Charlie’s eyes came up, finding his. She gave him a smile and mouthed the words “save me” and pointed at her erstwhile suitor.
Save her. It was all he’d wanted to do back then.
Knight’s voice came over the system. “This is your pilot. We’re about to take off. If you want to keep your ball bag in the right place, you’ll sit down and buckle up.”
So he was set. He was going to meet with Eli Nelson and his brother was at his back.
And he kind of wanted to keep his ball bag where it belonged, but Ten might lose his. He strode down the aisle. He wasn’t going to fight with Ten. He didn’t need to.
He took the seat across from Ten. “Charlie?”
She didn’t need more than that. She unbuckled and immediately moved to sit beside him without a backward glance.
Sean settled in across from Charlie, a smirk on his face.
“Buckle up, baby,” Ian said.
It might be a long flight, but at least he liked the company.
Most of it.
* * * *
The sun beat down on Nelson’s head, the heat nearly unbearable, but he stayed in position, watching the massive yacht in the distance.
He was getting too old for this shit. He was starting to envy the king and his carefree world. Kamdar didn’t have to hustle, didn’t have to worry that every day might be his last.
He was a little naïve to not worry about that last bit since Nelson’s job was to make sure the king didn’t have a good many days left.
The king was lying back on a chaise as his harem lounged around him. Beautiful women in bikinis that barely covered anything at all. They were all there awaiting the king’s pleasure. Including the new blonde he’d picked up when he’d refueled yesterday.
It had been the simplest thing for Nelson to get his own pretty blonde on board. His attempts at getting close to the king himself had met with failure. The king, he’d been told, was on vacation and not meeting anyone for business.
It would be so simple if he could just murder the fucker, but until he figured out where the research documents were stored, Kash Kamdar had to be kept alive. The last thing his bosses wanted was the research being made public. He needed every copy either in his hands or destroyed.
Hopefully Olga would do her work and do it well. She simply needed to get into the king’s bed and then wait until he made a mistake.
Or if he took too long, then Olga was not only magnificent in bed, she was also a well-trained torturer. She could lick a man’s balls and then make him wish he’d never been born with them.
He just wished she would get on with it. The shit in Russia was getting to be a pain in his ass. His employers didn’t understand that the pipeline raids were a delicate balance. He had to keep both the syndicate and the insider he’d placed at Malone Oil happy. The young engineer he’d found spied for him and let him know when security was weak, and then Nelson let Denisovitch know where to strike. All his bosses wanted was more profit. They didn’t understand that the minute Malone Oil found his spy, they would likely find him and figure out that rival oil companies were using the mob to weaken their competitors.
The world was changing. Governments controlled very little now. Oh, they made a good show of it, but they no longer had real power. Nelson had seen it coming a long time ago. The Agency paid shit, and they weren’t known for their loving care of retired employees. So when The Collective had first recruited him, it had been a godsend. The Collective understood how the world worked. They also knew how to keep an employee happy. Money. Profit. That was what The Collective traded in. He’d found his place.
Until fucking Taggart had ruined everything.
He’d been valuable to The Collective when he had CIA entrée. Now he had to hustle like the rest of them and hope he satisfied the men in power.
Corporations were the new kings, and they liked their warfare waged quietly.
He just sometimes had to convince them to be patient.
His cell rang—the private one he always had to answer. He put down his binoculars just as the king started in on a pretty Asian woman. It looked like he was branching out from his usual blondes.
“Yes.” No need for “hello” or “this is.” They knew exactly who he was and they didn’t care for pleasantries.
“Why was the Agency and MI6 swarming Dallas?”
Fuck. He hadn’t exactly explained to his contact that a round of assassinations had been part of his deal with the syndicate, but then he was awfully good at deflecting blame. “Denisovitch found his niece. I’m afraid I wasn’t able to convince him of her worth.”
Like he would try. He wanted the bitch dead, too.
“I explained to you that The Collective believes she could be an asset.”
“I brought your concerns to the syndicate, but I’m afraid they believe in revenge more.”
His contact’s frustration was clear in the tightness of his tone. “Try harder. We want the girl brought to us. She’s proven to be smart and capable and willing to get her hands dirty.”
They didn’t understand Charlotte Denisovitch the way he did. “Then why did she tip off the Agency about Al-Qaeda plots?”
There was a small chuckle over the line. “The fact that she knew about those plots at all makes us interested in her. We’re not terrorists, Mr. Nelson. We’re capitalists. There was no money to be made off anarchist plots. We stood to lose billions if the Euro dropped, so in our minds she’s quite the hero. We expect you to keep the syndicate in line.”
Yeah, because that was an easy job. “Denisovitch can be unreasonable.”
“Then maybe he shouldn’t be the head of the family anymore.”
Fuck. He was going to have to off another mobster. He’d been lucky last time. If he got caught, it wasn’t like The Collective would send the cavalry in. They would just find another agent to take his place and move on.
“Finish the job in India. If you can kill the project and bring us all the research, there will be a rather large bonus in it for you. Then you can handle the Russian problem and we can discuss your retirement from the field. We think it might be time to move you to management.”
Those were the magic words that kept him dangling on a string. Oh, he knew he would never really be out of The Collective, but he could move out of the field. He could move into recruitment and training and stay for months on his island.