#2
Zach stood in the dining room, the small table serving as their conference room. Too small table. Everything felt too small right now. Including his skin.
I’m not saying he’s the right person. He’s the right now person.
It hurt. Ached. The words reminded him that none of this was going to be easy, and he had zero idea what the hell he was doing. Of course he was the right-now guy. He didn’t have a fucking future.
“So you’re the Lou of the team?”
Devi was chatting with Parker and Tim like this was all a normal, everyday business conference and not a meeting of three different intelligence teams and the rogue agent they were all hunting or working. Like she hadn’t let that rogue agent fuck her like the world was going to end.
She had poured everyone tea like this was a happy afternoon gathering and not a recitation of all of his sins. And his shitastic past. If she thought he wasn’t Mr. Right before, wait until she heard about his biological dad’s rap sheet.
Lou sat across from Tim, TJ at her side.
“It’s so good to meet other techs. We don’t ever get to talk.”
Tim was a puppy of a man. The kid was maybe twenty-two and looked like he smelled like maple syrup. With shaggy golden brown hair, oversized glasses, and… Was that an actual pocket protector? Anyway, he was kind of the quintessential nerd. Except he didn’t mind hitting on every woman in sight.
Of course Tim probably had a squeaky-clean record and parents who didn’t treat his life like a revolving door in a house of horrors.
“There’s a reason.”
Parker was all charm now that Lou was in the room. He was polite and solicitous to both women and seemed friendly with TJ. Though naturally he looked at Zach with an air of suspicion.
Where the hell was Kala? Where was Coop? If they were off doing it somewhere before they had to pretend they weren’t married, he was going to punch his brother. Not Kala. She punched back.
“We get all the techs together and you start talking about how dumbass we operatives are,”
Parker said with the smooth smile of a player. But Zach noticed his eyes kept looking toward the door where Miss Magenta would enter.
Instead, Arthur moved in. Henry. Whatever they were calling him.
He stood in the doorway, cold blue eyes taking in the Canadians.
“Gentlemen, you can call me Mr. Bishop.”
Parker sat back, and it was easy to see he was trying to figure out how to handle the older man.
“Well, you’re certainly not Dr. Arthur Beddoe. I can see why you picked the cover. Rural vet with a simple website. No real web presence. I suspect your target didn’t pay much attention to your work and didn’t go into town often, so he wouldn’t run into the real Dr. Beddoe.”
“And yet he seemed to deal with a bunch of health problems with the animals.”
Zach’s head was still reeling when it came to Henry and his daughter.
“I helped him vaccinate goats earlier today. Or I guess he faked that.”
“The goats are perfectly safe from clostridium perfringens types C and D, as well as tetanus,”
Henry announced.
“And I did handle the horse’s leg earlier this week. I have a vet I know who walked me through the whole procedure. I assure you no animals were harmed in the working of this op. My wife would have my head.”
“Target?”
Devi asked.
“He’s talking about me. Mr. Bishop and his partner, Lacey Rook—almost certainly not her real name, but we won’t be using many of those today—were instructed to investigate me,”
Zach explained.
“I apparently wasn’t as good at hiding my evil ways as I thought I was.”
“Hey,”
Henry began, his gaze shifting to sympathy.
“We all know you’re not evil, Zachary. I know this is going to come as a surprise, but Mr. Lemon didn’t ask me to investigate you because he thought you were bad. He thought you were getting in over your head and wanted someone to watch your back since you wouldn’t let your team do it.”
“I know his name is Ian,”
Parker said.
“We don’t have to use all the ridiculous Agency names. Let’s go with first names if we’re worried about being identified, though I would like to point out that Ian knows pretty much everything about me, and it doesn’t feel fair.”
“Then you should be better about hiding things,”
Henry said, taking the chair at the head of the table.
“I don’t like the games either, but sometimes you’re compelled to play. Sometimes you don’t have a choice.”
Because like Big Tag’s daughters, Henry’s wanted to play, and he felt the need to watch over her. He wasn’t so sure, though, about Big Tag’s reasons for investigating him.
“So are you planning on letting the Agency know we’re here?”
Parker asked the question casually, but there was no mistaking the undertone.
“He’s not calling anyone.”
Kala walked in. She stopped at the door and managed a soft smile.
“Hey, Ben. Thanks for the intel. I needed to find Devi Taggart, and you came through. It means a lot to me. I’m sorry about the rude welcome. I didn’t tell Mr. Bishop you were in town. I didn’t want to blow your cover.”
“It’s fine. I would have made contact sometime tonight anyway.”
Parker straightened his shoulders, and his eyes seemed to eat her up.
“I’m glad we’re working together properly now. You look good, Maggie.”
She looked like her twin. He’d never truly considered how good an actress Kala was, but there were Kenzie Taggart vibes in the air now. She sat down beside Parker.
“You do, too.”
She sighed.
“You need to know that Cooper is on his way in. We needed a pilot. TJ can barely drive a car.”
“Rude,”
Lou complained. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses as though she was waiting for the drama to start.
“I don’t love to drive,”
TJ admitted.
Kala ignored him.
“Also, the four of us going on vacation together won’t cause any real suspicion in our handlers. They’re used to it.”
“So why did you need to find Devi Taggart outside of Agency overview?”
Parker asked and then shook his head.
“Scratch that. I get it. You don’t want Zach there arrested. But I thought you didn’t want the big guy to know what you were doing. I’m trying to get a lay of the land here.”
Cooper chose that moment to enter, and he had forgotten to button his top button. He looked like he’d rolled around for a while with his brand-new wife. Dumb ass. Henry’s eyes closed briefly as though he was holding back on the lecture.
Parker’s eyes widened, taking in the state of Cooper’s shirt.
“Parker,”
Cooper said with a frown.
“McKay,”
Parker returned with an equally dour expression.
Tim leaned over and whispered Devi’s way.
“Cooper liked Maggie and for a long time Ben thought Maggie was with Cooper, but she was all like no, eww, we pretend for ops and I like you. But Cooper got all freaked out when she almost died. Like soap opera hero freaked out.”
“I did not.”
Cooper frowned Tim’s way.
“And you weren’t even there.”
“But the security cam footage was,”
Tim replied, utterly non-plussed that a six-foot, five-inch Navy pilot looked like he was going to eat him for lunch. He was too busy flirting with Devi.
“It was a lot, and Ben was super sad because all he thinks about is Maggie.”
“Hey,”
Parker began.
Devi grinned, turning that high-wattage charm on Tim.
“No, tell me more, Tim. I’m new to this whole spy thing. I got involved with Zach at a lifestyle club. I thought he was an out-of-work student my brother knew. He was trying to get a job at my uncle’s restaurant. Washing dishes, but nope. He turns out to be a big old spy, and now some weird doctor person wants to murder me because my last name is Taggart. So I’m interested in how everything works. Maggie loves Ben now and not Cooper, who she just played around with.”
At least she had the story down. She was having way too much fun with this. He knew she would want to call Daisy and Brianna as soon as possible.
“We don’t need to get into this.”
Henry valiantly tried to stop the snowball that was starting to roll downhill.
“I don’t think they’re doing it yet,”
Tim whispered her way.
“If they are, then Ben is awfully uptight, but now it looks like Cooper’s getting some and this could become a fight.”
“I am not with Cooper,”
Kala stated, sounding more like herself.
“We are not together,”
Cooper agreed.
“I’m over that stupid crush.”
“Yes, he is.”
Lucy entered with a breezy smile. She looked Cooper up and down and tsked, her British accent perfect again.
“And I did not properly dress you after our reunion.”
She rebuttoned Cooper’s shirt.
“Sorry about that.”
All of the American eyes went straight to Kala, who was probably about to commit murder.
“Sorry. Cooper and I worked together several times before. We haven’t seen each other in ages, but let me tell you the chemistry is still there.”
Lucy ran an arm through Cooper’s and leaned against him like he was her beloved boyfriend.
“At least he won’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“Fuck me,”
Henry said under his breath.
But Parker seemed to buy it. He relaxed and leaned over, whispering something in Kala’s ear that made her go pale. Still, she smiled gamely and seemed to agree.
“If you two lovebirds could sit down, I think we have a lot to talk about,”
Kala said in her most professional tone.
“As for why I left my handler out of it, well, I’ve come to suspect he leaves his team out of some key decisions, so it felt like fair play. Mr. Bishop, are you or are you not working under direct orders from my handler?”
“I wouldn’t call them orders,”
Henry replied.
“I don’t work for Ian. I work with him from time to time, and I trust him. My operative, Lacey, and I were in the perfect position to work our way into Zach’s world.”
He could guess what that position had been.
“You were already in my mother’s world.”
Lucy laced her fingers through Cooper’s and dragged him to the table, sitting them together across from Kala, who would likely play in her entrails soon.
“Mr. Bishop and I have connections in certain underground movements, including a couple Shannon Reed is involved in. My specific mission for the last couple of years has been to investigate Disrupt Europe. We’ve worked with MI6 trying to track down the people who attempted to assassinate several members of Europe’s royal families a few years back. That was when we became aware of the bombmaker. It took us some time and another one of our associates to confirm the identity of her. At this point we believed the two missions were not connected. We knew Zach was involved in some way, but we didn’t suspect Shannon Reed was his mother.”
“Like Lacey explained, in the beginning we were tasked with figuring out what Zach was doing and if he was a direct threat to Ian’s team,”
Henry continued.
“Threat?”
Parker stuck on the word.
It was time for his confession.
“When I was assigned as the military liaison for Ian’s team, my real mission was to report back to my Army bosses and a certain contingent at the Agency who did not like the thought of Ian being in charge of a team. His team is considered experimental, and some people thought it was Ian’s way of acquiring power. I was sent in to find the dirt so they could break up the team while keeping the assets they wanted. Like Kara and Lou. They would have quietly put Ian and Charlotte out to pasture.”
“Is it experimental because they’re married?”
Parker asked.
“They are married, right? I think he’s referred to the redhead as his wife before.”
It was as close to the truth as he wanted to get.
“Yes, though there are other ways the team bucks Agency traditions. Operatives don’t work with the same teams. It tends to lead to drama.”
“It leads to us caring about the people around us,”
Lou huffed.
“And not sacrificing them for an op. Which is why they think we’ll fail.”
Henry’s brow rose.
“I’ve heard you don’t have that problem, Mr. Parker.”
That caught Zach’s attention. A few months back Parker had allowed Lou to be in a dangerous position in order to confirm his theory that Huisman was working with a German mercenary. Oh, he saved her after he got the bad guy to fess up, but it had been a close thing.
If Henry knew that, he was talking to Ian far more often and with more frankness than Zach had imagined. If Ian told him, then Ian trusted Henry.
Ian knew. Oh, he might not have known all of it, but he’d known. Zach hadn’t fooled him, and he’d likely wrecked his whole fucking life for nothing. He could have taken it all to Ian and maybe he would have come out of it with his career and freedom intact.
Or Ian would have tossed him to the wolves, and he would already be in jail.
“I’ve explained how badly I feel about what happened in Dallas. I would never put Lou in danger again. I was…desperate,”
Parker said with a long sigh.
“Believe me, Maggie and I have had this conversation, and I have apologized to Lou. That day taught me a lot about who I am and who I want to be, who I’ve allowed Manny to turn me into.”
“From what I understand, you were childhood friends with Dr. Huisman,”
Henry began.
If he was this close to Ian, he would already know the story, but Zach knew a lot of operatives would rather hear the story from the person than read a report. There were so many things that couldn’t be put into reports. Body language. The way a person spoke. How his eyes tightened before he started, as though he knew this would be painful.
Parker nodded.
“We were good friends when we were young. Then his father was killed and he went to live in Montreal with his grandfather. When we met up again, he was different, but I didn’t know how different.”
“He blames Ian for his father’s death,”
Kala explained, her eyes on where Lucy had a hand on Cooper’s arm.
“We believe his grandfather taught him this despite the fact that it’s verifiable Ian was not working for the Agency at the time and was not in Canada. It was a rogue CIA operative who killed the elder Dr. Huisman.”
“He wasn’t rogue at the time,”
Cooper corrected.
“But that’s not the point. What Kara is trying to say is Huisman is a dangerous nut bag with a delusional complex when it comes to our handlers.”
“He’s beyond dangerous,”
Parker interrupted.
“Don’t dismiss him as crazy. He’s very functional and knows how to bring people to his side. There’s a reason he hasn’t been arrested yet. I feel certain Ian had enough on him after what happened in Winchester.”
Kala nodded.
“The Agency wants to wait and see what happens.”
“Huisman bad.”
Zach was tired of waiting.
“We got it. How is he connected to my father? And how did he find me?”
“We believe he had someone follow you from the house where Miss Magenta and Miss Taggart were held,”
Parker explained.
“We tracked you going to a small private airfield, and we also have evidence of a vehicle following you. From there he would have had a tech monitor the flights going in and out. I’m sure you tried to cover your tracks, but he has billions of dollars to play with, and he doesn’t mind spending them.”
Henry’s expression went dark.
“Then my operative’s cover is blown.”
Lucy cursed under her breath.
“I got called into a meeting. They want me in London the day after tomorrow. I wasn’t supposed to meet with my Disrupt Europe contacts for another month, but yesterday they set up a meeting saying it was urgent.”
He’d fucked everything up.
“Lacey, I’m so sorry.”
She sighed, and at least her hand wasn’t on Cooper anymore. She held them together as though she needed to make sure she didn’t punch anything.
“I’m sorry as well,”
Parker said solicitously. The man knew how to look sympathetic.
“If I realized you were Agency, I certainly would have given Maggie and her team a heads-up.”
“Well, next time I’ll have you take pictures of who I need you to follow. I would have recognized them,”
Kala replied.
“And taken a step back. The truth is I have to call my handler now. I thought I could take Devi out of here, but I suspect that’s going to be hard at this point.”
“She needs protection.”
Whether she cared about him or not, he wasn’t going to leave her alone.
“And she needs to take that protection seriously. She had a bodyguard.”
“Apparently, I had more than a bodyguard. You had someone watching me, too, didn’t you, Zach?”
Devi accused, but her expression was more sweetly bratty than pissed off. Something about her family showing up had put her in a good mood. Despite her telling her brother she wasn’t serious about him, Zach liked how comfortable she was.
“It wasn’t an intelligence person.”
He would tell her the whole truth whenever he could.
“I hired an old Army friend of mine to keep tabs on you. That was all. I think it scared the shit out of him when he caught you shimmying out of that bathroom window and walking into a trap. He has some excellent pictures of Lena escorting you into the club. The trouble was he couldn’t see the gun at your back, so he wasn’t sure until they dragged you out that something had gone wrong.”
Kala nodded as though he explained something important.
“Ah, well, there’s the secondary 911 call. He didn’t stick around though, did he?”
Zach shrugged.
“He called me after he called the cops, and that’s when I used a friend’s login to follow Miss Magenta’s tracker.”
“But I thought he was using something to negate our trackers,”
Tim pointed out.
“I’ve been trying to find a solution because if I can’t keep up with Ben in the field, I’m useless.”
Lou waved her hand.
“I already solved it. I’ll send you some specs.”
Smart Lou. Tricky Lou.
“I am eternally grateful for your genius.”
“And I’m happy that at least one of you listened to me,”
Lou admitted.
“Everyone else was super freaked that Huisman would turn off Kara’s tracker. I had explained it to them, but did they listen? Nope.”
“I did, babe,”
TJ said encouragingly.
“And the nanites are going to be even cooler. Lou’s programmed some tiny machines to organize themselves as clothes. And if you get mustard on your shirt, they clean it up for you.”
“Yes, and sometimes they decide for themselves what the operative should be wearing,”
Kala added with a long-suffering sigh.
“I’ll stick to cotton, thank you. It doesn’t decide it’s too hot and shift to a string bikini in the middle of a restaurant patio.”
“I told you it was because of the big fountain. They thought you were going swimming,”
Lou argued.
“I like my clothes to not think, Lou,”
Kala replied.
“Oh, I’m excited to play with those.”
Devi practically clapped her hands together like a young girl who got to visit the castle with all the princesses.
Lou gave her a grin.
“I can’t wait to see some designs.”
“We’re getting off track.”
Henry seemed determined to deal with the actual problems at hand.
“What do we know about Ray White?”
“I can send you the dossier I’ve put together on him,”
Tim offered.
“He was a small-time drug dealer in Southern California when he met Shannon Reed.”
“My mother.”
Zach wanted to control some of this. After all, it was his history.
“She was a chemistry student at Stanford, and she decided the best way to start her career was by designing new drugs. They were more potent and cheaper, and my dad connected himself to a cartel, basically pimping out my mother’s skills.”
“Shannon Reed, by all accounts, was brilliant,”
Parker said softly, more of that sympathy easing out.
“She is brilliant,”
Tim corrected.
“I’ve studied what we have on her bombs, and the construction is revolutionary.”
“They kill people,”
Zach pointed out.
“In easy to cover ways.”
“But there are other uses for the things she’s creating.”
Lou looked his way.
“Almost everything humans create can be used for both good and evil. Your mother has created a structure that can be used in bombs, but also potentially in engines.”
“Have we thought about the applications when it comes to potential cold fusion?”
Tim asked.
Lou nodded.
“I dream about it at night. I would love to get my hands on one that didn’t explode. So far I’ve only gotten to inspect the remains. I would love schematics.”
“I can help you with that. I might have some of her early designs,”
Zach admitted. He would feel comfortable giving them to Lou. He wasn’t sure about anyone else.
“That would help enormously,”
Lou agreed.
“But I meant what I said. All technological advances have a dark side. This one might someday give us the key to limitless clean energy.”
He couldn’t imagine a world where the corporations allowed that. He worried his mother’s genius would always be about crime, but this wasn’t some philosophical exercise. Devi’s hand came over and rubbed against his forearm, and suddenly it didn’t seem so terrible to be here.
“I’m glad to hear that, Lou. As for my parents, they were kind of the match made in hell. My mom did her first stint in prison after I was born. My aunt quit the military so I would have a stable place to live since my father was also in prison. She got out and everything was fine until his time was up and he came looking for her.”
“And he was involved with a Mexican cartel, right?”
Tim asked, looking at his notes.
“Mexican and then Honduran. My father tried to play the two off each other, and it’s what led to my mom deciding the heat was too much. After her last prison stint she came home for a couple of years, but he showed up again, and that was when she hit the road.”
He’d been young at the time and hadn’t known that his brother had been born during one of those prison sentences. Born and then adopted by Alex and Eve McKay, who had no idea how the baby they were going to raise was related to Alex’s best friend Ian Taggart. Zach’s aunt Joyce had worked with him in the military and thought someone in Ian’s orbit would be the best guardian for the nephew she would never be able to claim.
“Honestly, I know very little about what he’s been doing since the last time he tried to intimidate my aunt into telling him where Mom went. I was sixteen, and he set me on my ass for trying to protect her. He should see how I plan to protect the women in my life now.”
“Your father moved into arms dealing, and we think we know why,”
Parker explained.
He could guess.
“He got my mother involved. He had no talent. Everything he had he owed to what she could do, and then he inevitably screwed things up. From what I understand my mother got involved in some underground groups, specifically ones rooted in environmental activism.”
“Yes, that’s where I found her,”
Lucy acknowledged.
“Though you should know she’s kept quiet. I believe she was forced to build those first bombs. Or maybe she made them for her groups. Some of the groups she’s involved in blow shit up to stop deforestation. Your mom’s bombs are easy to use and targeted. She could have kept any loss of life down to a minimum. Actually, now that I think about it, the way the bombs are designed would also have protected the land around the blast.”
Kala had a look of grudging respect on her face.
“That makes sense. So Ray gets out of prison and needs some cash and can’t get it himself. He goes looking for his ex because she’s always been his meal ticket. When he does find her, she’s building bombs for activist groups, and he sees a new way to make her pay.”
Zach groaned as the truth hit him.
“My father was the one who introduced her to The Jester.”
Devi gasped.
“Isn’t that the arms dealer person Tristan pretended to be after you murdered him and let Tris think he did it? That was sweet of you, by the way. Tris needed a major ego boost.”
Not the way he would describe it.
“I did it so he wouldn’t know I had figured out my mom worked for The Jester. I didn’t realize my dad was likely the one who introduced them. We can’t know she was forced. From what my aunt says my father had power over her.”
“That might have been true when she was a young woman, but I assure you she’s afraid of him today,”
Lucy explained.
“You’ve talked directly to her?”
Parker asked.
That would be news to Zach.
“Not yet, but I have an asset on the inside of one of her groups who has.”
Lucy sat back, watching the Canadians.
“And we’re going to trust this asset?”
Kala challenged.
“Yes, we do,”
Henry replied.
“The asset is above reproach.”
He expected Kala to argue. Instead, she took a second and then nodded.
“All right, we’ll work from a place of trust with Bishop’s asset.”
Devi slid her chair closer and leaned over, whispering in his ear.
“It’s Henry’s wife, so you can trust what he’s saying. At least that’s the only person I can think of who Kala wouldn’t vet herself.”
It was good to have his own interpreter, but Parker was watching them, and he didn’t want to give away that Devi knew more than she should. So he turned slightly and kissed her like that was what she planned on doing all along.
She stiffened slightly and then his adorable brat got into it.
“Guys, come on,” TJ said.
Devi sat back with a grin. “Sorry.”
“So you’ve made up with him for lying to you?”
Parker asked.
Devi shrugged.
“He’s good in bed.”
Well, if he wanted a deeply romantic woman, perhaps he shouldn’t have fallen in love with Erin Taggart’s daughter.
“The question now is where do we go from here? Obviously, I’ve fucked up Bishop’s operation.”
“Yes, you have, and along with it years of undercover work,”
Lucy said with no small amount of bitterness.
“If I’m lucky I can go home and play deputy and catch speeders.”
“I could only be so lucky,”
Henry said under his breath.
“Well, at least we know someone is going to be happy. My mother doesn’t particularly like my job.”
Lucy sighed as though resigned. And then perked up.
“Although maybe I can work with Coop again. I’ve spent all my time with patchouli granolas. I miss wayward pilots who make bad decisions after too much tequila. You remember that night in Cancun? I love it when terrorists go to luxury resorts.”
All eyes were on Kala again. Well, the ones who knew she was Kala.
Cooper sighed and gave Lucy a halfhearted smile and patted her hand.
“Yep, fun times.”
“Well, I’ve got more fun times ahead because Disrupt might want me dead, but I’m meeting Shannon Reed tomorrow night in Liverpool,”
Lucy announced.
“She wants me to bring her son.”
So that’s what she’d been doing all day.
“We’re going to Liverpool then.”
He hoped she had a big enough place because he was almost certain they would have more guests.