On Her Master's Secret Service (27 page)

He rushed out into the bright Florida sunshine. Everything was so fucking bright and shiny here. He’d gotten used to the dark.

He could still hear Master Asshole beating his woman. He could still hear the slap of his hand on her flesh and her breathy cries as she took his…discipline. God, what a word. It wasn’t discipline. It was fucking abuse, and he hated the fact that it had gotten his dick so hard he could pound nails. He’d just stood there listening to them. He’d seen himself there, smacking that beautiful ass.

He wasn’t a fucking pervert. He just wasn’t.

He’d heard the way the brutal fucker beat his woman, saw how he humiliated her in the meeting earlier in the day.

So why had it seemed so lovely to him? He hadn’t been able to stop watching, and it wasn’t just the smacks and how the Master tugged on her hair. He’d watched how she’d curled onto the Master’s lap, how she sank to her knees before him and her face had been serene. All the trust in the world had been on her lovely face.

Just for that moment, he’d wondered how it would feel to have a woman trust him like that.

He dragged humid air into his lungs as his cell started to ring. The boss man was right on time.

He answered the phone, looking behind him to make sure no one was following. He started walking down the cobblestoned streets that marked St. Augustine’s downtown. “I’m here.”

“You haven’t sent me the information I requested days ago. I would like an explanation.”

Jesse tried to hide his frustration. “There hasn’t been a good time to take pictures. I don’t want him to catch me. He’s gotten in good with Chazz. I think he could cause trouble if he decided to try to get rid of me. So I’ve been patient. He’s actually very observant.”

Master A was always watching, Jesse had noticed. The only time the man hadn’t been watching was when he was beating the holy shit out of the idiot Chazz had brought with him. Jesse had immediately dismissed the man as one of
Chazz’s
show-off friends and had gone back to concentrating on Anthony Priest.

Who wasn’t Anthony Priest. He’d heard the woman call him by another name. And damn if the man didn’t move really well. He was supposed to be some sort of professional pervert, but he walked like a cop. And his eyes. They were always moving, always hard. Until he looked at the woman.

Fuck.
They were acting.
Shitballs
. He’d missed it. They were really total perverts, but the Master person wasn’t as hard as he pretended. It had been in the way he held her when the others weren’t watching. He might have had a negligent look on his face, but Master A’s arms had curled around her, making sure there was no way she would fall and he’d settled her in as though her comfort was deeply important to him.

A cop making an appearance could screw everything up.

“Is there any way the local cops are onto this operation?” Jesse asked.

A long pause came over the phone. “I would have heard something. I have contacts there. Why do you ask?”

“I think this Master person is some sort of law enforcement. I don’t know why. It’s something about the eyes. My instincts tell me he’s not what he says he is.”

“Your instincts have been off before.”

He didn’t need to be reminded. There was a reason he was in this position. “Yeah, well, at least I know Anthony isn’t his name.”

“And how did you figure that out? How did you run anything on him without facial recognition?” The boss relied heavily on high-tech equipment.

Jesse had found out that sometimes it was better to just rely on his eyes and ears.

“His woman called him by another name.” While he was spanking her ass. While he was making her groan. How long had it been since he’d had anything but a quickie meant to get both him and the lady off as fast as possible so they could go their separate ways? Half the time he didn’t even ask for a name.

“I need to know that name, Murdoch.” The boss’s voice had gone low, whispering across the line.

“Alex. I didn’t catch the last name, but she clearly called him Alex.”

Jesse held the phone to his ear as he walked down the crowded street. Tourists were milling around the narrow lanes that offered small restaurants and art galleries and more fudge shops than any town should be able to handle. They really liked their sweets here. Nothing. He heard nothing for thirty seconds. He stopped, worried the line had gone dead. “Boss?”

“His name is Alexander McKay, and he’s an enemy, Murdoch. He’s the worst possible person to have walked through that door. He’s going to ruin everything.”

A cold shiver went up his spine. He’d known there was something wrong with Master A, but he still had to ask the question. “How can you be sure? There are millions of dudes named Alex in the world.”

“There is only one who can really fuck everything up. Alexander McKay is going to wreck this operation. He’s a man who can hurt us all and he won’t hesitate to do it. He is very dangerous.”

“How is he involved?” He’d never heard the name Alex McKay before, but then he hadn’t exactly studied up. He was a soldier. He was a grunt.

“Do you need me to send you his dossier? Perhaps I should find a more amenable agent.”

He couldn’t lose this job. It was all he fucking had and besides, he wasn’t exactly intelligence here. He was just following orders. It was all he was really good at. “No, sir. Tell me what to do.”

“Kill him. Kill him and whoever came with him, but get rid of McKay first.”

His gut tightened at the thought of killing the woman. He’d killed men before. That didn’t bother him. If McKay was threatening his operation, he had to be eliminated, but the woman was different.

“That’s an order, Murdoch. Do you understand me?”

He forced himself to say the words he knew his boss wanted to hear. “Yes, sir. I’ll have it done as soon as possible.”

“You better because this meeting is going to take place in three day’s time. I can’t have McKay disrupting it. How much does he know?”

“I don’t think he knows about the meeting.” Jesse only knew because the boss had told him. At this point, he wasn’t even sure Chazz knew what was going to kick him squarely in the balls three days from now.

“Everything rides on this. Everything we’ve worked for.”

He knew what was riding on his shoulders. “I understand.”

A long sigh came over the line. “Good. You’re a good soldier, Murdoch. You’re a good man to have on the team.”

“I won’t let you down.” Jesse ended the call.

The world flowed around him, families with kids, couples holding hands, friends joking around, and Jesse realized just how alone he was. He shoved his cell in his pocket and began the walk back to the club parking lot. He needed to get his shit together because he wasn’t going to ever be a part of some happy fucking family.

He had his job, and he was damn lucky to have it. The boss didn’t have to trust him. Hell, no one else did. He had one shot at having any kind of a future, and he wasn’t going to let Alex McKay, world-class pervert, get in his way. He’d surely been right before. The tenderness he’d seen was an illusion. If the boss said he had to go, then he had to go.

And then Jesse would be in. Then he would really be on the team, a true soldier again.

He picked up the pace, his resolve hardened. He would put the woman down easy, but maybe he wouldn’t be so kind to the man.

He had a little aggression to work out after all.

“So you’re saying you won’t be here any time soon, huh, boss?” Adam asked, his voice clear as day as Alex walked through the front door of the condo. The balcony doors were open and a peaceful breeze came off the Atlantic.

There was nothing peaceful about his best friend’s response. Ian’s voice cracked through the condo.

“You invited Taggart here?” Kristen whispered, holding back as though the devil himself was in the room.

Well, Ian had quite the reputation. He suspected there was a reason Kristen didn’t want Ian around. He would very likely take over. Of course as lovely and soft as Kristen was, Ian would also very likely try to get into her bed. He needed to get her to chill because he’d spent forty minutes listening to her bitch about Jake showing up. “I did not. And since he’s talking to Adam through a computer, it’s likely he’s not on his way.”

Ian practically snarled over the connection. “No. I will not be getting on a plane any time soon because some motherfucker managed to get my name on a no-fly list. I swear to god, when I find Nelson I am going to kill him real slow.”

Eve gasped a little beside him, rushing toward the dining room table where Adam had a monitor up.

Kristen simply frowned and carefully walked around the mass of tech gear Adam had accrued. She was deliberate about not walking in front of the camera attached to the computer. “Are you sure you weren’t going to bring him in, too? I might as well just walk away for all you respect me. I have plans, and you’re going to screw them up.”

“Oh, Ian. Did they detain you?” Eve asked, her voice sympathetic.

“I didn’t ask him to come in,” Alex said quietly to Kristen. All her plans had been working, so he chose to placate her for now. The truth was he rather liked Kristen. “And I’m sorry I didn’t mention Jacob. The idea came to me late last night. He did his job and he’s out of it now. And it doesn’t sound like Ian’s going to make it out of Texas. I do respect you. I want you on this team. I know Eve respects you, too. She really wants to take a look at those files.” She’d mentioned it to him as he’d dried her off from their shower. His gut tightened at the idea of Eve getting deeper in, but he was going to honor her request. And he was going to get back in good with Kristen. He could be charming when he wanted to be. “I’m so grateful that you have the full files. My old partner is a slave to the rules. He couldn’t help me.”

He could stroke her ego a little.

A little smile curved her lips up. “Warren Petty. I’ve studied up on him. Interesting guy. His brother is about to be in a tough election fight.”

Warren had always supported his brother’s campaigns. When they were working together, he’d always been so proud he had a brother in politics. “Hoping you get a story out of it?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, I hate politics. Talk about mired in scandal. No. I’ll stay out of Washington. Yeah, let’s not bring the feds in here. I can get us any info we need, though Adam has proven to not be a total nimrod.”

“I’m excellent, thank you very much,” Adam said. “I could totally have those files in five seconds. Do you want me to prove it?”

Ian’s voice came over the monitor. “No, asshole, I want you to prove that you can get my fucking life back in order. Nelson is screwing with me, and I don’t like it. I got more than detained, damn it. I got searched by two of Homeland Security’s finest, and by finest what I really mean is hairiest and least gentle with the body cavities.”

Wow. “Nelson is playing hardball.”

Adam snickered. “Or hardballs, as in Ian’s case.”

Adam should be happy Ian was four states away.

“I’ll get the files for you.” Kristen walked back to her office.

“Holy shit, did I just hear that big brother got the slow hand from Homeland Security?” Sean wasn’t even trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, well wait until Nelson decides to come after you, baby brother. We know he doesn’t like you either,” Ian said. Alex moved in front of the monitor. Ian was in his office, but somehow he made his presence felt despite the distance. “In the course of a few days, he’s managed to blow my whole damn life apart. I just got a notification that someone changed the ownership names on my properties to
Hottie
McHot
Pants. I can’t sell those assets or change things or accept rent until I get this fixed. He is seriously fucking with me.”

“I can figure it out.” Adam hid a smile behind his hand. “I can totally fix all of that for you, but it’s going to take a little time. I need everything that’s been changed and I can fairly easily change it all back. These are all simple hacks for an expert.”

“Can you track him back? Can you use this information to figure out where he is?” Ian asked.

Adam shrugged. “I can try. He’s escalating.”

“I’m surprised,” Eve said. “This doesn’t sound like Nelson. He’s never come at us out in the open.”

Nelson had been a pain in the firm’s collective asses for longer than any of them had imagined. Alex had thought their troubles with Nelson began when the CIA operative decided to sell corporate secrets to the Chinese and he’d tried to use Sean Taggart’s wife to do it. But a couple of months ago in London he had discovered that Nelson had been dirty for years and had very likely had a hand in killing Ian’s wife and sending Liam on the run. Alex wouldn’t put anything past the man, but he seriously doubted that Nelson was out there calling Ian
Hottie
McHot
Pants.

“He’s coming after us personally now.” Ian sat back in his chair.

“He’s coming after the boss anyway.” Liam knelt down, nodding toward the monitor. “And I think we might have had a break-in a couple of weeks ago. Ian asked me to go through all the security records. Someone used my security code at 1:51 am exactly three weeks and two days ago. I checked my records. I happen to know I didn’t come to the office that night. Avery and I were in Austin for the weekend. The rest of you were working on a corporate case and you were all in Omaha. No one but the accounting girl was in the office, and she certainly wasn’t here at that time of night.”

Why would Nelson sneak into their office? What could he hope to gain? He’d always tried to stay away from them. “Do we have him on video?”

Ian growled. It was the way he’d communicated since they were kids. “I can’t find the things. I’m calling the company that programmed the backup system. I hope we still have the security tapes, but the way the rest of my fucking week is going, I’m sure someone taped soap operas over them. Can I borrow Adam for a couple of hours?”

“Any idiot can run the
pics
we took today through a facial recognition system,” Adam said.

Ian sighed. “Thank god. Then Sean can do it.”