The Dom Who Came in from the Cold, page 28
part #57 of Masters and Mercenaries Series
“That was a ridiculous gamble.” The man obviously had no idea what he was doing. “She could have left early. She could have gone a different way. She could have ignored the situation entirely.”
Joseph’s head shook. “No. She was always going to make sure Vanessa was safe. It’s who she is. She couldn’t have made a different choice.”
He felt a low growl threaten to begin. Perhaps he didn’t need a knife. He could rip the man apart with his bare hands, and then Joseph would know not to shadow his girl.
The man needed to understand that just because they had a few things in common didn’t mean they needed to share anything. Including the earth they were both walking on at this moment.
“There’s one problem with this scenario. Canada doesn’t have a foreign intelligence agency.” Taylor watched the man warily.
“Not one we recognize in the public.” Joseph had been polite the whole time. “I know we have a reputation as the naïve children of the world, but don’t think we won’t protect our country. We know how good we have it, and we won’t allow ourselves to be stepped on. A few years back we realized the US wasn’t as stable as we’d once believed, and that relying on the CIA for our foreign intelligence was a mistake. I was one of the first agents recruited. Someday we’ll have a formally recognized agency. I’m going to build it on the back of the work I’ve done here. I’m going to take down The Consortium, and they’ll hand the reins over to me.”
“Will they pay you in maple donuts?” His uncle was grinning again.
“Only if I’m lucky.” Joseph gave his uncle a thumbs-up.
Kyle was planning on taking this guy seriously. He was either lying or he wasn’t, and either way they had problems. “Taking down The Consortium is your mission?”
“A few years back my government realized that certain companies were colluding to keep prices high. They used the pandemic to destabilize markets and send corporate profits soaring. Beyond that, these companies are manipulating politicians and attempting to set policy that is favorable to them, not to the public. They use their media conglomerates to spread disinformation and keep the public on edge so they don’t see what’s actually happening. My country wants it stopped,” Joseph explained.
“Everyone wants it stopped.” Drake sat down on the couch, keeping his eyes on Joseph.
“Do they? Has the Agency made it a top priority? Or are they all playing the stock market?” For the first time, Joseph sounded a bit savage.
“Don’t question my motives,” Drake retorted.
“Hey, you know he’s right.” Ian sat back in his chair. “There are forces in the Agency that would rather see the stock market rise than ensure it’s being done fairly. You’ve spent your whole life in politics and intelligence.” Ian chuckled. “See, I did it, too. Put together two words that do not match. Just like you, buddy.”
Joseph’s lips curled up slightly. “You’re not what I expected. When they talk about you, they make you seem larger than life and twice as deadly.”
“Yeah, they always forget how funny I can be.” Ian shoved his chair back as Charlotte moved in. Without missing a beat, she gracefully eased onto his lap.
“He checks out,” Charlotte said, draping an arm around her husband’s neck. “My contact with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service verifies his identity. But only after putting me through a bunch of hoops, so they’re serious about his cover.”
Ian snorted, his arm around his wife’s waist. “What does the CSIS do these days?”
“Mostly keep watch on Quebec separatists.” MaeBe proved she was a smarty pants once again.
Ian started laughing again. Charlotte gently slapped his chest. He shook his head. “I can’t help it. They all speak French. What would the uprising look like? Is there cheese and wine?” He looked to Joseph. “Hey, did you guys invent poutine so you could force-feed it to prisoners and make them talk?”
MaeBe frowned. “I think it’s delicious.”
Joseph smiled her way and gave her a wink. “It is, indeed. See, we Canadians don’t care what the alpha holes of the world think. We’re pretty confident in ourselves.”
“Hah. See he put alpha male and asshole together. Those totally go together. All the dudes out there on the Internet who call themselves alphas are really assholes.” Ian turned his chin up, looking at his wife. “He’s funny. I think we should keep him. He’s way funnier than the other sad sacks who’ve come through. He can say Canadian things and make me laugh.”
“Could you be serious for five seconds?” Kyle’d had enough of his uncle. “This man shot me.”
His uncle shrugged. “Lots of people have shot you. Can’t kill them all.”
“I shot you in the shoulder,” Joseph countered. “That was intentional. I’m an excellent shot. I could have hit your heart, but I barely grazed you. Did the same to Deke Murphy several months back. You’re welcome. I’ve done everything I can to keep you safe and out of her hands because I’m not sure what she’ll do with you if she gets what she wants. Right now she can fool herself that once you’re back with her, you’ll see the light. Once you spit some bile her way, she’ll likely slit your throat and I’ll have to bury you. You look heavy. Save my lower back. Stay away until I get what I need and take her down myself.”
“What exactly are you looking for?” MaeBe asked.
“I’ve been attempting to do exactly what Ms. Cline was trying to do.” Joseph finally moved to the couch, and the fucker took a seat right next to MaeBe. “I’m trying to map The Consortium from the inside.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to sleep with Julia to do it,” Taylor admitted with a shudder.
“I’ll admit there are parts of my job that I find distasteful,” Joseph said. “But it was necessary to make her believe I am who she thinks I am. Actually, a great deal of this job is to make Julia not think of me at all. I’m a useful tool. No one worries about their hammer. It sits there until you want to use it. That’s what I am to her.”
“How far have you gotten?” Drake asked.
“It’s hard to get concrete proof.” Joseph answered Drake but his eyes were on MaeBe. “There is some incredible anti-surveillance tech they have that isn’t close to being on the market yet. I can’t get any of it on camera, and I have to be careful. I’m not the first agent we sent in. She was made, and the police found her body in a dumpster. That was when we decided to try to send a man in. They view males differently. We’re far more expendable than the women. They’re better trained and more invested in the group. Conversely, we’re also ignored more. I’ve worked hard to get Julia to view me as nothing more than a convenient handyman/fuck buddy.”
MaeBe had turned all soft and sympathetic. “I’m sorry you had to do that. I know men are supposed to always want sex and not care how they get it, but it must make you feel used.”
Joseph leaned in. “It does. She’s not entirely sane, and she doesn’t mind taking that out on me. I can’t tell you the amount of times she’s made me pretend to be Kyle.”
Ian huffed another laugh out. “You’re going to find out what it’s like to be in Kyle’s belly if you don’t stop hitting on his girl.”
Charlotte laid her head on his shoulder. “Is she his girl? I kind of thought no, and if not then the Canadian is attractive.”
Kyle was so fucking happy his relatives were having fun.
MaeBe stood, and her eyes narrowed on the couple. “You two are bad people. Now hush. We’re working things out.”
MaeBe turned and then was lowering herself onto his lap.
The world seemed less shitty than it had two seconds before. He didn’t give a fuck that this was supposed to be a meeting. His uncle and aunt had the right idea. It was better to be connected. He wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her close. If she didn’t want him to do weird things, she should have picked another dude because he liked smelling her hair. Only hers.
He could feel his blood pressure go down.
“Can we talk now? Without looking like you’re going to kill our guest?” MaeBe’s lips curled up in the sweetest smile.
“Probably.” This was why his uncle had many a meeting with his wife sitting on his lap. There were men who could handle the shittiness of the world and men who couldn’t without some help. They were those men. He let his free hand find her knee so she was completely in his arms. Then he could deal with Joseph. “I suspect you think her father’s files would go a long way in helping you take down The Consortium.”
“I think they’re the key to everything.” Joseph suddenly seemed professional again. “They’re certainly her obsession right now. What happened in London hurt her with the organization. They wanted her mother dead so they could replace her seat in the senate with a more friendly senator. Not only did she fail, but her father died during the op.”
“Do they know she’s the one who killed him?” Drake asked.
Joseph’s head shook. “Absolutely not. I was given the story she wanted to tell, and I haven’t deviated from it. You have to understand that if Julia loses her position, they don’t merely move me to another operative. They fire me, and permanently. Julia’s fuckups are my fuckups. So I have to support her on this. According to the reports we filed, Drake killed his father.”
“Of course I did,” Drake said with a bitter twist of his lips.
Taylor leaned against her boyfriend. “Everyone who counts knows the truth.”
“They don’t realize he had records, do they?” Now that Kyle’s inner caveman was satisfied no one was taking his woman away he could think better. “Did Julia?”
“She would have known something about it.” Drake seemed calmer, too. “Our father taught us to keep intelligence on the people around us. Especially the ones with power. What have you figured out about how high up my father’s placement went?”
“I did not spend much time with your father. I was brought in shortly before the incident that led to Julia’s transformation,” Joseph began.
“You mean right before Kyle tried to unalive her?” his uncle asked.
Kyle had always been curious about this. “I was sure I’d hit her heart.”
“No.” Joseph clasped his hands together. “You missed, and the fire I started managed to get you to leave.”
“You got her out.” That shook his calm.
MaeBe smoothed back his hair. “She was his only way into The Consortium. You would have done the same thing in his place.”
“She’s right. I would have been blamed for losing a valuable asset,” Joseph agreed. “If The Consortium didn’t kill me, I suspect her father would have. He would have worried anyone close to Julia might have known his secret. By that time I did know he was involved at the highest levels, despite the fact I did not spend time with him. After I got Julia away, I called my contacts, and it was your father who made the arrangements to move her. First to Mexico and then to Los Angeles. Every operative has what we call a doppelganger. They have to find someone in the world whose identity they can take over in case of emergency.”
“I made up my own.” Taylor brushed back her hair. “I knew I would have to ID someone if I got in. It’s kind of creepy. You have to find someone with your basic height and bone structure. Someone vulnerable, with no real family or friends. It’s surprisingly easy to do in the age of social media. People can isolate and still feel like they have a foot in the world when they really don’t.”
“It was easy for her to take over Jane Adams’s life.” Joseph crossed one leg over the other, sitting back, though he kept that watchful energy around him.
“Did you kill her?” Kyle had to ask the question.
A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “Julia thinks so. Being able to save Jane is one of the good things I’ve done in the last several years. We staged her death so Julia had the proof she needed, and she’s living under the protection of the CSIS. She has a job with them that I’ve been told she enjoys, and she’s got real friends there. I don’t know if she’ll go back to her former life after we’re done with the op.” He glanced up at the clock. “I need to get going because Julia will want a report. I told her we would need a communications blackout until I got back to the safe house, but she’ll be getting anxious.”
“What exactly are you going to tell her?” Kyle was curious. He wasn’t completely convinced.
“That there was a firefight, and we lost the others.” Joseph stood, straightening the dark shirt he wore. “She won’t care about that. She’ll only care that Kyle Hawthorne is alive and that I managed to get out with Mae.”
The room seemed to still.
MaeBe’s hands found the sides of his face, and she forced him to look at her and only her. “Babe, I need you to stay calm and hear him out.”
He stood, picking her up as he did. Hutch was right. “I’m going to kill him and then we won’t have a problem anymore.”
She groaned. “It makes sense.” Her arms locked around his neck. “I’m not going to let you kill him. Think about what I can do if I’m behind the scenes, so to speak. I can gather so much information, and if Joseph helps me, I can get that to you easily. It keeps Joseph in the game, too. He can’t walk back in with nothing.”
“He can die and then we don’t have to worry about him anymore.” It was simple. It was a perfect plan.
“Kyle, agree with her.” Big Tag had stood, Charlotte standing beside him. “Tell her she’s smart and she can handle any situation she gets into.”
“She is,” Joseph insisted. “And I’ll be there to make sure nothing bad happens to her.”
Joseph could say that all he liked, but Julia was volatile. She’d proven it tonight. It had been stupid for her to move on MaeBe in this fashion. There had been not an ounce of logic to this plan. It had been driven by Julia’s emotional state and her ego. She’d broken MaeBe’s arm when she’d been cool and calm. There was no way of knowing what she could do when she was unhinged.
Joseph would honor his mission. He might want to save MaeBe, but he would also allow her to take some damage if it served his country’s needs.
His uncle moved in, and Kyle put MaeBe down. He would need both hands to crush that fucker’s windpipe.
“Do it, nephew. Do it now.” Ian’s jaw was a tight line as he put his will behind those words.
What the hell was his uncle doing? Was this some kind of play he was making?
He trusted his uncle. His uncle wouldn’t ask him to go against his every instinct unless he had a plan or his instincts were utterly wrong.
He’d felt so alone in the world, but he’d had this man in his corner since the day his mom had married Sean. He’d had Sean and Ian, and then their brothers and sisters, even the ones who didn’t share an ounce of blood.
He’d searched the world trying to find what he needed to feel whole, and it had been here all the while. Here with his family.
He was a dumbass, but he could be something more.
He stared down at Mae. “Do you need to do this?”
It would make him sick inside, but if she needed it, he would have to back her up.
MaeBe returned his gaze, the truth in her eyes. “I need to get this woman out of our lives to make sure we have a chance.”
He looked over at Joseph. Charlotte was slowly moving around the living space. Was she going to open the damn door and send them on their way? What were they doing? This was some play his aunt and uncle were making, and he needed to perform the part Ian had assigned to him. Charlotte was using the fact that she was a gorgeous, soft-looking woman to come in behind a trained operative.
He was supposed to do his part to distract the man. “If you get her killed, I swear I’ll hunt you down.”
Joseph gave him an earnest look. “I promise you. I will protect her. I’ll do everything I can.”
“What you’ll do is unlock your cell, call that psychotic asshole, and hand my husband the phone.” Charlotte emphasized the words by putting a gun to the back of Joseph’s head.
“What?” MaeBe gasped because Ian suddenly had a gun in his hand, too.
“Try anything and I won’t care what my wife will do to me because I didn’t put down a tarp,” Ian promised.
“It was time to redecorate anyway,” Charlotte conceded.
“What the hell is going on?” Joseph had his hands up in the air.
“Yeah, I’d like to know that, too.” MaeBe frowned Ian’s way.
“I think we’re about to get to watch the OGs work.” If Taylor was worried about all the guns being drawn or the sudden turn of events, she didn’t show it. She merely sat back and looked ready to watch the show about to play out.
“I’m not joking.” Charlotte didn’t move an inch. “I want that phone connected and in my husband’s hands in ten seconds or I will blow you away. You should understand that I already laid the groundwork with my Canadian contacts. You’ll find I told them you were acting erratically. I might have made it sound like we caught you after you initiated a gunfight. You know a lot of spies go bad. You think we sent Hutch home, but he’s set up downstairs with my sister, who assures me she can make you look as bad as we need you to. You might know her name. Chelsea Weston.”
Ah, Chelsea Weston. A name that should strike fear in the heart of anyone who knew something about the Dark Web. She’d once been the queen of information on the dark corners of the Internet, and she still did specialty work for intelligence agencies across the globe. If anyone could frame an operative and get away with it, it was Chelsea Weston, and Hutch would do his best to help her after what had happened to his wife this evening.
“You are killing my years’ long operation.” Joseph’s words were even, but there was a tightness to his stance that worried Kyle.
“No, I’m saving your life,” his uncle corrected. “Because I need you to understand that there is no way I allow you to put MaeBe at risk like that. Kyle has to back her. He’s her partner, hopefully her husband someday. I’m not. I’m as close as she’s got to a father, and I get to lay down the fucking law and not give a damn about the repercussions of her feminism.”
