Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries)

by Lexi Blake

  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.

  He had to move fast. It might be time to call in a few friends and take the boat over himself. He picked up his binoculars again and prayed the king decided to go back to blondes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The sound of the beach eased Charlie out of a deep sleep. The rolling waves had soothed her all night, forming a rhythm she’d eased into. After the long flight and then the drive from the airport, she had fallen into bed after barely getting a glimpse of the beach huts they had taken out.

  Soft light filled the room, and she could see the ceiling above her and a large, slowly rotating ceiling fan. The salty smell of the ocean wafted over her and then she smelled coffee, dark and rich.

  She rolled over and sighed as she realized the other half of the bed was still neat as a pin.

  Ian hadn’t come to bed. Though he’d been kind and had taken care of her during the long trip, he had pulled back into himself after a few hours. He was right back where they’d been before. Undecided. She reached out and touched the place where his head should have laid.

  Patience.

  She just needed patience. She was here with him and not stuck in a safe house with Liam frowning at her, and that was a plus.

  It had been her mantra on the long flight to Mumbai and then the shorter hop to the Goa airport in Vasco da Gama. Two cars had been waiting for them and she’d sat beside Ian as he drove the winding coastal road. She’d tried to pretend everything was all right as she’d taken in the natural beauty of the sea on one side and the rice terraces and coconut groves on the other. She spent so much of her time in cities that it was easy to forget how beautiful the world could be.

  But there was a hollowness to it all because he was so far from her.

  “Charlie?”

  She turned and he was sitting in a rattan chair, his eyes thoughtful. She wondered if he’d been watching her sleep. “Hi. Is everyone already up?”

  He nodded. “Yes, they’ve got some crazy-ass plan to go and meet this king. Ten and Damon really believe in subterfuge. They’re coming up with all these plots to get us on his boat. Apparently today is the day he brings his yacht in and restocks his liquor cabinets or something.”

  She yawned behind her hand and wondered if she would be stuck here while Ian worked. She would worry about him every single minute. “Yes. He’s quite the party boy. According to the tabloids, he seems to love fast boats and gorgeous women.”

  “According to your research, he also likes science.”

  Charlie got out of bed, not bothering with the robe that was laid out at the end of the mattress. She’d put on one of Ian’s T-shirts and it hung down to her knees. She looked out the window of the small, but likely wretchedly expensive “hut” they had checked into. Agonda Beach looked out on the Arabian Sea, the waves gentle, the water seeming never to end. White sand stretched out in either direction. There was peace here. Quiet. Tranquility. She wished they were here to be alone. “Yes, he’s spent a lot of money on research. He funds all kinds of studies.”

  “I’ve been thinking. Why would Nelson be interested in the king of Loa Mali? All reports have Kamdar as a humanitarian, a great ruler. The US has pushed him for elections, but there’s no doubt his people love him. From what I can tell, he’s not corrupt. He shares the wealth. Yes, they have oil, but Nelson’s already getting oil from Russia. Unless, he’s not really interested in the money from the oil.”

  She turned back to Ian. “How could he not be interested in the money?”

  “Because it’s petty cash. He has to share it with the syndicate. You have to know how your relatives pay.” Ian stood up and stretched. “It doesn’t make sense. I’ve been trying to study the man, but he’s shown me what he wants me to see. I need to study his actions. The truth is there. Why did he try to steal the drone plans for the Chinese and then turn around and get into arms shipments? Now he’s interested in oil. There’s too much jumping around.”

  “I didn’t look at it that way.” Now that she really thought about it, it didn’t make sense. It was nearly impossible to shift so much in so few years. His contacts would have to be far and wide, running across many countries, many sectors. Agents in the CIA tended to have a territory. They tended to work in one part of the world. Ian and Nelson had both worked in Europe. So why was he working for the Chinese and now in India? Unless he wasn’t dealing in money. Not really. It would come back to money, but that wasn’t the first goal.

  His eyes were dark as he stared at her. “How did you contact him the first time?”

  So he was finally going to get into it. A little shiver went through her. This was the conversation they should have had five years ago. “I didn’t. He contacted me.”

  “So you weren’t looking for an assassin?”

  She felt pinned by him, unable to do much more than answer his questions. “I was, but I was doing it quietly. I had reached out to another syndicate, one in the US. They had problems with my father. They were both fighting over some territory. My father wanted to expand out of Russia.”

  “What kind of territory?” His tone was flat, the same as he probably used on everyone he interviewed.

  “Drugs. They were just trying to get into the pharmaceutical business, and the States was the best place to do it.”

  Ian nodded. “They were bilking Medicare and Medicaid?”

  It was a common practice for the syndicate. They took money from government programs. “Yes. They would buy doctors who would write prescriptions for patients. OxyContin mostly. He didn’t care if the patients took the drugs or went and sold them. The patients worked for the syndicate.”

  Ian held up a hand. “I understand how it works. So let me get this straight, you reach out to a rival syndicate, but Nelson replies. You reach out to a syndicate that is making money off pharmaceuticals. Nelson was supposed to be working in Europe at the time, but he wasn’t in Russia according to what I could find out. He sees a way to get the ten million in bearer bonds that I’m going to use in my operation, but he has to get rid of me to do it. So he sends you in. An exchange of services, so to speak.”

  God, he could make her feel like a prostitute, but then again, she’d put herself here. “Yes.”

  “And he used your father as a scapegoat. He convinced the Agency that your father was the likely suspect for claiming to have the uranium we were attempting to buy. Once he was dead and there was no further evidence, the case was closed. He couldn’t use the bonds for years so everything quieted down. The Agency was too busy dealing with me. I suppose I should be happy they bothered with me at all. They could have burned me and let me rot in a London jail.”

  He wouldn’t have lasted long. When she looked
at the evidence from Ian’s perspective, there was no way to find her innocent. “I didn’t understand what was going on at the time. I only knew I had to get out or my father was going to eventually kill my sister. Nelson offered me a way to run. He offered me money and a chance to be free of my father.”

  “What else did he offer you? Did he offer you comfort?”

  She shivered at the thought. “No. He offered me a job.”

  “Now that I find interesting. What did it involve?”

  She had to shrug. “He just gave me money and told me to get to the States and he would contact me.”

  “What do you know about his finances?”

  She hated the cold, flat tone he was using on her. “Chelsea knows more than I do.”

  “I don’t want to talk to Chelsea. I want to talk to you.”

  He wanted to torture her, but she owed him answers. “Fine. I know he’s got accounts all over the place, but I was surprised to find out he doesn’t have a ton of liquid. In the last year, I’ve connected him to several mafia jobs and a couple of terrorist groups.”

  “Why would he be working with terrorists…Charlie, baby, what did the terrorism involve?”

  Fuck, how could she have not seen it? “Oil fields. They were destroying equipment in oil fields. The groups do it to protest American involvement in the Middle East.”

  Ian stood up, stretching. “Yeah, well, I don’t think Nelson gives a crap about the Middle East. But he does seem to care deeply about oil.”

  A few pieces to the puzzle fell into place. “He’s working for an oil company.”

  “That would be my guess at this point. If we take everything we know, we can probably figure out what company it is. He’s freelancing, but it isn’t for other governments. He’s freelancing for corporations. A terrorist for hire, so to speak. It makes a man wonder. I heard a rumor a couple of months back about some ex-Special Forces aiding in the civil wars in certain African countries that have a high level of diamond mines. They were getting paid by diamond merchants to keep the war going because the minute the war ends, the market will be glutted with diamonds and the price will go down. What if Nelson is trying to manipulate the price of crude?”

  She thought about everything she knew about the king of Loa Mali. “The rumor is Kamdar is working on an energy project.”

  He walked up to her, his expression softening a little. He reached down, touching the pad of his index finger to her nose. “Smart girl. Keep quiet. The other rumor was that the man brokering the deal with the mercenaries was an intelligence operative.”

  She didn’t like the suspicion in his voice. “You don’t think it’s Ten, do you?"

  He was suddenly invading her space, pressing his body to hers. It seemed the interrogation was over. “Don’t let Ten’s idiot bongo beach boy attitude fool you. He’s deadly, Charlie. He’s been with the Agency since he was a kid. They recruited him straight out of college. He’s smart, fast, and he has no ties to anyone. He grew up in foster care. Do you know why he’s named Tennessee?”

  She could only guess. “His mom loved Tennessee Williams?”

  “His loving mother dumped him in a trash bin with his umbilical cord still attached. They named him Tennessee because the diner he was left in was close to the state line. Another couple of miles and he would have been named Kentucky. He was raised in foster care and kind of fell through the cracks. By the time he was nine, he’d been in seven different homes, and when he was thirteen he was running away, getting in trouble. But he scored a perfect score on his SATs and showed an aptitude for moral flexibility the Agency likes. His last foster parent worked for intelligence. He knew what to do with Ten. Think of Ten as a very charming version of Dexter.”

  Somehow she couldn’t see it. He was so laid back, so flirty, but she believed Ian. “All right. So you think he might be working with Nelson?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to believe it about him or the MI6 agents, but we’re going to keep our mouths shut and our eyes open.” His hands found her hair, tangling in it. “He wants you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He seems to want anything with the proper female parts.”

  “Not like that, baby. He wants to hire you. He wants to take you back to DC with him and install The Broker at Langley. It would be a coup for him.”

  That was an easy decision. “I’ll pass.”

  A long sigh came from his chest as he let her go. “All right, then. I thought I should tell you. You need to get dressed. We have to go and listen to whatever plan they’ve come up with.”

  “Ian.” She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the way he kept turning away from her. “Do I even have a shot at this? I know I should be patient and I will be. I’ll give you all the time in the world if you’ll just tell me I have a shot at making this right.”

  “You can’t make it right.”

  Her skin flushed with emotion. “Never? You can never forgive me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I can forgive, but I don’t know that I can forget.” He looked back at her, his eyes weary. “And I don’t know if it matters. I want you every minute of the day and I don’t think that’s ever going to stop, but what are we going to do, Charlie? Are we going to give up the game and buy a little house like Alex and Eve? I don’t think we get to do that. So the question becomes what do we do about it? I’m tired of fighting it. I don’t care if you slept with Nelson. I don’t care if you did everything that fucker said you did.”

  She shook her head, tears forming. “No. I didn’t, Ian.”

  He held a hand out, silencing her. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.” She couldn’t lose him to a pack of lies.

  “Do you love me, Charlie?”

  An easy question to answer. “Yes. God, yes.”

  “Then promise me something.” He came over and stood above her, his eyes looking down into hers.

  “Anything."

  He took her hand and placed it in the middle of his chest where she could feel the heat of his body through the cotton T-shirt he wore. “If you betray me this time, shoot me. Straight through the heart. Make sure I’m dead because I don’t want to live in a world where you betray me twice. Promise me.”

  She shook her head. She needed him to understand. “Ian, I’m not going to betray you.”

  “Promise me.” His mouth hung over hers. So close. He was so close.

  She shook her head. “I don’t have to.”

  His hand tightened on hers. “Promise.”

  “I promise.” Her heart ached as she said it. How could she make him believe?

  His mouth took hers, lips forcing hers open under his dominance. Arms wrapped around her, drawing her up to his chest.

  She clung to him, her tongue meeting his and gliding in a silky dance. Five years she’d waited for that kiss. Five long years of aching and praying and hoping to make it back to him. His mouth covered hers, blanketing her in heat and desire and something so much sweeter. Adoration, worship was in his kiss. Love was in that kiss and though she didn’t have everything she wanted, she could hope because his lips were on hers. She let him lead her, turning her head one way and then the other as he explored her again, reminding her of the long nights he would spend kissing her. He could kiss for hours, his hands skimming her skin and driving her crazy. She would beg him to move on, but he would be content with his tongue tasting hers.

  He drugged her with kisses, making all her fears go away and replacing them with the certainty that this was the right man and it was finally the right time.

  When he came up for air, he laid his forehead against hers. “I can’t fight you anymore, Charlie. I want you too badly. I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, but you’re mine now and you’re going to behave. Do you understand what I mean?”

  He was keeping her? “Ian, I want to be good. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I want to be your wife. I want you to be proud of me.”

  “Do you understand what I’ll do if I catch you on a comp
uter doing anything but playing solitaire or spending too much money on clothes?”

  A little hope lit through her. Oh, she wanted a life where he bitched at her for how much she spent on clothes and shoes and then made her make up for it in his arms. “I suspect my ass will be red.”

  “You have to trust me, Charlie.” His words were a passionate plea. “I want that above everything else. If you can’t trust me then you should think about Ten’s offer. The Agency could protect you.”

  She didn’t want that. “You’ll protect me."

  He picked her up, hugging her tight. “I will. When we’re done here, we’ll leave and figure out what to do.”

  She stilled in his arms. “Ian, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I’ll go with you.”

  Now she started to push him away. “You can’t. You can’t leave your family.”

  “You’re my family now. I tried to fight it, but I can’t."

  It was everything she wanted and so bittersweet it nearly broke her heart. “I never meant to do this to you. I thought I could hide with you. I thought that maybe my uncle had moved on to bigger things. It was stupid, but I honestly thought I could make this work. It had been over a year since my uncle had sent someone after me.”

  “Yet he found you so quickly after you came to me. Nelson had me watched. He’ll always have me watched if I’m out in the open. I think the people he’s working with will do the same as long as they need your uncle’s cooperation. They’ll watch us.”

  Maybe she should consider working with the Agency. How could she ask Ian to give everyone up?

  He reached down, drawing her chin up so she had to look at him. “I wouldn’t like what’s going through your head, would I?”

  Very likely not since she was thinking of running. “You can’t leave your home.”

  His arms tightened around her. “My home is with you now. Trust me. Choose me this time.”

  She searched his face.