Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Taggart’s head came back up. “There’s always a problem when the puppies start thinking with their penises. Has he tried to pee on you? I know that feels like an insult, but it’s a sign of affection.”
Kyle started laughing, and Drake sent him a nasty look.
She wasn’t playing this game. It was obvious Drake had a relationship with the man who held the strings to important parts of this op, and she needed to make herself plain. But in a way that didn’t make her the bitch. She’d heard Taggart liked being the protective older brother in every group he was in. She could use a protective older brother. She wouldn’t mention that he could be her dad. Though only technically. The big guy was barely in his fifties and still wretchedly hot. “He did try to pee on me but only after he screwed me under false pretenses and then let the Agency take me away for questioning. I wasn’t even given the chance to get dressed. I was held in an Eastern European jail for two weeks before they decided I wasn’t a double agent. Did I ever thank you for helping my father? For helping me?”
There were things Drake didn’t know either, and some of them could fuck him over. There was a reason she was so amenable to working with the Taggarts.
She’d never met the man personally, but she knew what he and his friends had done for her and her father.
“That was mostly Markovic.” Taggart’s gaze had softened. The man was definitely a top, but she would bet he was a wickedly indulgent one. His wife likely got whatever she wanted.
“Nick Markovic?” Tucker asked. “From the London office?”
She nodded. “He and my father came up through the ranks together in SVR, though my dad was older. He viewed Nicky as something of a younger brother. He was happy when Nicky made the move to get out and ended up with the London office. When we needed help getting into and out of Havana, the London office and its agents came to our aid. Undercover, of course. That was how we stayed off the radar.”
“I don’t normally condone smuggling anything but cigars and rum out of Cuba, but lifesaving cancer drugs seem like a good bet,” Taggart replied. “I was so sorry to hear about his passing. Your father was a good man. He should be with us, and Drake is a fucking douchebag. Stay away from him.”
“I thought I was a helpless puppy.” Drake seemed upset at the turn of events.
Taggart pointed a finger his way. “Puppies can bite, and it looks like you did. Taylor, please continue. I’d like to know how you’re going to get Tucker and Jax here killed. You should know that I’m full up on kids. You kill these two, you get all five of the little fuckers, and all the dogs, too.”
She didn’t take that as an insult. It was Taggart being Taggart.
“I think our wives would have something to say about that,” Jax argued.
Tucker shook his head. “Nope. If I die Roni is shipping all three of them straight to the Agency. I’ve been warned.”
She needed to get control again now that she was sure she’d made her point. “So let’s get to the mission. If you read the packets Brad’s placed in front of you, you’ll get a detailed outline of what the parameters of my part of this mission have been so far. I began working on this a year ago. After the Agency figured out my father wasn’t a double and I hadn’t sold out my country, they laid out what had happened to him.”
“Your father was investigating The Consortium at the same time as Kyle?” Taggart opened the folder.
“We were coming at it from two different angles. Neither Drake nor I realized anyone else was looking into the group.” Kyle went into a professional tone. “From what I’ve read of Sokolov’s notes, he identified a company in southeast Asia that was responsible for the deaths of at least ten people from polluted water, one of whom was an informant of Sokolov’s. He worked for an underground group. Sokolov was curious.”
“He was upset,” she corrected. “My father took his assets seriously. He liked Niran. He followed the court case that happened and thought there was corruption involved. He was right, of course, but he realized he’d only scratched the surface, that the company was connected to other companies and there was further abuse and even what some would call terrorism. He identified the structure and several of the corporations. He had a theory that The Consortium was working with a couple of intelligence agencies and might actually have recruited some operatives of ours.”
“He was ahead of us.” Drake had gone grave as well. “We knew there was some kind of link between world corporations that had risen from the dust of The Collective, but we hadn’t identified any intelligence operatives.”