She didn’t have time to explain things to him. The truth was, she might have to deal with him sooner rather than later. It might be time to work on her own.

  John couldn’t be alive. MaeBe was lying, and she intended to find out why.

  “Get back here and fast. I need you to deal with the Taggarts,” she said as she took the stairs quickly. The guest room was code for torture chamber. It was really an interrogation room, but her father had taught her that interrogations went so much faster when there was torture involved. “They won’t wait long.”

  “We need to talk about this,” John insisted. “This is dangerous information. If The Consortium ever…”

  She cut him off, anger rising. “We’ll talk when you get the job done. Get back here and contact the Taggarts. Give them some bullshit about picking up the kid in thirty minutes somewhere in DC.”

  “Well, I don’t have the kid,” John pointed out.

  He wasn’t as smart as she’d hoped. “I didn’t intend for that to be the actual pickup spot. I’m not an idiot. If we give Taggart a real time and a real place, he’ll have a whole team waiting for us. But I need him to think this is happening now. Then we’ll leave the kid somewhere in the woods. I’m sure she can find her way out. It’ll keep her parents occupied while we move Kyle to the island. Get everything ready. We’ll leave as soon as we dump the kid.”

  She was no longer considering keeping the kid around. Up until a few moments before it had been an actual thought in her head. She could use something like family, and the girl would be an excellent way to keep Kyle in line until she could get through to him. She could teach the girl as her father had taught her. It could be fun.

  But the thought that John wasn’t who he was supposed to be had unsettled her.

  Luckily she’d caught another little fish who might do well. The question was how many others had she brought with her?

  Though it would be like a man to not listen to a woman. She could see Taggart ignoring poor MaeBe’s warnings. It wasn’t like she herself hadn’t dealt with men who didn’t listen to logic. Drake would have told her to follow whatever plan he’d come up with. Another man who thought he knew everything.

  “You’re probably correct about Taggart,” John was saying. “But we’re going to have to talk about what’s on this drive. I’ll make the call now and set the meeting at the Lincoln Memorial. It’ll still be packed at this time of day.”

  It would be chaotic, and that was exactly what she needed. “Good. I’ll talk to you when you get back.”

  She hung up. She was going to have to figure out how to deal with the new John. The old John would never have questioned her. He would have verified the data and passed it over to her.

  Had that perfect obedience hidden his real agenda?

  “Ma’am, the power is back on, and I rebooted the security system.” There was a guard waiting at the end of the stairs. “It’s working now. I think there was a glitch in the system, but not long enough to go to the generator. Do you want me to go and do a perimeter check?”

  Something wasn’t right. It pricked along her spine, that feeling that something was about to happen and she wasn’t ready for it. She should lock everything down.

  And then the guard dragged MaeBe in, and all she could feel was rage.

  MaeBe’s head came up. “Just let me see Kyle. I’ll tell you what you want if you let me see Kyle.”

  It had all been a lie. MaeBe had told her she couldn’t forgive Kyle, but here she was, a pathetic creature begging for love from a man who shouldn’t be bothered to look at her. She wasn’t beautiful or exciting or even intelligent. She was nothing compared to Julia.

  Was this what Kyle wanted? This mewling idiot?

  The instinct that she was in trouble dimmed in face of the real threat. Nothing was more important than Kyle and proving to him once and for all who was the right woman for him.

  “Take her inside.”

  Julia wanted to be alone with her adversary.

  Only one of them would walk out of that room.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The minute the lights blinked on and off, Kyle knew the game had changed and he had to be ready.

  He looked over to where Kala had been lying on her back, seeming to nap, but now she shifted, turning to her side, and easing up to sitting.

  He would give it to his cousin. She was a cool customer. She glanced over and the guard was yawning. He might not have even noticed.

  How many guards were in the house right now? He’d counted a solid eight, but had overheard two talking about who would be going to DC to take the drop-off.

  When he’d heard the word drop-off, he’d known they were moving into the most dangerous time he and Kala would face, and it had happened far faster than he’d thought it would. He’d expected at least another couple of days.

  Unless they’d found the intel exactly where they’d thought they would.

  Or…unless MaeBe had found a way around it all. Giving Julia the intel was dangerous to the world. Keeping it would be dangerous to him and Kala.

  So the only way MaeBe could meet both needs would be to fake it all.

  His adrenaline started pumping as the door above came open.

  “Hey, everything okay down there?” a deep voice asked.

  At least two. Two guards close to them. There would be more, but she would have sent several to protect that all-valuable data. Julia was paranoid and almost certain there were other Consortium operatives watching her. If they’d started with nine, they would definitely be down to at least six. Maybe less.

  The guard sat up straight and tried to cover a yawn. “It’s fine. What’s going on?”

  “You didn’t see the lights flicker?” the mercenary asked. “Are you fucking sleeping again? I warned you about that. Check the security cameras.”

  “Fuck. It looks like the Internet is out. I’ve got to reset it.” The guard moved over to the bank of tech equipment.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.” Kala stood up and moved to the bars.

  “In a minute, kid.” The guard sighed as he looked over the many high-tech blinking boxes with their lights and multitudinous switches.

  “Is it back up? You know she’s going to freak out if some power surge knocks out her cameras,” the guard above said. “I don’t want to deal with her. John’s not here, and she’s a mean bitch when he’s not around.”

  So she’d sent John.

  Kala’s hands held on to the bars as she looked out. “I really have to go.”

  Something was about to happen. He knew it. That power surge wasn’t a coincidence.

  “We’ve had three surges since we got here. It’s an old house,” the guard argued as he flipped a switch and then waited.

  Or it could be coincidence.

  Either way, he needed to be ready.

  Could they have figured out where Julia would take them? Yes. Absolutely. MaeBe could find him. If anyone could, it was her, and if she could, his uncle and aunt would come up with a plan. If they had any doubt at all that Julia might not honor the deal, they would do what they had to. For some people that would mean bringing in the authorities. For his family it meant taking matters into their own well-armed hands.

  Which meant this all would go down very quickly.

  “Dude, I’m going to pee myself if you don’t let me out of here,” Kala insisted.

  The guard growled and went back to look at the monitors. “She should have put a fucking bucket in there.” He glanced at the security cameras which appeared to have come back online. Appeared being the operative word.

  How would they come in?

  “The cameras are fine,” the guard said.

  “We have a situation up here,” the man on the stairs announced. “Check the locks and get your ass up here. Someone’s on the grounds.”

  They must be down to a small team if they were leaving he and Kala alone.

  “What do I do about the kid? I don’t think we have anymore clothes, and I don’t want to sit in a car with her if she’s covered in pee.”

  “She can wait.” Kyle didn’t want to get separated at this point.

  “No, I can’t.” Kala managed to squeeze out a tear and look an awful lot like her sister. Despite the fact that they were twins, it was always easy to tell the difference between them. Kala was hard where Kenzie was soft. Some of that vulnerability her twin never hid was coming out right now, and he could see it was working on the guard.

  “Hurry,” the upstairs guy said. “Something’s happening. If this goes south…” He left that dangling.

  “Kala, I don’t think you should leave right now.”

  She frowned but kept her eyes on the door in front of her. “The bathroom is right there. Do you want to humiliate me?”

  The guard quickly put in the code, his gun up. “Hurry. You’ve got two minutes.”

  Kala was back to her bratty self. “Awesome.”

  She disappeared into the small bathroom. It was a tight fit, with no mirror and only the toilet, sink, and rudimentary shower that did not have a drop of hot water attached to it.

  What was she doing?

  And then he realized what she was doing when he heard a gentle snick coming from his left.

  He groaned, trying to cover the noise. He wasn’t sure how or why, but there was something happening along the wall opposite of him. Maybe they were coming in through the vents, but he had to make sure the guard didn’t check. Kala had done her part. She’d realized her parents were coming and she’d hidden so they didn’t have to worry about her.

  The rest was up to him.

  “Hey, how the fuck long are you planning on keeping me down here?” He got loud. It might throw the guy off since he’d been a model prisoner up until now. He hadn’t tried a damn thing, and he was pretty sure the guy thought he was as much of a threat as Kala.

  He wasn’t as hyper, likely-helped-out-by-steroids muscled as this guy, but he could handle him.

  “Keep your voice down, asshole.”

  He could hear something shuffling. Was someone moving inside the walls? “Why? What are you going to do?”

  The guard stopped as though he could tell something was happening.

  “I asked a question, you piece of shit.”

  That got the guard’s attention. His nostrils flared like an angry bull, and he turned away from where the sound was coming from, giving Kyle his full attention. “You want to play, asshole?”

  That’s what he needed. He needed this dude wholly focused on him. Perhaps then he wouldn’t notice that Kala wasn’t coming out of that bathroom and someone was moving around behind that wall, looking for a door that might be there.

  Had MaeBe discovered that, too? Had she found this place and learned there was a secret way in?

  Julia had always told him she wouldn’t live anywhere she didn’t have a way out of. She said her father had taught her that.

  “I don’t think you can play at all,” Kyle taunted. “I think the lady upstairs has your balls in a vise, and you can’t do anything about it. She tells you what to do, and you do it like the lapdog you are.”

  The guard’s shoulders straightened, and he probably had the instinct to beat his chest or something. “Fuck you. I do what I want. I don’t let any bitch tell me what to do.”

  That was the moment the door opened and Charlotte Taggart moved in, her body encased in all black and a gun with a suppressor in her hand.

  “Die.” She pulled the trigger and the guard went down quickly. Charlotte stared down at him. “This bitch seems to have been able to tell him what to do. Kyle, where’s my daughter?”

  Ian had moved in behind her, his brothers and sister-in-law flanking out from the small door that had been revealed.

  The bathroom door opened. “Mom!”

  Kala ran out, hurling herself into her mother’s arms.

  Theo and Erin carefully moved around them, covering the stairs. Ian joined his wife and daughter, wrapping his big arms around them.

  “I knew it was you,” Kala said, her head resting on her mom’s shoulder. The tears had come now, and she looked more like the kid she was. “I knew when the lights went out that you were coming to get me, and I knew I should hide so you could do what you needed to do, but I couldn’t get Kyle out and I thought he would be smart enough to take cover, but I don’t think he did. I don’t think he knew.”

  “I knew.” He’d been a damn CIA operative. “I absolutely knew.”

  His stepdad moved in front of him. Sean looked so different, like this was a side of him he’d never seen before. He was in all black and looked exactly like the badass Green Beret he’d once been. But his eyes softened, and he was Sean again. “Hey, son. You okay?”

  How much had his mom and stepdad been through the last few days? Emotion threatened to choke him. Why had he ever considered leaving this family for a freaking second? He nodded, reaching a hand between the bars. “Yes, Pops. I’m good. I kept watch over her. Uncle Ian, I take back everything I’ve ever said about you. You are a saint of a man.”

  He wasn’t going to call him Sean again. He couldn’t call him Dad. That place was forever enshrined to the man who’d raised him as a child. But Sean had taught him so much about how to be a man. Pops would do.

  Sean took his hand, pulling him against the bars into as much of a hug as he could while Ian kissed the top of his daughter’s head and then frowned, sniffing the air and finding out his daughter hadn’t bathed in days. At least he’d taken a shower.

  Sean sighed as though something had settled inside him. “Okay. We’re going to get MaeBe and get you out of here. We brought along some C-4. Ten is going to take Charlotte and Kala back out.”

  That was when he noticed the lanky man in the back. Tennessee Smith. He’d met the man before, but he looked different today. He looked leaner and harder than the man who smiled and told jokes at family get-togethers. This was the Ten Smith who’d existed before he’d met his wife and had a bunch of kids.

  “She only left one guard here?” Ten frowned as he looked down. “That wasn’t smart.”

  “MaeBe was right. She isn’t thinking straight,” Charlotte said, taking a deep breath and stepping back to look at her daughter. “Come on, baby. We’re going back through the tunnels with Ten. We’ll wait for your dad and everyone else out at the cars.”

  “Where’s Mae?” Was she holed up in a van monitoring the situation? He wanted her far away from here, but he wasn’t going to tell her to run. Not this time. He was going to trust her.

  He was kind of surprised she hadn’t left Hutch to do the overwatch work.

  Kala turned to her dad. She stood up a bit straighter, as though trying to be professional. “I’m pretty sure you’re dealing with less than five tangoes, and they’re all mercenaries. Two of them are former Marines. I think the rest are ex-Army. This is a job to them. We think Julia sent the dangerous ones to the meet site. Well, I do. I don’t know that Kyle thinks a lot.”

  She was the worst. “Go. Get her out of here so you can find a way through the security code on this sucker. Can I talk to Mae? Do you have her on the radio?”

  Charlotte took her daughter’s hand. “I’ll leave that explanation to the rest of the group. Ten, we’re ready. Theo, you can start working on the code to the door.”

  Theo Taggart had a familiar device in his hand. It was a modified tablet that Hutch and MaeBe used to bust codes on security systems. It could sometimes take hours.

  He could be here for hours. The thought should freak him out. He should be chomping at the bit to get out of here so he could face Julia and finally end this madness. He couldn’t let his uncle do this for him.

  Except he really could. He didn’t care who killed Julia as long as she was out of his life and he could be with Mae. It didn’t matter who brought Julia the justice she deserved. All that mattered was he got to start his life with Mae.

  “Mom, please. Like I didn’t watch.” Kala stepped up to the keypad of the lock. She closed her eyes as though trying to remember exactly what she had seen.

  Another reason she’d asked to go to the bathroom. In the chaos of the power flickering and whatever was happening upstairs, the guard hadn’t covered the keypad.

  Kala had watched his fingers move.

  Oh, if she got this open, he was never going to live it down. He hadn’t even thought to watch the guard.

  Maybe it was time to accept that he wasn’t the superspy he thought he’d been. He’d been a soldier, and that was okay. Now he just wanted to be a husband and—if they decided together—a father.

  He prayed his child was easier than Kala Taggart.

  The lock clicked and the door opened.

  But there was no question that one day Kala Taggart was going to be magnificent.

  “Hey, kid.” His uncle put his hands on Kala’s shoulders. “I love you. We’re going to sit down and have a long talk when this is through.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll be grounded for life,” Kala replied with a sigh.

  “Oh, you’ll be grounded, but we’re going to talk about more than that.” Ian leaned over and kissed his daughter’s forehead. “You want training? I think it’s time. You might not like it, but I know when fate is probably punching me in the face. Go with your mom. You two be safe.”

  Kala’s head tilted up. “I love you, Dad. Kick her ass. She won’t stop coming after Kyle. Not ever. You have to kill her. If she’s alive, she’ll find a way to hurt Kyle and MaeBe. We can’t let that happen.”

  So like her father. A hard outside, with real love and caring behind it.

  “We won’t let that happen,” his uncle promised.

  Kala started to walk toward the secret door, Ten Smith holding it open for her and her mom. Charlotte went first, placing Kala between her and the ex-operative.

  “Faith and I will be waiting for the all clear,” Ten promised. “You give it and I’ll get her in as fast as I can.”

  Faith Smith was with them? It was good that they were so prepared they’d brought along their own doctor.

  Ian nodded and the door closed behind them.

  His Pops handed him a Glock. “I don’t suppose I can get you to go with them?”

 

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