by Lexi Blake
As for her fitting into his world, maybe it was time he stopped treating her like a china doll to protect and started looking at her as a partner. They would sit down and figure it out.
The woman who had greeted him the night before had been a woman who knew damn well what she wanted, a woman who could handle herself.
A woman who might kick his ass.
Maybe she would see how much pain he was in and take pity on him.
“Now you decide this?” Taggart asked with a shake of his head. “You’ve got horrible timing, but I can tell you what that son of a bitch is going to want. He’s going to want use of my house on Loa Mali. He’s got this girl, some sort of Russian supermodel, and he’s trying to impress her. He thinks he can do it if he has rights to come and go at my gloriously beautiful beach house. Do you know how I got that beach house? Blood. Blood and death and sweat and tears. The tears came from the king who gave it to me for saving his life. He’s a sentimental guy. I swear to god if that Russian smokes in my beach house and makes it smell like a cheap bar, it’s your ass I’m coming after.”
Nick shook his head and then realized that was a terrible idea. Still, he forced himself to look up at Taggart. “The favor is from you?”
“Yeah. Dusan loves this shit. He’s all about making deals and having everyone look at him like he’s some power broker. He likes all that political stuff. He also loves calling in favors.”
Nick sent Taggart a glare that most men would back down from. It was the same stare he used on men he was going to murder horribly. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me the favor was from you and not me?”
“I can be a total dick sometimes,” Taggart admitted.
“Finally, something out of your mouth I can agree with one hundred percent.” Damon set a mug of coffee in front of Nick. He also placed a bottle of aspirin in his grasp. “Take two of those as well and then report down to Walt. He’s going to treat you with IV fluids. I need you on your feet. I know you think you should leave…”
He cut that off quickly. “I’m not going anywhere. I was being a fool. I’m needed here.”
He swallowed two of the pills, the coffee burning its way down his throat. It didn’t matter. He needed to wash away the sins of the night before. It was time to get back to work. She needed him.
“Damn straight, brother,” Taggart agreed. “It’s all gone to hell. The mission last night ended up with me murdering the target. Kayla brought hers in but he’s not talking.”
Despite the pain, he managed to frown up at Taggart. “You killed him?”
Taggart slumped into his chair with a long sigh. “Apparently he’s got a high tolerance for liquor. Way higher than yours, and he’s a damn fine actor. Was. He played drunk, but when he got Charlie out of the bar, he suddenly had complete control again. He put his freaking hand on my wife’s ass and rubbed himself against her. I’m the only one allowed to do that. I intervened and there was a knife and yeah, we might have fought over it and I might have gutted the dude. Charlie already yelled at me. I ruined our perfect night by murdering someone. You have no idea how loud that woman can yell.”
Damon shook his head. “Yes, well, I’m the one who had to clean things up. Next time please make it less messy. The Ukrainian is being stubborn. He insists all he had communications wise was a series of e-mails. We’ve got Adam working on it, but it could take time. So now I have a Ukrainian who could use a bath in the basement, a rather wretchedly large bill from a cleaner, and a security guard who’s in worse shape than you. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t sue. I promise if he does, I’m sending that bloody bill straight to the Agency. What kind of roofies are they using these days? Giles is still mumbling in his sleep about biscuits and no one taking his.”
“Someone drugged Giles?” Giles was the night guard on the parking garage. He allowed cars in or out. The night before he would have been waiting up to greet the Taggarts and Kayla and her guest. “Why would someone drug Giles?”
The answer hit him and suddenly it didn’t matter that the room was spinning. He was on his feet and moving toward the stairs. Someone had gotten in and taken Hayley. That was the only reason anyone would have drugged the guard. His heart was pounding in his chest and there was zero question about his sobriety at this point. He was hyper aware of everything around him.
“Nick, it’s not what you think.” Damon was running behind him.
He stopped because it was obvious that someone had screwed up. He turned on his boss and his…other boss. “Where is Hayley?”
“No idea,” Taggart said. “But dude, she’s really good with a hypodermic needle. Like shockingly good. Even Charlie thinks she could learn a thing or two from your girl.”
He felt off balance again. “What is that supposed to mean? Is she here or not? She’s supposed to be in my flat. She’s supposed to be protected. You promised you would watch after her.”
Was she here or not? His gut threatened to churn as he stood there.
Damon stepped up. “There’s been a development. Apparently Hayley has decided she no longer needs our protection.”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t leave on her own. She’s not stupid. She knows how dangerous it is out there. Someone took her. I want to see all the surveillance videos. I want to know every single person who even walked close to the building yesterday evening. We have facial recognition. I’ll find the bastard and if he’s laid a hand on her, I swear to god, I’ll hang him with his own entrails.”
Taggart’s face lit up. “I knew you were cool. Entrails are the only way to go. Old school. I love it. But we don’t need facial recognition. She left with Ezra.”
He stopped, his whole body stilling to the point that he was happy his freaking heart continued beating. “Excuse me?”
He couldn’t have heard them right.
Damon put a hand on the railing, his weariness clear. “She and Ezra left last night at roughly one in the morning. They took the car Ezra arrived in and we’ve tracked them to a private airfield. He had a private jet waiting for them and they took off at two-thirty. I’ve been told their flight plan is classified, which means whatever flight plan I can get my hands on is certainly a total lie.”
Ezra Fain had kidnapped his woman. “Where did he take her?”
Damon shook his head, his mouth flattening out in clear frustration. “You’re not listening to me. He didn’t take her anywhere. I looked at the security tapes myself. Hayley is the one responsible for my guard taking an extra long nap. She even high-fived Fain after he caught Giles when he passed out. Lucky for him they left him in a comfortable position or he would be looking at some serious back problems.”
They were missing the point. “Do I look like I care about the state of Giles’s spinal cord? Where is Hayley?”
“Dude, you look seriously crazy right now. I get it. Your girl took off with the hot, horny CIA guy,” Taggart pointed out. “But it’s not Damon’s fault. Honestly, they didn’t need to roofie poor Giles. We can’t keep her here. It’s like kidnapping and shit. I’m sorry that you told her you were staying and she left anyway. That’s gotta hurt.”
Nick suddenly found the floor endlessly entertaining. Well, easier to look at. “We had a fight.”
“So you had a fight and you told her what?” Damon asked. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that she’d left. I assumed that was why you went on a bender.”
“I told her I was leaving London and that she needed to remain here. I broke off our relationship. She did not take it well.” He could still see her standing there, tears in her eyes from the second time he’d ripped her heart out.
“I think she took it all right. You dumped her. She got a new boyfriend and he’s got a private jet.”
He might kill Taggart. “Where did they go?”
Damon sent Taggart a stare that actually had the man backing down. “Leave him be for a moment, please. We need him sane and cooperative.” He turned back to Nick. “Penelope believes she’s pared the code on the mi
crodot down to three possible groupings. I need you focused. You’re the one who can tell us if any of the locations make sense.”
“I have to find Hayley.” And Ezra Fain. Yes, he was going to have a long talk with Ezra Fain.
“Track down the location of whatever it is these guys want and I suspect that’s where you’ll find Hayley,” Taggart replied, serious for once. “I’m fairly certain Ezra knew exactly where he wanted to go the minute he set foot in The Garden. He’s got a plan and he needed Hayley to make it work.”
“I’m going to kill him. He’s going to understand why they call me Butcher.”
“You can’t kill Fain. He didn’t force her to leave with him. That will be made plain when you see the surveillance tapes.” Damon turned and looked out over the garden below. “He’s smart, that one. He prefers to use seduction over force. And he knows we’re in a bad position. We need his contacts on too many cases to truly freeze him out.”
“Seduction?”
“Now who’s poking the bear?” Taggart asked. “When his voice goes low like that and he actually sounds like a real scary Russian crazy person, that’s when we calm him back down. We don’t know that she’s fucking Fain. Probably not. Maybe. Some women would view him as a good candidate for a revenge fuck. You know what I’m talking about. It’s when you dump a chick and she finds another dude to rub your nose in it with. Preferably one with his own jet. But probably not. Maybe Fain doesn’t even like chicks. I don’t know. I don’t watch him.”
“Yes, you’re excellent at this,” Damon said with a sad shake of his head. “Nikolai, I expect you downstairs to meet with Walt and fix your physical issues. We convene in two hours and we’ll decide where to go from there. I’m going to pair everyone up and send you all to the three locations Penelope has discovered, with you going to the one of your choice, the one you decide is the closest to where Desiree would have hidden something.”
It struck him suddenly that Damon could be out. Hayley had gone and it wasn’t like she was paying for Damon’s incredibly expensive services. She’d left and apparently gone on her own. It made sense for Damon to step back.
“Why are you doing this?”
Damon looked out again, over the small space that was his kingdom. “I’m doing it because you’re part of my family, Nikolai. Because I was once exactly where you are and I thought I was alone. A very important person taught me that family doesn’t have to be blood. Family is what we make of it. Family is the people you choose and once you’ve chosen, when your silly family member falls, you pick him up. You weren’t going to be allowed to leave, Nikolai. I already had Walt steal your passport and you’ll find your bank accounts shut down. In the event that didn’t stop you, Brody was going to lock you up until such time as I dealt with the matter. We had a meeting yesterday after you announced your plans. We’re all in agreement.”
He had to force himself to take a deep breath, the emotion of the moment threatening to overwhelm him.
Somehow, even though he’d been on the team for years, he’d always considered himself an outsider. He was someone they took on because he and Des had been a package deal, someone to be tolerated, but not truly one of them.
He felt his jaw tighten at the idea of Kay and Brody, Walt and Owen and the lads all coming together to decide how best to deal with him.
He wasn’t a fool. There might be some stubborn asses out there who would see that as meddling, as troublesome, but he remembered what it meant to be cared about. He remembered how his sister would poke and prod at him, how his parents would shove their noses into his business.
“I will not leave, Damon. This is my promise to you. My promise to my family.” His vow. “I will go see Walt and meet you at the proper time. And I thank you for taking care of this for me.”
“Of course.” Damon turned and nodded shortly.
Taggart leaned in. “You know I’m the one who taught him all that family shit.”
“I was talking about my wife, you wanker,” Damon shot back and then the slightest smile creased his face. “Perhaps you had a small part in it. Nothing more.”
Nick left them arguing like an old married couple. He started toward the lift with purpose.
He was a man with a mission and now he realized he’d always had a team behind him.
Two hours later, Nick looked over the three locations Penelope had managed to pluck from the code on the microdot. The whole team was around the conference table, each one studying the information packets they’d been given on the locations.
A location in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district.
An office building in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
An apartment building in Rio de Janeiro.
“I can verify that she and I stayed in apartments in Hong Kong and Rio. She kept a place in the Ipanema district there. We went to Manhattan many times. She had a place there in Greenwich Village, but I’m almost certain it was left to her mother in her will,” Nick explained. He felt perfectly focused thanks to some hydration therapy.
“It was.” Penelope sat next to her husband at the head of the table. “I checked, but that wasn’t the location I found in the code. The longitude and latitude pinpoints an office building. I ran a list of all the business who have rented there for the last ten years. Do any of them look familiar?”
He glanced down and one name bounced out at him. “Yes, this one. The legal firm. Her family used them for their American business interests.”
“So she could have left something with them,” Kayla concluded.
“Possibly.” He didn’t think so though. It wasn’t Desiree’s style. The New York law firm was one selected years and years before by her grandfather. They’d handled the family’s American investments since shortly after World War II. “The law firm she employed to handle her own assets was much more in line with the way she tended to work. They were very small, very exclusive. A roster of around thirty clients, most of them involved in criminal activities on some level. We certainly need to check this out, but it’s the least interesting of the three to me.”
“All right, I’ll send someone up to check it out,” Taggart said. “I’ve got a Brit on my team. He can pose as her relative. I’m sure Simon and Chelsea would like some time in the city on the firm.”
Kayla held up a hand. “I’ll handle Hong Kong. I know it well and I’m the only one who speaks the languages.”
“You’re also the only one wanted by MSS,” Damon pointed out. For years Kay had been a double agent, spying on China’s intelligence agencies.
Nick shook his head. “No, absolutely not. You can come with me to Brazil.”
“Why Brazil?” Damon asked.
“Because Des was happy there.” He wasn’t sure why, but Rio stood out to him. His instincts told him to go there. He remembered the sunny apartment she kept that overlooked the beach. When they had time or when she was weary, she would ask him to take her to Rio. She would walk up and down the beach and shop and pretend she was normal. She kept a whole drawer of scandalously small bikinis and she would lie on the beach and soak up the sun.
Penny frowned as she pulled up something on her computer. “According to this, the Ipanema flat was included in her will. It was left to her family and they sold it off quickly. I can’t find anything about a Hong Kong flat.”
“She sold it,” Nick explained. “Right before she died, she sold off some of her property. Working for a living hurt her bottom line. Once we signed on here, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her side businesses. She’d settled down a bit and when she needed cash, she sold property.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Nick, but she hadn’t stopped her side businesses.” Damon closed the folder in front of him. “According to my investigation, her finances picked up in the year before her death. To the tune of three million pounds.”
“Do you have financial records?” He let the betrayal wash off him. He had other things to consider and he was done allowing Des to turn him
into a whiny wanker, as Damon would call him. “How were the deposits made? In small amounts? From what bank?”
“I’ll send you a copy and you can read it all on the plane. Are you sure you want to go to Rio knowing the apartment was sold?” Damon asked.
“If it was important she wouldn’t have stashed it where she stayed. She would have found another place. I want Rio.” It was there in his gut. If he had to choose, he chose Rio.
He prayed that was where he would find Hayley, too.
“All right.” Damon stood up. “Kay, you’re heading out with Nick. Brody, take Owen with you to Hong Kong and make sure you don’t lose him.”
Brody nodded. “Will do.”
“Everyone check in when you get to the destination. Nick, take the company jet. Brody, have Teresa make arrangements for you. Go in as tourists. I don’t want to tip anyone off. We have too many enemies in that part of the world.” Damon nodded and was off. “Taggart and I will work with our Ukrainian friend to see what else we can get out of him.”
“Make it fast, though. I’ve got to get back to Dallas in a few days or my whole office will implode.” Taggart eased out of his chair. “And maybe we can let Charlie torture the dude in the basement for a while. It might make up for last night. I’m still in the doghouse, man, and British doghouses are worse than American. Your couch sucks.”
They were arguing as they stepped outside the conference room.
“I’ll go pack. Rio, fun.” Kay winked his way before she practically skipped out of the room.
Brody looked at him across the conference table. “Are you sure?”
“That I want Hayley?” He’d never been surer of anything in his life. “Yes. I love her. I’m not sure that she’ll greet me with open arms, though. She might tell me to leave.”
“What will you do then?”
“I don’t know.”
Brody sighed and slapped an envelope on the table as he stood. “Maybe this will help. It’s time for you to read this, mate. I know you think you’ve put all this behind you, but it’s obvious to me you haven’t. You think I don’t remember what you were like before Desiree died? You like to pretend that you’ve always been this brooding, but you used to be quite dashing. You used to take life by the bollocks and swing on the damn things like Tarzan. You think pretending you didn’t love Des is helping, but it’s not. It’s putting a wall up between you and a woman you could love even more. Forgive yourself for making the wrong choice.”