Master No (Masters and Mercenaries, #9)(15)

Faith knew minor things. He’d purposefully kept his end of the conversation light. She knew he’d grown up in the south. She knew he liked barbecue and worked for a security firm.

Everything else he’d told her was lies.

Simon Weston sat forward, his face serious. He was dressed in a white dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. He’d hung up the suit coat, and that was about as casual as the Brit ever got. The only time Ten could remember seeing him without a tie around his neck was at Sanctum. “From what Chelsea’s found, the Agency isn’t actively looking for you.”

Me, too, sweetheart. I’m eagerly awaiting your arrival. Get plenty of sleep tonight and let Theo carry your bags. That’s my first command. Once you get here, there will likely be more.

Once she touched down in Texas, she was his sub. She was under his command. He’d spent most of his adult life with scores of assets under his command. He’d sent men and women into dangerous situations, some when he knew the likelihood was they wouldn’t survive.

So why was this so different? Faith was another mission. Why did the idea of having her under his command, of being able to demand she undress for him, that she submit to him—why did that make his whole body tighten?

“Just because they’re not actively searching for me doesn’t mean there isn’t a see/kill order.” It was simple. He ran into an operative. The operative saw him. The operative killed him. The Agency was down one more problem.

“Chelsea doesn’t think so,” Simon replied. “She thinks you took care of the problem. She asked me to mention a certain e-mail you sent to the director during your time in Saudi.”

Tag laughed. “The girl is good, Ten.”

He should have known Chelsea would figure that out. Franklin Grant had taught him well. Franklin’s final gift to his children had been a package of information he’d gathered over his thirty-year career with the Agency. Ten and Jamie and Phoebe had already received copies of the information after their foster father’s funeral. They’d each added to it during their own careers. When Jamie had died, Ten had added his brother’s information to his own before handing it over to Phoebe.

“Big Tag knows?” Simon asked. He sat back, watching Ten.

He knew Alex was Tag’s best friend and that Tag’s circle was pretty big, but Ten’s wasn’t. It was incredibly small. Hell, he trusted Tag more than he did anyone with the exception of Phoebe, and he hadn’t wanted this burden on her. “He knows where the information is and he knows to get it out in the event of my death.”

“An insurance policy,” Simon murmured.

Hutch nodded Ten’s way. “Boss practices what he preaches. When we joined up with his team, he told us it was important to keep track of things we’d learned. Especially the things that could damage the Agency.”

He had enough on the higher-ups that they wouldn’t want it to get out. He simply hadn’t been sure they’d gotten the message. He’d passed on what he’d learned from his foster father to his own men. He’d always been an Agency man, but Franklin Grant had known things could turn.

Damn but he missed the old man.

“I watch out for my men. You have to have insurance. If you don’t have leverage and the wrong people come into power, things can go bad quickly. As evidenced by me.” One day he’d been a power player with his own operational team. He’d been given a fairly free hand to do whatever he needed to do.

And then he’d come up against Senator Hank McDonald and he’d been disavowed overnight.

He had to wonder if he didn’t have a file documenting some of the Agency’s worse secrets, if he wouldn’t be dead already. If his men wouldn’t have been taken out one by one. It was the one thing he wouldn’t tell anyone. He hadn’t simply bargained for his life. He’d let it be known that if his men suffered any sort of odd accidents he would release the information. If anyone from McKay-Taggart went missing, he would release the information.

He was going to protect his team and when he was gone, Taggart would do the job for him. Big Tag would use the insurance policy to protect the men who had been loyal to Ten. And Phoebe. They’d had the conversation about the fact that no one was more important to Ten than his sister. He could relax because Jesse Murdoch would lay down his life for her and Big Tag would watch over them both.

I eagerly await your commands, Sir. I’m kind of counting the hours until I get to meet you in person. It’s been good that we spent time getting to know each other, right?

He’d gotten to know her. He’d gotten to know how sweet she was, how na?ve and weirdly innocent. He wasn’t sure what to do with a woman who played so innocent.

What if she really was innocent? He didn’t mean that in a sexual fashion. Virginity meant less than nothing to him. But that lack of true cynicism was something he didn’t understand. Who did what she did? She gave up her comfy life to help people she didn’t know.

His eyes strayed back to that picture of her. He needed to understand her. “Tell me about the sister.”

Send me another picture.

He was fairly certain either Theo or Erin had been on the other end of the camera, so he was likely going to get ribbed about that. He could handle it. He wanted another picture of her.

“Hope McDonald.” Tag nodded toward the back wall where there was a monitor affixed.