Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(67)

Apparently her input wasn’t helpful as she’d been told to get ready for bed. He hadn’t even allowed her to help bandage him up. Eve had been the one to wash the blood off his shoulder and tell him how lucky he was that the bullet had only grazed him. Ian dismissed her the minute they had gotten back to his big house in the country. Chelsea had already disappeared into the guest bedroom Ian had assigned them to. Alex and Eve took the bed in the small dungeon. Jesse and Simon were pulling guard duty while Ian had called Jake and Adam to bury the bodies until Ian was ready to offer them up to the Agency. Charlie was sure the only person who was happy with anything that had happened all night long was Serena, who would probably be taking notes.

She couldn’t even think about sleeping. Not when she needed to get away. It was time to leave. Ian didn’t want her and she didn’t want to get anyone killed. She’d thought they would only come after her, but today had proven that her uncle was willing to hurt civilians to get to her. She’d thought she would have more time before they found her. Hell, she’d thought that maybe they had given up. She’d been in Florida for over a year working on the op that brought her back to Ian and no one had tried to kill her then. After so long without hearing from her uncle, she’d felt almost safe. Safe enough to come after her husband.

She’d been wrong and it was time to leave. After a little rest, she needed to get Chelsea and clear out of here.

The closest she’d managed to going to bed was changing into one of Ian’s massive T-shirts. It would have to do for sleepwear. It hung to her knees, covering more than a lot of dresses did.

“So you’re married to the big guy, huh?” Basil Champion sat down on the couch across from her, a longneck in his hand. He draped himself almost negligently across Ian’s big comfy couch.

“Not really.” She wasn’t sure why the British agent wanted to talk about her marriage, but she wasn’t getting into it with him.

“That’s not what the paperwork says, love. It’s just hard to believe you’re here. I was there the night you died, you see. I actually got a decent look at your body. Damon and me had to get Big Tag away from the police. Our bosses thought he might suffer a bit in jail.”

He likely would have been killed there. Nelson would have sent an assassin and then he wouldn’t have had to worry about Ian Taggart screwing up his plans. She’d known it, but she’d still taken that pill. Maybe she didn’t deserve to be forgiven. Maybe this had all been a huge mistake. “I’m sure he was grateful.”

Baz took a long draw off the beer before replying. “Nah. He was too upset. I remember thinking this was supposed to be some sort of superhero. You know, he was kind of a legend even though he’d only been working for a few years. I thought I was about to meet the real shit, but he was kind of broken, know what I mean?”

She felt a little broken now, but she still didn’t want to talk about her personal life with an MI6 agent. “So you’re here to drag me kicking and screaming to England?”

He huffed a little, an arrogant sound. “No way. We wouldn’t conduct this particular interview on British soil. Damon is being a bit of an idealist. I suspect we’ll take you back to London and you won’t make it out of Heathrow before the big bosses take you off of our hands and whisk you away to someplace nice and outside the confines of all those pesky human rights laws we have. Really, they’re so confining when it comes to torture.”

So she would be taken to some friendly government in Africa or the Middle East and they would torture her until she gave up the info. What they didn’t realize was that Chelsea was the one behind most of the information brokering. Charlie was mostly muscle. The information Charlie had dealt to specific governments hadn’t made them any money, but probably saved a bunch of lives. Chelsea hadn’t been happy with her those times. Chelsea was the brains, but she didn’t intend for that information to get out. “I haven’t directly come up against MI6. Why are you coming after me now?”

He sat up, his feet hitting the floor. “Are you going to play dumb, then, love? You hacked our systems three months ago. You were polite about it. You got in, took three files, and got right back out. If we didn’t have some very observant techs, we would never have known you were there at all.”

Fuck. Chelsea had promised her she would stay out of MI6, the Agency, and China’s MSS. They were the three countries most likely to catch her and string her up, though in this case it would be Charlie on the end of the rope. She settled in. It wasn’t the first time she’d been forced to cover for her sister. “I wasn’t trying to f*ck with MI6. I just needed a couple of files.”

“On Eli Nelson? Were you working for Taggart?”

Ah, her interrogation started now. At least she could answer those questions. “Eli Nelson is after me. I am not now nor have I ever worked for Ian or McKay-Taggart. I have, however, worked for Eli Nelson. We had a bad parting of ways.”

“From what I can tell, you parted ways on your terms, not his.”

He was well informed. “I never meant to work for the man on a permanent basis.”

“No, you just used him to kill your father.”

She shrugged a little. “It would have been difficult to do the job myself.”

It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it, dreamed about it. She just hadn’t figured out how to do it and save Chelsea and herself at the same time. It was why she’d taken Nelson’s devil’s pact.