by Lexi Blake
He’d been loved. By his brother, Case. He couldn’t have asked for more. He’d been blessed again when he’d found Ian and Sean and taken his place in this weird and wonderful family.
And Erin. His stubborn girl. She’d loved him and he’d given her a home and a family.
It was a good fucking life to be loved. It was all a man could hope for.
He tried to tell her again, to tell her he would love her forever, that if there was any way, some odd place where souls could meet in the after, he would find a way to wait for her, to watch over her.
But the darkness came, its warmth flowing around him.
Theo Taggart died with one prayer—that she would live and be happy.
He came to in a cold white room, nausea rolling through his system.
It was too bright, too much for his eyes to handle.
He was going to throw up.
Something cool washed over him, as though calming water rushed through his veins.
“The anti-nausea drug I gave you should be working right about now,” a soft voice said. “Sorry. I thought you would sleep longer. I should have known you were strong as a bull. How do you feel?”
Disoriented. So fucking confused. Where was he? What the hell had happened? He tried to sit up but strong hands pressed him down.
“Don’t try to move,” the feminine voice said. “You’ve recently had some serious surgery. I was able to stabilize you back in the Caymans, but we had to come to Havana to perform the real miracle. You almost didn’t make it.”
“Make it?” His lips felt so dry, his throat parched. Why did everything hurt? “Why are you holding me down?”
“Don’t mind Robert. He’s only doing as I asked. If you’ll be still, he’ll let you go. You have to understand that the bindings are there for your protection. You can’t struggle against them or you’ll undo all my good work.”
Bindings? He tried to move his legs and sure enough something stopped him. He was trapped. His wrists were held to the bed. Was he in some kind of hospital?
“Where am I?” Intel. He needed intel. That’s what his brother had taught him.
He had a brother. His mind was foggy, but he was pretty sure he had a brother.
Shouldn’t he know?
“I think he’s fine now, Robert.” A woman’s face came into view. She was blonde, her hair in a chic bob. So unlike Erin.
Erin. Case. Brothers. He had brothers. Case and Ian and Sean. The memories came rolling back and that made him feel more awake than anything. She’d been crying.
Was he alive? How had he managed that? He was in Cuba? Had Ten gotten him on a plane? Where was Erin? Faith was a doctor. Had she managed to save him?
“We’re going to stay here briefly and then I’ve got a lovely new home for us. I know you don’t remember much. You’re probably frightened, but the injuries you went through were grave. You’ll likely never get your memory back. It’s all right. You’re here with me now. And your brother. Robert was worried.”
A man he’d never met before smiled down at him. “I know it seems weird. I went through the same thing. I couldn’t remember either. It’s going to be okay. You’re here with your family and we’re going to take care of you.”
Every word hurt, but there had been some kind of mistake. “I don’t know what’s happening. My name is Theo Taggart. I need to contact my brother, Ian. He’s in Dallas. He’ll come and get me.”
Her smile faded. “That was fast. You must metabolize drugs quickly. Robert, could you help me?”
The big guy disappeared and a chill went through Theo.
Hope. He was staring at Hope McDonald. It hadn’t been Faith who saved him. It had been Hope, who he’d chosen not to kill.
“Dr. McDonald, I need to call my brother. He’ll be happy you saved me. I think you’ll find he won’t come after you if you call him and let him come get me.”
She put a hand on his head, smoothing his hair back. “Your brother is certain you’re dead. He won’t come after you and he likely won’t care about me since it was my father he blamed. As my father is now deceased, I think your family will go back to Texas to mourn. I’m sorry. I thought the drug would work. I can see you need more. Robert doesn’t require as much as you obviously do. I’ll have to ensure you get enough on a daily basis or my therapy won’t work.”
“Therapy?”
“Don’t worry about it.” She turned away. “Thank you, Robert.”
“Of course.” The big guy with brown hair and a ready smile looked down at him. “Don’t worry, Tom. You’re going to be okay.”
“My name is Theo.” He started to struggle because she had a hypodermic needle in her hand and he couldn’t let her poison him. Shit. He didn’t want to die like this. It had been all right when Erin was here, but now it was wrong.
He wanted her. Above his brothers. He wanted Erin here with him.
“Here you go. This will help you, Tomas,” Hope McDonald said. “When you wake up again, you’re going to feel so much better. We’ll be in a new home and you’ll have your whole new life. Here with me. Where you belong. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”
He felt the drugs when they hit his system. The world seemed to go fuzzy. What the hell had she given him?
He heard her whispering against his ear. “No more fighting, love. No more.”
But he did fight. He fought the sleep threatening to take him over.
And he fought to keep a single vision in his brain. A vision of her. A vision of Erin.
He would never forget her. Never.
CHAPTER ONE
Dallas, TX
Eighteen months later
He raised his weapon, putting the young lady’s forehead securely in his sights. It wasn’t something he enjoyed doing, but he understood the need. Cash was required and it wasn’t like Mother could get a job. Her work was far too important and it was up to him to ensure their survival. For him and his brothers.
So he would kill the girl if he had to. He told himself that over and over again. He hadn’t been able to force himself to do it before. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to now.
“Place the money in the bag,” he said in Spanish.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she rushed to do his will. His arm was steady, but in that moment she changed. Somehow she morphed right before his eyes, her hair lightening to a natural red and her skin turning ivory with the sweetest dusting of freckles.
“You don’t want to do this, Theo,” she said. This girl wasn’t crying. She was a woman and not a girl at all. She wasn’t afraid of him. Her clear green eyes were steady on him.
He didn’t want to kill her. Oh, no. He wanted something entirely different from her.
Pain flared through him, threatening to split his skull. His name was Tomas and he didn’t know the woman in front of him. He didn’t fucking know her so why did she constantly show up in his dreams? Why did she appear like a ghost he couldn’t quite rid himself of and screw everything up? She couldn’t be here. Not now.
If he fucked up they would all pay. They would pay in pain that only seemed never ending.
“Theo, come back to me. Come home, baby.”
Every word sent another spike through his skull. Come home? He was home. He’d never had another home. The blood was starting to pound through him. He needed that money. Mother made it clear. When her orders weren’t followed he lost more. He lost days. Nights. He started over again.
He lost those brief moments when he thought he remembered other brothers.
“Theo? Theo, are you with us?”
The voice was deeper, but familiar. The redhead was speaking with a masculine voice, but it didn’t matter. Just her face made his head hurt. What the fuck was her name? Pain. Her name was pain and trying wouldn’t help anyone.
“Hey, princess? You not getting enough sleep?”
“He’s fine. Leave him alone.”
Why was he always stuck between two worlds? Between the one where he knew his place and
found some form of peace and this one, where odd voices called to him.
There was only one way. Mother had told him what to do. Stop the voices. Give in. Stay in his place. Peace was there.
He lifted the gun and fired directly into the beautiful redhead’s face.
Theo came awake with a shudder.
God, when would it end? When would he stop killing the woman he was supposed to love?
“Well, Princess Theo? You want me to grab you a blankie? I think they have some in the nursery.”
He forced himself to sit up properly. The room was dark and the slightest bit cold. He was sitting in a chair and surrounded by people who were around some kind of table.
McKay-Taggart. He was at McKay-Taggart and he was in the conference room and he was Theo Taggart.
A hand covered his, soft skin making his body come alive. “Are you all right, babe?”
He had the sudden instinct to turn his hand over, offering up his palm so he could tangle their fingers together. So he could hold on to her like a lifeline. Erin. Pretty Erin, who apparently lived in his house and…god, she’d had his child and he couldn’t remember her past the fact that he often murdered her in his dreams so the pain would stop.
He moved his hand away, turning back to the man who was his oldest brother. Ian.
Sometimes he wished they all wore nametags.
“Sorry. I’m fine. I drifted off.” He sat up and looked around the table. It was something he’d done every single day for the last six weeks. Since he’d been rescued from Mother…Hope McDonald’s experiments, he’d had to retrain his brain in a number of ways and one was to constantly remind himself of where he was and who was around him.
Adam Miles. Computer junkie. He was sitting in front of his laptop, running the visual portion of this meeting.
Nick Markovic. He was Russian, though he was based in London. He’d come to the company after he left Russia’s foreign intelligence and that was also known as SVR. So many initials to remember when it came to the agencies around the globe. Nick looked like he always wanted to murder someone, and that someone might be Theo. He got the feeling the Russian didn’t like him.
Liam O’Donnell. Irishman. Everyone here seemed to look up to the man.
Charlotte Taggart. She could be hard to look at. It was the red hair. It was close to hers. Charlotte was married to Ian and she was pregnant with their baby. Their third, he thought. He wasn’t good around kids.
Case Taggart. Brother. Twin. He used to look a lot like Case. He was easy to remember most of the time. He lived in Case’s apartment. Not his own home. He hadn’t even walked into it. He hadn’t met his own son. He wasn’t ready. Not even close.
He didn’t look her way. He tried not to because when he looked at her he remembered how he often made the choice to kill her.
Erin. Thinking the name didn’t hurt so much anymore. Erin Argent.
“Is he doing that thing again?” Ian stood at the head of the table. The most sarcastic of his brothers. All around asshole and never-ending pain in Theo’s butt. Ian wouldn’t back off. Even Case left him alone most of the time. Not Ian. Ian poked and prodded and made him want to explode.
“You know what Kai said.” Charlotte shot Ian a look that could freeze fire. Ian called his wife Charlie, but it seemed like everyone else used her full name.
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “Kai’s taking too long, but we can discuss that later.” He turned his gaze back to Theo. “You manage to get through everyone? Know all our names?”
“Leave him alone, Ian, or we’re going to have a long talk you won’t like.” Erin didn’t seem to be intimidated by big brother.
He wanted to get on with the meeting so he could go back to Case’s place and play video games with Robert. He felt better around Robert, easier. They didn’t have to talk about what happened. They could simply be. “I’m good, boss. We were talking about Hutch. What have we found?”
“Nick, if you don’t mind.” Ian nodded the Russian’s way.
Nick Markovic sat back, looking at the screen. It showed a map that apparently tracked the movements of a man named Greg Hutchins. Hutch. Theo did remember him, although according to Case they had a longer history. Hutch had been in the base with him. It’s what they called home. Base. At the base they each had their own cells. Hutch had been across from him at first, but then Mother moved him because Hutch irritated him and when he got irritated he tried to get out.
Sometimes he could see the man sitting in front of a computer, a smile on his face and something red dangling between his lips.
Red Vine. Candy. Hutch used to like candy. Mother cured him of that.
He let the image float through his brain, not trying to catch it. That was what Kai said he was doing wrong. The pain came when he tried to force himself to remember. Memories would come and go as they pleased and Theo should ride the wave, not attempt to dominate it.
A sudden vision slammed into him.
Erin Argent on her knees, her thighs spread wide and not a stitch of clothes covering her glorious body. She looked up at him, her lips curling slightly. You wanted something from me, Master?
The memory slipped away, but only from his brain. His dick was suddenly hard and aching. The damn thing hadn’t worked the entire time he’d been with Moth…McDonald, and now it perked up like a puppy eager to play every time Erin walked in a room.
He wanted her and he didn’t trust himself to have her.
“I tracked Hutchins from the Turkish border where he entered Europe under press credentials,” Nick said. “Apparently he posed as a photographer working on a story about the immigrant crisis on the Turkish-Syrian border.”
“It was one of our covers.” Theo sat up a bit straighter. This he did remember. It made him feel like he was worth something. Too often he sat in a chair with nothing at all to add. “After we made the deal with the doctor in Africa, McDonald wanted to ensure we had a route out if we needed it. She tried to have more than one contingency plan at all times. If we headed into Europe, we would use the press credentials. If we needed to go to Asia, we would pose as a small medical team connected to Doctors Without Borders. She never left us without choices.”
Nick’s icy eyes pinned him. “Of course not. You were her prized pupil.”
“Experiment.” Erin stared right back at the Russian. “He wasn’t a pupil, Nick. He was an experiment in torture. Do you have a problem with this assignment?”
Nick shook his head, sitting back in his seat. “Not at all. Finding Mr. Hutchins is extremely important. Especially when I believe finding him might lead to finding Dr. McDonald. That is the goal, is it not? That’s what everyone wants? You do know we’re not the only ones looking for her. I had to deal with several agencies who are also interested in Dr. McDonald. I’ve managed to keep Mr. Hutchins off their radar so far, but I can’t imagine it will last. He’s been quite aggressive.”
“Our CIA contacts assure me they’re not interested in Hutch,” Ian said. “You read the debrief from Ezra Fain? Excuse me. He’s one of those assholes with fifty-two different names. I believe he’s going by both Beckett Kent and Mr. White as well these days. You know it makes me miss Ten. Well, when he lets me miss him. Asshole’s buying a place here and wants to like socialize and shit. What’s up with that?”
“It’s called growing and maturing, and he and Faith want to set down some roots,” Charlotte shot back. “He’s coming home to his family.”
“Freaking family is too big already,” Ian said with a shake of his head. “And sometimes the puppies get off their leashes. So we tracked him crossing the border. Do we have any idea where Hutch is now? Have we checked the candy shops?”
“I found him on the Deep Web,” Adam said.
“Deep Web?” He knew about the Internet, though he hadn’t been trained on computers the way Hutch had been. It was precisely why they’d stolen Hutch. Mother had needed his skills.
Liam turned to him. “You don’t remember? I don’t understand how
it works. You remember how to drive a car but not something like the Deep Web?”
He could brush his teeth, but he couldn’t remember that he hated certain brands of toothpaste. He’d known instinctively how to get to the McKay-Taggart building from his brother’s apartment. He’d gotten behind the wheel and found himself pulling into the lot, likely because he hadn’t been thinking about it at all. He’d been listening to the radio.
But he couldn’t remember what the house he’d bought for he and Erin looked like.
He couldn’t remember how she liked to be kissed or what it felt like to sleep beside her.
“He remembers everything,” Case insisted. “It’s all under a heavy veil right now. Kai assures us one day Theo’s going to get his memory back. For now we have to remind him.”
Kai Ferguson. His therapist. The man he spent most of his time with and who was certain he could pierce that veil over his brain. Theo wasn’t at all certain.
“The Deep Web is the part of the web we can’t see on the surface,” Adam explained. “Think of the web as an ocean. Most of us live on the surface. That’s where you can buy socks and download movies and order pizza online.”
He liked pizza. A solid week of eating nothing but pizza had taught him that he liked pepperoni and sausage and that Canadian bacon was weird and gross and vegetables had no place on a pie. “All right. So the Dark Web is what’s underneath and Hutch is there?”
“Yes. You can’t reach the Dark Web through conventional browsers. Google can only find about four percent of what’s actually out there,” Adam explained. “To find the rest you have to know where to look. I found Hutch on a site for black hat hackers. I tried to get close, but he made me and I lost him. He’ll have changed his profile and servers. I’ll keep trying.”
“Physically I believe he’s somewhere in Germany,” Nick said. “He entered the EU on the press passport. Once there he has freedom of movement, but I suspect he wanted technology and top-notch access to the Internet. Germany is perfect.”