“I would not like what you are thinking right now,” Robert mused, sitting back in his chair. “Did it not go well? Might I suggest a trip to River and Jax’s kitchen island. It seems to inspire them.”
“Will you stop going on about that damn island,” a familiar voice said as a red-haired woman rounded the corner and entered the kitchen. “You don’t understand how it is when you’re first married. You gotta get all the sex in you can before the kids come. I told River that at her bridal shower. Not that it was much of a shower since they have to live out of suitcases and shit, but we all gave her advice. Theo and me didn’t even get that time because his fool ass got killed, and TJ was already here by the time he was smart enough to come back to life. Is there coffee?”
Erin Taggart. She was wearing boxer shorts and a too big T-shirt with the Top logo on it, her red hair up in a messy bun.
His stomach took an immediate nose dive.
“I made a fresh pot of coffee a couple of minutes ago.” Robert glanced up at him, concern on his face. “They got in late last night. I let them stay in your room. They’re finding a hotel this afternoon.”
“Are you sure about the coffee?” Erin’s husband walked in behind her. Theo Taggart was technically the youngest of the four Taggart brothers, but only by a few minutes. His twin, Case, had been born first, a state that led to Theo being called the tiniest of the Tags. Looking at the six-foot-three-inch tree of a man, it was hard to think of him as tiny.
Erin’s right brow climbed over her eyes. “Are you serious? You know I’ve done this before and you haven’t. One cup a day isn’t going to kill me. You might know that if you’d been around the first time.”
His hands came up. “Peace, woman. You’re a beast without a little caffeine. Hey, Owen. How’s it going?”
Theo held a hand out and Owen forced himself to shake it. It was odd to stand in front of the man he’d betrayed. He knew deep down that he didn’t deserve to shake the man’s hand, but it was expected of him.
Erin was pouring a cup of coffee. “From what I hear it’s going pretty good since Ezra told me you took the target home last night. She lives on this floor, right? Should Tucker be coming and going like he lives here? Are you supposed to know each other?”
“She can’t see us from here and Tucker takes the stairs,” Robert explained. “Oh, he whines and complains about it, but he does it. Wait until he starts talking about his quads.”
Was Theo working on something else or was he really here to check up on him? Did they already think he was mucking things up? “She’s got a tag on her purse and her phone,” Owen explained. “I’ve also placed a device on her front door that lets us know when she’s entering or exiting.”
Robert held up a tablet as the thing chimed. “Like now. What’s up with the cops?”
Erin turned to him. “She called the cops? What did you do?”
Yes, there was the judgment he always expected. It wasn’t like she didn’t have the right to it. “I didn’t do anything. At least not anything she didn’t want me to do.”
“Ah, that’s why you want me to check into the neighbor,” Robert said, his eyes on the tablet. “I saw him hanging around. He didn’t look happy to see you going into her apartment after you went to the café. That security camera is perfectly placed. Sasha did an excellent job with that. I think he actually does better work drunk off his ass. Dude, those cops are getting an earful. Your girl is not happy.”
He moved around so he could see the image on the tablet. Becca was still in her robe and she was pointing to her left, toward Carter’s apartment, her face angry as hell. At least she was blaming the proper person.
Robert had fed the security footage through all their systems so they would be able to know when it was and wasn’t safe to move around the building. Becca didn’t know it, but her every move was being monitored.
It made him feel a little sick to think about how he’d tagged her phone while she’d been sleeping. He’d rolled out of the bed he’d taken her in again and again, only to sneak to her purse and make sure they could keep track of her, stealing every vestige of her privacy because he’d also planted some bugs so they could listen in.
“You’re doing it as much for her as for the rest of us,” Theo said solemnly, as though he could read minds.
Or he was so damn transparent anyone could tell what he was thinking. “I’m not sure she would agree.”
“She will when we keep her from falling into Levi Green’s clutches. I think he sent us here to do his dirty work. He’s trying to find leverage to make her work for him, but we’re in Canada and he has to be careful. If she’d been in Boston, he wouldn’t have bothered with us at all,” Erin said with a wrinkle of her freckled nose. “I hate that asshole. I’ve been thinking about numerous ways Kay and I could mess him up. I think he requires female justice.”
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.”