Chapter 15 #4
“Tay’s right,” Rhys agreed. “An operation like KDT will have access to the kind of technology that can track the progress of a piece of mail through the postal system. They could be working on it right now.”
And if not right now, it was only a matter of time. The chilling thought brought with it a unique clarity. “If they do make contact that way, then why don’t we use it?” Taylor said. “There must be a way to use me as bait.”
The office erupted, with objections flying left, right and center.
Nick was furious, Rachel forceful and determined to put across her arguments against the idea, but it was Rhys who stunned them all into silence with a short, sharp, two-word roar that cut through the noise like a hot knife through butter.
“Hell, no!”
Even when the animosity between them had been at its peak, she’d never seen him so enraged. Touched though she was, Taylor had to disagree, and took advantage of the ensuing silence to do so.
“Rhys, think about it,” she urged. She turned to the man on the opposite side of the desk.
“What do you think, Special Agent Livingston? All they can get from Pops is my false name and the address of the starting point for any mail he sends to me. Do you think they have the technology to use that and track me all the way here?”
“Weapons manufacturing is a high-tech business, Ms. Markham. It’s also notoriously secretive about projects in development. And while there may be some merit in your suggestion, you’re asking me to put you in an extremely dangerous position?—”
“Do you have a choice?” Taylor demanded. “They’ve taken my father, who I haven’t seen or spoken to for years. I have a stake in this. So, tell me—what other options do you have?”
“There’s always a choice, Ms. Markham. They might have the name you’ve been using and the first address in the chain, but they don’t have a recent picture of you. One of my agents could pose as you—if we were to go ahead with such a rash plan.”
“Don’t you think that’s a dangerous assumption to make?” she countered. “That they haven’t seen a picture of me, recent or otherwise?
“Not necessarily. Have you sent your father a picture of yourself recently?”
“No,” she admitted quietly, “but it’s not as if we’re dealing with a situation where a parent was separated from a young child who’s grown into an adult.
I haven’t changed that much since I came to Texas, so if Pops had a photo of me and they found it, they’ll have a pretty good idea of what I look like and they’d know your agent wasn’t me.
Unless I have a doppelg?nger in your office? ”
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“You’re not doing it.”
They’d barely pulled away from the parking lot at the FBI field office when Rhys seized the opportunity to lay down the law. If Taylor thought the argument had ended in Livingston’s office, she was sadly mistaken.
She removed her laser-like focus from the back of Nick’s head and aimed it at him. “Did you not listen to what Special Agent Livingston said?”
He’d listened, all right—he’d listened very closely and liked none of it. Objectively, the plan sounded feasible, but objectivity didn’t come into play when it was his woman putting herself in the line of fire.
“For your information, fy nghariad, I listened to it, analyzed it, and dissected it, and I still don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Nick concurred. “We can only hope the field office in Las Vegas comes up with something from that end.”
Before they’d left the meeting, Livingston had assured them he would be liaising with his counterparts in Nevada, offering a glimmer of hope that the perpetrators could be apprehended before their efforts to trace Charles Markham’s daughter brought them to Texas.
“Then they’d better come up with it quickly,” Rhys growled. “And until this is over, you’d better get used to having me around, because I’m not leaving you alone for one moment.”
Taylor’s eyebrows arched. “Have you thought that statement through, genius? It could get embarrassing.”
His ability to be embarrassed had been surgically removed during basic training. “I don’t think so. Nothing you could say or do would ever be embarrassing… for me.”
Taylor pinched her lips and snorted. “That’s what you think. Challenge accepted.”
And with that, she lifted her chin and deliberately turned her gaze to the scenery speeding past the window.
He wasn’t about to let her get away with that. Rhys reached across for her hand.
She turned back to him and directed a pointed look at their hands. “You think that’s going to work on me?”
He shrugged. “Won’t know unless I try.”
“And God loves a trier.” Taylor sighed and managed a smile. “Good thing I do, too.”
Sporadic bursts of conversation peppered the remainder of the journey back to Honey Fields as they discussed other aspects of the meeting, mainly around Livingston’s decision to assign a local FBI presence to be on the spot when Taylor went to check her mailbox.
Logically, Rhys understood why the agency had to be there—but viscerally, there was no way he was entrusting the safety, the life, of the woman he loved to anyone else, because not one of them would be prepared to go to the lengths he would to keep her safe and alive.