The Dom Who Came in from the Cold, page 36
part #57 of Masters and Mercenaries Series
Julia looked over at the dead Russian, a brow rising over her cold eyes.
New John shrugged. “He wasn’t getting with the plan. I thought I’d save you the trouble and fire him. You told me to watch out for the kid. I didn’t like the way he looked at her.”
“And now you have one less person to share the pay with,” Julia said with an approving nod. “Well, he’s yours to clean up. After. For now I want you to take the young Miss Taggart to the limo. Don’t take your eyes off her. She’s smarter than she looks.”
“I’m not letting you take her. You promised me I could stay with her.” Kyle faced off with the woman who’d pretty much dragged him into hell.
“Well, she’s not getting far, and John seems to know how to handle anyone who doesn’t understand how I want my underaged prisoners treated.” She frowned and sighed, a frustrated sound. “She’s going to go sit in the limo so we can talk. I’m not going to send her off somewhere. I have a room ready for you at my house, and I will allow you to share it with her. Maybe you can keep her under control. I have no idea what the Taggarts have been teaching their kids, but that one is practically feral.”
“You should remember that.” Kala spit some bile Julia’s way.
Julia’s lips curled up. “She reminds me of me at her age. Except I was better with manners. Her father should beat her more.”
“Hey,” Kyle began.
Julia held up a hand. “I thanked him later. It prepared me for torture, which as you know in our line of work is an everyday kind of thing. Now, Glen, if that’s your name since I don’t care to know it…”
“Glen works,” the slender mercenary said.
“Excellent. Why don’t you and John take Miss Taggart out to the limo while I talk to my fiancé.”
Kala’s eyes rolled. “Oh, my god, lady. You are delusional. He’s not your fiancé. He’s practically married to MaeBe.”
“No, I’m not. Mae’s never going to forgive me for leaving her. We don’t have a relationship anymore.” He had to keep that falsehood going.
“Well, if that’s true, you screwed that up. MaeBe is awesome. Kyle kind of sucks. He makes everyone in the family go to his lame funeral and he didn’t even respect us enough to actually be dead,” Kala complained.
He didn’t like to think about the fact that his mom and stepdad had let his uncle have a whole, awful funeral, and there was a coffin somewhere with a blow-up doll in his place. And his Xbox. Yeah. That pretty much sucked.
“At least I got an Xbox out of it,” Kala continued.
Hah. He knew his mom wouldn’t have thrown out an expensive piece of technology, but she would hand it over to someone else.
“It was inevitable that any relationship Kyle tried would fail,” Julia said with a prim set to her mouth. “He was already in the most important relationship of his life.”
“Yes, with his Xbox. He loved that thing, and now it’s mine.” Kala couldn’t seem to help the sarcasm.
Julia’s eyes narrowed.
The woman could be incredibly cruel when she wanted to be. He needed to keep Kala as far from her as he could, and that meant trusting her the slightest bit. “I need you to promise me she won’t be hurt and you won’t separate us for more than a few minutes.”
She stepped closer, her hand coming to his chest, and he had to fight the nausea that rolled through him. “I think you want me to get her back to her parents at the first opportunity. But yes to everything you asked. She will come to no harm unless new John here doesn’t want his job.”
“I don’t want to hurt a kid.” John stepped around Julia. “Come on, kid. Try to remember I’m the one who took you down.”
“Only because you had backup.” Kala’s head came up, eyes going steely. She looked so much like her mother, but that stubborn set of her jaw was pure Ian.
“I still have backup.” John gestured for her to go first. “If we get back soon, I can make us pancakes.”
“Like I would eat poison pancakes,” Kala snorted.
“They’re not poison.” John followed after her, the gaunt guard trailing them and leaving only the pilot behind.
He could take Julia down. He could get the gun she carried and kill the pilot, too, but he didn’t have Kala. If Julia wasn’t alive to pay them, it wasn’t like the mercenaries would throw up their hands and walk away. No. They would try to cover up the crime by killing them both and burying the bodies, and he would never do that to his aunt and uncle. Or his mom and dad.
Where had his death wish gone? For so very long all he’d wanted was to push the world to its limits and go over that edge so he could find the peace he craved.
The peace he craved wasn’t in the afterworld. It was right here. And that peace wasn’t some thing or place. That peace had a name. Mae Beatrice Vaughn.
“You didn’t fight me,” Julia said quietly, studying him with solemn eyes.
“You knew how to get me to move. You don’t need Kala.” He took a step closer to her, staring down. “I’m angry with you, but I think you might be right. I haven’t enjoyed my life lately.”
“You looked like you were.”
“Do you honestly think I could be happy forever with board game nights and hanging out watching Star Wars with a bunch of geeks?” He was a geek. It didn’t matter that he had great abs. He could now have an hours’ long discussion about how Marvel could properly align the X-Men universe with the current MCU. He had achieved geek status. He loved sitting around a board game table trying to figure out how to block Hutch or Deke from getting the points they needed to win.
But Julia would never understand what it meant to have a group of people who loved her, who took care of each other. All she’d ever had was a well-meaning but absent mother and a stepfather who was a fucking monster from what he could tell.
Julia’s lips curled up and she stepped in, coming close and tilting her head up as though waiting for a kiss. “No. I never thought you could be happy in that world. You weren’t meant for it, my love. You were meant for mine. Have you thought about how we could rule The Consortium?”
Yep. There was the bile in the back of his throat. He hated the fact that this had worked on him once. He’d thought she was gorgeous and sexy, and he’d been attracted to her darkness. Now that was all he could see. “I don’t know that I want to rule The Consortium. I don’t know what I want at all except I don’t want my uncle to come in here and kill us. He’ll do it. I assure you he’s out there plotting your painful death right now.”
Julia pouted like a child who’d been called out for some minor bad behavior. “That seems rude of him. Up until now all I’ve done is give the girl an adventure. It’s not like she’s some cry baby. Trust me. She’ll be fine, and when I’m done, Taggart won’t be able to touch me. Now stop talking about the girl who is not your family. You don’t share an ounce of blood with her.”
“You didn’t share an ounce of blood with Don Radcliffe, either.”
He knew he’d made a mistake when she stepped back, her eyes going cold again. “He raised me. He loved me. You were an adult when you met Sean Taggart. It’s not the same thing at all, and I killed him to save you. He was the only person who ever knew who I truly was, the only one who wanted me to be as great as I could be. I destroyed him because I love you. You need to think about that. Don’t try to get me to let go of the girl again. I’m not stupid, Kyle. I know what you’re doing, but what you don’t get is that I will win you back. I’ll peel back all those happy, normal layers you’ve taken to hiding under and I’ll find the man I fell in love with again.”
“And if that man is gone? If I’m exactly who I say I am and he was always the mask?” That Kyle had masked his pain, his fear. Now that he’d faced both, he didn’t need a mask at all.
“You better hope he’s in there somewhere,” she said, venom in her tone. “For you. For that kid you’re trying so hard to protect.”
She turned and walked out of the plane.
“Come on. It’s time to go.” The pilot pointed a gun his way.
He prayed MaeBe would work quickly. He was afraid their time was running out.
* * * *
“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying.” Ian Taggart looked older this morning. It was clear the man hadn’t slept at all the night before. He’d barely been home long enough to shower and talk to the kids and make sure they moved over to Alex and Eve’s for the time being.
MaeBe sat at the other end of the big conference table, her heart aching for this entire family she’d come to love so much.
After Julia’s call, they’d all come back to the office where it would be easier to gather the intelligence they needed. Derek Brighton had shown up along with a friend of his from Dallas’s FBI office. They’d gone downstairs to the Miles-Dean, Weston, and Murdoch offices once Adam had assembled his team.
While Ian had talked to Adam’s team, she’d huddled in with hers. Drake and Taylor and Hutch. Noelle had shown up with Deke and Maddie, bringing them all much needed coffee and snacks. She’d forced herself to eat the sandwich her friends had brought her despite the fact that her stomach was in knots.
By morning, she’d known her plan could work. But she had to make Ian and Charlotte and the rest of the crew comfortable with what she was proposing.
“She’s asking the right questions and coming to proper conclusions. If we wait until we actually find the data, it could be weeks. I can’t let that happen.” Charlotte couldn’t seem to sit still. She paced the length of the conference room in her bare feet, a coffee mug in one hand. “Does Julia know what’s in her father’s files?”
“I would bet my life that she doesn’t,” Drake replied. “If she did, she would have used the information. My father was a deeply selfish man. If this intel exists—and I believe it does—he didn’t share it with anyone. It would have been far too dangerous. That intel my father gathered on The Consortium was only to be used if he needed a safety net. Consider it mutually assured destruction. If The Consortium ever decided to terminate him, he would use it as a shield. He wouldn’t have shared that with my sister because he knew damn well she would use it in a different way. For all that he trained her, I don’t believe he truly trusted her.”
“She’ll want to take power,” Taylor continued. “Has everyone read the profile I gathered on her? It’s a compilation of Agency information on her over the years and Eve McKay’s updated profile.”
Ian tapped the folder in front of him. “Yes, I’ve gone over it again. It’s pretty much my personal nightmare. I’m going to be honest, she’s not who I would have selected had I been given a choice in which criminal kidnapped my daughter.”
“I’ll be honest, it gave me some hope.” Charlotte set her mug down. “She’s ruthless but she’s got some hard lines she hasn’t crossed yet. She could have killed MaeBe. She didn’t.”
“I don’t think she kills for pleasure. She’s angry with me, but she views most people as sad sheep who need her leadership,” MaeBe replied. “Some of her advice to me was actually helpful. I’m not saying she’s not a monster. She is. But I don’t think she’ll torture Kala. I think she’ll happily trade her back for the intel and keep her real prize. Her greatest flaw is she thinks she’s way smarter than she really is. She believes if she hands over Kala unharmed, you’ll be so happy to have your daughter back, you won’t come after her.”
“In my sister’s mind, there’s no reason for you to come after her. She will view this as a transaction,” Drake stated. “We have something she wants. She has something you want. Once the deal is done, she won’t understand why you would be angry.”
“I’ll explain it to her in thorough detail,” Charlotte promised.
She couldn’t imagine how hard these hours had been on Charlotte. It was one of the reasons she’d come up with her plan. “Julia believes she’s the smartest person in every room. She’s a true malignant narcissist, and we can use that arrogance against her. If Julia has never seen the intel in her father’s files, why shouldn’t we make it all up?”
That was the plan that had come to her. They thought they knew where the data was, but until they got into the bank, there was no way to be sure. They could be running across the US and parts of Europe chasing after this intel, and she wasn’t willing to leave Kala or Kyle in Julia’s tender care for any longer than necessary.
Adam chuckled, though it wasn’t an amused sound. “You think her ego will be satisfied with getting her way, and she won’t question the data.”
“I think I know how my father worked,” Drake corrected. “And Taylor knows how to fake data so no one will even question it. MaeBe and Hutch are damn fine at it, too. So is our guest, who is being helpful, but he’s not happy about his confinement.”
Ian had immediately put Joseph under twenty-four-hour guard despite the fact that he’d been right that Julia was going to attack. He’d simply been wrong about the target, but Ian couldn’t risk Joseph roaming free. “I’ve talked to the Canadian. He can leave once I have my daughter back. We can’t be sure he’s not a double. I don’t care what the Canadian authorities tell me. The Agency would have said the same thing about Julia Ennis a few years ago.”
Joseph had been calm about the guard. He’d offered his services and his opinion on whether or not they could fool Julia. He thought they could, but he was also under the assumption that Julia would trade Kala but not Kyle.
However, if Kala was out of the equation, Kyle would be free to do whatever he needed to do.
Once Kala was safe, MaeBe would be able to move in and then the real game could begin.
“Explain this process to me.” Charlotte finally sat down beside her husband.
“We’re going to take everything we currently know about The Consortium and a whole bunch of things we think we know and put them into a group of reports and faked surveillance footage that will look like a burn file,” MaeBe explained.
“I know how my father organized the one he had on his Agency enemies,” Drake admitted. “He kept detailed blackmail-like material on many rivals at the Agency and in politics. My mother would call it opposition research, but my father used it for something different. So I know how it should look. We simply have to properly organize it and make the data in the reports as airtight as possible. We’ve already begun. Normally we would take weeks, but we’ve got several talented people working on it. Chelsea alone has faked enough documents to make a go of this, and MaeBe is shockingly good with the deep fake.”
“Hutch is, too.” They’d spent the night faking video evidence of a couple of known Consortium CEOs committing acts of sexual deviance that would likely get them ousted. Not that she thought there was anything wrong with a dude who liked it rough and with a surprising amount of bodily fluids, but the world had not caught up on the live-and-let-love-kinkily philosophy. “We’re matching up times and places so everything looks good. It should take her far more than a casual perusal to figure out it’s fake. She’ll have to dig deep to catch any flaws.”
“We think it should take her days to go through what we’re going to give her,” Taylor explained. “It’s not reasonable for her to verify the data before she releases Kala. We think she’ll trust Drake enough to be willing to exchange Kala for what we give her. She’ll still have Kyle after all.”
“My sister doesn’t think I’m ruthless. She underestimates a lot of people, but you should understand that she will be well organized at this point,” Drake said. “I know you’re well versed at military operations, but she’ll be prepared for that. I’m not saying you can’t take her…”
“But until we have Kala out of the line of fire, anything can happen,” Charlotte said, seeming to take control of her emotions. Ian reached out and took her hand in his. “When we have Kala, there won’t be anything to stop us from taking care of the situation.” Her eyes came up. “I’m sorry, MaeBe. That call should be yours.”
“Kyle will be waiting for us to storm in. He’ll be ready, and he wouldn’t want to stay with her any longer than he has to in order to protect Kala,” MaeBe replied. “He told me what he wanted me to do. We move as soon as we can, and we finish this.”
“I’ve talked to our law enforcement contacts, and they’ve agreed to allow us to handle this as we see fit. They’re putting their careers on the line for me because this is not protocol,” Ian said, his voice grave. “So we need to keep this entire operation as quiet as possible.”
“No one’s going to talk,” Adam promised. “I’ve already wiped any security cam footage of Derek and the others coming into the building, and Chelsea will make sure there’s nothing to be found on our end. She also thinks she’s figured out where they flew out of. She believes they drove to a small airfield west of Shreveport, Louisiana. According to the records she’s managed to recover, the plane was a private jet registered to a company with known Consortium ties.”
“Where did it go?” Ian asked evenly.
“According to the records it flew to Upstate New York. Chelsea didn’t believe the official record,” Adam explained. “They had to have filed one or they wouldn’t have been allowed to land, but they can go back in and hack records. Chelsea believes the plane landed at Winchester Regional Airport in Northern Virginia.”
“One of the places Joseph told us to look was in Winchester,” MaeBe pointed out. “It’s an hour and a half out of DC.”
“My father’s family had a house out there. He sold it after his mom died. I’ll get you the address,” Drake replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if my father found a way to fake the sale and use it as a safe house. If he put it under an alias, it would be hard to track who actually owns the place, and my mother wouldn’t have asked questions. It had some interesting architectural features that no one talked about.”
“Why?” Charlotte asked.
“Because they’re historical and could potentially caused the whole estate to have been declared a historical landmark and then it would be worth less money because it would be so much harder to redevelop it,” Drake replied. “No one wants to live in a house they can’t renovate without going through a historical society. If I remember we made a couple million off it, but my father apparently kept large sums of cash hidden. This could have been his way to ensure he had a completely hidden safe house. She wouldn’t have cared about anything but the cash. She was in a tight race at the time. I argued that I wanted the place, but I was fourteen and she wouldn’t listen to me.”
