Chapter Three
Shane
Talia’s apartment has been tossed. Someone is clearly looking for her treatment formula and her information on recreating it. Paintings have been pulled off the walls and even the mattress in her bedroom was removed from the bed as part of the search.
I have to admit I am impressed with her hiding place. I don’t call her my little brainiac for no reason. Now we have the satchel with her disks, flash drive, papers, and notebook, along with one shopping bag of personal necessities.
I want as few things as possible that could potentially be bugged with a tracker. The people after her are clearly determined, and I have no way of knowing whether they planned this in advance, in anticipation of her completion of her work.
We can grab anything else she needs once I determine where we are going. A safe house is one possibility, but I need more details from her first.
I call Ian from the road, and when we arrive at the high-rise building that houses McKay-Taggart, we meet up with my boss in a conference room on the same floor as the main offices.
Ian isn’t alone. Nor is he with any of the MT crew.
“You brought the girls?” I ask, shocked Ian’s twins are sitting at the table, coloring, but I have a hunch the quiet won’t last long. They are Taggarts, after all. Chaos will inevitably follow.
“Oh my God, they’re adorable!” Talia exclaims, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the children. “How old are they?”
“Five.” Ian turns, and I realize he has his infant son strapped to a carrier attached to his chest. And there are throw-up stains on his shoulder.
“Problem?” Ian asks, cocking one eyebrow, daring me to comment. “Because if there is, you should have had your emergency during business hours.”
I raise my hands in a gesture of peace. “No, no problem.” Ian won’t hurt me in front of his girls, but it is prudent to stay on my boss’s good side.
“Charlie’s home sick,” he says of his wife. “Now what’s the emergency, and who’s the client?”
“That would be me. Talia Shaw.” She extends a hand to shake.
Ian shakes his head. “I’m sticky. The girls handed me their lollipops on the way in.”
I hold back a snort of laughter. Nothing relegates big, bad Ian Taggart to the status of normal human being like his family. I almost envy him, but I remind myself I didn’t do marriage all that well the first time.
And as long as I am in this line of business, I won’t be finding a woman who can put up with the hours away from home, not to mention the danger.
Amy, my ex, was sweet but fragile, and she couldn’t deal with being married to a cop.
Bodyguard is no different. Although I have coworkers who found their significant others despite their choice of careers, I don’t believe it is in the cards for me.
I glance at Talia, taking her in at the same time as Ian, and I know what my boss sees. A petite woman, glasses giving her a smarty-pants air, I think with a grin. She changed into a comfortable pair of body-hugging leggings at her place, a long, off-the-shoulder T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers.
Soft.
Delicate.
She isn’t Amy, but she is damned close. And she needs my protection, not my lust.
“Motherfucker,” Ian mutters. “It’s like that?”
“Charlie said not to let you curse in front of the girls,” I remind him.
“Then don’t drool all over the client.”
Talia sucks in a surprised breath, and I know my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Damn Ian and his intuition. Of course, I probably am all but drooling when I look at Talia.
“Tell him what’s going on,” I say, changing the subject. “And now that you’re safe, you have time for more detail.”
I gesture to a chair and pull it out for her to sit. Just as we all settle in, the girls, Kenzie and Kala, begin to play tag around the table. And Ian ignores them.
Talia toys with that locket around her neck and begins to explain her job.
“Basically, it comes down to this. The drug can cure a congenital heart defect in utero. But that means the big drug companies lose tons of money providing patients with drugs over the course of their lifespan, whatever that might be. In my mother’s case, it wasn’t long enough,” she says, looking down at her hands.
My heart clenches at her admission. I know her history, that she lost her mom at a young age. I am lucky enough to have both parents, still happily married. I can’t imagine such a loss, times two. Her father passed away as well.
“It sounds to me like big pharmaceutical is somehow involved and they want to stop the cure from getting out there,” Ian says, interrupting my thoughts.
She nods. “Exactly. My assistant called me in a panic, but he wasn’t at the lab. Everything is gone. I’m sure they thought they acquired the entire formula, but they only have the last third. I broke it up. Part two is with us now.”
“We stopped at her apartment to pick up the formula on the way here. The place had been ransacked. And I dropped a tail on the way here,” I tell Ian.
“What? You did?” Talia shakes her head and sighs. “I didn’t see anyone,” she mutters, sounding disappointed in herself and her detecting abilities.
“Got it. How did they miss finding the formula?” Ian asks, his gaze on his girls, whose pace around the table has picked up.
“Because it was beneath the shower in a waterproof safe with her fingerprint as the entry,” I say.
And Talia squares her shoulders with pride. So damned cute, I think, cursing myself for the distraction from what is important.
Ian blinks, admiration crossing his face. One of the girls shrieks, and Ian cringes at the ear-piercing sound. “Keep it down. These guys don’t have your daddy’s ability to tune you two out,” Ian says to the screaming girls.
“Whatever you say,” one of the twins says dutifully, sounding exactly like—
“She gets her sarcasm from her mother,” Ian says too proudly, if you ask me. “Okay, so back to business. Where’s part one?” he asks, following both his girls and the story without missing a beat.
“My mentor. He’s the one who trained me to be careful.”
“Paranoid,” Ian says. “But damned smart.”
Talia nods. “He started this research before he retreated to parts unknown in Oregon. I took it over. But someone stole a piece from him years ago, and he learned to take precautions.”
“So you need to get to your mentor,” I say. “And then?”
She swallows hard. “His ex-wife, Sheila, is head of a pharmaceutical company. He can contact her and she’ll make sure the formula gets into the right hands.”
“You need to call him,” I say.
She scrunches her nose at the question. “I can’t.”
“Explain,” Ian says.
“He’s eccentric. And he trusts very few people.
So I have a special way of reaching him.
I go to Portland and I have to put a handwritten note, myself, no postmark, not mailed, in a post office box.
He comes to town the second and fourth Thursdays of the month.
I can ask him to meet with me that way. He won’t know to bring the research with him, but we can go back with him to get it. ”
I nod, mentally cataloguing what will happen next, as I have to get her from here to Portland safely.
I glance at Ian. “I need a decoy when we leave here. I’m thinking Simon and Chelsea for a match in looks.
Meanwhile we need to thoroughly scan and check her things before we take anything with us that could be bugged. ”
“Hutch!” Ian calls out, and the tall, lean, bulkier now ex-hacker walks in with a piece of red licorice hanging out of his mouth.
“That was fast,” Talia says, stunned.
“I called him in, figuring you’d need him. Search and scan,” he says, pointing to Talia and her bags.
I rise out of my seat before anyone can blink or draw breath. “I’ll handle Talia. You take her things.”
“Motherfucker,” Ian mutters again.
The girls, who had gotten quiet again, are on Hutch in an instant, pulling at his pants. “Candy! We want candy!”
“Charlie’s gonna kill me,” Ian mutters as Hutch, the man with a sugar addiction, reaches into his pocket and supplies the already rambunctious kids with a sugar rush they don’t need.
A little while later, Ian leaves, kids hanging from him as they head home.
Hutch hands me a piece of scanning equipment while he takes Talia’s personal belongings back to his office to handle his end of things and call Simon and Chelsea in for backup.
“Your boss is… interesting,” Talia says, once we are alone.
That is a good word for Ian Taggart. “You okay?” I ask her, making sure she is on solid mental ground before we start off on our trip.
“A little overwhelmed, but otherwise fine.” She flashes me a bright smile I think is forced.
“Well, I need to check you over. You know, for bugs and trackers.” And there is no way in hell I wanted Hutch’s hands anywhere near her body. The thought makes me see red.
I hold up the metal wand meant to search for a standard tracking device.
She rises to her feet. “What do you want me to do?” She meets my gaze, trust in her eyes.
Which is pretty damned amazing given our history. One we haven’t yet addressed. I have to remain professional now and not cop a feel like I did when I was a kid. No matter how much I want to.
“Hands and feet spread wide,” I say through clenched teeth.
She swallows hard and spreads her legs, then raises her arms and holds them out.
I kneel down, start at her feet, and swipe the wand down her outer leg, then travel up, from foot to inner thigh, holding my breath at how close I am to her body and her sex, wishing I could pause for further exploration, cursing myself for the inappropriate thoughts.
I slide the metal over her belly and around to her back. Up and over her curvy ass. Her breasts, noticing her nipples puckering as I breathe close. I even scan her eyeglass frames and the locket on her neck.
By the time I finish, sweat dampens the back of my neck, and I am hard as stone.
“Are you done?” she asks breathlessly.
“Yeah.” I clear my throat and rise to my feet.
“Ready to get moving, kids?” Hutch strides back into the room and deposits her belongings on the table. “All clear on my end.”