A Necessary Deception

by Lucy Farago

  “Why don’t you close your eyes and try to get some sleep? It’ll be a couple of more hours before we change planes.”

  “I can try.” She turned her gorgeous eyes to him. “What would I’ve done without you?”

  “You, Taylor Moore, are a survivor. You’d have made it back on your own.”

  “You…Monty Buchannan,” she grinned “are a total bullshitter.”

  “Wow, would you look at that?” Cowboy said through the headset. “She’s got you all figured out. I like her already.”

  He ignored Cowboy’s dig and leaned back in the seat, taking Taylor with him. “Don’t trust anything this man says, Taylor. He was raised by wolves.”

  Chapter 24

  Taylor was home. She looked around the two-bedroom Arts-and-Crafts–decorated town house that only last year she’d been so proud to move into. With the profit she’d made on her first condo, her mortgage was nearly paid, and she’d done it on her own. Her first apartment hadn’t been much, but she’d spent her evenings renovating, even redoing the bathroom herself. After paying for school, there hadn’t been much left of her grandfather’s trust fund, but the remainder had gone into her business. Without any real friends to party with, staying home and saving hadn’t been a hardship.

  Drawing back the blinds, she took in the picturesque street on which her condo sat. She’d gone from having everything to having nothing to having a decent life, and probably back to having nothing. Except for Monty. They were taking it one day at a time. And that was fine with her. Real life was upon them.

  True to his word, Monty hadn’t left her side, and it was only now that she’d returned to her apartment for fresh clothes that they were apart. He’d offered to send someone, but a girl didn’t want a stranger rummaging through her underwear. It was icky enough to think TSA did it. It was why she packed her lingerie in large clear baggies, hoping no one opened the bag. Who cared if they wore gloves? They were worn for their protection, not hers. It was gross, them touching other people’s clothes, then digging through hers.

  She opened her bedroom closet and withdrew her big luggage before tossing it on her bed. She filled it with everything she thought she might need and Monty hadn’t already gotten her. He seemed a little over the top with this attentiveness, but having a new roommate, especially a woman, tended to do that to men. They’d decided, since his place housed more computers than anyone needed or it was humanly possible to employ all at once, it was better to stay where he’d have easier access to the technology required to ensure the Bratva was neutralized and no longer coming after her. She didn’t know why she’d agreed, but playing house with him was nice.

  She headed into the other bedroom, which she used as an office, and grabbed her spare cell, debating if she should remove the personalized cover before slipping it into her purse. She’d thought it a cute marketing strategy, but now what would people think when they saw her logo? She’d had already told her employees to find other work. Even after she got the company up and running again, there was no guarantee all the bad press wouldn’t kill her business. She’d have to rebuild. She wasn’t afraid of that. She wasn’t afraid of much anymore. If her life was a romance novel, she’d gone from the one-time heiress who doubted herself—even though she pretended not to—to the woman who’d conquered C-4 and rescued her hero.

  She closed her suitcase and laughed. She’d come out of this a better, stronger person, but had she won the hero? Or was he just on loan? He’d told her that he didn’t do love. Was that the truth or a brave face he’d learned to hide behind? She sent him a quick text and smiled, wishing she could see his reaction. If he was a loan, she wasn’t so sure she’d give him back.

  She rolled her bag to the door and shut the lights with only the slightest twinge of fear. What if she couldn’t make her business successful again? Would she lose her condo? That would really, really suck…and it would hurt. But she wasn’t going to think like that. After all, she was a heroine; she was Wonder Woman. She reached for the doorknob just as her cell phone rang. Was it silly to hope it was Monty, telling her to hurry, that he missed her? Things had been good the last week. How long would their playing house last? Once the feds had locked up their case, would he go back to Vegas? But the caller wasn’t Monty. Never in a million years would she have expected this call, and it took her brain a few seconds to register the voice.

  “Taylor, this is your father. Can you hear me?”

  “Y-yes.” What the hell?

  “Run. Run, Taylor. They’re coming for you.”

  * * * *

  Monty couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. His friends had said he was a control freak. Hell, Taylor had agreed with them. Maybe they were all right and maybe that was what this was. He liked everything to be in its own neat box, and right now the boxes were anything but. It was setting his teeth on edge.

  They’d been watching Taylor for months. Carrie had hacked into the security cameras on the street by Taylor’s office and the one near her apartment. Both were centrally located in tourist areas and would have eyes. The man outside Strike a Match was tagged almost immediately, but it had taken a while to notice the parking ticket agent who seemed to genuinely enjoy nailing cars outside Taylor’s apartment block. It wasn’t that far off to think kidnappers would be watching their mark if their attack was planned. But they’d seemed to have had it planned long before Taylor had stumbled onto the truth. Then came the biggest question of all, after he watched the tapes and spotted the food truck and the man inside, Agent Riley. Since when did he do surveillance? And why on Taylor?

  If Monty’s suspicions were correct, all this had nothing to do with Strike a Match. Of course, hacking into the IRS database had helped give more credence to his theory.

  He told Taylor he’d wait for her in the bistro across the street. They’d been inseparable the past couple of weeks, and he had to admit he liked having her around. He kept finding excuses for her not to go back to her place. It was sneaky and underhanded, but he suspected she had his number and was going along with it. He liked that too.

  At the table to his right and just in front of him sat a statuesque brunette who’d turned heads when she’d walked in. Monty opened his paper to hide his face. “Well?”

  “You were right. Ethan Moore is under investigation for money laundering,” a sexy, throaty voice told him.

  “Why the secrecy?” Why hadn’t his informant known that until now?

  “National security. Need to know. Low man on the totem pole. I didn’t need to know.” A waitress came by, and his friend ordered a coffee.

  “Terrorism? Or the other national security?” He flipped the page on his paper.

  “The other one.”

  Russia. “Shit.” But why watch Taylor? If they thought to use her to get to her father, it wouldn’t work. She hadn’t spoken to him in seven years. Hell, they barely spoke before that. Did she know her father was involved with the syndicate? Maybe the feds suspected she, in fact, did know something. “Okay, so that’s settled. Now tell me why they’re watching his daughter.”

  “That one is complicated.” They returned to pretending to ignore each other until after the waitress dropped off the coffee.

  “Complicated how?”

  “Up until she called, she was a suspect. We considered that maybe the split between father and daughter was a ruse of some kind. I mean, what were the odds both were working for the Russians and neither knew about the other?”

  “She’s not exactly rolling in cash,” he said, the need to defend her immediate.

  “That didn’t look to be true. Let me start from the beginning. The Bureau received an anonymous tip about Strike a Match. But we didn’t want to alert anyone to our investigation. We checked her bank accounts first. Ms. Moore has several. One for the business, two personal, and a savings account with two hundred Gs.”

  “She doesn’
t have that kind of money. They made it look like she was taking payoffs.”

  “Yeah, we figured that out after. Then we learned the Russians were watching her and had been for a long time.”

  “Three months, according to the security cameras outside her place.”

  “You’re not supposed to tell me shit like that. Jesus, Buchannan.”

  He could practically hear her cringe. “And you’re not supposed to be talking to me.” It wasn’t like she was going to rat him out to her superiors. But he assumed it made her feel better. What she should remember was that their relationship was mutually beneficial. The feds didn’t openly admit that, but even her superiors had benefited from ICU’s talents.

  “Anyway, you’re wrong, smarty-pants. Wow,” he heard her sip her coffee “never thought I’d up you one.”

  “Just spill it.” Given time, he’d have found whatever she’d tell him.

  “In a minute…and chill. Or I might start thinking there’s something up with you and Ms. Moore. Now, that would make my day.”

  “She saved my ass. I owe her one.” And that’s all he was admitting to.

  “Sure, if you say so. Anyway, when she was attending NYU, she rented a room over Shaul’s Deli, got real cozy with the family.”

  He knew about her staying with a Jewish family. “And…?”

  “Shaul Danin immigrated with his parents to New York in twenty-three…from Russia. He was a baby. He went back in forty-one, believing it was his duty to fight. The US Army wouldn’t take him on account of flat feet. The Russians didn’t give a shit. After the war, he returned with a wife, one Hester Morros. She was the fifteen-year-old daughter of a Russian army officer.”

  He remembered Taylor talking about Bubbe D. “You’re boring me.” He knew she hated it when he provoked her, and he could practically hear her teeth grind.

  “The bureau has a file on Hester.”

  He straightened the paper as it started to go limp. “Why?”

  “She was a spy.”

  The woman Taylor spoke so fondly of…a spy? Had Taylor known that?

  “In the sixties, she spent six months in jail while under investigation, then struck a deal with the government for a suspended sentence. She admitted the only way she’d been allowed to leave Russia was if she agreed to…answer the call. She didn’t like it, but she was in love.”

  “Is that an excuse?” It was a poor one.

  “Never been in love, Buchannan? It can make you do all kinds of crazy things.”

  “Speaking from experience?” Several heads had turned when she’d walked in, and rightly so. She was a beautiful woman. Didn’t make sense she was alone.

  “I’m still trying to figure out what love is.”

  And some people never figured it out. “So, was she spying on Taylor for the Russians?”

  “I’m fairly certain that’s the case. Excuse me, miss,” she said, flagging down the waitress. “Can I get a BLT?”

  “Sure thing,” the waitress said. “On white or brown?”

  “Brown is good.”

  “I thought you went vegan?” he asked, once they were alone again.

  “I decided I can’t live without bacon. Anyway, Hester’s father made the switch to the KGB a few years after the war. And as the Bratva has ties to the former KGB…”

  “Do you have proof?” How the hell did people read the paper this way? His arms were growing tired.

  “Monthly calls back to Mother Russia while Ms. Moore roomed with them.”

  “What a fucking nice thing to do.” The old woman had risked Taylor’s life.

  “Don’t blame her too much. Shaul developed liver cancer, and they were blowing through their savings to pay for his treatments.”

  “No insurance?” His cell beeped on a text. Reading, he smiled. Ready to get naked? Coming down now, going down later.

  “Pre-existing condition. Hep C during the war. If she spied for them just to marry him, she’d do it again to keep him. They were married one hell of a long time.”

  “Were?”

  “He didn’t make it. She met up with him two years later.”

  Met up? “You mean she died?”

  “Do you even have one romantic bone in that far-too-sexy-for-a-computer-nerd body?”

  He peeked over his paper and, sure enough, she was pretending to talk on her cell. That, however, didn’t stop her from tossing him one very in-your-face smirk. He raised the paper and shook his head. “Ever after is for fairy tales.”

  “Such a pessimist. You know what your problem is?”

  Here she went. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “You need to get laid.”

  And on that note… “I should see what’s keeping Taylor.” He folded the paper and left it, along with money for his beer and a tip, on the table. Then he stood and walked out, pretending like he hadn’t had a very informative conversation.

  Before his foot hit the sidewalk, he recognized Taylor’s company logo. What was her phone doing on the road? Adrenaline spiking, he ran inside and up the three flights of stairs, not willing to wait for the fucking elevator. Her apartment was at the end of the hall in the U-shaped building. He banged on her door, and when he got no response, he kicked it in. If he was wrong, he’d pay for a new one later. He stopped short of her luggage and the purse she’d dropped, its contents spilled on the floor. “Taylor.” He got no reply to his shout. “Taylor.”

  He checked each room. Nothing. He called Carrie.

  “Hey, glad you called. There’s been some unusual activity—”

  “Not now. I need you to tap into Satellite Nexus, code 7070tps capital XT4.”

  “You’re giving me access. You never give me access.”

  “With good reason. You have a thirty-second window before they figure out who commandeered their satellite. Half a second too long and the FBI will be knocking on your door. Taylor is missing. I need you to zero in on Taylor’s street. You know how to do that?”

  “Really? Who trained me?”

  He had, and he prayed he’d done it right. It occurred to him that his problem with Carrie had never been about her abilities but rather his own. If she failed, it was on him. “This is important. You can’t dally, and you only have one shot.”

  “I can do this,” she assured him.

  He didn’t have a choice but to believe her. He glanced at his watch, praying like hell he got the time right. Taylor’s home screen was a clock. He factored in her last text and the time he’d wasted getting here. Then he told Carrie where and how to find what he needed. “They store the video for one hour before it’s downloaded into the base’s mainframe. Like I said, thirty seconds. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Locked and loaded.”

  That was fast. “Are you sure you did it right?”

  “Sooner or later you’re going to have to trust me. We’re a team.”

  A team. Hadn’t Taylor said the same thing? “Okay, ready?”

  “Say when.”

  He crossed his fingers. “When.”

  * * * *

  Taylor tried to stare at her father with new eyes, but it was hard to focus on one thing. It would help if they hadn’t slammed her ass so hard into a chair, her tailbone throbbed. The gun certainly wasn’t helping. Stinking of dollar-store cologne, the man standing over her looked to be made out of concrete, and she didn’t doubt that should she flinch, he’d shoot her without a second thought. Then there was nine-lives Daniel. If that plane crash hadn’t killed him, why should she be surprised he’d managed to survive a C-4 explosion and elude the state troopers and the FBI? Maybe he was the one made of concrete. Part of her wished he was. The rage turning his face red wouldn’t bode well for either of them.

  Before she’d had time to process anything her father had told her, she’d found herself tos
sed into a minivan—again. The first time, she’d had no clue as to what was going on. She’d feared for her life, as any person would, but now… While she may not understand what the hell was happening now, she knew these guns were real and these men weren’t happy. Maybe she’d seen too many movies, but being dragged to a half-built high-rise never ended well for the person who was outnumbered, sitting in a chair overlooking the bay through unbuilt walls where windows should be.

  He’d claimed he’d been trying to protect her, that every awful thing he’d ever said or done had been for her own good. She hadn’t understood but had reacted with surprising calm. Her last words to him before today had been anything but that, and she’d have accepted more of the same when a man who’d tried to sell her to the highest bidder picked up the phone to say just kidding. Instead, she’d listened and done as he’d told her, avoided the elevator, and taken the stairs. Perhaps the events of the last few weeks had made her highly attuned to danger, because when he’d said run, she’d run. Why had she trusted him? He’d given her no reason to believe he cared one iota for her. It wasn’t until she’d reached the last step that she realized maybe that was it.

  His not loving her was his problem, not hers, but there she’d been, so desperate to have it not be true that she’d forgotten Monty waited for her. Monty, the man who’d put his life on the line to save her. She needed to find him, and that’s where she’d been headed.

  The back alley led to a side street. She’d told her dad she was hanging up and would call him when she was safe. And she would’ve been, had she been able to reach Monty. But the van was waiting for her.

  “Let her go, Daniel.”

  “You double-crossed us,” he said, all pretense of a Russian accent gone.

  “I’ve done everything you’ve ever told me to do,” her father replied, not addressing the accusation. “For twenty-seven years, I’ve been your lackey.”