The Dom Who Came in from the Cold, page 22
part #57 of Masters and Mercenaries Series
“You know you could have told her…” Kyle began and then settled back. “She would have done it on her own. Thank you for helping her. As she’s not in jail or Agency custody, I take it the hack went smoothly.”
“Without a hitch,” Adam agreed. “Though we also had some help from Chelsea.”
Chelsea Weston was a badass who’d taught her a thing or two. While Ian and Erin had trained her on how to protect herself, Adam and Chelsea had tutored her in some new hacking techniques. She’d been able to find the information she’d needed, but putting all the puzzle pieces together had been a challenge. “Drake, I don’t know what Adam’s told you, but I suspected that your father was involved with The Consortium for a while.”
Drake’s expression didn’t change, but there was an oddly charged air around him. “And why was that? I’m a seasoned CIA agent and I didn’t suspect my father of anything but being a bit cold and emotionally unavailable.”
It was time to come clean on everything. “Oh, I investigated all of you. Your whole family.”
The faintest hint of a flush was the only sign that Drake had a reaction to that news. “I suppose that makes sense. So you knew she was my sister.”
“I knew her name, so it wasn’t hard to find out.”
“I should have told you,” Kyle said quietly. “That was a mistake. I should have laid it all out for you the minute I knew we were serious, but I thought I could hide it. I thought you would never need to know how stupid and reckless I’d been, and then it was too late. By the time we knew she was alive, she had you.”
“As I’ve said before, that would have been a good time to send me a note. A carrier pigeon, perhaps. She might not be able to trace a pigeon.”
That actually got a chuckle out of him. “Yeah, I’m beginning to understand there might have been something more than logic behind that decision.”
She wasn’t sure what logic had to do with it. Kyle was a man who moved on instinct, and his first had been to push her away. “So you believe Julia’s after her father’s leverage. Do you have any idea what that would be? I’m going to assume given his connections he could prove some powerful people have done bad shit. My research puts him knowing most of the world’s best known CEOs.”
“Yes, but he did run in some influential circles when he was younger,” Drake said. “He’s spent most of his time at home the last few years. The most he’s done is take some golf trips with friends. He doesn’t…didn’t travel much anymore. I was surprised when he came to London with my mother.”
She felt for Drake. Or rather she understood his problems. He was still processing the loss of his father and the truth of his life. But she didn’t have the luxury of coddling him. “Adam, do you have a system I can use?”
Adam flipped open his laptop. “If you want to pull up the surveillance, I can do it for you.”
Within a few keystrokes Adam had the photos she needed up on the conference room screen, easily using the wireless connections built into the office.
“From what I’ve learned your father’s golf trips were usually covers for meetings with suspected Consortium members.” The picture showed what looked like a normal group of wealthy men indulging in a harmless hobby. The photos she’d pulled showed Don Radcliffe meeting with a group of men she’d identified as the CEOs of major energy companies.
“That’s from an exclusive country club outside of Hilton Head,” Drake said with a frown. “How did you get surveillance photos? They’re supposed to protect the privacy of their members.”
“Oh, you sweet summer child,” Big Tag said.
But MaeBe understood. “He’s not naïve. He’s still in shock.” She turned Drake’s way, a bit of sympathy welling up inside her. “I’m sorry, but there’s always a way around whatever security a site says they have. In this case, I connected with a black hat hacker who I suspect is actually a foreign intelligence operative. The country club scrubs their system, but the hacker picked it up in real time. I had some information they wanted, so we made a swap.”
Kyle’s spine had straightened, and he looked at her like she’d grown a whole extra head. “You did what?”
Ian held up a hand as though he could ward off the impending explosion. “She worked with Adam and Hutch and Chelsea. She was perfectly safe. I can assure you my sister-in-law knows how to deal with shady characters.”
Chelsea Weston had once been the world’s greatest information broker. When she’d wanted to investigate Julia’s shadowy world, she’d gone straight to Chelsea.
“Chelsea’s been out of the game for a decade. She’s a mom now.” Kyle seemed intent on arguing.
Charlotte leaned forward, the constantly amused expression on her face replaced with a stillness that MaeBe found disconcerting. “I assure you, nephew, we will never forget how to play this game. We played it from a young age and when we are old, we will still be the queens.”
Charlotte spoke perfect English with no hint of an accent, but she’d let her Russian accent flow with those words—a reminder of where she’d come from. She’d been dragged into her father’s world, into a world of mobsters and criminals, and she’d fought her way out with blood and sacrifice.
Kyle sat back, his eyes wide. “Okay, Aunt Charlotte. Now I get why everyone says they never worry about Uncle Ian. It’s always you they’re truly afraid of.”
Ian frowned, a genuine expression of shock. “I am very scary. See, this is what happens when you get married and your wife won’t let you beat the employees anymore. Or stab a couple of them. I’m telling you once you’ve murdered one for being an asshole, the others fall in line.”
She often thought Ian Taggart would have been an excellent pirate. It was kind of his perfect life. Living the life of a dude who got to stab people and sail the wild ocean. Scurvy might be a problem, but he wouldn’t care because he would be chasing booty all the time. And then he would find a lady pirate who stole his heart and probably his ship.
MaeBe shook her head. That was the first time in forever that her mind had wandered into ridiculous territory. Sometimes she saw the world like that, fun stories that played out in her head. She hadn’t for the longest time. It was like her creativity had died when Kyle had.
“See, that reminds me of what it was like in the old days.” Adam Miles smiled wistfully. “We had no money, and when Ian would set out a box of office supplies, we would Hunger Games the hell out of it. I’ve got serious scars from taking those pens from Liam.”
“Yes, it’s terrible for all of us.” Charlotte was right back to her normal chic perfection. “Now you two pull each other’s hair over who gets to use the private jet.”
Ian grinned her way, a devilish expression. “It wasn’t the hair on his head.”
“Asshole,” Adam replied and then shook his head and turned back to Drake, sobering. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. You have to understand the position we were in.”
“You couldn’t be sure I wasn’t part of it,” Drake replied. “I do understand that.”
“He better,” Taylor said under her breath.
He brought her hand to his lips. “I assure you, I do. I learned my lessons, but I hope the group can consider me above reproach at this point.”
“Someone could have mentioned it to me,” Kyle grumbled.
She didn’t like the guilt she felt. “The majority of this was gathered by me. I didn’t send it to Ian until it was too late to warn you. I needed to be sure. I didn’t want to ruin a whole family if I was wrong. I also didn’t honestly think Drake was involved. I knew how I would feel if someone I loved was accused like that without irrefutable proof. I didn’t understand that things were moving forward the way they were or I would have said something.”
“Yes, this is a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,” Ian began, “mostly because the right hand cut itself off and ran away.”
“What Ian is saying in his extremely non-helpful way is we didn’t have the information we needed to make that call,” Charlotte explained. “That needs to stop.”
“This is no longer an Agency operation.” Drake’s hand was firmly in his girlfriends as he spoke, their fingers tangled together. “I have no idea who I can trust at the Agency.”
“I have a list of most of the Agency employees who either visited your father in the last several months or he visited them.” This was what she’d done since Kyle had been gone. She’d devoted it to figuring out how to get to Julia Ennis and fallen down the rabbit hole Don Radcliffe represented. “I’ve managed to piece together the last six months of your father’s life. I have a question I haven’t been able to answer though. According to the records, Julia went missing in Hong Kong. Three weeks after, your father bought a ticket to Hong Kong but he was a no show at the airport that day. I believe instead of the commercial flight he told everyone he was going on, he took a private jet owned by a billionaire real estate developer we think is a member of The Consortium. That jet went to Singapore and two days later made its way back to DC after a stop in Los Angeles.”
Kyle’s face flushed and Drake cursed.
She’d known it had something to do with Julia. “Did he tell you he was going to search for her?”
“He convinced my mother not to go to Hong Kong with him,” Drake said with a tight expression. “She didn’t go until Julia had been missing for three months.”
“So we have to assume that your father brought Julia back and perhaps put her in touch with the plastic surgeon.” She’d wondered about that. She’d known one of Julia’s early plastic surgeries had taken place with Dr. Blumenthall—the man she’d murdered at The Reef on the night she’d kidnapped MaeBe. “Though I wouldn’t think a nose job would be the first of her surgeries and while the doctor was known primarily for that, his only other expertise was with burn victims.”
“There was a fire,” Kyle admitted. “It was precisely why I didn’t bury her body. The building we were in caught fire. I shot her. The roof started to come down and Drake and I left. The fire was pretty intense. It was a chemical company’s test site. From the reports on the accident, the fire burned at over 700 degrees Fahrenheit. More than enough to burn human bones.”
How hard had that been on Kyle? She’d known he’d been the one to take the shot at Julia, but listening to the hollow tone in his voice it hit her how terrible that moment must have been. How much had he loved Julia? How hard had that betrayal cut him? Had it been such a blow he could never truly come back from it?
“It’s why we weren’t surprised they didn’t find her body.” Drake took a sip from the water bottle he’d brought with him. Julia was his sister. She’d betrayed him and then he’d discovered his father had betrayed him, too. Yet his voice was steady as he spoke. “It’s why we’ve been walking around thinking everything was fine. I would like to see any information you have on my father and to talk to you about where you think he might have stored data he considered highly valuable but also dangerous. I’ve looked over every place I can think of in DC, but it appears I never knew the man at all, so I might not be good at this.”
Drake had support. He let the woman he loved lend him her strength. She would bet Drake didn’t shove her in a cell to protect her. He would want Taylor to watch his back.
“What you need is an outsider.” Charlotte looked thoughtful, as though she was playing through the scenario in her head. “Someone who’s studied your father from a distance. Someone smart who knows how to dig up information other people can’t access.”
“Obviously we need MaeBe.” Kyle wasn’t going to play the game. He turned his attention directly her way. “All right. MaeBe, can you work with me? Can you help me find what I need to finally take this whole organization down?”
If only he’d asked her months ago. Things would be so different, but her answer hadn’t changed. “Yes.”
She started to explain what she’d discovered and tried her hardest not to think about the man sitting across from her.
* * * *
An hour later MaeBe finally closed her borrowed laptop. She’d given them everything she had, and there was a part of her that was grateful to be done. She was almost certain that now Kyle would thank her and he and Drake and Taylor would go catch that airplane they’d intended for her.
He might come back one day, but she would know it wasn’t about love. She’d thought about their relationship a lot and come to the conclusion that Kyle still viewed her as the opposite of Julia Ennis, and she couldn’t be that.
The truth was she and Julia had something in common now. She could see the world through Julia’s eyes, and she didn’t like her place in it.
She’d been prey, and now she had to be the predator.
Big Tag closed his notebook and sat back. “All that sounds like an excellent start. What do you want to do with that information?”
“I’d like to have MaeBe discuss everything she knows about my father. It might help us figure out where he might have kept his personal files.” Drake had been solemn all morning, listening to the rundown of his father’s crimes.
She could do that from the comfort of her cubicle. “Of course.”
“And when we decide on a couple of locations that might work as a place for him to have stashed the intel, the four of us will go and hopefully find the data we need.” Kyle sat up straight and stretched, moving one muscled arm over his chest. “Mae can act as our analyst and tech when we’re in the field. I’m going to raid the storeroom for some equipment and then I’ll set up a couple of desks for us so we can work from here, if that’s all right.”
Why had he said four of them? Who else was he taking?
Charlotte stopped Ian, who looked like he was about to protest. “Take whatever you need. I think you’ll find we’re pretty well stocked here. Your uncle likes his toys.”
“Yes, and I tend to like to keep them.” Ian didn’t move when Charlotte stood and gathered her things. “He better not touch my flamethrower.”
“What do you mean act as your tech?” MaeBe asked. He couldn’t have said anything that would have surprised her more. Kyle didn’t want her to work. She’d always gotten the feeling he would be so much happier if she’d stayed home and waited for him. Like some pathetic doll. “You want me in your ear?”
It was something she’d done many times before for ops, but almost never for Kyle. He mostly did bodyguard work, and MaeBe worked tech for investigators.
“You’re the only one I would trust. I want Taylor ready to come in if she has to.” He pushed back and stood. “She’ll stay with you and help with tech, but if you’re there then we can be assured we’ll still have someone in an overwatch position.”
Now she understood. She could easily do that job from here. It would be good to keep an eye on what was going on. “Sure. We’ll need to coordinate and make certain we’ve got a secure link from here to wherever we end up.”
She was thinking DC. It was where Don spent most of his time. He’d lived there for forty years and was well established in the area.
“Here?” Kyle moved for the door. “This is not a remote job. I don’t want to use anything that requires long-range contact. You’re coming with us. I’ve decided that’s the best way to keep you alive. It’s what I should have done in the first place. I should have faked both our deaths and then you could have learned how to run a fryer, too. We still might have to do it. Think about how you want to fake die. I’m going to grab some lunch. I saw the pizza guy dropping off a bunch of pies. Is Boomer here?”
“Boomer took the day off to go to his daughter’s science fair,” Charlotte said as she started out the door. “I ordered the pizza because I thought it would be easier for you guys to eat here.”
“Come on, babe.” Taylor took Drake’s hand. “Let’s get you some lunch and then we’ll figure out where we’re staying tonight. I have to admit, I’m intrigued by the princess castle. I think you’ll look good with some glitter.”
She’d expected to be stuck at Sanctum for the time being, but she hadn’t counted on having roommates. She’d honestly expected him to lose his shit and storm out when he realized she wasn’t going to fall in line.
Instead he moved into her space, one hand coming up to brush her cheek. “I want you to think about letting me stay with you tonight. I’ll be a good boy and not kidnap you, but I will sleep outside your door if you don’t let me in. I meant what I said. I made a mistake and I’ll do anything I can to fix it. Can I kiss you? It’s been an awful couple of days, and all I want to do is kiss you.”
Her wall of ice threatened to melt completely, and she stepped back, shaking her head.
She didn’t owe him anything. Not one single thing. Not comfort. Not a kiss. Nothing. He’d left her alone and he had to deal with the consequences.
“Okay.” He looked so sad, his shoulders curved slightly inward. “I’ll go get some lunch and then I’ll get to work.” He turned and started out the door as a familiar man walked in. “Hope there’s some sleeping bags at the club.”
Kai Ferguson did a double take as Kyle walked by. “Hey, welcome back from the dead, man.” Kai was Sanctum’s resident therapist. He also ran the Ferguson Clinic which was housed in the building next to Sanctum. “And if you need a sleeping bag, check the second-floor closet. Also, there are still some nap mats in the kid’s room.”
She tried to envision Kyle napping on mats meant for toddlers. He would need at least three of them.
Was he going to sleep outside her door again? What would he do when they were out in the field?
The idea of being in the field sent a thrill through her. She could do something active to bring down her tormentor. She didn’t have to sit and hide and feel utterly helpless.
If he was telling her the truth.
She started for the door. She wasn’t hungry, but she would force herself to eat something. She would take it to her desk because sitting around a table with Kyle and Drake and Taylor would make her feel too much like a part of the team when she knew damn well she wasn’t. Kyle needed her technical expertise. That was all.
