by Lexi Blake
She hurried after Charlotte and wondered if her baby steps hadn’t become one giant leap into the big old life pond.
* * * *
Brody woke up with a shock as the car he was in came to an emergency stop, throwing him against the seatbelt. A horn blared and he heard someone shouting.
Tucker turned in his seat, giving him a wary smile. “Sorry. Apparently driving is one of those things that got wiped from my memory.” He waved a hand out the window. “Sorry about that! Yeah, fuck you, too! Jeez, I thought people in Texas were supposed to be friendly.”
As far as he could tell from Tucker’s accent, he might be from Texas. Or someplace in the American west. Brody glanced around. They weren’t far from the McKay-Taggart building. Another few lights and one right turn and they would be there. If Tucker didn’t get them killed. “They’re friendlier when you’re not driving like an arsehole with a death wish. You do realize this ain’t a road, right?”
Tucker stopped. “What do you mean? The GPS lady told me to turn here.”
Did he not notice that people on both sides were looking down at them from the platform like they were idiots? “Nope, she told you to turn on the road. This is where the train runs. In case you’ve forgotten what a train is, it’s a bit like a high-speed bullet that kills everything stupid enough to get in its path.”
Tucker’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit. Holy shit. We’re going to get hit by a train. What should I do?”
Brody yawned again. It had already been a long damn day. Why had he thought bringing the brain-damaged puppy along for the ride would be a good idea? “Probably get off the tracks. Preferably before the train comes. You wait too long and the train will do the work for us.”
Tucker gunned it and managed to get back to the actual road. He stopped at the next light, his hands wrapped around the steering wheel like he was afraid to let go. “Maybe you should drive.”
“How are you going to learn if you don’t do it?” He certainly hadn’t brought the lad along to let him sit in the back and eat candy and play on his bloody iPad. He got enough of that back in England.
Tucker relaxed a bit. “You are a weird dude. From what I can tell nothing upsets you. You didn’t even wake up when the plane hit that storm. Everyone else was puking their guts up and you were asleep.”
“Man needs his sleep.” Odd that now that he knew he was going to see her, he’d settled down. It would be all right. She had another man and all he was doing was checking up on a woman he cared about. He would see her, talk to her, meet her new guy, and then he would be able to move on with his life. Whatever trouble she was in, he would help her out, and then he would know everything was fine. He would be able to date other women, women more like him.
Women who didn’t make him crazy with lust. Women who didn’t haunt his every dream.
“It’s unnatural,” Tucker complained.
It wasn’t for Brody. He’d nearly been killed about a hundred times, and he remembered every single one. He didn’t let it get him down. He went into every situation with the same odds. He would either die or he wouldn’t. Most days it didn’t matter to him which outcome came true.
But the thought of her being killed, that made his heart race.
Couldn’t the bloke drive a bit faster? He would feel better once he saw her. Once he laid eyes on her he would remember all the reasons he’d left. All the reasons he’d stepped aside and let some bugger named Nate take over for him. Yes. He would meet the bloke. Nate would be an over-educated arsehole, and Brody would be able to happily step back after he’d fixed this problem for her. He would know that she was fine and had found a man worthy of her. Maybe Nate was another doctor or a scholar of some kind. That was what she needed.
He could have a talk with the man, get him to see that talking Stephanie into coming back to the States would be good for her.
Tucker moved the car along, coming ever closer to the building that housed MT. He might have to fight his way in, but that would be okay, too. It would be good for Big Tag to know that anything that happened with Stephanie Gibson should go through Brody Carter. Not Liam O’Donnell, who already had a family to take care of. Him. Brody. He was her close contact.
He was the one they should call on.
He sat up straighter, watching for the turn since it seemed like Tucker didn’t know the difference between a road and a set of train tracks.
“Turn right at the next street,” he said a few seconds before the GPS navigator told him the same thing.
Tucker turned. “Way to gang up on a guy.”
He had no idea. This was more important to him than Tucker could possibly know. “Did the team find out anything on this bloke she’s with? Nate something. Is he a new doc at her clinic?”
“I got a report from Sasha, who told me he couldn’t find anything on his travel search. He looked through records for the past year and the only Nathans who came through on his passport search didn’t fit the bill. There was a Nathan Conroy who traveled on a British passport for a corporation. Stayed exactly two weeks in Freetown and went home. A Nate Gilliam who appears to be a missionary from Utah.”
He could see her building water wells with a missionary group. “Maybe it’s him.”
“Then she likes them young. He’s nineteen.”
Probably not. “Tell Sasha not to bother. I’ll have an actual name for him in an hour or so. And tell him to keep trying to get in touch with the clinic. I can’t get anyone to answer.”
“About that, uhm, that’s where things get a little weird. You were sleeping again when the drone footage came through. Damon’s got spectacular connections in that part of the world. Some of the corporations over there use drones for security purposes. Damon convinced one of them to send the drone over the clinic. I sent the footage to your phone.”
Now he was talking. He reached for his mobile, switching it on and pulling up the email that contained the footage.
“Damon had them do three separate flyovers,” Tucker explained. “At three different times, a few hours apart.”
The buildings were there. Even though they were overhead, he knew the site well enough to pick out the surgery and the clinic. The drone flew over, showing the dusty road that led to the small cluster of buildings. Three cabins that would more likely be called huts by most people lay on the outskirts of the site. There was an outer building where the kitchen was located. Steph and her workers all ate together, each taking turns cooking.
He’d done his part while he was there, though he wasn’t the world’s greatest cook. He’d taken turns with breakfast, frying up eggs and making a reasonably decent oatmeal. She’d laughed the first time he’d done it. It had been a watery mess, but she’d still eaten it.
The buildings were all there. Where the hell were the people?
The clinic always had someone walking about. Whether it was patients straggling in to see the doc or kids coming for food and water, staying to play football in the lot behind the kitchens, there was always someone milling about.
Not this time. This time the place was eerily deserted. A chill crept up his spine. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“What time of day did they fly over?” He switched to the second of the three short videos.
“Noon, three p.m., and just before dusk. That’s what Damon said. They could go over it at night, but Damon didn’t think they needed to. He says he’ll send the intel to Adam, if you like. He might be able to see something we’re not.”
He didn’t want Adam. He wanted his own people. “Make Walt do it. He’s going to be resting for a week or so. He can certainly isolate some imagery for me. I’m looking for anything out of the ordinary. We should have footage from the Theo Taggart rescue op. Have him compare the two and give me anything different. If there’s a new tree, I want to know where it came from.”
“Landscaping. Got it.” Tucker sighed. “I think that’s it. Should I park in the garage?”
And let them know that he was coming up?
O’Donnell had told him he was giving Brody fair warning, but Brody played a bit dirtier than that.
Actually, now that he thought about it, he wanted to know why O’Donnell had decided he needed an arsekicking. Unless Steph had talked about their brief night together. O’Donnell couldn’t possibly think he had something to do with whatever had sent Steph and her new boy toy running for Dallas.
A sick feeling hit his stomach. Was Steph talking bad about him? Was she angry he wouldn’t return her calls? So angry she would want to get a bit of her own back? It occurred to him that she could make his job difficult if she wanted to. He’d never thought she would. She was too kind, too sweet, but sometimes women changed when a man had his back turned.
“Park in the visitor slot. If we try to get into the covered garage, we’ll need a code from the front desk.” He would figure this out because he wasn’t losing his job over a consented upon one-night stand.
“Are we sneaking in?” Tucker asked. “Because I didn’t bring my stealth clothes.”
Such a pain in Brody’s arse. “You just watch my back, mate.”
Tucker parked and Brody got out of the car. It took a moment to realize the bloke wasn’t following him. He turned and started to bark at him for not keeping up, but he stopped. Tucker was standing in the middle of the lot, his face turned toward the brilliant sun.
A smile played his face as though he’d never felt that kind of warmth before, never stood in the light and had it warm his skin.
It was rainy and cold most of the time in London. Even when the sun came out it didn’t feel like the same sun that would shine down on him in Australia. No. That sun would beat a man down, but it could also warm him, lift him up, and give him energy he couldn’t find anywhere else.
Tucker had spent his whole life in the cold. At least all the life he could remember. As far as Tucker was concerned, he’d been born a grown man in a sterile lab where he’d been tortured into submission, and even when he’d been rescued, he spent all his time hidden away in a building in the middle of a city he wasn’t allowed to explore.
Brody could give him a moment.
Tucker’s head came back down and his skin flushed in a way that wasn’t from the sun. “Sorry. It felt nice.”
Nice. Yeah, he needed to be nicer to the bloke. “No worries. It’s a lovely day. When we’re not working, maybe we can see a bit of the city. I’ve been told there’s a park up the road that has something called food trucks.”
Tucker’s face lit up like a kid being given a treat he’d been sure he would be denied. “That sounds great. I’m starving. Airplane food is terrible. And there was so little of it.”
He practically ran up the stairs to the building.
Damn, but he wished he had that kind of energy. Wished the world felt fresh and new. Not that he wanted to get his brain wiped out, but the energy that came from no past weighing Tucker down, that was something he could handle.
He took the lift up. McKay-Taggart occupied the top two floors of the building, with the highest floor used as the main office. He’d only been to the Dallas office on two occasions, but he remembered the way.
Where would he be without this place? And why the hell had Ian Taggart offered him a bloody job? After he’d left SASR, he’d been at loose ends, unwilling to go back to his tiny hometown and work at a station the way his old man had. He hadn’t wanted to go home to his mum’s place and be forced to look at the room his brother had left behind when he’d been killed in combat.
He’d taken a bodyguard job. Stupidest thing he’d ever done because he’d found himself thinking it would be an easy job. All he had to do was escort a scientist named Walter to meet his contact in Finland. No worries. Except he’d been smack in the middle of a bloody global conspiracy.
He’d screwed up and gotten himself taken, but at least it had been by the good guys.
End of the op, he and Walt found themselves working for McKay-Taggart and Knight in London.
What if he’d taken a different path? He would have never met Stephanie and she wouldn’t be a hole in his heart. He wouldn’t have flown halfway around the world to check up on her.
The lift doors opened and he followed Tucker out.
“Nice place.” Tucker opened the big glass and metal doors that led inside. And stopped, his shoulder dropping down before he walked up to the receptionist desk. Walk? More like strode in, as though he’d managed to transform from curious lad to lothario in a heartbeat. “Well, hello, pretty lady. What might your name be?”
The young woman behind the counter looked up from her laptop. Her glossy red hair was in a high ponytail and she was wearing a pretty blue dress that accentuated her curves. “Sadie. Do you have an appointment or are you bringing in the order from the pie maker? I sure hope you are. He’s been in a doozy of a mood this afternoon and his wife is downstairs working with a lady who needs a bodyguard. So the only thing that works is to stuff a lemon square in his face the next time he says something awful. I’ve had one client walk out and he threatened to cut the man bun off the deliveryman. He had the scissors out and everything. I’m supposed to avoid lawsuits, but how can I do that when the boss is a crazy man?”
So Big Tag was still Big Tag. “Not the pie delivery service, luv.”
Tucker’s smile was movie star wide and his voice had deepened. “Not at all. I’m a secret agent. I’m so secret no one even knows my name.”
Sadie was a pretty redhead who looked an awful lot like her Aunt Grace. From what Brody recalled, she’d started working part time at McKay-Taggart after Grace had joined her husband Sean’s growing restaurant empire. They had sites in Dallas and Fort Worth, but Sean had recently been featured on the Food Network and was a rising star in the culinary industry.
“If you don’t have anything sweet and lemony, I have no use for you,” Sadie said with a frown. She sat down and went back to her laptop.
Tucker frowned and turned to Brody. “I’ve been told I’m quite attractive. Did the women at The Garden lie?”
Brody stared for a moment. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?”
“Human attractiveness is an easily settled subject, from what I can tell.” Tucker seemed tense, his hands on his hips as he worked through the problem. “Symmetrical features are important. Women seem to appreciate a fit body on their men. Do I not exude a willingness to both physically and financially take care of a female?”
Sadie stood back up, her green eyes now wide with obvious curiosity. “Oh, you’re one of them, aren’t you? Like my Uncle Theo? He’s not my blood uncle, but they take family pretty seriously around here. I was raised in Waco by my mom, who was Grace’s sister, who is married to Ian’s baby brother, who is half brothers with Theo and Case because their daddy was something of a rogue, as my momma would say.”
Brody wasn’t following her at all. She talked fast, spitting out facts with her down-home Texas accent. “He’s one of what?”
“Them. The Lost Boys,” she clarified. “Uncle Ian calls them vagrants, but he calls a lot of people that. It’s a catchall term for him, really. He will see a perfectly dressed guy and call him a vagrant because he’s wearing one of those pork pie hats. I don’t see how that’s an indication of one’s homelessness.”
Brody had to chuckle because Ian was a bastard. He put a hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “He is one of the Lost Boys. You’ll have to forgive him if he doesn’t know he’s acting like a bloody douchebag.”
Tucker frowned again. “I was only trying to test the waters with a beautiful woman. I haven’t had a chance to meet women outside of The Garden and the office. Kay told me it’s different in the outside world and that I needed practice or no one would ever swipe right. I’m not sure what that means but if I want a woman, I have to ensure that she swipes right.”
Sadie suddenly seemed less grim. She looked up at Tucker and gave him a playful grin. “You’re quite symmetrical, Mr. Tucker. And women like more than fitness in their men. They like politeness and kindness
and a man who’ll make sure to put them first in the world. If that happens to come with a nice set of abs, then that’s all the better.”
Tucker immediately pulled up his shirt. “I know what abs are. I have abs.”
Sadie put a hand over her eyes and laughed. “I’m glad I didn’t mention anything lower. All right. Since you’re not going to help me with my boss, why don’t you tell me how I can direct you? Just a pointer, again, if you’re here to see Ian, you might wear a flak jacket.”
“I was actually looking for Li O’Donnell.” If Big Tag had his knickers in a twist, he would avoid the man. Besides, Li was the one he needed to talk to. Li was the one who knew where Steph and her boy toy were holed up. Li could make a meeting happen and then he could put this all to rest. He would get the name of the bloke who was threatening her and he would then educate Steph’s new boyfriend on how a man handled himself. If his young charge wanted in on that bit of violence, well, sometimes two sets of hands were better than one.
“Hey, Sadie, has my brother shown up?” Adam Miles walked around the corner.
Sadie frowned at him and pointed a finger his way. “I was warned about you, Mr. Miles. There will be no pranking going on today. I intend to run as tight a ship as my Aunt Grace, and that includes attempting to keep the two of you from doing horrible, juvenile things to each other. You will not touch those lemon squares or I will do something terrible that you will regret for the rest of your life.”
Miles smiled her way, a condescending grin on his face. “Oh, I sincerely doubt you could do violence to anyone.”
“No violence. I’ll call your wife. I have her on speed dial,” Sadie threatened, holding up her heavily bejeweled cell phone like it was a weapon of the first order.
Miles frowned fiercely. “That is rude and unbecoming. It was a tiny little laxative. He wouldn’t have even noticed. No taste. No odor. We all know how that man likes his bathroom time. I was simply trying to give him more of it.”