A Dom Is Forever (20 page)

“I remember.” He did. Not much more, but he knew that much. “I was drugged at a pub. It was the night before we were supposed to meet with the arms dealer. My brother died that night.”

He couldn’t get the sight of those boots out of his mind. Even in his sessions with Eve, he got hung up on those boots and the ringing of his phone. And he still couldn’t figure out if it was real or a fiction his head had made up because nature abhorred a vacuum.

“Tell me something, O’Donnell. Who were you working for that day?”

He shrugged. He was an asset. He rarely knew exactly who was behind an op. “I was supposed to answer to a high-ranking agent in Irish intelligence, but I always knew MI6 was involved.”

“But we were only covering for who had really planned the op. It was all CIA.”

Liam went very still. “No. It was a Brit op. You needed someone with an Irish accent and believable IRA ties in order to get into the cell. My mother was IRA. Rory and I gave that up a long time ago. We were loyal to our country and friendly to the crown. The CIA had nothing to do with it.”

Liam hated the shit-eating grin that crossed Weston’s face. “The CIA is rarely uninvolved, and you shouldn’t be so naïve. They planned the op. They selected the SAS assets to use. They had their fingers in every single move we made. Look, this was before I was recruited. I didn’t join up until twenty-four months ago, but I’ve studied the files since I figured out who you are. Did you think you could come here and ruin my operation? I’ve become an expert on you. And I know exactly who sold you out.”

And he was prevaricating.
Fucker
. “Then why don’t you tell me?”

He passed the folder over to Liam. “Didn’t you ever wonder why Ian Taggart was so willing to take you in? You had run two ops with him three years before that night. Why the hell would he move heaven and earth to save you?”

A cold chill went up Liam’s spine. “He’s a good guy.”

“He’s a man with a past you can’t even begin to comprehend.”

“He’s my friend.” That word meant something to Liam. He didn’t have many friends. He had his crew at McKay-Taggart. That was his little family, and they hadn’t steered him wrong. Sure, he thought Adam was an obnoxious prick at times, but he thought of him like a cousin he wanted to punch. He was still his family no matter how much he rolled his eyes.

“Ian Taggart was the agent who ran the op.” The words fell out of Weston’s mouth like a land mine waiting to go off.

“I don’t believe you.” Ian would have told him. Ian knew damn well that that had been the op that cost him his brother, his goddamn life. Ian wouldn’t betray him that way.

That manila file folder sat between them. Liam’s eyes held it. Bare. It had no markings on it, but it suddenly struck him that file folder could change his life. He didn’t want to open it. He wanted to be back in bed with Avery. He should have pushed aside all his fears and taken her again. His cock had been ready. It had been his brain that hesitated because he’d been scared of what she meant.

If he was still in bed with Avery, he wouldn’t be facing that damn folder.

“Ian Taggart is a brilliant asset.” There was a nauseating sympathy to Weston’s voice that put Liam on edge.

Ian was his friend. And he knew bloody well what Weston was trying to do. He was trying to drive a wedge between Liam and his team. He was trying to break Liam’s loyalty. Manipulation was an art form, and MI6 taught its agents well. “I know Ian Taggart. This isn’t going to work. I know he used to work for the Agency. If he’s consulting with them again, then he has his reasons.”

They were looking for Eli Nelson. Nelson was rogue CIA. It only made sense that Ian would use his contacts. It certainly wasn’t a betrayal. It wasn’t.

“How well do you know Ian?”

Liam rolled his eyes. This was so transparent, and he was just about ready to test Weston’s open door theory. He had some important information. He had the girl. If Ian really was in contact with the CIA, then they probably had some influence and might be able to talk MI6 into leaving him in, although he likely didn’t need it. Weston, for all his charm and good looks and obvious money, hadn’t gotten into the lady’s bed. Liam had done that. She trusted him, not Simon Weston. If they wanted to get close to Avery then they needed to keep Liam around and maybe, just maybe, he would share
intel
with them.

This was his op. He made the decisions. He might not have any right to run the op on British soil, but he had leverage now. They’d waited too long to call him out.

He made sure his voice was confident even if his brain was running in twelve different directions. “I’ve known Ian Taggart for years. I’ve worked with him, trained with him. I know the man.”

“Tell me something, O’Donnell, how much does he talk about his wife?”

So transparent. “He’s never been married. Don’t be ridiculous. Ian Taggart is the man least likely to get married.”

The thought of Ian putting a ring on some girl’s finger was ridiculous.

Weston flipped that file folder open so casually, as though he wasn’t opening Pandora’s box. Liam looked down. A marriage license from five years back stating that Ian Mitchell Taggart and Charlotte Marie Dennis had been married in London, England.

“So?” Ian was a deep one. If he had a failed marriage in his background, he wouldn’t go around blubbering about it. He wasn’t like Sean, and now Adam and Jake, who felt the need to whine about their relationships like they were a walking daytime television show devoted to talking vaginas. Ian would bury it down like a man should.

“So you don’t know anything about Charlotte Taggart? You don’t know that she was Ian’s cover for his last European assignment? That he married her because he needed the cover?”

Liam winced inwardly. He was betting Charlotte Taggart had likely been pissed off. Or more likely she didn’t even know that he’d used her. She had probably been quietly divorced and now lived a perfectly boring Middle-American life with three kids and a fat husband who didn’t know how to internally decapitate another human being.

Avery would want that life. Avery would move on after he’d used her, and she wouldn’t look back at the idiot man who wasn’t smart enough to love her.

Did Ian ever think about Charlotte?

Weston’s hand flicked the marriage license aside and another very formal-looking document was beneath it. “Does he ever mention that he’s the one who put a bullet in her back? Charlotte Taggart was eliminated after her loving husband no longer needed her. Oh, he claimed she was dead when he found her according to Scotland Yard, but it’s clear enough to me. And would you like to know what op he was running at the time? Would you like to know why he was ‘honeymooning’ in England?”

Those pages just kept flipping, an English Intelligence book of horrors. His stomach was a wave of nasty suspicion. Ian had married a woman just weeks before Rory had died, and he’d been in England at the time.

When he’d called Ian that day so long ago, Ian had told Liam he was in Dallas. But according to his passport, he’d been in England. He’d been dealing with his wife’s murder.

Had Ian been killing his wife?

“According to all MI6 reports, Ian Taggart was still an active CIA operative at the time of his wife’s death. The US government smoothed the way in the investigation of the incident. At the time, he’d been running an op in cooperation with
G2
and MI6.”

Liam shook his head. “No. I never talked to the CIA.”

Weston sighed. “Why would you? You were the grunt, O’Donnell. You were expendable. You’ve worked intelligence long enough to know that the right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing, and most of the time neither hand even realizes there’s a brain behind the actions. Ian Taggart ran the op that killed your brother. It was his baby. It was the whole reason he was in Europe in the first place. He’d tracked those Russians for years. You had worked with him a couple of times. How do you think he managed to get you out of Ireland so easily? Everyone should have been looking for you or your body, but Ian Taggart just bought you a plane ticket to the States? No. The CIA got you out. Taggart made a deal with them. Why the hell would that man risk his newly started company to take in someone who might or might not have killed seven people including his own brother? Even if you discount the potential murder charges, there is no doubt that you fucked up that op. Those bonds are gone because you decided to celebrate with a pint. Why the hell would he bring you in unless he wanted to watch you? He’s been watching you for years, O’Donnell, and when he gets what he needs out of you, you’ll end up like his loving wife.”

Weston revealed a vile photo. A beautiful woman with pitch black hair staring up at the camera, her crystal blue eyes vacant. Charlotte Taggart. Dead and gone.

“Her body went missing from the morgue twelve hours after she was declared dead. I’ve always wondered what he did with it. We didn’t get a chance to do an autopsy. I suspect we would have found evidence against him if we had.” Weston sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Taggart is involved in a lot of nasty business. So why don’t you tell me why he’s come to my island? I need to know so I can form a plan to stop him. He’s every bit as dangerous as anything Molina is into.”

Liam stared at that girl. She morphed into another girl. Younger, less beautiful, but she’d had her life ahead of her. Had he choked that life away? Had his actions that evening, innocent though they’d been, led that small blonde woman to her death? How many women had died because of that single operation?

How would Avery look on a slab, her face devoid of the life that lit her up from the inside?

Would Avery Charles be one more woman on a slab? He didn’t remember the other girl, but he would die with the feel of Avery’s arms around him. He would always be able to taste her on his tongue.

“O’Donnell?” Weston’s voice seemed to come from far away, but it pulled him out of that very dark place. Somewhere in the background, he could hear a phone ringing. It wasn’t real. He knew that. That phone was in his head. In his nightmares. Who had called him? Had it been Ian Taggart? Why couldn’t he remember?

Liam forced himself back into the present. He had enough shit to deal with in the here and now. He didn’t need to get lost in the past. He schooled his expression. No matter what, he wasn’t about to make an emotional decision. He needed time. He needed to sort this out. He’d been played before and people had died. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

“I can help you.” Weston’s voice was smooth, friendly. “I know what it means to be that piece of crap expendable asset. I’ve had to fight the same shit over here.”

Liam doubted that the second son of a duke was really so fucking expendable. Liam had grown up rough. He knew what it meant to go to sleep with an empty belly and rats skittering across the floor. Whatever worth he’d had in this world, he’d had to fight for.

Weston had no idea what it meant to be utterly expendable.

The door opened abruptly, and his evening was complete. Damon Knight walked in looking utterly different than he did at The Garden. His leathers were gone, replaced with a perfectly cut suit and a frown that could freeze a man from ten feet away. He walked in like he owned the place.

“Do you want to explain this to me, Weston?”

Weston glared back. His eyes had flared, and there had been just a second’s worth of panic on the agent’s face before he settled back into a calm but annoyed look. And it was brutally obvious they knew each other. If Weston was shocked the owner of a
BDSM
club had come walking into his safe house, it didn’t show. “He’s sleeping with my target. I investigated him and discovered he has ties to an American security firm. Not that it was easy to figure that out. They did a pretty good job of trying to hide his true name.”

“Yes, McKay-Taggart,” Knight shot back. “I am well aware.”

Weston stopped for a minute. Yeah, he hadn’t known that. It was obvious in the flare of his eyes before the agent moved on. “I had tech pull some CCTV footage of him.” He glanced back at Liam. “You were pretty good about keeping your head down, but I found a moment when you looked up at something Avery was trying to show you.”

Liam could guess what had happened from there. “You ran my face through facial recognition software and you got a hit from
G2
.”

“From a couple of places, really,” Weston admitted.

Knight didn’t look like he gave a shit. “Agent Weston, would you please repeat back to me the parameters of your mission. I think you’ve forgotten. I know damn well you weren’t cleared to interrogate this man.”

Weston’s frustration hardened his face. “He’s in her bed. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Was I not supposed to run a trace on him?”

“You didn’t just run a trace, did you?” Knight argued. “If you had run a trace, you would have discovered his very solid cover.”

Liam looked up at the Dom unwilling to leave it a second longer. “You’re MI6. Any reason you didn’t bother to mention that to me?”

Knight’s shoulders squared. “Talk to Ian.”

Well, of course Ian knew. Ian knew everything.

“We’re not enemies, Liam,” Knight said. “It’s precisely why I’m having this fight with junior here in front of you. You’ll have to forgive His Lordship. He wasn’t given the information because he didn’t need to know. He’s been a little too thorough, and he does a lot of work on his own. If he’d followed protocol and contacted his handler like he should have, we would have avoided this little scene.”

Knight’s eyes went to the file folder, flaring briefly before he scooped it up. “What the fuck have you done, Weston?”

“I did my job,” the Englishman ground back, and Liam finally understood that maybe Weston did get what it meant to be left out of the information loop like a cog in the wheel that could be easily replaced.

“Your job was to get the information on Molina, not to screw one of our allies.”

“I’m not so sure Taggart is an ally. Why is he here? Why is he jumping into the middle of my operation?” Weston asked, his fists clenched.