Master No (7 page)

Chelsea was laying low because Ten had been the one to hire Chelsea Weston. He was certain she was under a lot of scrutiny given her connections to McKay-Taggart. There was really only one question he wanted answered about the Agency. “Is there an active kill order on me?”

His laptop dinged again.
I’m looking forward to it, Sir. I’m very excited to finally meet you in person. I feel like I know you already.

She knew absolutely nothing about him. Not even his real name. As far as she was concerned, he was Timothy Graham. He’d selected the last name with care. It had been Phoebe’s alias for years. He was used to using it. Typically, he would have used his foster father’s last name, but McDonald knew too much about Franklin Grant and his foster sons. So Graham had been a suitable replacement. It was best to go with something similar. Something easy for him to answer to.

Faith knew minor things. He’d purposefully kept his end of the conversation light. She knew he’d grown up in the south. She knew he liked barbecue and worked for a security firm.

Everything else he’d told her was lies.

Simon Weston sat forward, his face serious. He was dressed in a white dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. He’d hung up the suit coat, and that was about as casual as the Brit ever got. The only time Ten could remember seeing him without a tie around his neck was at Sanctum. “From what Chelsea’s found, the Agency isn’t actively looking for you.”

Me, too, sweetheart. I’m eagerly awaiting your arrival. Get plenty of sleep tonight and let Theo carry your bags. That’s my first command. Once you get here, there will likely be more.

Once she touched down in Texas, she was his sub. She was under his command. He’d spent most of his adult life with scores of assets under his command. He’d sent men and women into dangerous situations, some when he knew the likelihood was they wouldn’t survive.

So why was this so different? Faith was another mission. Why did the idea of having her under his command, of being able to demand she undress for him, that she submit to him—why did that make his whole body tighten?

“Just because they’re not actively searching for me doesn’t mean there isn’t a see/kill order.” It was simple. He ran into an operative. The operative saw him. The operative killed him. The Agency was down one more problem.

“Chelsea doesn’t think so,” Simon replied. “She thinks you took care of the problem. She asked me to mention a certain e-mail you sent to the director during your time in Saudi.”

Tag laughed. “The girl is good, Ten.”

He should have known Chelsea would figure that out. Franklin Grant had taught him well. Franklin’s final gift to his children had been a package of information he’d gathered over his thirty-year career with the Agency. Ten and Jamie and Phoebe had already received copies of the information after their foster father’s funeral. They’d each added to it during their own careers. When Jamie had died, Ten had added his brother’s information to his own before handing it over to Phoebe.

“Big Tag knows?” Simon asked. He sat back, watching Ten.

He knew Alex was Tag’s best friend and that Tag’s circle was pretty big, but Ten’s wasn’t. It was incredibly small. Hell, he trusted Tag more than he did anyone with the exception of Phoebe, and he hadn’t wanted this burden on her. “He knows where the information is and he knows to get it out in the event of my death.”

“An insurance policy,” Simon murmured.

Hutch nodded Ten’s way. “Boss practices what he preaches. When we joined up with his team, he told us it was important to keep track of things we’d learned. Especially the things that could damage the Agency.”

He had enough on the higher-ups that they wouldn’t want it to get out. He simply hadn’t been sure they’d gotten the message. He’d passed on what he’d learned from his foster father to his own men. He’d always been an Agency man, but Franklin Grant had known things could turn.

Damn but he missed the old man.

“I watch out for my men. You have to have insurance. If you don’t have leverage and the wrong people come into power, things can go bad quickly. As evidenced by me.” One day he’d been a power player with his own operational team. He’d been given a fairly free hand to do whatever he needed to do.

And then he’d come up against Senator Hank McDonald and he’d been disavowed overnight.

He had to wonder if he didn’t have a file documenting some of the Agency’s worse secrets, if he wouldn’t be dead already. If his men wouldn’t have been taken out one by one. It was the one thing he wouldn’t tell anyone. He hadn’t simply bargained for his life. He’d let it be known that if his men suffered any sort of odd accidents he would release the information. If anyone from McKay-Taggart went missing, he would release the information.

He was going to protect his team and when he was gone, Taggart would do the job for him. Big Tag would use the insurance policy to protect the men who had been loyal to Ten. And Phoebe. They’d had the conversation about the fact that no one was more important to Ten than his sister. He could relax because Jesse Murdoch would lay down his life for her and Big Tag would watch over them both.

I eagerly await your commands, Sir. I’m kind of counting the hours until I get to meet you in person. It’s been good that we spent time getting to know each other, right?

He’d gotten to know her. He’d gotten to know how sweet she was, how naïve and weirdly innocent. He wasn’t sure what to do with a woman who played so innocent.

What if she really was innocent? He didn’t mean that in a sexual fashion. Virginity meant less than nothing to him. But that lack of true cynicism was something he didn’t understand. Who did what she did? She gave up her comfy life to help people she didn’t know.

His eyes strayed back to that picture of her. He needed to understand her. “Tell me about the sister.”

Send me another picture.

He was fairly certain either Theo or Erin had been on the other end of the camera, so he was likely going to get ribbed about that. He could handle it. He wanted another picture of her.

“Hope McDonald.” Tag nodded toward the back wall where there was a monitor affixed.

A picture of a blonde came up. She was smiling but it didn’t reach her eyes. He sat back and looked at her. Smart suit. Perfect makeup. Not a hair out of place. On the surface someone might think she was prettier than her younger sister.

Those people were dimwits.

His laptop dinged and a picture of Faith filled the screen. Fuck. His dick was hard. She was smiling without inhibition. She looked into the camera and radiated outward. Erin stood beside her, smiling with her friend. Damn. Even Erin looked happy next to Faith. The two women were holding glasses of wine. Erin was drinking red and Faith a white. A Pinot Grigio likely. She’d ordered several bottles of Noir and Grigio off the Internet along with a case of beer and a bottle of tequila from a local liquor store. She’d paid with her credit card and had it delivered with instructions to leave the boxes inside the courtyard of the chalet. He’d watched her every move, read her every e-mail for the last several weeks, watched every place she went to on the Internet.

She liked some fairly dirty porn. She was attracted to the fetish movies and she went there directly after their conversations. He could get her hot, give her what she needed. He’d done all the training he needed to be able to fit into his role, but he hadn’t really gotten it until he’d started talking to Faith. It had been something to learn. He needed to dominate this woman. He needed to top her. Only her.

And that disturbed him.

“Hope graduated from Johns Hopkins, did her residency at Massachusetts General. She worked as a surgeon specializing in neurology until she quit seven years ago and joined Kronberg Pharmaceuticals.” Tag clicked the remote in his hand and the picture changed. There was a list of the financials of Kronberg. Two billion a year in income. They were on the leading edge of medical technology. “She works in research, but she’s got a ton of connections, and that’s where Faith comes in.”

Beautiful, sweetheart. Enjoy your evening. Tomorrow, you’re mine. Let Theo take care of you in my absence.

“What do you mean that’s where Faith comes in?” His eyes trailed back to the pictures. He would hoard all the ones she’d sent him, looking at them over and over again. She liked to send him pictures of her relaxing, a glass of wine in her hand, but he’d seen her be serious, too. They’d talked over FaceTime at least once a day and she’d talked to him about her job. She’d told him about the clinic she ran and what it meant to her.

She hadn’t talked about Ghana. Even when he’d asked if there was anything about her job that scared her. She’d simply said losing children. Her mouth had turned down and she’d changed the subject.

Did she still dream about it?

Tag went on. “Kronberg has funded the majority of her vaccination campaign for the last few years. In exchange she gives them data on infection rates and vaccination protocols. She shares data so she can get drugs.”

That didn’t seem so bad to Ten. It seemed to him like she was working her connections to help people who couldn’t help themselves. “Good for her.”

Hutch huffed. “Good for The Collective.”

Ten didn’t want to hear that. The Collective was a group of corporations that seemed to have banded together to practice some of the worst crimes against the public he’d ever seen. The Collective consisted of some of the world’s biggest companies, and they maximized profits at the expense of anyone who got in their way. “Why do you think Kronberg is Collective?”

Hutch’s shoulders moved up and down in a negligent movement that belied the fact that the man never accused without some solid evidence. “You know it’s hard to tell. They don’t publish their rolls or make public their meetings. So we have to look at patterns of behavior and rely on gossip. Damon Knight is the head of McKay-Taggart’s London office.”

“I’m well aware.”

There was a knock on the door and then the man himself was stepping into the room. Damon Knight was a big bull of a man with pitch-black hair starting to gray at the temples. He was a broody son of a bitch. Well, he used to be. Now he was smiling and had a hand out as he stepped into the conference room followed by another man. This man wasn’t smiling. He was leaner than Knight or Tag, built on predatory lines. A hungry wolf with dark hair and a close-cropped beard. He looked over at Ten with icy blue eyes.

“How was your flight?” Tag asked, shaking Damon’s hand.

“It was commercial, you bastard,” Damon shot back with a chuckle.

“Sorry, buddy, I’m not MI6. If you want a company jet, you’re going to have to bring in some more cash,” Tag joked. “How’s Penny?”

Ten was fairly sure Knight was going to break his face if he kept smiling like that. “She’s already found Charlotte. She’s eager to meet your daughters. Especially now that she’s about to become a mum.”

Tag slapped Knight on the back. “Are you serious? You bastard, you didn’t say a thing.”

Knight waved a hand. “We wanted to wait a bit. She’s only a few months along, but it appears everything is going brilliantly. Never thought it would happen. Imagine us. Two old dads.”

They continued on as Hutch leaned in. “I do not get that. In my world, when a chick gets pregnant we all ask the dude how he managed to fuck up that badly. Wow. Erin looks hot. How is that possible? I finally see what Theo sees in her.”

“They are both pretty girls,” a low voice said behind him. A low, heavily accented voice. Ah, Knight had brought the Russian with him.

And the freaking Russian was staring at Ten’s girl. He slammed his laptop closed. His target. Not his girl. Still. He didn’t like the way the big bastard had stared at her.

“Are we breaking up?” Ten asked, well aware he sounded annoyed as hell. This wasn’t a fucking backyard barbecue family reunion.

“Sorry, he’s pissy since he lost his Agency spy decoder ring,” Tag said, gesturing for Knight and the new guy to take seats. “Please join us. We’ll catch up on the real life stuff after the people who don’t actually have one are safely out of here.”

Fuck Tag. Why the hell was he friends with that asshole anyway? Oh yeah, the loyalty stuff. Still sometimes he wished he’d won that fight between them and he still had several free punches left. He would appreciate Tag so much more if he could break the fucker’s nose on a regular basis. “First introduce the Russian and then tell me what The Collective has to do with Faith’s clinic.”

When everyone was settled he flipped his laptop back open. She’d sent another pic, this one of her staring at the camera and blowing him a kiss.

Good night, Sir.

Good night, Faith.

He closed the laptop again, not trusting himself to not stare at her pictures.

Knight sat down beside the new guy. “This is my latest employee, Nikolai Markovic. He’s former SVR.”

“It all still KGB. Don’t let new letters fool you.” The Russian sat back with a long-suffering sigh. Ten put his age around thirty, young to already be out of the game.

The KGB had officially disbanded back in 1991 after a failed coup had been led by the former director. The government had split the KGB up and formed the Foreign Intelligence Service. SVR or
Sluzhba vneshney razvedki
, was the organization that handled Russian intelligence operating outside the federation.

But Markovic was right. It was all still KGB. Putin had taken Russia right back to playing the old games.

Damn, Ten really missed the Agency.

“I was recruited young. My father, he was a paper pusher in the SVR. Smart man, but without many physical skills. He offered up me and my sister to be operatives. My sister died during a mission to Ukraine and then the bastards tried to send me in to finish her job.”

Ten could bet what that had been. “To stir up chaos in Crimea?”

Markovic nodded. “Yes, I am supposed to pose as Ukrainian soldier, to lead the revolution. My sister dies over gas pipelines. Putin is no leader. He is businessman. So now I am as well.”

Not if he was working for McKay-Taggart. There was a bit of bluster in the Russian, but he’d chosen a company known for taking on the occasional case simply for the rightness of the cause. They were also known for sometimes turning in the companies that employed them if they discovered they were grossly violating the law. Tag did it quietly, but the man believed in justice.