Just a little torture. He looked inside the house. It wouldn’t be more than a minute or two before Alex got his shit together and came looking for him, but it was already too late. Damon wouldn’t have come alone. “Where’s Baz?”
Damon Knight and Basil Champion had been partners for years. If Knight was here, Baz would be backing him up.
“He’s here.” Simon walked from around the side of the house, Baz in front of him.
Baz’s slender frame belied what Ian knew to be a ton of lean strength. He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and black slacks, looking dapper as he moved through the yard. “Hey, Damon, look who I found.”
“I told you to put your fucking hands up,” Simon ordered. “Do you really think I won’t shoot you? I don’t even bloody like you.”
Ah, no dogs for the Brit. Simon was getting a raise.
“Now, seeing as I have your boy here and you have my boss, I suggest we all take a little time out and talk this through like the gentlemen I know we are,” Simon said. “Or we can start shooting and see who’s standing at the end.”
“You’ve been in America too long, Weston.” The gun at Ian’s head disappeared as Knight sighed. “You’ve turned into a bloody cowboy.”
No, Simon had gone from MI6 agent to Ian’s man. There was no way to downplay the beauty of loyalty. Ian had taken Simon in after he’d fucked up, shown him that he didn’t have to conform to MI6’s rigid rules, and Simon paid him back with loyalty.
“Boss, Adam picked up this one’s trail about two hours ago. I rather thought they might decide to pay you a visit. Damon, in case you’re thinking about trying something tricky, you should know I have a sniper on you. Jesse? Are you in place?”
A voice came from above. “Sure as fuck am. Tell Alex his roof is totally solid. I have a great view from up here. I would have taken out the first dude, but Ian seemed to be having fun. This one, though, is all mine.” A nice red dot appeared on Knight’s forehead. Right between his eyes.
Yeah, he was getting to like Jesse, too.
Alex sighed from his broken patio doors. “Could we keep the body count down? As it is I have no idea what we’re going to do with the sniper and the Russian Charlie used as a carpentry experiment. Why don’t we all come in the house and talk this thing through? There has to be some way for Damon to get what he needs without taking Charlie to Britain’s Guantanamo Bay.”
Alex was a spoilsport. “Fine, but you need to think about moving, man. This is a dangerous neighborhood. Hey, those contractors didn’t happen to leave a shovel behind, did they?”
Alex’s eyes went wide. “You can’t bury them in my backyard. Damn it, Ian, we’re putting in a swimming pool in the next couple of weeks. How am I supposed to explain that? First my French doors, then the hardwoods, and now you want to turn my backyard into a fucking body dump. It’s not happening, Ian.”
He walked away, muttering under his breath.
“I think that’s what happens when good agents lose their brain to a pretty bird,” Knight said.
At least they were in agreement on one thing.
He picked up Knight’s gun and followed Alex into the house.
Charlie watched as Ian and Damon Knight sat at his kitchen table together, their faces grim as they worked out her future.
Apparently her input wasn’t helpful as she’d been told to get ready for bed. He hadn’t even allowed her to help bandage him up. Eve had been the one to wash the blood off his shoulder and tell him how lucky he was that the bullet had only grazed him. Ian dismissed her the minute they had gotten back to his big house in the country. Chelsea had already disappeared into the guest bedroom Ian had assigned them to. Alex and Eve took the bed in the small dungeon. Jesse and Simon were pulling guard duty while Ian had called Jake and Adam to bury the bodies until Ian was ready to offer them up to the Agency. Charlie was sure the only person who was happy with anything that had happened all night long was Serena, who would probably be taking notes.
She couldn’t even think about sleeping. Not when she needed to get away. It was time to leave. Ian didn’t want her and she didn’t want to get anyone killed. She’d thought they would only come after her, but today had proven that her uncle was willing to hurt civilians to get to her. She’d thought she would have more time before they found her. Hell, she’d thought that maybe they had given up. She’d been in Florida for over a year working on the op that brought her back to Ian and no one had tried to kill her then. After so long without hearing from her uncle, she’d felt almost safe. Safe enough to come after her husband.
She’d been wrong and it was time to leave. After a little rest, she needed to get Chelsea and clear out of here.
The closest she’d managed to going to bed was changing into one of Ian’s massive T-shirts. It would have to do for sleepwear. It hung to her knees, covering more than a lot of dresses did.
“So you’re married to the big guy, huh?” Basil Champion sat down on the couch across from her, a longneck in his hand. He draped himself almost negligently across Ian’s big comfy couch.
“Not really.” She wasn’t sure why the British agent wanted to talk about her marriage, but she wasn’t getting into it with him.
“That’s not what the paperwork says, love. It’s just hard to believe you’re here. I was there the night you died, you see. I actually got a decent look at your body. Damon and me had to get Big Tag away from the police. Our bosses thought he might suffer a bit in jail.”
He likely would have been killed there. Nelson would have sent an assassin and then he wouldn’t have had to worry about Ian Taggart screwing up his plans. She’d known it, but she’d still taken that pill. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be forgiven. Maybe this had all been a huge mistake. “I’m sure he was grateful.”
Baz took a long draw off the beer before replying. “Nah. He was too upset. I remember thinking this was supposed to be some sort of superhero. You know, he was kind of a legend even though he’d only been working for a few years. I thought I was about to meet the real shit, but he was kind of broken, know what I mean?”
She felt a little broken now, but she still didn’t want to talk about her personal life with an MI6 agent. “So you’re here to drag me kicking and screaming to England?”
He huffed a little, an arrogant sound. “No way. We wouldn’t conduct this particular interview on British soil. Damon is being a bit of an idealist. I suspect we’ll take you back to London and you won’t make it out of Heathrow before the big bosses take you off of our hands and whisk you away to someplace nice and outside the confines of all those pesky human rights laws we have. Really, they’re so confining when it comes to torture.”
So she would be taken to some friendly government in Africa or the Middle East and they would torture her until she gave up the info. What they didn’t realize was that Chelsea was the one behind most of the information brokering. Charlie was mostly muscle. The information Charlie had dealt to specific governments hadn’t made them any money, but probably saved a bunch of lives. Chelsea hadn’t been happy with her those times. Chelsea was the brains, but she didn’t intend for that information to get out. “I haven’t directly come up against MI6. Why are you coming after me now?”
He sat up, his feet hitting the floor. “Are you going to play dumb, then, love? You hacked our systems three months ago. You were polite about it. You got in, took three files, and got right back out. If we didn’t have some very observant techs, we would never have known you were there at all.”
Fuck.
Chelsea had promised her she would stay out of MI6, the Agency, and China’s MSS. They were the three countries most likely to catch her and string her up, though in this case it would be Charlie on the end of the rope. She settled in. It wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to cover for her sister. “I wasn’t trying to fuck with MI6. I just needed a couple of files.”
“On Eli Nelson? Were you working for Taggart?”
Ah, her interrogation started now. At least she could answer those questions. “Eli Nelson is after me. I am not now nor have I ever worked for Ian or McKay-Taggart. I have, however, worked for Eli Nelson. We had a bad parting of ways.”
“From what I can tell, you parted ways on your terms, not his.”
He was well informed. “I never meant to work for the man on a permanent basis.”
“No, you just used him to kill your father.”
She shrugged a little. “It would have been difficult to do the job myself.”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it, dreamed about it. She just hadn’t figured out how to do it and save Chelsea and herself at the same time. It was why she’d taken Nelson’s devil’s pact.
“But you’re quite effective at other work. You could be very valuable to someone like Nelson. Or someone like Taggart.”
She laughed a little. “You can’t imagine that I’ve been working for Ian all these years. He had no idea I was alive. I think that’s funny since you and your partner obviously did.”
An innocent look came over Baz’s face. It was a handsome face, but there was something dark about the man. “Now, I’m deeply offended. I assure you if Damon had known that Ian Taggart’s long lost wife was alive and well, he would have contacted the man. He’s very loyal when it comes to his friends. No, we’ve only known you as The Broker. We started to suspect The Broker was a woman last year when a million dollars stolen from the Taliban showed up in a fund for educating women in Afghanistan.”
That had totally been Charlie’s idea. It had been a fun day all around. “I’m a feminist.”
“You’re an anarchist,” Baz retorted, but there was very little judgment in his tone. “And you’re playing with fire. If your ‘clients’ ever figured out that you play them against each other, you’ll have more than your uncle and Eli Nelson out to kill you.”
A girl had to have a hobby. Hers just happened to be causing chaos for some of the world’s worst terrorists and criminals. It was fun. “I tend to be very careful about who I do business with.”
Chelsea usually had a deft hand about not getting caught with her fingers in the cookie jar. Which was good because the cookie jar was probably rigged with explosives.
“But you really got on our radar a year ago. We had an operative in one of the terrorist cells you did some work for.”
A little smile crossed her face. She’d enjoyed that little side project. “Sorry. I shut that down faster than your operative could. He was slow.”
They had received information about a cell working to strike at several of Europe’s public transportation systems in a coordinated effort to topple the economy. She kind of liked Europe. It was really hard to plan an operation like that when all the money disappeared.
“Our operative was working his way up the food chain. You blew the whole thing right out of the water. The cell turned on each other. Our operative watched while they accused each other of taking it. He was accused as well. He barely made it out alive.”
So they had multiple reasons for disliking her. She’d upset their plans. “I wasn’t in on the MI6 project. I simply saw a problem and I solved it. They were planning on releasing sarin gas into the air filtration systems of the undergrounds in London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. They were ready to buy the gas. Your operative was too slow. I wasn’t willing to risk a couple hundred thousand people and the European economy because your guy wanted to move up. I also think you’ll find that I tipped off the cell’s plans to the Agency.”
His jaw firmed. “Yes, they didn’t mind holding that over our heads. Might I ask why you didn’t come directly to us?”
“I consider myself to be American.” She was her mother’s daughter, and her mother was from California. She’d always wanted to go home, but had settled her daughters on the East Coast in an attempt to hide from their father. He’d still found them.
“You were born in Moscow.”
“But I was happy here. My mother was American. I gave up my Russian citizenship, or I would if I could actually show my face at a government office. I send bits and pieces along to the Agency from time to time and they dispense it as they see fit. But Ian has nothing to do with that. He’s spent the last couple of years working strictly for himself.”
Baz’s eyes narrowed. “Not only for himself. He’s still in good with the Agency. He wouldn’t have been able to do all that work in England without having a few good contacts. Damon is high on him.”
She wasn’t sure she trusted Damon Knight. “He didn’t seem real high on Ian back at Alex’s. He seemed pretty pissed when Ian had a gun on him.”
“Ian only got the drop on him because Simon was following us. Bloody bastard. Otherwise you would be on your way out of the country.” He sat up, straightening his shirt. “Aren’t you tired of running?”
That was a dumb question. “Of course I’m tired.”
Baz sent a little look behind him, glancing into the kitchen. A laugh boomed from the neatly appointed room. At least Ian found something amusing. The British agent turned back, leaning in. “What if you didn’t have to run anymore? What if you could settle down with all the money you’ve made and find a place where a woman of your talents could, shall we say, excel?”
“What are you trying to say?” If he was going to make an offer, she would rather he just came out and said it. Because the truth was she was tired. The thought of running again made her violently ill, but if she managed to get out of this situation, she would have to do it. She would have to take Chelsea and hide somewhere, and then they would hide somewhere else, and so on and so on until they were caught and killed or managed to make it to old age. She’d made her play for Ian and she’d lost, and she had no real idea what she should do next.
“I’m trying to say that you could do well for yourself. We’re not all like the Agency. Not all organizations will use you and dump you. Some organizations would do much to be able to properly use all your talents.”
Did MI6 want to torture her or hire her?
Should she listen to a proposal?
“I can’t settle down. Not really. I thought I might be able to, but they found me really fast.” It had been a calculated risk, allowing Adam to run traces on her identity, but she hoped her uncle had relaxed his stance. It had been years and the syndicate tended to focus on business. But she’d had no luck. Her uncle was eager to kill her, and she suspected it was because Nelson had double crossed her. Of course, she’d done the same to him, so she couldn’t cry that she was innocent.