play. We know who you care about. We don’t want for those packages to be sent to your sister or perhaps to Mr. Weston. You look him up far too often on the Internet, dear. You’re getting a bit sloppy in your retirement. We’ll call you this evening. Find the package or Albert will be joining his mother and sister and then we’ll be forced to start looking at your family. Until then.”
Simon looked over and Chelsea had her stoic face on, but she was pale, far too still.
Ten took a long breath as he stared at the screen. “Hutch, I’m going to need another secure line. No matter how the man feels about me right now, there’s no way I’m not warning Tag. Chelsea, where would he send the package?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t like I got a lot of packages while I was moving around the world trying to keep one step ahead of my father’s men. It was a bad bet to leave a forwarding address,” Chelsea said.
Simon moved toward her, but when he put his hand close to hers, she moved away slightly.
She was shutting down again and at the worst possible moment.
Ten flipped the laptop closed. “Let’s clear out and I’ll make my call. I want every man looking into this Krum guy. Connect him to a corporation and that corporation to a lawsuit. I need straight lines to and from, people. And figure out where he would have sent this mysterious package of his. Weston, make sure your people get some sleep. We’re moving in the morning. Don’t ask me where. It’s better you don’t know.”
The room emptied as Ten and his men went to find another, more private location. It wasn’t lost on Simon that Boomer and Deke stayed behind. Their guard. It was good to know there were only two of them.
He could handle two of them, but not until later. Now it was time to truly bind her to him because he was going to make his move and he needed to make sure that when he did, she was by his side.
Chapter Thirteen
She wasn’t going to cry. She’d done enough of that. It was time to face the facts. She’d gotten them in this mess and working with Ten was the only way to get them out of it. She stared out of her balcony at the massive moon overhead. It didn’t look so big when she was in the city, or maybe she just never looked up long enough to really see it.
Three hours had gone by and she still couldn’t get the sight of that poor woman kneeling on the floor out of her head. Jesse had pulled her away before the shot that ended the woman’s life, but she could imagine it. She could certainly imagine feeling utterly helpless and alone in the world. It made her sick. Al’s whole family was dead. Al, with his shy smile and big eyes hidden behind thick glasses. He’d been a little chunky and the dude could have dressed better, but the time they’d actually met he’d been funny and sweet. He’d run all over Venice with her. It had been weird because she hadn’t pictured him that way, but he’d been one of the first real friends she’d made during those years on the run.
The sound of boots moving across the patio below brought her out of her reverie. Case Taggart had taken Boomer’s place manning the outer perimeter. She was sure if she opened her bedroom door that Theo would be pacing the halls.
Where was Simon? Was he still sitting downstairs talking to his aunt? Ava had finally caught a little of the evening news, and the very elegant lady had proven she knew a whole bunch of curse words.
Tag the Third looked up and nodded before continuing his sweep.
So much trouble over one little package, but then that might be the story of her life.
A restlessness took over and she couldn’t stay cooped up a second more. She needed to see Simon. She needed to come clean with him and get him the hell out of this op. The Collective would use him against her and she couldn’t allow that to happen. She would just walk right up to him and tell him what she was going to do. She was never going to be his girlfriend or sub or whatever he wanted to call it. She was going to be Ten’s broker.
She crossed over to the door after pulling a robe over the gown Ava Malone had dropped off at her room. Deke had forgotten about PJs and apparently Simon’s aunt was a deep believer in wearing elegant things to bed. It was a far more feminine nightgown than she would ever wear, but it was all she had at this point. White and silky, it covered everything. It also had a plunging neckline and a thigh-high slit, but luckily it came with a long-sleeved robe that when knotted properly formed a sort of elegant silk muumuu. At least that’s what she told herself.
She opened the door, perfectly ready to walk out and face down Simon. Theo was standing right there, his hand up as though ready to knock. He looked so much like Satan and Sean it was a shock to see him there. “Hey.”
He nodded. “Hey. Uhm, the British guy asked me to bring you to him. He’s in a room at the end of the hall. I don’t know why he couldn’t get you himself, but I had nothing better to do so I said yes.”
Good. At least she wouldn’t have to look for him. “All right.”
Theo held a hand out, gesturing toward his left. “His room is in the east wing. God, that’s weird. The rich are different. I grew up in a double wide. No wings there.”
She started walking beside him. He slowed to match her pace. “I’ve lived just about everywhere and it’s all the same. It’s the people in the house that make it livable. Not the house itself.”
Sometimes when she slept she dreamed about the little house they had on the Carolina coast. She could smell the Atlantic and hear the waves. Endless waves like possibilities.
You’re like those waves, baby girl. You can go anywhere, be anything.
Her mother hadn’t been great with metaphors and then she hadn’t been anything at all.
She’d been a wonderful mother. She’d surrounded her daughters with love. She just hadn’t been able to protect them when the monster came back for her.
“What’s he like?” Theo asked, his voice low.
“Ian?”
“Yeah. I’m just curious. I didn’t tell Case this, but I knew Dad had another family. I found pictures in the closet once. They were way in the back with some of Dad’s old things. When I took them to my mom and asked about it, she didn’t know. They fought that night. Worst fight ever and I nev
er asked again because I didn’t want to see that look on her face.”
“Well, you would know if you’d gone into the Army instead of the Navy. Big Tag is a legend. He and Sean were both Green Berets. Ian got recruited into the Agency but then he met my sister and she died, and he was framed and he said fuck it, because he says that a lot, and quit and opened McKay-Taggart in Dallas. His hobbies are cussing, shooting people who annoy him, oddly enough gossiping, and he’s got this weird affinity for Guns N’ Roses.” Every time that one song came on, Ian and Charlotte would mysteriously disappear. “I think he’s got a man crush on Axl Rose.”
Theo shook his head. “He killed your sister?”
Oh, that was a long story. “Nah. She faked her own death so we could get away from our Russian mob father, but it cost Ian his career and he was pissed when she came back. She showed him her boobs and it was okay.”
Maybe it wasn’t such a long story. If she showed Simon her boobs again, would he forgive her?
“I’m confused. I don’t know if I want to meet him or not. Case says no.”
“Oh, then you should totally be like your doppelganger and say yes.”
The sweetest smile curled Theo’s lips up. He was quite stunning when he wanted to be. “His name is Sean? What’s he like?”
It was nice to know one of them was curious. “I like Sean. He kind of lives to poke his brother, but they’re really close. He got out of the business for the most part, though he helps out from time to time. He opened a restaurant.”
When he really smiled, he could light up a room. “Wow. That’s kind of cool. I guess when I think of Taggarts I think of military men. It’s nice to know we’re expanding.”
“You should meet them.”
His glow dimmed, and he shook his head. “Nah. That’s not a good idea. Case wants to do this thing with Ten. We have to keep real low profiles.”
They had to stay in the dark. Their only real friends would be in the program. Anyone they met in the outside world would be given a happy little lie. She was likely going to be spending a lot of time around Theo and Case and they would forever be reminders of the life she almost had.
They came to the end of the hall, and she could hear music playing through the closed double doors. She stopped and stared for a minute.
“You okay? If you don’t want to see him, you don’t have to, but I kind of thought you had a thing going,” Theo said.
“What gave me away? Was it sitting on his lap during a business meeting or him nearly killing his cousin?”
“It was the way you looked at him. You looked at him like he was the only man on earth. No one ever looked at me like that. I got kind of jealous and I don’t even know you. Did I get it wrong? Are you scared of him?”
She was scared of so many things, but not him. Never him. Not in any physical way. “I love him and I shouldn’t. I can’t because I’ll get him killed in the end.”
“A woman looks at me like that and maybe that’s worth dying over,” Theo said. He took a step back and a rueful grin crossed his face. “If you need anything, I’ll be out here.”
Ah, the night watch. “I bet you will. I promise not to bust out.”
He gave her a little salute. “See that you don’t.”
She turned back to those doors and forced herself to walk through them. He was probably ready to talk strategy or to go over her memory again in hopes of figuring out where the package might be. She would just walk in and treat him like a coworker. That would be for the best. Talk about the case and then tell him what she’d decided.
She opened the doors and her jaw dropped.
His room was a suite and he’d moved the furniture all to the side so there was a large space in the middle. The room was lit with what looked like a hundred candles. There couldn’t be that many, but they sparkled like diamonds illuminating the night.
He stood in the middle of the room. He’d left off his jacket, but he looked utterly masculine and immaculate in his dress shirt, vest, and tie. His slacks were perfectly pressed, and she had to sigh over just how hot he was. The Taggarts of the world might be rugged, but she would take Simon any day of the week. He was perfectly polished and smart and she’d seen him in a fight. For her, he was the perfect man.
How the hell could she give him up?
All the reasons flooded back, but they didn’t matter because she had one more night with him. “Hey. I was coming down to see you. What’s going on?”
His eyes heated as he looked her over from head to toe. “I was going to call Jesse in for a late-night supper. I thought he would appreciate the romantic gesture.”
“Come on, Weston. Let me off the hook. What’s going on here?” She kind of couldn’t breathe he looked so good. “Aren’t we supposed to be working?”
He stepped toward her. “I’ll leave that up to Ten. I wanted to find a way to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For being angry with you when I shouldn’t have been.” There was a single strand of golden hair that fell across his forehead, the imperfection making him look younger, happier than she was used to seeing him. “I was wrong about you and Ten. I’m sorry. My only excuse is that I was horribly jealous.”
He held out his hand, offering to bring her into his circle, the one filled with candlelight and soft music. She hesitated. “Why me?”
“What?”
“I don’t understand this.” She didn’t trust it for a second. “Why me? I’m not beautiful. I’ve got a bad attitude. I push people away. So I have to ask—why me? Is this some sort of game to you?”
His hand came down and he stepped toward her, his face going dark as he left the light. “I don’t play games like this. I knew I wanted you the minute I met you. Perhaps it makes me a masochist, but I wanted you the second you planted that little fist in my face. I wanted you because it would be a challenge and I’ve had so few of those.”
A lie. Now that she knew about his childhood, she could partially see that the elegant clothes and sophisticated veneer were there to protect him. “I don’t know that I like being pursued because I’m a challenge.”
He laughed a little. “It’s been a while, love. I think I would have given up by now if there was nothing else in it for me. We’re a lot alike, you and I. If you would just see past the outer parts of me, if you would really see me…”
She would see the lonely boy inside the man. Like she was still a girl who had her life ripped out from under her. One day she’d been playing in the shoals, up to her ankles in sand and sea. She’d been beloved, and the next she’d been taken around the world to a place where she was used as nothing more than a way to force her older, more beautiful sister to do their father’s bidding.
They had more in common than she liked to admit.
“I don’t know that I can be the woman you need me to be.” That was the real reason she’d stayed away from him. She was afraid he would need her to change and that she wouldn’t be able to.
His hand found hers. “As my cousins would say, bullshit. I don’t believe that for a second. You went into the information brokering business because you needed to be powerful. You were on the run and you had to find a way to protect yourself and your sister. And then you liked being powerful for a change.”
“Yes. Yes, I did.” And that would be all she would have when she worked for Ten, but at least she would feel useful.
“I can give that to you in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone. Chelsea, you’re bloody brilliant. You can find anything. What if you decided to find people? People who get lost? My cousins and I grew up with a girl named Dana.”
“The redhead in the pictures with JT and Michael?” She’d seen a couple of pictures hanging on the walls. She’d caught JT staring at one of them.
“She was a family friend, and at one point we all thought she would marry JT. She went missing a while back. It’s a long story, but I believe she’s on the run and she was pregnant when she left.”
“With JT’s ba
by?”
“No. She married someone else and it got her into a spot of trouble. I’ve looked for her and I can’t find a trace. I’m going to ask you to take over the case. Find her for us. Chelsea, find her and then we find another case and you spend your life reuniting families or hunting down people who need to be found. There’s power in that. Can you see it? You could be a force for good in the world, and that isn’t something to be taken lightly or thrown away on a whim. You were given a gift, and it is not yours to waste. You can be so much more.”
She was good at finding people. They always left a trail behind. Even when they left the grid, almost no one could stay off it forever. She could find loved ones, hunt down criminals.
Find secrets and play in the cesspool. That’s what she’d do because she’d made her bed long ago and now she had to lie alone in it.
“I’ll find her.” She would use every tool in the Agency’s pocket to find JT’s lost girl. It was one thing she could give to Simon. “I promise.”
His smile was brighter than all the candles. He moved into her space and his hands found her face, tilting it up so she was staring into those warm blue eyes of his. “I knew you would say yes. Now say yes to me again.”
She wanted to spend her life saying yes to him, but she would take one more night. Looking up at him, she realized she needed this. Wasn’t tomorrow soon enough to face reality? Shouldn’t she get one beautiful memory of him? “Yes.”
“You don’t even know the question.”
She sighed and moved closer to him, feeling a little drugged by his nearness, the romantic candle light, the soft music. “We both know I’ll sign anything you put in front of me, so why not just say yes to all your questions?”
“Dance with me.”
She took a step back. It had been one thing to sway slightly to country western music with Ten. That had been more about Ten using the moment to talk to her than it had been about dancing. Simon could really dance. Like a professional. Like the guys on TV. She could barely walk. “Simon, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
