“I’m only saying we could do some good in the world,” Big Tag argued. “I’ll scoop his eyeballs out myself. I’ve been practicing. Corneas are in short supply.”
A long-suffering sigh came from Ezra. “Shouldn’t you go back to Dallas? Doesn’t your plane leave soon? You should head to the airport.”
“I’m flying private, man,” Tag shot back. “Billionaire sister-in-law, remember? Who would have guessed Case would end up being the smartest one of us all? I’ve got plenty of time.”
A collective groan went through the room.
Owen sat back and closed his eyes as Robert started talking about the actual op and what they still needed to do. Make contact with the target. Make friends with the target. Bug the target’s mobile. Bug the target’s condo.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Turned out Toronto wasn’t so different from Dallas. He’d only been here a few days, but he’d spent his time looking through records and prepping the documents they would need to begin the mission. Robert’s job was logistics, and Owen was his partner for this op.
In the beginning he’d been the lead. Ezra had put him in charge when they’d been worried that the target might recognize them. There was still a risk, and they had less data on a couple of members of the team, but they were almost certain there was no way Walsh had met any of them. When they had been sure they would go through with it, Big Tag had handed the op over to Robert, shoving Owen to the sidelines.
Turned out he was mostly muscle. Until the bullets started flying, there wasn’t much for him to do.
He hadn’t always been muscle. At one point in time, he’d been a bloody good operative. He’d been SAS for years. Or so the files told him. Of course, back then he’d had his memory and a body that hadn’t been ravaged by an experimental drug.
Sometimes he wondered why he was here at all. Guilt, perhaps. They dragged him along because he had nowhere else to go.
He felt a hand nudging him from his right side and he looked up, realizing all eyes were on him.
Big Tag stared at him, his body relaxed, but there was tension in those icy eyes of his. “Sorry, you don’t snore like Sasha there. I couldn’t tell if you were awake or asleep. I asked if you had anything to add since until a few days ago you’ve been the one following Green.”
Yes, he’d been the one sitting in a car outside of numerous bars because the fucker liked to party. “If the bugger works at all, I can’t tell. He spent a total of ten hours at his office in Langley. Not that I could get all that close to it. They tend to not like you spying on the spies.”
Another set of blue eyes was on him. Ezra Fain’s always seemed warmer than Big Tag’s. Tag’s could have come from the arctic, the kind of blue lit by ice. Fain’s were more like a Caribbean sea, the kind that was so clear he could see his feet even when the water hit his chest.
“I have my own people on the inside,” Ezra explained. “He met with groups over the course of a couple of days. My person thinks he met with a senator and a general as well, but we don’t have proof of it. He’s getting all his ducks in line to make his big play. I believe he’s going to use the intelligence he intercepted from us at The Ranch to move up in the organization.”
“Is your person Kimberly Soloman?” He had to ask the question because he had something else to tell his boss, and Fain wasn’t going to like what he’d found.
At the sound of his ex-wife’s name, the former CIA operative paled. Owen could see it even in the dim light. Fain’s smile faded. “No. I haven’t heard from Solo since the day Jax walked into the woods.”
He waited for a moment. No one was watching him now. They were all set on the boss. Well, except Sasha, who was still sleeping. Even Jax had looked up from his phone.
Robert shook his head. “You’re seriously not even going to ask? The last time anyone saw her she’d been shot.”
“She was dying the last time I saw her,” Jax said. Of course he would know. Jax had been dying, too.
Luckily the drug that had taken his memory hadn’t taken his skills. Owen had been the one to fly the helicopter that day. He’d helped the doctor to load Jax in and gotten him to a hospital. It had been one of the brief times he could remember that he’d felt like he meant something.
Ezra’s stare had gone stubborn. “There’s nothing to ask. I assume she’s alive. You can’t kill her. She’s like a cockroach.”
He took exception to that since Kimberly Soloman seemed like a nice lady to him. She’d given them valuable intel, and according to Jax she’d been at the site in the woods in Colorado to help them. But then what did he know? “It’s all in my report. Now can we move on to Dr. Walsh? I signed the lease on the condo yesterday. I’ve got movers for tomorrow.”
At least they’d trusted him enough to let him call the movers in.
“Seriously, you don’t care if she even lived?” Tucker ignored him, preferring to gift Fain with a judgmental stare.
“I told you. I know she lived. You don’t take out Solo with a single gut shot. Though I noticed he didn’t go for her heart. She would have been much safer if he had since she doesn’t exactly have one.” He’d been wrong about Ezra’s eyes. They could go incredibly cold when he wanted them to.
Big Tag slapped Ezra on the back. “Good one, man. That’s some serious denial right there. And she totally lived. I’ve already read the report and talked to her on the phone. She had a rough couple of weeks, but she’s on the mend.”
Here was the bad part, the part Big Tag hadn’t read. Owen opened the folder in front of him and slid the photo on top Ezra’s way. “She’s back at work from what I can tell. She met with him for roughly ten minutes at a café outside Langley before she went to her office. I wasn’t close enough to get audio.”
Ezra’s smile held not an ounce of amusement as he stared down at the photo of his ex-wife sitting across from the man who’d burned him and tried to kill him. “I don’t need audio. She’s plotting with her boyfriend.”
Intel on Dr. McDonald’s experiments and the other doctors she’d worked with hadn’t been the only thing they’d learned from their time in Bliss, Colorado. They’d also learned far too much about the boss’s marriage. From what they’d pieced together, Ezra had been married to Kim Soloman, also known as Solo. She’d been responsible for the mission Ezra’s half-brother had died during. He’d blamed her and they’d divorced. She’d had something brief with Levi that had given the bugger crazy-stalker vibes about her, and Ezra wasn’t even close to being over her.
He hadn’t needed audio either. “She was angry with him. There was a lot of tension on both sides, but she was the truly angry one. I know she had security keep him out of her hospital room. She was alone in there the whole time. Not a single visitor.”
He’d thought about sneaking in to see her but decided not to try his luck. He was already the group fuck-up. It would be worse if he also became the one who got his arse hauled to jail.
He’d learned a bit about his boss’s ex-wife. She was alone in the world. She was an heiress who’d chosen to turn her back on the life of privilege that could have been hers.
The door opened and he watched two figures moving through the shadows toward the conference table. He would bet a lot those two were women, and that Robert was about to lose his shit.