Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 732(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“Huh, I never thought about timing. My path always seemed set. I don’t like the whole up-in-the-air thing.” Aidan’s expression shut down, going a perfectly polite blank. “So back to what I’m here for. I don’t suppose you want to tell me the details of how you came to be injured. Beyond quips.”
TJ wished he could say more. “Not really.”
“So it’s classified,” Aidan said, his voice tight as he put a stethoscope to TJ’s chest.
“Yeah. Sorry, man.” TJ knew Aidan had a reason to get irritated by all the spy stuff. After all, it seemed he’d lost his partner and best friend to it.
Something had broken down when Tristan had joined the CIA team, and now it was so bad Aidan and Carys were getting married. Without him.
“I’m used to it. Take a deep breath. Can you at least tell me what they used on you? I would say a taser, but it could be a cattle prod,” Aidan said, his tone going mild.
TJ breathed in and out before he answered, allowing Aidan to listen. “It was both. They were full-service torturers. I was also dosed with some kind of roofie. It was put in my drink, but I seem to have metabolized it.”
“That all?”
“Oh, uhm, I might have also been accidentally dosed with whatever the Agency uses in those microdosers. You know the ones they put on their palms and oops, you’re suddenly asleep,” he admitted.
“Accidentally?” Aidan asked.
TJ shrugged. “It happens. I would explain it to you…”
“But it’s classified.” Aidan sighed and sat back, wrapping the stethoscope around his neck. “I would like to do some blood work, but superficially you’re fine.”
“That’s what I told everyone. Sorry to bring you out so early.”
“It’s not a problem. Carys and I meant to come by at some point. Time…it seems to get away from me. We work. We sleep. We start again. Oh, and we plan a wedding that hopefully will actually happen this time.”
Aidan had asked Carys to marry him two years before, just after they’d formed the CIA team. They’d set a date and then put it off. Once and then again.
As though they were waiting for something. Or someone.
“Do you think he’s going to change his mind?” TJ asked, hoping he wasn’t stepping on any toes.
“Tris? I think Tris is an arrogant, stubborn asshole who makes decisions without talking to his loved ones.” Aidan sighed. “I don’t know. I also don’t know that it matters anymore. He was supposed to work Army intelligence, cyber intelligence, from safely behind a screen. It was something he could do here in the States, but he got pulled into…”
This was the in he’d been looking for. “He got pulled into the Agency. But again, I would think that’s okay. For the most part he could be here like the rest of the team. Aidan, I’m worried about him. I thought he was just working with the twins and Lou, but he’s involved in something else, something I’m not even sure Big Tag understands.”
Aidan’s jaw went tight. “Well, if Big Tag doesn’t understand, then I don’t know how I’m supposed to.”
But there was something about the way Aidan stiffened. He wasn’t a spy and he wasn’t a good liar. But TJ also wasn’t sure that going at him directly would get the answers he wanted.
And suddenly he wanted answers. He didn’t like the idea that Tristan’s Agency work could break them up. What would happen when he someday left the Army and came home to find a job? Would that break him and Lou?
He wouldn’t allow it to. Not that they were together, although he had woken up with the sweetest bundle of femininity wrapped around him. He’d wanted to kiss her awake and pull that old Mission Impossible T-shirt off along with the boxers she used as PJ bottoms and start the morning right.
Instead he’d stayed still and let her slink away like she hadn’t spent the night in his arms. When she’d brought Aidan back here, she’d pretended like nothing had happened, asked him how he’d slept.
Like a baby.
“The team doesn’t know where he is,” TJ gently prodded. “I was hoping you might. I know we’re all worried about him.”
Aidan started to pack up his bag. “No idea, man. Tristan has made it plain that his work is nonnegotiable. Carys and I understand and we’re moving forward. I haven’t seen or talked to him in months.”
But there was a little tic as his jaw locked and then released.
Was Aidan lying to him? Why would Aidan lie? “You don’t know what he’s working on?”
Aidan stood up. “Sorry, man. You would know more than I do.”
“And you have no idea why he would walk away from you and Carys?”
“It’s not your business.”
“Carys is my cousin. You know this family. It’s all our business. I could beat the shit out of him for you.” It was sometimes the way they handled things in the Taggart clan.