#2
Zach held her in his arms and didn’t give a fuck about the wound he’d taken while he and Cooper had fought their way through Huisman’s mansion to get their women. When he’d learned Devi had been kidnapped along with Kala, he’d almost lost his mind, but he’d known he had to do something. He’d put everything he and Lacey had been working for in jeopardy, but he wouldn’t take it back.
Devi had been acting out and putting herself in danger again and again. She wanted his attention? She had it.
“Is she finally asleep?”
Lacey asked.
“I think so.”
He was pissed about the drugs even though he knew he would probably have been forced to do it himself. Devi was mad, and a mad Devi was a chaotic Devi, and he couldn’t have chaos right now. When they got to the farm, Devi could get as angry as she wanted. For the most part the cows and the chickens wouldn’t give a damn.
“You could have gotten arrested.”
Lacey was driving, and she wasn’t happy about it.
“Taggart should have taken you in the minute he saw you.”
All the intelligence agencies out for his blood were a point of contention for Lacey. She had her own work to do, and Zach was fucking it all up. It was precisely why he’d spent the last couple of weeks in the Colorado wilderness with his aunt. He understood her frustration.
“I knew he wouldn’t.”
That was a bit of a lie. He’d thought Big Tag wouldn’t arrest him. He hadn’t been certain. Coop was more of a risk. His brother had discovered the truth about their relationship in Colorado, and he had not taken the news well. Naturally Kala had, and she’d listened to him and chosen to leave him be.
For now.
But when he’d walked up to Cooper and his former team this evening, there had been nothing but affection for him. Well, Big Tag called him a dumbass, but that was practically a declaration of love from him.
It filled him with hope, and wasn’t that the most dangerous of all emotions because he knew deep down this didn’t end in a white picket fence and two point five kids with the woman of his dreams.
There was a reckoning coming, but not until the people he loved were safe. Once he’d found his mother and gotten her to a secure location and ensured all of her research and notes were destroyed, he would deal with the fallout. He didn’t intend to spend the rest of his life on the run. He would stand in front of the people he cared about—the family he could have had—and reveal all of his secrets. Every single one.
“You were lucky, Zach. I’m surprised you’re being this reckless.”
“That’s what happens when you’re in love.”
She groaned. He should have expected it. Lacey Rook wasn’t much of a romantic. She was far more practical. In the two years he’d known her, he’d never actually seen her hit on anyone. He still wasn’t sure what her type was. Man. Woman. No idea. He did know she had specific tastes when it came to food. She was a vegan. They were likely in for some meatless living in the place she was taking them to.
“Now I think you’re even more reckless,”
she replied as she turned down the road that would lead to the private airfield. Super private. Like the Agency hopefully didn’t know about it private.
His life now revolved around hiding from the Agency, and that meant going to some unsavory places. Was he doing the right thing? He immediately answered his own question. Zach Reed followed his instincts, and he knew this woman.
“I couldn’t leave her. She’s on Huisman’s radar now, and she’s been ditching her guards. She’s here apparently because she wriggled out of a bathroom window to prove she didn’t need one.”
He sighed and stroked her hair. Damn but he’d missed all that curly red stuff. And her freckles. He gently traced the line of them that went across her nose and cheekbones. So fucking pretty.
“I think if I let her uncle take her back, she would try again.”
“Well, now you know why I sedated her,”
Lacey said with another huff.
“Zach, you have to know we can’t keep her.”
“I don’t see why not.”
The farm was private and quiet, and he rather thought Devi would prove reasonable when she remembered what had happened tonight. She loved her family. She wouldn’t want them in the line of fire.
Of course maybe she would wake up and be so happy he saved her from Huisman that she fell into his arms and proclaimed her love and willingness to be a wanted criminal with him.
Sure, that was happening.
Lacey snorted.
“Because it’s called kidnapping, and it tends to get nasty. Her parents are going to lose their shit when they don’t know what happened to her. Unless she doesn’t have the kind of Taggart parents you so often describe.”
“Kala was conscious when I took Devi out of there, but I get your point. It’s not the same as knowing she’s being taken care of.”
He would have to deal with that.
“You gotta burner in here?”
She popped open the glove compartment and tossed him a small cell. It wasn’t smart. It wasn’t luxurious. It would get the job done, and no one would be able to trace it. Even if they could, the signal would put them in Virginia, and they would be gone in an hour.
“Are you going to call her uncle and tell him where we are so we can both go to jail?”
He wasn’t the only one with the authorities after him. Lacey had a long rap sheet and her own reasons for staying underground.
“No, I’m calling someone who will be reasonable about this whole thing.”
He dialed the number, and it immediately picked up.
“This is Erin. Who the hell is this?”
The woman he wanted as his mother-in-law sounded irritated.
“Erin, it’s Zach.”
A pause came over the line, and she sighed as though relieved.
“Well, hello, Zach. You have some explaining to do, son. A lot of it, actually. But first, do you know anything about what’s happened to my daughter? Ian hasn’t called yet.”
Zach wasn’t surprised she was calm. Erin Taggart had been Army intelligence, and she was cool under pressure.
“I have her and she’s safe.”
“You? What were you doing with Huisman?”
She stopped.
“Damn it, Zach. Did you hear about it and go in?”
Another relief. She hadn’t immediately thought he was working with Huisman.
“I monitor several sites Huisman works with when he needs muscle. I also might have someone on the inside with the Disrupt organization, and she tipped me off that something was going down. You should also know that I had someone watching Devi. She managed to give him the slip along with her bodyguard. I wasn’t going to leave her there. Erin, I know I have a lot of things to explain, but the one thing I have never once lied about is how I feel about your daughter. I walked into the op knowing I might be arrested because I was not going to leave her in his hands. I won’t allow that fucker to touch her again.”
“Well, good luck because she’s proven to be stubborn when it comes to her own safety. Can I talk to her?”
“I can’t believe you rang up her mum,”
Lacey said under her breath.
He ignored her. He could see the small runway up ahead. They would take off from there, land at a private airfield in upstate New York, and make their way to the UK from there.
“I’m afraid she’s asleep.”
“You mean you drugged her.”
The sound became muffled as though she put a hand over the receiver. She still talked loud enough he could hear her.
“Theo, calm down. I don’t think he wants to hurt her.”
Devi’s dad would be way harder to deal with.
“I don’t. I’m trying everything I can to make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”
“Well, you could turn yourself in,”
Erin pointed out.
“Then Huisman wouldn’t need to grab Devi.”
She didn’t know the whole situation.
“Oh, but he would. I assure you he would grab her, and I would find myself needing to break out of prison. He doesn’t want me in prison, and he’ll do what it takes to have me out here in the field where he wants me.”
“Why does he want you, Zach?”
Erin put the question out there. The question he hoped to never have to answer.
“Because my mother is the bombmaker.”
A whistle came over the line that proved Erin knew more than she should.
“Damn. All right. This is probably already way more classified than I should be involved in.”
“I can send you everything I have. My career is already over, and we both know there are two ways I get out of this.”
“Prison or a coffin,”
Erin answered with a weary sigh.
“I’m sure that’s what you think, but you have to know Ian has some pull.”
“Which he isn’t going to want to use on me. I lied to my team. I had my reasons, but I lied to them.”
Here was the big one.
“I lied to my brother for years.”
“No one cares about that.”
He heard Theo talking in the background, so it was a pretty good bet they were on speaker.
“Who doesn’t have a sibling or two who shows up out of the blue? It’s the kidnapping my daughter part that I’m upset about.”
So everyone knew.
“Zach, what my husband is trying to say is you handled the situation the best way you could, but now it might be time to come in and let the family figure out what to do,”
Erin said in that reasonable tone.
“I’m close to finding my mother,”
he told her.
“I’m working with some people I trust, and once I make sure she’s safe from Huisman, I’ll do exactly that. I’ll turn myself in to Langley.”
“You will fucking not turn yourself in,”
Erin practically snarled.
“Zachary Reed, you listen to me. I am trusting you with one of the most precious people in my life. If you are lying to me or playing her then you should turn yourself into Langley because they might, and I mean might, be able to protect you from what I’ll do. If you’re not, then all you will be doing is putting your team in the position of having to break you out. You fix this and you come to Dallas and we will find a way out.”
“Or he could drop our daughter off with her cousins and go about his business,”
Theo said in the background.
He was not going to cry. Nope. He’d been alone and hungry and cold for freaking weeks. He’d felt his singularity in ways he never imagined before, and the fact that Erin Taggart wanted him to come home… Home. That fucking word. Had he ever truly had one.
“I can’t, Theo. It’s too dangerous. I’ll find a way to get what intel I have to Ian, and I’ll set something up so you can talk to Devi. If I think she’ll take her safety seriously, we can talk.”
“I expect a call tomorrow,”
Theo said.
“When you settle in,”
Erin corrected.
“Tell my daughter I love her and we’re going to have a long discussion about what it means to have a bodyguard. Or apparently two. She got away from the one she knew about and the one she didn’t. So there’s that. Don’t take your eyes off her, Zach. I will hold you personally responsible for her safety from now on.”
It was how he wanted it.
“I’ll take care of her.”
“Also, tell her Eve survived. Barely. She’s going to be okay.”
His heart squeezed at the news. Cooper had only told him part of the story since they’d been preoccupied with saving their women at the time. Devi had been through a lot of traumatic shit today.
“Good. I’ll let her know. Talk to you soon.”
He hung up, rolled down the window, and let the burner fly out to the highway.
“Well, she seems like an interesting woman,”
Lacey commented.
“Like you don’t know her. I’m sure you have a file on all the Taggarts.”
Lacey kept copious files on everyone she came into contact with, and that didn’t have to be physical contact.
In her world, Lacey was considered an expert on intel gathering.
She knew where all the bodies were buried, who buried them, and how much dirt they got under their nails while doing it.
“Not for the reasons you think,”
she admitted.
“They’re not on my organization’s radar. Look, the Taggarts don’t have anything to do with the people I work with. They’re strictly about saving lives, and I appreciate that. I have nothing against them, but they are Agency and have ties to law enforcement across the globe who could try to stop my friends from doing what they need to do.”
Save the planet. It was what Lacey Rook wanted to do. Even if she used some fairly illegal tactics to do it. It was precisely how she had contacts who knew his mother.
“The Taggarts have never been involved in the green underground, so you have intel on them because they’re connected to me.”
She turned slightly and gave him that uptick of her lips that always made him think she knew more than she was saying.
“They’re connected in ways you haven’t thought of yet. But I do trust them to do the right thing for the most part. What I worry about is the people who want to take them down. Wasn’t that part of your job?”
He looked at the woman on his lap. How much did Devi know? What had his team told her? She knew he’d lied, but did she realize how far it went.
“It was how I got the position. I was supposed to spy on them, gather evidence to help bring the team down. I did a terrible job, and that’s why no one at the Agency will save me.”
No one except his team. Maybe.
Lacey took a deep breath and seemed to settle down. She took the exit ramp that led to the small airfield.
“Then we have to save ourselves. Let’s start with getting you stitched up and then I’ll give you your new ID. I’ll have someone meet me in New York with ID for our guest.”
This was what Lacey did best. She could be in the middle of a Bulgarian wheat field and pull a hacker out of her ass. Or something like that. Lacey always knew how to get out of bad situations.
Maybe she had some advice on how to handle Devi.
“Thanks. I am sorry for the trouble, but I couldn’t leave her.”
She sighed.
“Well, I suppose it’s nice for you to find a woman to love. Not brilliant timing, though, since no matter what Erin Taggart thinks, you’re in a hell of a muddle, mate, and we haven’t even gotten to the bad part yet.”
He was. And his side hurt. He didn’t think he was bleeding out, but he might not notice.
The only thing that mattered was the woman in his arms.
He went silent as they approached the airfield, simply reveling in being able to hold her.
It was the quiet before the inevitable storm, and he wanted to enjoy it. But he still asked the question.
“What’s the bad part?”
Lacey looked at him through the rearview mirror.
“I didn’t find your mum. Not yet. But I did find someone else. Someone who could be way more dangerous to you.”
He didn’t want to know but he did. There was only one person in the world who could unsettle him more than his brilliant, troubled mother, and that was the man who troubled her.
“What’s dear old Dad up to?”
“Well, I’m almost certain he’s working for Huisman now.”
And just like that all his peace was shattered.
His father was back, and his world was infinitely more dangerous.