Chapter Five #2
Cooper sat in the conference room at McKay-Taggart, his teammates talking all around him. They discussed their plans for the weekend, how hard Big Tag was about to be on them, what they watched on TV the night before.
But Cooper’s whole focus was on the door because Kala was late.
“She had an appointment with the doc the Agency sent out.”
Kenzie gave him a sympathetic look. “She’s been avoiding the psychological debrief, but the bosses told her she has to go and say something beyond fuck you. Don’t expect her to be in a good mood.”
He didn’t need her in a good mood. He needed her here. “Why didn’t someone drive her?”
“She didn’t want a lift,”
Lou said from her place beside her boyfriend, TJ Taggart.
“I think she said something about needing time to prepare to deal with assholes.”
TJ had already raided the downstairs coffee cart. He was on his second muffin. Or maybe his third. Coop had no idea where he put it. “I’m not sure if she was talking about the psychologist or us.”
“Probably both,”
Lou acknowledged. Lou was a sweet-looking woman with brown hair and intelligent eyes behind the glasses she wore.
“Well, I don’t think any of the women should be on their own.”
Tristan Dean-Miles sat across from Kenzie, his green eyes on Cooper. “We have no idea where Huisman is, and he’s proven perfectly capable of hurting the women of the team.”
Kenzie snorted. “You try telling my sister she can’t get any alone time. Guys, she’s still processing what happened in Canada. This is how she does it. This, and probably going all Mistress Kala on some sub’s ass tonight at The Hideout. I already talked to Gabriel about finding someone for her to scene with.”
“For us to scene with,”
Cooper corrected. “And we have an appointment tonight, so that wasn’t necessary.”
Kenzie put her hands up as though letting him know he was being over the top. “Sorry, Master C. I was only trying to help.”
It wasn’t easy being a top when the woman you were so sick in love with was a top, too. He and Kala had been raised in families who were invested in the D/s lifestyle. But both of their dads were Doms and their moms happy subs.
They had to find their own way, and he’d started by topping subs with her.
Never sex. She never had sex in the club. Sometimes he wished she would since then at least he would know if the guy was treating her right.
At least he would know who he might have to kill.
Because maybe that was what it would take. Years. More than a fucking decade and she still hadn’t forgiven him for being a dumbass kid who didn’t know who he was. Well, he was a man now, and he was done playing around. She’d put him on this team, insisted on him. She could have left him where he was but she hadn’t, and it was time to show her what that meant.
Fuck, he could still see her in Ben Parker’s arms. He’d walked out of that burning mansion with her body, and Cooper had been sure she was dead. He’d known his whole life was over because she was everything. Everything.
When he held her, felt her chest moving and realized she was alive, he’d known he was done being patient with her.
He’d given her time to heal. Time to deal.
You’ve given her like a week, dude.
He shut down the reasonable part of his inner voice. The angelic voice that told him to be patient.
Get her in bed and everything will fall into place. That’s all you need to do. Fuck her. Give it to her better than she’s ever had it. Prove to her you’re not the kid who broke her heart. Show her you’re a man who can handle all that darkness. With your dick.
Yeah, the devil was pretty much in charge and had been since he watched her almost die.
Kenz was giving him a big-eyed stare that let him know she thought he was being a weirdo. “I forgot you guys make appointments. The rest of us kind of go with the flow.”
Sometimes he missed being on teams where he hadn’t grown up with his teammates. When he’d been strictly Navy, he hadn’t had to deal with people who remembered him at the age of five.
“To get back to the point, all I’m saying is Huisman is out there, and we have to be ready,”
Tristan reiterated.
“And Zach.”
Tasha walked into the conference room, carrying a laptop. Behind her, Cooper could see her fiancé, Dare, walking back to his office.
Zachary Reed. Damn, it hurt. He wasn’t even sure why. He’d only recently gotten close to the captain. Zach was closer to Tristan, but the last few months he’d taken to hanging out with Cooper. He’d even given Zach flying lessons, helping him get his license. Only days before Zach had sat across from him at a diner. He’d brought along TJ’s sister, Devi, since they seemed to be a couple. Or had been. Cooper had sat beside Kala, and he’d felt like they were on a double date. Like they’d done when they were in high school, sharing meals and movies with Tris and Carys and Aidan.
I thought we were hanging out.
Would his fifteen-year-old self follow him always?
“Zach wouldn’t hurt Kala,”
Tris argued.
“We don’t know that.”
TJ suddenly seemed interested in something besides his girlfriend—or a snack. TJ was mostly muscle and often slept through these meetings. “I do think Devi might need a bodyguard.”
“He’s not going to hurt Devi.”
Tris turned TJ’s way. “There’s something going on that we don’t understand. I know Zach.”
“Well, if you know him, why don’t you tell us all why he skipped out on us?”
a husky voice said.
Just the sound of her voice made his dick go tight. Kala walked into the conference room wearing her normal uniform of stylishly ripped jeans, an old concert tee, and combat boots, her newly pink hair in a high ponytail. She had her leather jacket over her arm and started walking toward the seat Lou had held for her.
He was going to break her of the habit. Someday she would look his way and know her place was at his side. Okay, even the little devil inside him said that kind of thinking would get him in serious trouble. His place was at her side. Yeah, he would put it like that.
There were definitely days he wished he was wired differently, wished he could give her the submission she seemed to need. Instead, what he could offer was to be the king at the side of the queen.
She stopped and then turned, coming his way. She sank down next to him, and every eye was on her. “What?”
Kenzie’s lips turned up, and she shook that perfectly identical head. They’d been strawberry blonde for the last mission, but two days ago they’d shown up for work and the magenta-colored hair they’d gotten their handle from—Ms. Magenta—was back. “Nothing. Just wondering if the therapist is still alive. You look weirdly calm for having to talk about your feelings for an hour.”
“Oh, she doesn’t,”
Lou assured them. “I’m pretty sure she sits there and has a stare off with Lena. I kind of don’t blame her. I’m going to be honest. I didn’t like the woman. She told me I’m trying to turn TJ into my dad. I don’t know what that means. She said I have abandonment issues, but I don’t. My bio dad died. Do you think she means I’m trying to turn TJ into him? Because he was an asshole from everything I know, and honestly, TJ’s not great at math.”
Cooper snorted. Louisa Ward was considered a genius by most of the people who knew her. She was an engineer and inventor, a true innovator, but in this she wasn’t very self-aware. “She’s not talking about your bio dad. She’s talking about how TJ is slowly morphing into Boomer.”
“Am not,”
TJ said around a mouthful of muffin.
Kala’s lips curled up in one of those pure amusement grins she rarely shared. “Last night he ate all the lasagna we had left over. Kenz made an extra-large and thought we would eat it for a week. TJ managed to down it in an hour.”
“It was good,”
TJ said apologetically. “And it was leg day. You know I get really hungry on leg day. I’ll get us takeout tonight.”
Lou’s head tilted the way it did when she was thinking. “Huh. That makes more sense.”
“When he starts bringing home every sad-sack homeless animal he can find, we’ll know his transition is complete. I don’t think it’s a bad thing,”
Kala replied, and then seemed to get serious. “Where’s the big guy, and do we have a babysitter today?”
The door to the conference room opened again, and the answer was clear. Drake Radcliffe walked in followed by the aforementioned big guy, Ian Taggart, and his wife, Charlotte. Drake was in his mid-forties and had once been a deadly operative, but he’d shifted into management, and he and his wife, Taylor, were the team’s liaisons with the Agency.
Kala had stiffened beside him, though her expression hadn’t changed.
She was worried Drake was here to shut them down. At one point he would have cheered the very idea, but two years of watching her work had made him understand how much she needed this. She’d been born for this work. He could have been happy in any number of jobs, but there was only one for Kala Taggart. Yes, he could have been happy in several jobs, but he could only be happy with one woman. Her.
“Hey, guys. Sorry I didn’t get out here earlier. I’m afraid I’ve been working on figuring out exactly how fucked we are when it comes to Captain Reed.”
Drake took a seat opposite Big Tag and Charlotte. “Taylor is still in DC. She’s working the Dark Web, trying to figure out where he’s gone and what connections we missed.”
“Yeah, I’d like to know, too,”
Big Tag said before looking over to Kala. His brows rose when he seemed to realize she’d forgone her usual place beside Lou. “Did you kill the doctor? Because I don’t think Phoebe is going to be cool with our normal body disposal methods. She in your trunk, daughter?”
Drake groaned. “Please tell me we didn’t screw with Dr. Gallagher. She’s new, and the director thinks she’s the shit. She was a top profiler with the FBI and recently took the job with us.”
“I didn’t kill the doctor,”
Kala said with a long eye roll. “She’s okay. I told her what she wanted to know and then set up another session with her. See, I can take one for the team.”
It was his turn to stare at her, shocked. “You have a session with her?”
She turned slightly. “It’s not my first time with a shrink. Besides, I get the feeling she needs to spend time with me or she won’t give us the sterling review we so richly deserve.”
She turned back to Drake. “Is this yet another ploy to break the team up? Since the Zach plan obviously didn’t work?”
Kenzie pointed her sister’s way. “What she said.”
“Zach didn’t want to break up the team,”
Tris insisted. “There’s something more going on here.”
“I agree with Tris,”
Lou said quietly, her gaze seemingly focused inward, like she was seeing something she couldn’t forget. “He didn’t want to leave us. I saw him that day. He saved me and Aidan. He didn’t have to. It would have been easy for him to walk right by, but he didn’t. He told me he had to go back to hell. Said he should have known he always belonged there.”
Drake’s tone went low, sympathetic. “I know Zach was good to the team, but he wasn’t who we thought he was.”
“He’s exactly who we thought he was, but apparently with a couple of extra layers,”
Big Tag said. “Look, I’m with Lou and Tris on this one. I’m a fairly good judge of character and nothing set me off with Zach. There’s something we’re missing. He’s definitely not working for Huisman.”
“We can’t know that,”
Drake replied.
Cooper was kind of team Zach. “It doesn’t make sense. Huisman was planning on torturing him for information. It’s obvious Zach has a connection to someone Huisman is looking for.”
“The bombmaker,”
Kala concluded. “He knows who the bombmaker is, and he has all along. If he works for anyone, it’s that dude. I don’t know why. Maybe he’s a childhood friend and there’s some weird loyalty to him.”
“Have we considered Zach himself could be the bombmaker?” TJ asked.
Tasha laughed. Not a little giggle, a mad guffaw. Lou snorted along.
“Guys, don’t be mean,”
Kenzie admonished. “Zach is not dumb.”
Kala smiled broadly. “He’s not, but you have to admit, the dude isn’t like an engineer or anything. He’s not even all that great with computers.”
She sobered, seeming to think of something. “Unless he’s pretending. Playing dumb is always a good cover, but it’s hard when you work so closely with someone. I’ve read Tristan’s report. We know he’s the one who killed The Jester and set him up to be found by Tris.”
The Jester was an international arms dealer with fingers in all kinds of weaponized pies. It had been The Jester Huisman was looking for when he’d kidnapped and tortured Kala and Carys Taggart.
“My question is how did Huisman know.”
Tris sat back, playing with the pen in his hand, cycling it back and forth around his fingers. “About Zach. It was Zach he was serious about. I think I was nothing more than a fun diversion for him. Oh, he wanted to know if I knew anything, but it was Zach he was planning on spending real time with.”
Drake opened the folder in front of him. “Let me see if I have everything straight in my head. Sorry. I know you’ve gone over this a hundred times. So what we know now is that Huisman is interested in the man who built several bombs used in attacks in Jakarta we’ve connected to the Disrupt shadow groups that we now believe are run by Dr. Emmanuel Huisman.”
“And London,”
Tasha added. “A few years ago there was an attempted assassination on British royal family members. The bombs didn’t work the way they were supposed to, but according to the experts there were signatures on the bombs that connect them to the weapons used in the Jakarta attacks. Lou could explain it better.”
Lou sat up straighter. “It’s actually very interesting…”
Charlotte held up a hand. “Sweetie, I know you could spend an hour explaining, but I trust you. Can we all agree if Lou believes they were made by the same person, we believe her?”
“Yes,”
they all said at roughly the same time. And heartily because Lou would talk for an hour, and he would understand very little because she mostly spoke science.
Lou huffed. “Fine. But you know one day I’m going to give incredibly important information and you all are going to be sleeping or doodling and you’ll miss it. To put it in simple terms, it’s like art in a way. The London bombs were part of his early works. They show promise, but he hadn’t figured out how to smooth over the rough edges. Move on to Jakarta and you see he’s maturing. The detonators have a beautiful and terrifying simplicity. The materials he’s using… Well, it’s obvious he’s moving into small nuclear arms. I’d love to see something he’s recently worked on. I think these bombs could be used to deliver biological weapons as well. I can extrapolate where he’s going from the materials he’s using, but getting my hands on it, being able to reverse engineer it would tell me so much.”
“We have two different definitions of the word simple, Lou,”
Big Tag said. “And I haven’t been able to ID any other bombs. I’ve been talking to intelligence agencies around the world, but we haven’t found anything like the signature we found on the Jakarta bombs. Of course if we did, it would likely mean Huisman had, too. The fucker seems to always be one step ahead.”
“Because he’s been planning things for decades,”
Kenzie pointed out. “He knows who we are because he’s been following us since long before we joined the Agency and had our pasts erased. Stop kicking yourself, Dad. You couldn’t have foreseen this.”
“He couldn’t have foreseen that some asshole from his past would come back to haunt us?”
Kala’s brows rose in a near perfect imitation of the very father she was talking about.
“Come on,”
Tasha argued. “How could he know?”
He did not get in the middle of Taggart sister fights. Every man who knew them knew to take a step back. He would stand behind Kala, and Dare would do the same for Tasha, and they would stay out of the line of fire.
“Well, he was Agency for years, and even after he left he fucked over like a million bad guys,”
Kala pointed out. “Do I need to go into all the Russian mobsters Mom screwed over?”
“Hey, I always killed them so they couldn’t come back to haunt me,”
Charlotte explained. “And your dad tried to as well.”
“The ones left remember,”
Kala said quietly, and Coop could sense her mood shift. She’d been joking before, but this part was serious.
Kala was like flying sometimes. He had to get a feel for the air around her, find the good streams that swept them along, and know when turbulence was going to batter them.
“Well, Big Tag didn’t even kill Huisman’s dad.”
There were times to protect himself and times to give her cover. Her mom was looking at her like she wanted to ask some questions, and he saw the tightness to Kala’s shoulders. It was time to deflect. “So in addition to wanting to find a bombmaker, he used the Montreal op to begin his revenge on Ian. Who again wasn’t even there when his dad died.”
“Fucking Levi Green killed his father,”
Big Tag said in a low growl, mentioning the unalived CIA operative who’d haunted them for years. “But what we learned recently is he blames me. Huisman believes if I hadn’t protected the Lost Boys, his father would be alive and all the dominoes that fell after wouldn’t have and his life would be sunshine and puppies and roses. It’s ridiculous but he believes it.”
“I have Lena working on a profile of him,”
Drake replied. “And, Ian, you couldn’t have known that twenty years later some kid you’ve never met would decide you’re the devil and he needs to take you out. This isn’t on you.”
“It’s not. I was just joking about the fact that when you take down as many assholes as my parents have, you should expect someone’s going to come after you,”
Kala said, her tone flat. “I believe he said he would visit the sins of the father on his children. Or some bullshit like that. He’s an overly dramatic motherfucker.”
“Yeah, he was definitely overly dramatic when he was using my daughter as a test subject,”
her mother said, her tone dark. It was a good reminder that there were two Charlotte Taggarts. Or at least two versions of the same woman. One was the loving wife and mother, the mom every kid adored. One had been a Russian mob assassin, and she never forgot how to kill.
Kala had been given an experimental paralytic, and despite the fact that all the doctors said she was fine, he still wasn’t sure what the long-term effects could be. Huisman had made her vulnerable and then poured fire into her veins.
He really wanted to kill Emmanuel Huisman.
“Do we have any idea where he is?”
Tristan asked.
No one needed to ask who he was talking about.
“Who?”
Except TJ.
Drake simply ignored him. “The last location we have for Huisman is three days ago in Algeria. He met with a group of mercenaries. We have to think he’s hiring. We believe he’s no longer in Africa. I’ve got some intelligence that has him traveling to Asia, though we’re not sure where. The Canadians are going to announce an investigation into the Huisman Foundation in a couple of days.”
“Are we worried that could set him off?”
Charlotte asked.
“I would have to ask Lena,”
Drake replied. “We’re considering her the subject matter expert. She’s spent the last couple of months diving into his history.”
“Eve thinks yes,”
Big Tag said, sitting back. “You have your experts and I have mine. I think we should authorize protection for the families of the Lost Boys. In particular Owen and Rebecca Shaw. They’re in Sweden right now. I think we should bring them in.”
“I can’t authorize anything without Lena’s go-ahead, but I will talk to her,”
Drake offered, closing his folder. “And I’d love to read anything Eve has on Huisman. As for Zach, he’s disappeared off the face of the earth. I’ve gone over his file about three thousand times, and there’s not a hint of a lie there.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to lie. You just have to keep your mouth shut,”
Big Tag replied. “We know his mother spent time in jail for cooking meth. We know she had some very sketchy contacts, but we’re talking almost twenty years ago.”
“Where is she?”
Cooper was curious. “According to Zach, she drifted out of his life when he was a teen and never returned. He thought she was back to making designer drugs.”
“She’s gone, too,”
Drake replied. “We do know she was connected to a couple of cartels back ten years ago. The last known location we have on her is El Salvador. From there she disappears, and nothing I’ve found connects her back to Zach after she split. We have to consider the idea that Zach’s mom is in some way connected to the arms community and knows something. I would love to talk to Zach’s aunt. If I could fucking find her. Disappearing is a way of life for this family.”
“Joyce lives a nomadic life,”
Big Tag explained. “After Zach left home, she built out a van and took to the road. I can find her. I just need some time. She’s…a character.”
“She also might be working with her nephew, so be careful. We have no idea why Zach killed The Jester in the first place. I think the likeliest scenario is he wanted to become The Jester,”
Drake replied.
“Then why not kill Tris?”
Kala pointed out. “He could easily have done it.”
“I wouldn’t say easily.”
Tris looked slightly offended, but he carried on. “But Kala’s right. He could have taken me out but he didn’t, and not once did he try to manipulate me in a way I would say would bring him some monetary gain.”
“This isn’t about money.”
Cooper felt like he knew the guy. “This is something else.”
Drake stood. “Well, you need to figure out what it is because pretty much every agent out in the field is looking for him. I can’t control what they do when they find him. This is a dangerous situation. I need you guys to lay low for a while. Let Lena do her job. I’ll work on the higher-ups to get more resources. I’ll be in town for a couple of days if you need me.”
“So we’re supposed to sit on our hands?”
Kala asked, irritation flavoring every word.
“Rest, Kala,”
Drake said. “I know you’re super woman, but you went through something traumatic and you need…”
“I told you. I’m doing the therapy.”
Her hands fisted on the table. “I saw all the doctors. I’m doing everything the Agency asked me to do.”
“We’ll prep for providing protection for Dr. Shaw’s family.”
Cooper knew what he needed to do. Give her a job. She didn’t relax. The job focused her. “And we’ll try to find Zach’s aunt. We’ll stick close to the MT building, and Lou can work in her lab.”
“Great.”
But she sat back, and her shoulders came down from around her ears. “Logistics. Awesome.”
He leaned in, his voice going low. “And we have some other projects we’ve neglected.”
She turned his way slightly, her mouth curling in a smile that went straight to his dick. “Naughty subs. We should probably talk through the scenes we’ll run this weekend.”
Yep, he hoped the meeting lasted a while because he had a hard-on.
“All right, let’s get to work.”
Big Tag stood, reaching out a hand to his wife. He always reached for her at the end of a meeting. Or a dinner. Or because they were sitting next to each other. The group started to break up, but he sat.
Mostly because of the hard-on and the utter hell he would get from everyone if they noticed. But also because he wanted to reach for her hand, not because she couldn’t stand on her own. She was a force of nature. No. He wanted to reach for her hand so she would know she wasn’t alone. So he would know he wasn’t alone.
“You coming?”
She stopped at the door.
“In a minute.”
He pretended to be looking up something on his phone.
And she was gone.
But this weekend, they would play, and he was determined that this time around, they wouldn’t stop.