You Only Love Twice (Masters and Mercenaries #8)(94)

Ten had gone utterly still, as though he knew there was a rattlesnake in the room and it was about to bite him. “Who was the other name, Phoebe?”

“Tennessee G. Smith.”

“Shit.” Ten rose to his feet and immediately got on the phone. “Damn it. I’m sorry. I know it’s late Charlotte, but I have to talk to him.”

Her brother walked into his room and the door slammed shut.

“I find it interesting that he called Big Tag and not his director,” Erin mused.

“He’s worried there’s a mole,” Jesse said. “That’s it, right?”

“The name Tennessee Smith doesn’t appear in records,” Phoebe replied. “Only the Agency is supposed to know his name, and even then only men with the proper security clearance. When he works with anyone outside his circle, he goes by the tried and true.”

“Mr. Black,” Simon supplied. “Yes, I’ve met a few of those in my time.”

“After the problems Taggart had, he took to calling himself Mr. White, but it’s all the same. It’s there so you don’t ever really know the name of who you’re working with. I know you won’t believe me, but it’s as much for your protection as his.”

“Sure it is.” Erin set her plate on the table. “So someone figured out his name. Big whoop.”

“Ace knew his name.” Jesse’s hand smoothed up and down her back. “We have to assume he gave the Caliph all the intelligence he had on the team. We know he was in contact with him.”

She let his heat sink in even as she pointed out the problem. “I can assure you that my brother has never revealed his middle name to anyone on his team.”

Theo shook his head. “I don’t know it. I’m closer to Ten than most.”

“Does the G stand for George?” Hutch asked.

Jesse huffed. “Obviously it stands for Grant. He considered the man his father. Why didn’t he change it legally?”

And they teased him for being dumb. “He didn’t want a big paper trail connecting him to me and Jamie. He’s paranoid. Until he flipped out when he thought Tag was going to murder me, none of his team knew he had a sister. I was just a fellow employee.”

“So we have bigger problems,” Simon mused.

“Yeah, we’ve got another damn mole and one who’s close to a senator.” Hutch reached for a pastry. “So now we need to figure out why that drunk boy knows Ten’s super secret middle name. He really looked more like a George, you know.”

“So you’ll look into Albertson?” She shot Hutch a pointed look. “Like now?”

Hutch grabbed another plate. “Fine. You know other people on this team get time off.” When no one replied, he just shook his head. “Fine. I’ll go wake up Chelsea and she’s going to be irritable.”

“Send her my love,” Simon said with a wave. He looked back at Phoebe and Jesse. “And you two get ready. Phoebe has a session soon and you need to look through the footage.”

“Simon?” Jesse started.

“I’ll go with her. I won’t let her out of my sight,” Simon promised.

“Thank you, brother,” Jesse said with obvious relief.

So Simon was the only one he really trusted. She should have picked someone from her own team, but that didn’t mean anything now. Jesse was her team and he would feel better with Simon watching over her. She wasn’t going to question him.

She turned her head up when Simon left to clean up and Erin and Theo continued bickering over breakfast. She and Jesse were left to themselves. “Are you okay?”

His hand came up, smoothing back her hair. “I’m as good as I can be, thanks to you. Your brother should have fired me.”

“Not if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Phoebe, I screwed up last night. I put us all in harm’s way.”

“You had a bad moment.”

“And that one moment could get us all killed. I don’t want you to go out there today. I want you to come with me and we’ll go to the airport and we won’t even go back to Dallas. We’ll go somewhere no one knows who we are. We can just hide.”

“Jesse,” she started.

His hand came up and he put a finger to her lips. “I said that’s what I want to do. What I’m going to do is tell you to be careful because you’re precious to me.”

How was she supposed to resist him? The universe was cruel and oh so kind. She leaned forward and kissed him. “I promise.”

He wrapped his arms around her and they sat that way until it was time to go.



Six hours later, Phoebe stood beside Simon as the session on new ecological laws in First World countries came to a close. It was the third session she’d sat through and the final one of the first day of the conference. Frustration threatened to bubble over. “I didn’t see the al Fareed party at all.”

Simon nodded shortly and leaned over to speak to her in a quiet tone. “I didn’t either. I think we have to believe they might have left. There’s a private meeting this evening, but Kamdar isn’t invited to it. It’s only oil companies.”

She looked around, but found not a single familiar face beyond Theo standing guard in the background.