You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(4)

Jamie had gone with Ten. Their father had sent the boys into danger time and time again even as they’d protected her. When Ten took over their father’s job, Jamie had insisted on keeping his assignment despite the fact Ten had given him an out. She’d married Jamie five years before and every moment they’d had together had been precious. Every private day had been a blessing.

Now she knew that Jamie had the easier road. He didn’t have to live knowing he wouldn’t see her again. He didn’t have to move forward knowing he wouldn’t love again. God, he’d likely died thinking that he was leaving a son behind. The last time she’d talked to him she’d thought she was pregnant. By the time she realized her mistake, he’d been taken.

Stupid girl. She was still the same stupid girl who screwed up everything good in her life.

Ten got to one knee, his deep green eyes seeking out hers. Her young adulthood rushed back in and she couldn’t help but remember all the days she and Jamie and Ten had spent together. Every good day of her life had been spent with them. Ten was her family.

“I can’t possibly feel what you feel, sister.” He put a hand on her knee. “I know you miss him. I do, too. God, I miss him. My whole damn life I’ve had you and Jamie. I can’t lose you, too.”

His words started to play at her conscience. Jamie had adored Ten. It had been the three of them for so long.

What would Ten do if they were both gone? He’d been alone for years—just like she had, and then he’d had a family. She still had a brother. She still had Ten.

“I don’t want to go on.” It felt good to admit it.

Ten lost his perpetual cool. His handsome face screwed up and tears flushed from those gorgeous eyes. “Please don’t leave me. I can’t be alone again, Phoebe. I love you. I know I’m not Jamie and it’s not the same, but I do love you. You’re the only person I love in the whole damn world now that Jamie and Dad are gone.”

It had been the three of them burying their adopted father when his fierce heart had betrayed them all. God, she missed Franklin Grant.

Did she owe it to them all to go on? Because it would be so much easier to take a few too many sleeping pills and float away. It was so easy to get them. Everyone wanted her to sleep and rest and not feel. Everyone except Ten.

Days she’d spent in this purgatory, but Ten was getting to her.

“What would I do?” She didn’t know a life outside of the Agency.

“Work for me. I have a place for you to go. It’s a long-term undercover op. It’s cushy, sweetie, but it’s so necessary. It could be years you spend there.”

She didn’t want to do it.

“Please, Phoebe. I don’t trust anyone else to take on Taggart.”

She couldn’t help but sit up a little straighter at the very name. “Ian Taggart?”

He was a legend. He was a problem. He was a fine balance that she would have to walk. Intriguing. Even in her grief, she found the idea of playing the game with Taggart deeply intriguing.

“Yes. He’s got connections that go around the world and while I like the man, I have to keep an eye on him. There’s something else. There’s a situation that’s starting up in Florida.”

She felt her jaw firm, her blood chilling. There was only one situation either of them cared about right now. “Murdoch?”

Ten nodded. “I’ve been tracking him and he’s working with some FBI agent out of DC, though he recently took a job in St. Augustine at one of those fet clubs.”

“You think he has something to do with Taggart?” Taggart was knee-deep in the BDSM lifestyle. She’d read all about it in his files. It didn’t appeal to her at all. Jamie had been tender, so tender with her. He would never have hit her, never have tied her up so she couldn’t fight back. Ten always said Taggart was a good man, but he liked to hit the women he had sex with so that made Phoebe doubt it. Some people in the Agency still believed that Taggart had murdered his wife.

It shouldn’t surprise her Murdoch was into the same shit.

Ten ran a hand over his hair, a sure sign that he was frustrated. “It’s a complex situation and I still don’t understand the whole of it. You’re better at patterns than I am.”

“I can look at the file for you.”

“It’s still early, but someone is playing a game and I think I might have figured out who it is. I think Taggart’s wife is still alive and somehow she’s gotten tangled up with my investigation into Murdoch.”

So maybe Taggart wasn’t a killer. He also wasn’t Agency. “You put too much faith in him. He left you a long time ago, Ten. He’s on his own and he couldn’t care less about you or the job we do.”

She’d never been in a room with the man, but she’d always resented him because no matter what Ten said, she knew Taggart’s leaving the Agency had hurt Ten. Ten had recruited the man, trained him and he’d walked away.

“You’re wrong, Phoebe, but I’ll let you form your own opinions of the man. I feel like shit not telling him about Charlotte, though. As far as I can tell, she’s working on something to do with McKay and his ex-wife. It’s a big old clusterf*ck and Taggart won’t see it coming. They’re on a collision course.”

“You can’t tell Taggart a damn thing.” He owed his loyalty to Jamie not Ian Taggart. For the first time in hours, she stood and felt her blood starting to thrum through her system. Jamie might still need her. “If this gets us close to Jesse Murdoch, then you keep Taggart in the dark. No one outside the Agency knows Jamie died in Iraq.”