Lost and Found (Masters & Mercenaries: The Forgotten #2)(58)

Theo frowned. “That you will give up. I don’t care that you need a little violence in your life. You can kill again after you give birth, and that is a hard damn limit for me, baby. I can be indulgent, but I can also find a way to very gently make it so you can’t sit for a week.”

“Promises, promises,” Erin tossed back at her husband with a wink. “Fine. No bloody vengeance until the miracle baby arrives.”

The door came open and Tucker hustled in, carrying two brown bags. “Timmys for everyone.” He looked up at Owen. “Well, not you. I thought you would be eating with the doc. Did she throw you out?”

Before he could reply, Erin was taking the bag from Tucker. “I’m starving. Throwing up all morning makes me hungry. Did you get the sour cream glazed donut holes?”

Tucker shook his head. “Nope. They’re called Timbits, and if you don’t call them that they…well, they’re Canadians. They just smile and correct you.”

“This is a strange land, my friend,” Erin said, but her eyes lit on the bag of donuts. “Theo, you going to explain why we’re here or are we waiting for Ezra to show up?”

“I was going to wait until we had a proper meeting.” Theo grabbed a cup for coffee for himself. “My brother always does this kind of thing in a room with a projector and everyone sits around in the half dark and there’s a bunch of file folders.”

Erin’s eyes rolled. “There’s a reason he does that. Your brother sleeps through most of those meetings. He says it’s about being high tech, but if you listen closely, you can hear him snoring in time to the hum of the projector. Truly, it’s one of his great talents.”

“He sleeps? But he’s got his eyes open,” Theo pointed out.

“Another one of his talents.” Erin turned to them. “We’ve tracked Levi here and we think he recently had a meeting with Paul Huisman. Hutch found some traffic cam footage of Huisman being picked up in a limo. No ID on Green, but we did catch one of his CIA lackeys on film. Unless Donnie Lennox has taken a second job as a limo driver here in Toronto, which I doubt since he’s still on the Agency’s payroll.”

Fuck all. “She said something scared her yesterday. She said someone was in her building when she was alone, and she felt like whoever it was he was stalking her.”

Tucker sighed and set down his breakfast sandwich. “Well, we knew he was planning something.”

“I’ll have Jax pull CCTV from around the building. He can get it to Hutch for facial recognition,” Robert said, picking up his mobile and starting to text. “Dante can get the internal feed. Was she in her office when it happened? He said there’s a camera right outside her door and another one in the hallway.”

“Yes, she was going home. The lights went out.” When she’d told him the whole story, she’d been lying in his arms. She’d been relaxed and seemingly happy. He’d managed to get that haunted look out of her eyes. “I want to know who went up those lifts or who took the stairs up to her floor right before five p.m.”

“We’ll get it done,” Robert promised.

He couldn’t help but turn to Theo and Erin. “Is that all? Because that seems like something you could have told us over the phone.”

That brow of Erin’s rose again, but Theo was waving a hand as though he could hold off his wife’s wrath.

“You know why he’s asking. He thinks we’re here to monitor him,” Theo explained in a patient tone. “He thinks Big Tag is pissed because he took over the op.”

Erin’s smile was entirely predatory. “He is pissed.”

Theo sighed. “And he also thinks Owen can handle this.” He turned Owen’s way. “Did you make a call in the field?”

He felt like he would never stop explaining this. “She wasn’t going to buy what we were selling, man. If I’d walked away from her, she wouldn’t have talked to me again. She’s got a very narrow focus. Right now, I’m her focus. As a friend, she would have easily prioritized work over me and everything else.”

“All right,” Theo said simply. “This should always have been your op. My brother overrode Ezra because he’s a stubborn bastard. Erin and I are here for different reasons. We’re following up on a lead.”

“A lead? On this case?” Why hadn’t he been informed?

Theo’s eyes hooded, and Owen knew there wouldn’t be a lot of information forthcoming. “I’m following up on something else. I’ve got some intel about Dr. McDonald’s former associates. I’m meeting a man who thinks he can get us in touch with someone who can give us new information. He wouldn’t come to the States. It was here or Mexico City.”

“Spicy foods don’t agree with me right now,” Erin said before popping one of the sweet treats in her mouth.

Theo had a wholly masculine look of self-satisfaction on his face as he put a hand on his wife’s barely there baby bump. “Don’t worry about us. This is a last-minute thing and Erin and I decided to make a mini-vacation out of it. TJ is currently showing his cousin, Heath, the ropes. Case thinks he’s super dad now. He has no idea how hard taking care of an infant and a toddler is going to be. Good luck with that. Anyway, we’re going to follow up on this lead and stay out of your hair. We’ll be at the Shangri-La for a couple of days if you need us.”