“He’s using us to find what he can’t.” It was the only explanation.
“I agree. Theo Taggart is coming up this weekend,” Ezra said. “Big Tag is apparently making more small demons with his wife and he said something about ovulation that I didn’t want to hear, so he’s sending the Baby Tag.”
“I think we have to call Theo a mediumish Tag,” Tucker corrected. “There are a whole bunch of tiny Tags crawling around now. Is Erin coming with him?”
“I’m sure she will,” Ezra shot back. “Taggarts rarely travel without their wives. It’s like they’re tethered or something.”
How much of Ezra’s bitterness came from longing? It was a stupid thought and one he likely wouldn’t have had a few days before, but now he wondered if Ezra had once been “tethered” to Solo and how much he missed the feeling.
But that thought was drowned out by another. Theo and Erin were coming to town—the very people he’d hurt when he’d betrayed his team.
His gut rolled. He’d been careful to avoid them while they’d all been in Dallas. It hurt to look at that family and realize what he’d almost done to them. Little TJ Taggart would have grown up without a mum or dad if McDonald had been successful. It didn’t matter that Theo seemed unbothered by his presence.
As for Theo’s wife, he was sure Erin would have slit his throat if she’d had the chance. She was the savage one in that relationship, her violent tendencies only tamed by her love for her husband and son.
There were days he wished she would do it, that he would wake up one night and Erin Taggart would be looming over him like an avenging angel, her knife promising him sweet release. And if she wanted to torture him for a while, to flay the skin from his bones as he screamed, well, that would start to pay back what he owed.
“So we need to have something to tell them,” Ezra was saying. “I’ve got Jax trying to hunt down Levi.”
“He’ll be somewhere close to her, close to Becca,” Tucker said.
Owen shook his head. “He won’t get too close. If he could do this job himself, he wouldn’t have sent us to do it for him. I don’t think he’ll be content to sit back and watch. He’s got a plan.”
“He certainly did while we were in Bliss,” Tucker offered, but his light had dimmed. His jaw tightened, and Owen could briefly see the demons that lurked under his normally sunny surface.
It could be easy to forget that Tucker had a dark side. A seriously dark side. A side that had been tortured over and over again. And maybe he’d been on the other side of the needle at one point in time. Owen knew that was Tucker’s greatest fear, that he’d been callous and heartless, cruel and indifferent to the suffering of those around him.
Owen didn’t have to fear. He already knew he had that darkness in him.
He sat back and thought about the light he’d been in recently. When he’d reached out for Becca Walsh, there hadn’t been an ounce of dark between them. She’d been sunshine and she’d warmed his soul.
As Ezra started in on what they needed to do and Robert started getting paranoid about Levi taking off with Ariel, Owen sat back and sipped his coffee.
And plotted the seduction of Dr. Rebecca Walsh. He would get her out of that pretty cardigan and then they would see if she blew him off again.
Chapter Seven
“Thank you for coming up on a Saturday.” Becca smiled at the intern. Annie showing up to help her out in the lab on a weekend seemed to be one of the only things going right for her.
That wasn’t true. The research was going great, and that should make her happy, but all she seemed able to think about was the fact that she’d passed Owen Shaw three times in the hall in the last few days and he’d said nothing but hello to her. And then walked on.
She should be cheering. She’d gotten away clean and there was no weirdness between them.
Yet here she was on a Saturday, hiding at work so she didn’t have to see if he was going on a date. Which was perverse because she had a date tomorrow. She’d agreed to Cathy’s plan and she was going through with it come hell or high water.
“They’re doing great, Dr. Walsh,” Annie said, who despite Carter’s insistence seemed incredibly smart and focused on her job. The young woman couldn’t be more than twenty-four, her blonde hair up in a ponytail and a ready smile on her face. “Kidney function is perfect in all the rats. The drug doesn’t seem to be affecting the liver either.”
Becca stared down at the reports. “Excellent. How did short-term memory perform?”
Annie handed her another set of files. “With the drug, they managed to make it through the maze two times faster than the control subjects. After three tries, memory function made them ten times faster.”
It was everything she’d hoped for. “Yes. That’s what I want to hear. The nerves are repairing themselves. The connections are coming back online once the drug clears the plaque out of the system.”
“Once you clear the plaque,” Annie said. “Dr. Walsh, this is remarkable. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“A lot of people helped work on this,” she murmured, uncomfortable with the praise. She didn’t give a shit about the prizes that would likely come if this worked out. The notoriety she would receive would be the worst part of her work.
She wasn’t looking for money and fame. She was in a war, and it finally hit her that she might be winning.
“Yeah, well, a lot of people didn’t have your ideas,” Annie said. “I’m going to be you when I grow up.”
She glanced up at the intern. “I’m like five years older than you.”
A slender shoulder shrugged. “Yeah, but you’re an actual adult. You don’t party and stuff. I’m still sowing a bunch of oats or something. That’s what my nana says. My mom just slut shames me and wants to know when I’m going to find a husband. She then tells me no man is going to want me if I don’t slow my roll.” She leaned in. “She means sex. I think if a guy can sleep with a bunch of people and have fun, then I should be able to, too. Not that you should. You should be here working and making the world a better place and stuff.”
Did everyone see her as some kind of boring, plain Jane, never-gets-out of the lab martyr? “I have fun.”
She’d damn straight had fun a few days before.
She kind of wished Owen had been the stripper she’d teased him about being. Then she could call and request his services. She wanted to celebrate and couldn’t think of a better way than watching Owen get naked.
Annie’s lips firmed as though she was holding in a chuckle and she nodded. “Of course you do. You simply have a different version of fun than a normal person. You’re a genius. You’re different from the rest of us.”
She groaned because she’d heard that her whole life. She was special. She was different because she’d been touched by God or something. Her big brain was a blessing and she had to ensure that she did everything she could to make herself worthy of it.
She was sick of being seen as some kind of goody-two-shoes brainiac. “Do you know what I did Wednesday, Annie?”
“Yes, Dr. Walsh. You came to work. You were in the lab most of the day and then you had to listen to Jimmy’s complete and utter failure of a trial. I saw the chick who wants to kill him. Her nose hair grew. I mean all the rest of it did too, but I was impressed at how fast that nose hair grew. You had a turkey sandwich for lunch at your desk and Cathy called in a chicken salad sandwich for your dinner from the Spadina Street café.” She shrugged again. “We all have your schedule in case Cathy has an emergency.”
God, she was boring. Well, she would have to fix that. “Was banging a hot Scot in an elevator on Cathy’s schedule? Because that was how my night went.”
Annie’s eyes went wide. “Seriously?”
She felt her face flush, but there was no going back. Besides, she wasn’t exactly ashamed. “His name was Owen and he was incredibly good stress relief.”
“I thought your shoulders seemed looser lately. Good for you, Dr. Walsh.”