Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(5)

This was the way the last several months of his life had gone. They’d been ready to start the op months before but key elements had fallen through, only coming together in the last few days. They’d scattered around the country, each working a different angle to set this op up, but it was now go time. He wished he could be more excited about it.

“No,” Tucker said and Owen was certain there was a triumphant smile on his face. “Big Tag can’t be serious at all.”

“I assure you I’m entirely serious about carving up Levi Green for parts,” Big Tag replied. “Think about it. All that skin. He’s wasting it and there are lots of people out there who need some. Burn victims totally deserve that skin more than he does, and I bet his liver could go into like three different people.”

“It depends on how big the liver is,” Tucker mused. “But honestly, you can do living liver donations. Of course, it might be way more fun to take the whole thing. I hate that man.”

“And we could do a test to see if Tucker here really was a surgeon,” Tag mused. “This is a win-win.”

Owen let the conversation fade into the background as Sasha started to snore lightly.

Sometimes he was absolutely certain that he’d had no life at all before this one. His days started with some form of slide presentation complete with his boss’s never-ending snark, at some point he sat in front of a computer gathering data, or sat in a car taking pictures, and that was really more like gathering data than it sounded, spent an hour in the gym because the aforementioned boss said he would get pudgy if he didn’t, and then he microwaved something terrible, listened to Tucker bemoan his fate, and finally drank enough whiskey to pass out.

Yet he knew he’d had another life. There was evidence of it, pictures of him smiling with two women he obviously loved—his mum and sister. There were videos of him laughing and talking with them at Christmas. He’d seen photos of himself with Nikolai Markovic, read the emails and joking texts between himself and his one-time partner.

He’d been that partner. Owen Shaw had been in those messages. The man in those texts to Nick had been funny, seemingly loyal, and yet that same man had also betrayed a nice couple, had been willing to send another person into hell to save his own family.

His mother and sister were gone. They were nothing but photographs now, smiling ghosts who tripped through his brain like wispy butterflies he couldn’t quite catch.

“I’m only saying we could do some good in the world,” Big Tag argued. “I’ll scoop his eyeballs out myself. I’ve been practicing. Corneas are in short supply.”

A long-suffering sigh came from Ezra. “Shouldn’t you go back to Dallas? Doesn’t your plane leave soon? You should head to the airport.”

“I’m flying private, man,” Tag shot back. “Billionaire sister-in-law, remember? Who would have guessed Case would end up being the smartest one of us all? I’ve got plenty of time.”

A collective groan went through the room.

Owen sat back and closed his eyes as Robert started talking about the actual op and what they still needed to do. Make contact with the target. Make friends with the target. Bug the target’s mobile. Bug the target’s condo.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Turned out Toronto wasn’t so different from Dallas. He’d only been here a few days, but he’d spent his time looking through records and prepping the documents they would need to begin the mission. Robert’s job was logistics, and Owen was his partner for this op.

In the beginning he’d been the lead. Ezra had put him in charge when they’d been worried that the target might recognize them. There was still a risk, and they had less data on a couple of members of the team, but they were almost certain there was no way Walsh had met any of them. When they had been sure they would go through with it, Big Tag had handed the op over to Robert, shoving Owen to the sidelines.

Turned out he was mostly muscle. Until the bullets started flying, there wasn’t much for him to do.

He hadn’t always been muscle. At one point in time, he’d been a bloody good operative. He’d been SAS for years. Or so the files told him. Of course, back then he’d had his memory and a body that hadn’t been ravaged by an experimental drug.

Sometimes he wondered why he was here at all. Guilt, perhaps. They dragged him along because he had nowhere else to go.

He felt a hand nudging him from his right side and he looked up, realizing all eyes were on him.

Big Tag stared at him, his body relaxed, but there was tension in those icy eyes of his. “Sorry, you don’t snore like Sasha there. I couldn’t tell if you were awake or asleep. I asked if you had anything to add since until a few days ago you’ve been the one following Green.”

Yes, he’d been the one sitting in a car outside of numerous bars because the fucker liked to party. “If the bugger works at all, I can’t tell. He spent a total of ten hours at his office in Langley. Not that I could get all that close to it. They tend to not like you spying on the spies.”

Another set of blue eyes was on him. Ezra Fain’s always seemed warmer than Big Tag’s. Tag’s could have come from the arctic, the kind of blue lit by ice. Fain’s were more like a Caribbean sea, the kind that was so clear he could see his feet even when the water hit his chest.

“I have my own people on the inside,” Ezra explained. “He met with groups over the course of a couple of days. My person thinks he met with a senator and a general as well, but we don’t have proof of it. He’s getting all his ducks in line to make his big play. I believe he’s going to use the intelligence he intercepted from us at The Ranch to move up in the organization.”