Chapter Eight #2
Kenzie’s head swiveled, and she caught sight of the sad-looking pink bear on the grass. Her hands loosened. There she was. The sweet side. It could be coaxed back out. “Oh, that’s so cute.”
Sosa shook her head. “It’s good way to smuggle in the poisons.”
Gabby took advantage and rolled out from under Kenzie, grabbing the bear. “I do not poison. That is Uma’s job and she would… Well, she would poison me if I try. You know who gave this to me.”
Sosa’s expression softened. “I do. Gabby, he say he can help. He say he will help get our sisters out.”
Gabby clutched that worn-out teddy, ignoring the guns and knives that had also fallen. “I don’t simply want out.”
“I will help you burn them all down,” Taggart promised.
Kenzie sat back in the grass. “Damn it. Fine. But you have to stop trying to kill my dad.”
Her dad frowned fiercely her way. “And you have to start wearing damn underwear. What the hell, Kenz? Like that skirt isn’t short enough? Are you going to smother the poor girl with your vagina?”
Gabby clutched her bear.
A big dog lumbered up, stopping and staring around like he was trying to figure out who he needed to kill. He was huge and black, with curly fur and intelligent eyes.
Another dog ran up and started licking Kenzie’s face. Pretty dog. Not a spark of real intelligence behind those eyes.
“What the hell,” Charlotte Taggart had a baby in a sling and a semiautomatic in her hand. “Sosa, I told you…”
Sosa held her hands up. “It was not me. It was Gabby, but she does not know about the helping and the Costco. She only know about the job. Now she knows and will be helping like me.”
Charlotte lowered the gun and sighed as she looked at her husband. “How the hell did she shoot you while you were in the Bronco? It’s fortified. The bullets shouldn’t have gotten through.”
It was the first time he’d ever seen Taggart go pale. “Baby, I…”
Oh, he could throw Taggart’s ass under the bus.
Yes, he’d saved the man’s life, but giving him a taste of hell wasn’t something Ben could pass up.
“He got out of the car after I started talking about how Kenzie’s my sub.
I think he was feeling a little nauseated.
Now I wonder why since I’ve heard him talk about sex pretty openly. ”
He went over and offered Kenzie a hand up. He hauled her up and pulled her in, wrapping his free hand around her. And yes, he tugged her skirt down. “You okay?”
“Well, I won’t wear these boots to climb a tree again,” she groused but snuggled close.
“You got out of the car when there was clearly a hit out on you?” Charlotte’s voice was dangerously low and her free hand was around her grandbaby, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully through it all.
Even the dogs seemed to back up from the sound of her voice.
“There was a lot of talk about mouths, and it was gross, baby,” Ian tried to explain.
Sosa helped Gabby up. “It is to be being okay, G. I trust them.”
“You do not trust anyone,” Gabby said, eyes wide with obvious shock.
“I see her as my new mother, and while I did try to do that thing where I am having random man’s baby to cause chaos between couple, he is my new and very mean to everyone else papa,” Sosa said with a grave nod.
“Now, wait a minute,” Ian said, going even paler.
“Ian, I am getting Open Door notifications,” Charlotte complained. “They want to know who’s shooting on the crazy guy’s property. I do not want another HOA meeting where I have to explain away multiple gun fights.”
Kenzie sighed as her parents started to argue and Gabby and Sosa talked about all the hot dogs and chicken bakes they could eat at the Costco food court.
He held her and kissed the top of her head, and somehow the chaos wasn’t so bad.
* * * *
“You couldn’t get him to a hospital?” Lou asked, looking inside the conference room where Kenzie’s father was preparing to go through with his debrief despite the fact that Aidan O’Donnell was patching up his leg, where a bullet had apparently taken out a nice chunk of his calf.
Kenzie sighed. “You have no idea how stubborn he is. He and my mom had a massive fight over the HOA thinking we’re some kind of criminal enterprise, and then they were on about the trees. Then I had to hold Colton while they made out.”
Her parents had a beautiful marriage. There had been a lot of talk about spanking her mom for her sassy mouth.
Ben hadn’t even threatened her with a good time and she’d run into gunfire and everything.
“But the trees are beautiful,” Lou complained. “You won’t have any privacy if you get rid of the trees.”
“Drones.” TJ rounded the corner carrying two coffees. He handed one to his fiancée. “I’ll set up Uncle with a fleet of drones that patrol the tree line and he’ll chill out. He’ll have a lot of fun with it, and it’ll give the HOA something to talk about that isn’t gunfire.”
Actually, that wasn’t a terrible idea. She could distract her dad with drones. “Huh, I never thought of that.”
TJ sighed as he gestured back toward the break room. “Well, I never thought our office would be taken over by youthful assassins. What exactly do we know about them?”
“Not enough to bring them in,” Ben groused.
He was cranky, but then he’d had a day. Which would have been made better had he taken her into an office and smacked her ass silly and then fucked her until his eyes rolled to the back of his head and did that slump down on her like she was the best fuck toy in the world thing and then she would get them some tea and cookies.
When she’d suggested they talk in private he’d kissed her briefly and said he needed to call in. He spent half an hour calling his boss from a secure line and then joined them.
Like nothing had happened. Like this was just another day.
“What are we supposed to do with them?” Kenzie asked. If he was going to be professional, then she would be, too. “We need to figure out if they know anything about the person who hired them.”
Kenzie was calmer about the two young women, who couldn’t be much past twenty. Sosa was obnoxious as hell and Gabby could talk a mile a minute, but it was obvious that they were both traumatized. Gabby had held on to that stupid teddy bear like it was a lifeline, and Sosa had held on to Gabby.
“I already had my boss look into them. I sent your father what Joseph discovered,” Ben admitted.
Kenzie cocked a brow. “And?”
“Hey, are you having a meeting without me?” Kala strode in and frowned at Ben. “Ben.”
He frowned right back. “Chick who nearly deballed me for no reason.”
They’d avoided each other at the wedding and would likely have continued to if they hadn’t been called up here.
“Oh, I had reasons,” Kala shot back and might have said more but Cooper chose that moment to slide an arm around her shoulders.
“Ben, my man.” Her brother-in-law was as sunny as her sister was dark. He held out his free hand.
Ben shook it, but there was a reluctance. “Good to see you, Cooper.”
“Nah, it’s not,” Cooper replied with a smile. “But it will be one day. So the old guy got shot by another Russian girl?”
“French,” TJ said.
Cooper stepped back and laughed. “Perfect. And now he has to deal with… What are we calling them?”
“Benzie,” Lou said after a long swallow. “TJ’s right. It’s the only way to go. Kenjamin sounds like someone got cute.”
“I like it.” It was fun. “It’s way better than Kalper.”
Ben’s expression had gone all cute-boy confused. “What?”
Kenzie pointed to her cousin. “TJ likes couple names. Says it saves him time. So Tasha and Dare are Dasha. I like to call Lou and TJ Loot. We decided on Zevi for Zach and Devi. And we’re obviously Benzie. Cute, huh?”
He did not look impressed.
“We are not calling us Kalper. It sounds like some equation from physics we’re supposed to solve,” Kala complained.
“Yes, that’s why I like it,” Lou shot back.
Eve McKay walked in from her office. She was casual today in jeans and a sweater, her blonde hair in a bun on her head. She winked her son’s way. “Hey, sweetie. Where’s your brother? The new one.”
That was Aunt Eve. She found out her adopted son had a brother and she brought him right in. Zach had been going to family dinners with the McKays for weeks now.
“He and Devi headed to Colorado after the wedding,” Cooper explained. “Charlotte is sending Seth and Travis out today. Zach is going to coordinate with the sheriff and Henry Flanders for their protection, and he wants to check in on his mom.”
Who was also Cooper’s bio mom, but he’d made it plain while he was open to a relationship with Shannon, Eve McKay was his momma.
Huisman would love to get his hands on Shannon Reed. She was the infamous bombmaker who’d designed the perfect system to deliver Huisman’s anthrax, but she’d been smart enough to not let him learn how to make it. Keeping her safe was important.
She hoped her cousin didn’t get all kidnapped and shit again. It was getting to be a real habit for Devi and one she wanted to break.
Eve sighed. “Yeah, I think your father and I are going to take a vacation for a week or so, too, just to be careful. Everyone needs to be careful. Right now they’re after Ian, but when it becomes clear they can’t get to him, they might start looking at the rest of us as a way to draw him out.”
“I think we should fake his death,” Kala said loud enough for their dad to hear them.
“I’m not faking my death,” he shouted back. “Get in here. We have a plane to catch.”
That was news to Kenzie. And not good news. If they got called into DC, she wasn’t sure Ben could come with them. She strode into the conference room. “Uh, I’m going to the club tonight, Dad. Tell Drake we can do a Zoom.”
She had plans, and they included getting her brand-new Dom on the dungeon floor and seeing if she could open him by allowing him to torture her in the sweetest way.
“We cannot do a Zoom because you’re horny, Daughter,” her father shot back and grimaced before looking down at his leg. “Aren’t you done yet?”