He was a legend. He was a problem. He was a fine balance that she would have to walk. Intriguing. Even in her grief, she found the idea of playing the game with Taggart deeply intriguing.
“Yes. He’s got connections that go around the world and while I like the man, I have to keep an eye on him. There’s something else. There’s a situation that’s starting up in Florida.”
She felt her jaw firm, her blood chilling. There was only one situation either of them cared about right now. “Murdoch?”
Ten nodded. “I’ve been tracking him and he’s working with some FBI agent out of DC, though he recently took a job in St. Augustine at one of those fet clubs.”
“You think he has something to do with Taggart?” Taggart was knee-deep in the BDSM lifestyle. She’d read all about it in his files. It didn’t appeal to her at all. Jamie had been tender, so tender with her. He would never have hit her, never have tied her up so she couldn’t fight back. Ten always said Taggart was a good man, but he liked to hit the women he had sex with so that made Phoebe doubt it. Some people in the Agency still believed that Taggart had murdered his wife.
It shouldn’t surprise her Murdoch was into the same shit.
Ten ran a hand over his hair, a sure sign that he was frustrated. “It’s a complex situation and I still don’t understand the whole of it. You’re better at patterns than I am.”
“I can look at the file for you.”
“It’s still early, but someone is playing a game and I think I might have figured out who it is. I think Taggart’s wife is still alive and somehow she’s gotten tangled up with my investigation into Murdoch.”
So maybe Taggart wasn’t a killer. He also wasn’t Agency. “You put too much faith in him. He left you a long time ago, Ten. He’s on his own and he couldn’t care less about you or the job we do.”
She’d never been in a room with the man, but she’d always resented him because no matter what Ten said, she knew Taggart’s leaving the Agency had hurt Ten. Ten had recruited the man, trained him and he’d walked away.
“You’re wrong, Phoebe, but I’ll let you form your own opinions of the man. I feel like shit not telling him about Charlotte, though. As far as I can tell, she’s working on something to do with McKay and his ex-wife. It’s a big old clusterfuck and Taggart won’t see it coming. They’re on a collision course.”
“You can’t tell Taggart a damn thing.” He owed his loyalty to Jamie not Ian Taggart. For the first time in hours, she stood and felt her blood starting to thrum through her system. Jamie might still need her. “If this gets us close to Jesse Murdoch, then you keep Taggart in the dark. No one outside the Agency knows Jamie died in Iraq.”
“I’ve kept his cover. As far as Tag knows, Jamie was just a friend of mine and he died in a Humvee accident while training rebels along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. No one wants it to get out that some of our operatives are posing as soldiers.”
Her mind started working again, a tiny bit of the fog of grief clearing out. “You work it from Murdoch’s end and I’ll keep an eye on Taggart and his group.”
McKay-Taggart Security was rapidly becoming one of the country’s premiere security providers. They were made up of ex-Special Forces and ex-FBI.
For the first time in days, Ten smiled. “I am so glad to hear you say that.”
She had to make one thing clear. “You won’t tell Taggart.”
His smile died, but he nodded. “No. I’ll keep quiet. He’s my friend, but Jamie was my brother. We have to figure out if Murdoch turned on him.”
“If he did, he’s mine, Ten.” She would seek retribution on the man who betrayed her husband. It didn’t matter why he’d done it—whether out of greed or cowardice. Somehow Murdoch had been left untouched while everyone else died. It wasn’t fair.
Sometimes life wasn’t fair. Sometimes karma didn’t work.
But Phoebe did.
She sat back down and Ten’s hand found hers. They stayed that way for the longest time, until the light died and night fell.
When she stood back up, she knew it was time to go to work.
CHAPTER ONE
One Year Later
Dallas, TX
Jesse Murdoch sat back in his chair and thought about looking around for the cameras because sometimes the boys liked to play pranks on each other. Like the time Big Tag had filled Adam’s office with balloons. It had seemed like such a lighthearted little trick until Adam had popped the first sucker and discovered they had all been painstakingly filled with lemon pudding. It had been retribution for Adam eating the last of Ian’s beloved lemon-filled donuts, and it was a video they still played at office parties from time to time, along with the video of Eve finding the psychotic clown Halloween decoration in her closet and losing her shit and Grace trying to track down a mouse only to discover it was being radio controlled by her husband who—according to that tape—was never sleeping in their bed again.