by Lexi Blake
He knocked on the door. “Kenz, buzz me in.”
Kenzie Taggart looked up and waved. “Sure thing, Mr. Kent.”
“Hold that.” Kala Taggart came into view, staring at him with her blue eyes. The shape resembled her mother’s eyes, but that stare was all Ian. She was dressed in black, from her T-shirt down to a pair of combat boots. “How do I know you’re the real Beckett Kent?”
He did not need this. “Kala, let me in this office right now. Your father called me in.”
“Which is exactly what you would say if you were some bad guy who wanted in the office,” Kala replied.
He wasn’t sure how her parents were going to survive her teen years. “You know what I look like.”
She shrugged. “Surgery is a real thing. You wouldn’t be the first dude to have a whole bunch of surgery done so he could pass for someone else. You think I haven’t read those files Dad thinks are secure? Uncle Li’s own brother did it and then nearly killed him and Aunt Avery. It’s not happening to me. I learn from ancient history. I’m going to need DNA.”
He was going to have such a talk with Tag about putting his barely teenaged menaces in charge of the reception desk.
Kenzie stepped up beside her sister. She was dressed in bright colors, her strawberry blonde hair in a high ponytail. She was the lighter of the two, like she’d gotten all of her mother’s joy. “He looks like Mr. Kent and he’s wearing the same clothes he was earlier today. But then he had his keycard this morning.”
Kala was her sister’s mirror, but she was all her dad. “His clothes are super basic. I don’t think I would even notice if they changed. Like how hard is it to get khakis and a collared shirt?”
“I am going to talk to your dad if you don’t let me in,” he said, his patience running out.
The door buzzed open and Tasha Taggart was shaking her head from behind the receptionist desk. “Dad told me to make sure Mr. Kent got in all right. Sorry, Mr. Kent. Kala takes things way too seriously, and Kenz not at all. Come with me. Did you lose your badge? I know how to make a new one.”
Tasha Taggart had recently turned fourteen and had only the barest hint of her former accent, though it was thick when she spoke her native language. The girls liked to go into Russian when they didn’t want anyone to know what they were saying. Tasha seemed constantly amused by her younger siblings.
“I still think we should make him take a DNA test. He’s changed his name a couple of times,” Kala said under her breath.
“I think you’re cool.” Kenzie gave him a wave. “And khakis aren’t bad. Lots of dads wear them.”
By dad she meant old dude. He wasn’t a fool. But then he probably looked ancient to those babies.
The phone rang and the girls started to argue about who should answer it. Tasha opened the door to the inner office. “Don’t mind Kala. She’s in a bad mood because Cooper is at baseball camp and he’s not replying to her texts. I’ve tried to tell her if she wants a boy to reply to her she shouldn’t punch him on a regular basis.”
The ways of those kids were a mystery, and he liked it that way. The big group of kids contained cliques within cliques, and as they got older they seemed to be pairing off. He preferred the youngsters who wanted to treat every surface of a space like their own private jungle gym. “Are they in the big conference room? And my keycard is in my truck. I ran up here and forgot it.”
“They’re in Dad’s office,” she said. “I’m sitting in for Genny. She’s in New York with Wade this week. It’s pretty cool. They’re with Remy and Lisa. The guys are working as bodyguards for this reality star who’s been accused of murdering another reality star. I hope we get to meet her. The alive one, I mean.”
Despite the fact that the man had a whole business in another state, Remy still honored the pledge he’d made to Tag many years before. He came in on some of the higher profile cases. He particularly liked the ones where the company paid for travel.
Up ahead the door to one of the four largest offices on this floor came open and Charlotte stepped out. “Beck, excellent. Come on in. We’ve got something to show you. Adam’s on his way up, and Hutch is already in there.” She smiled at her oldest daughter. “Everything okay out here? Are the twins all right? Yasmin should be back any minute.”
“Kenzie’s answering the phone. Mostly. We shouldn’t lose too many clients,” Tasha promised. “I’ll go check on Seth and Travis and make sure the nursery is still standing.”
Charlotte watched her walk away with a smile on her face. “I have no idea what I would do without that child.”
“Where is Kim?” He wanted to get straight to the point.
Charlotte turned serious. “You should come in.”
He walked into Big Tag’s office. It was bigger than Beck’s apartment and had a glorious view of Dallas. Taggart was standing over his chair, which was occupied by Greg Hutchins. Hutch was the head of cyber investigations and security. He was in his early thirties, but then he’d been one of the youngest CIA employees in history. Recruited by Tennessee Smith for his hacking skills, Hutch had been Big Tag’s man for over a decade.
“Beck, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Tag said. “You have to know I wouldn’t unless it was important.”
“Where is she?” Only one thing mattered.
“It’s complicated.” Taggart had his hands on his hips.
Hutch looked up from his laptop. “Nah. It’s not really. She’s in Malta. Did you know there was a country called Malta? I didn’t. It’s apparently some weird island in the Mediterranean. It’s super tiny.”
Tag frowned down at Hutch. “What about let me handle this did you not understand?”
Hutch shrugged. “He wasn’t going to listen to a lecture, boss. He’s been looking for Solo for seven years. I spend way more time with him than you do. Now that he knows we actually have a location, he’ll chill.”
“Or he’ll take off after her, and the situation is complex,” Tag insisted.
Malta. She was in Malta. “He’s right. I wouldn’t have stopped until you gave me a location, but I’m not going to immediately run off after her. Unless she’s in some kind of danger.”
“We’ve got some feelers out,” Charlotte explained. “Chelsea is on it.”
“How did you find her?” His heart was racing. Kim was in Europe and she was alive. “What do you know about her?”
“Very little.” Tag came around his desk. “This intel is literally an hour old. I called as soon as we got the report.”
“You know I’ve been tracking Solo’s history for years now. By history, I really mean her family’s business and social connections,” Hutch explained. “It’s this big weird puzzle because the Solomons have family across the globe. Did you realize Solo’s connected to three different heads of state?”
“She didn’t talk about her family much.” It had been a point of contention with her. “I know she trusted a couple of cousins, but she wasn’t close to any of them.”
“From what I’ve been able to gather, she traveled a lot as a kid. She spent a whole lot of time in boarding schools,” Hutch continued.
“Yes. Her parents didn’t pay a lot of attention to her.”
“After I realized that studying her super-classified time at the Agency wasn’t yielding anything, I thought I would go deeper. I looked at her childhood. Sometimes when things are rough we go back to basics. She spent a few years at a boarding school in Austria,” Hutch said. “She had very few visitors, but according to the records I acquired…”
“He hacked,” Tag interjected with an eye roll.
“You say tomato,” Hutch replied.
“Interpol says violation of international law,” Tag shot back.
“Who visited her?” He didn’t care what Hutch had done or how he’d done it. If Hutch got his smart ass taken to jail, Beck would break him out.
Hutch turned his way and seemed to get serious. “According to the records, a man named Francis Bruno came to visit her six times over th
e course of the four semesters she spent there. He visited on both of her birthdays.”
He thought he might have heard the name. “Was he Italian?”
“Yes,” Hutch replied. “He’s got an Italian passport, but his official residence is in Malta.”
“She mentioned an uncle in Rome.” She’d so seldom wanted to talk about her family. “He was a physician of some kind.”
“Francis Bruno is technically a cousin, but he’s old enough that I could see where she might call him uncle in familial situations. He was a surgeon.” Charlotte leaned against the desk, looking down at her notes. “When he was in his fifties, he developed a tremor in his hands after a car accident. He was the passenger. His wife was driving and she didn’t survive. He came from a very wealthy family himself, but his wife had an even greater fortune and they did not have children. He couldn’t work as a surgeon anymore, so he dedicated himself to charitable work. A few years later, he joined the Order of the Knights of Malta.”
Hutch sat back. “It’s not as cool as the thrillers make it out to be. They used to be warrior priests, but now it’s pretty much a bunch of doctors and medical professionals who do charity work around the globe. But this dude, he’s the knight. Like the head dude.”
“What Hutch is trying to say is Francis Bruno took the same vows a priest would,” Tag explained. “He lives in the one place the knights still own property in Malta. It’s called Fort Saint Angelo. The actual fort is a tourist attraction, but at the top is a residence.”
“They filmed Game of Thrones there,” Hutch said with a geeked-out smile.
“You think Kim is at Fort Saint Angelo?” Beck asked.
The door to Tag’s office came open and Adam Miles strode in. “I’ve got it. The report doesn’t lie. It’s one hundred percent her. That was an amazing call, Hutch. Are you sure you don’t want to come work downstairs?”
Tag growled Adam’s way. “Do not poach my employees. Unless it’s one of the kids. You can’t have Tash, but the twins are ready to work.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Not on your life.” He turned Beck’s way. “Hey, man. You ready for this?”
He’d been ready for years. He nodded.
Adam handed him a folder. “These were taken by CCTV in the town of Birgu, Malta. She’s walking on the road that leads to the wharf and up to the fort.”
He stared at the series of shots. Her head was down in almost all of them, but he would recognize that blonde hair anywhere, and the set of her shoulders. She wore a long sundress with spaghetti straps, and he could easily see the scar she’d gotten in Colorado.
But then he got to one photo where her head came up and a smile lit her face like she’d seen someone she cared about. That smile kicked him right in the gut.
She was still so beautiful it hurt.
“Is she happy?”
“Dude, we just figured out she’s alive,” Tag said. “We do not know the state of her joy.”
“Ian.” Charlotte knew exactly how to make her husband’s name a warning. “Beck, this intel is so new, I haven’t seen those pictures yet. You’re sure it’s her?”
He stared down at that photo. It was the first tangible evidence he’d seen that she was alive. He’d always believed it, but here she was. “Yes.”
“You have to know I’ve been looking for years,” Adam said. “Ian put me on this, and he’s been on my ass all this time. He doesn’t understand that I can’t hack into every single CCTV system in the world. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Usually when I’m looking for a missing person, I at least have some clue where he or she’s gone. My starting point was Paris. Also, I’m not usually tracking down highly trained operatives.”
He’d known Adam’s group had been working on the problem, but he’d thought that they considered it a cold case. “I thank you for this.”
Adam gave him a nod. “Once Hutch told me to look into this particular section of Malta, I came up with those pictures pretty fast. Phoebe immediately looked into property around the area and she thinks Solo bought a building near the marina around four years ago. It’s not in her name, but Phoebe pulled a couple of strings and it led back to a holding company Solo used to purchase the property we found she owned in Sydney. This street she’s walking on is the same as where the building is located. There’s a bookstore on the ground floor. We’ve got some of our people working on getting more data. Hopefully within twenty-four hours we’ll know more.”
“I want to be on a plane by then.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. What had she been through in the last seven years? When she thought of him, did she still hear the last angry words out of his stupid, selfish mouth? “I don’t have to make contact if you think it’s for the best, but I need to check the situation out.”
“I thought you would feel that way. I called Damon and let him know I need to borrow Robert to work out the logistics.” Tag moved in and looked down at the pictures. “She looks good. Healthy. Not under Levi Green’s thumb.”
It was what they’d all worried about. It kept him up at night, the fear that somehow Levi had found her and had her hidden. “Do we have eyes on him?”
Tag nodded. “I’ve also got a call in to my contact there. Drake still keeps up with Levi. He’s on an assignment, but he usually replies within twenty-four hours or so. Levi is in Europe. He’s in Berlin meeting with some senior intelligence officers.”
He didn’t like the fact that they were on the same continent. “How long has he been there and when is he supposed to come back?”
“He’s scheduled to be in meetings for the next three days,” Charlotte replied. “After that, Levi has a flight scheduled for the night the conference ends. He’s supposed to be back in DC ten hours later.”
“I want to make sure he’s on that flight.” This was a delicate time. If he watched Levi, he was fairly certain Levi still watched him. Levi definitely watched McKay-Taggart. “If we send a team over, he’s going to know it. I might be able to get there on my own if I’m careful.”
“You are not going over there alone,” Tag commanded in that he-will-not-be-moved way of his. “Tash is putting in a call for the company jet.”
Adam frowned. “Uhm, I’ve got some meetings in Seattle.”
The two companies shared a single jet. Ian and Adam had made the purchase only the year before, and now they bickered about it constantly.
“I can’t hide where he’s going if I put him on a commercial jet,” Tag pointed out. “Do you want to be the reason Solo gets caught by Levi?”
Adam’s eyes rolled. “Of course not, but I also don’t want to fly commercial. It’s horrible.”
They started to argue. Charlotte took him to the side. “I’ll have you in Malta by tomorrow afternoon. But Ian’s right. You can’t go alone.”
“If half the team here suddenly goes missing, Levi will know something’s up.” He didn’t want to go without a team either, but he wasn’t going to put her at risk. “Maybe I can take Hutch.”
“I need him here,” Charlotte replied. “But I think I might have a team for you. Some of them are out of practice, but I know they won’t let you go alone.”
The door came open again and there was another Taggart in the doorway. Theo looked like he’d run down from the gym they kept on the second floor of MT. He was in a T-shirt, sweats, and sneakers. “Hey, I got the text. We found her?”
He hadn’t expected Theo to be so excited. “Yes. Were you in on this?”
Theo stepped inside and took a look at the photos. “Not the investigation, though I’ve kept up with it. But the plan on how we’ll work this op is one I’ve been thinking about for years.” He grinned. “It’s time to get the band back together, brother. Come on. We’ve got some calls to make.”
He felt his heartrate tick up.
It was time to face his wife and find out if there was any way to earn her forgiveness.
* * * *
Bliss, CO
Jax Seaborne watched his kids runnin
g after Buster on the lawn in front of their cabin. They giggled madly and chased the big mutt who’d been his constant companion for almost eight years. Buster was slower than he’d been back then, but he could keep up with two rambunctious boys.
Sometimes better than their dad.
“Caden, don’t hit your brother,” a feminine voice called out, and then the center of his world was stepping out onto the porch.
He smiled and looked her over. No matter how many years he’d been married to River, he still took in every inch of that beautiful body as often as he could. “Hey, gorgeous.”
She moved next to him, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Are you packed? Henry should be here soon.”
He hugged her close. “Yeah. You know I don’t want to leave you, right?”
She tipped her head up and wrinkled her nose. “You never leave me, babe. You’ve barely left Bliss for seven years. Come on and tell me there’s not a part of you that’s excited.”
He couldn’t lie to the love of his life. “I love Bliss, but I wouldn’t hate one last mission.”
“Especially since it’s Solo.” River laid her head against his chest. “Please tell her I miss her.”
Over the years, his wife had come to forgive the woman who’d lied to her. Solo had been River’s friend in a time when she’d needed one. Forgiveness had always been his wife’s default position. She’d even forgiven him. “Are you sure you’re okay with me going? Hiking season is in full swing.”
They’d built up Mountain Adventures over the last seven years, and now they had twenty employees and offered everything from guided camping to a weeklong kids’ camp they were debuting this summer. He still wasn’t sure that hadn’t been a mistake because Max Harper had gleefully signed up all four of his kids the week before and then run out of the office yelling “no take backs.” He was absolutely certain the Harper kids combined with the Hollister-Wright brood would make the summer interesting.