“So you don’t know anything about Charlotte Taggart? You don’t know that she was Ian’s cover for his last European assignment? That he married her because he needed the cover?”
Liam winced inwardly. He was betting Charlotte Taggart had likely been pissed off. Or more likely she didn’t even know that he’d used her. She had probably been quietly divorced and now lived a perfectly boring Middle-American life with three kids and a fat husband who didn’t know how to internally decapitate another human being.
Avery would want that life. Avery would move on after he’d used her, and she wouldn’t look back at the idiot man who wasn’t smart enough to love her.
Did Ian ever think about Charlotte?
Weston’s hand flicked the marriage license aside and another very formal-looking document was beneath it. “Does he ever mention that he’s the one who put a bullet in her back? Charlotte Taggart was eliminated after her loving husband no longer needed her. Oh, he claimed she was dead when he found her according to Scotland Yard, but it’s clear enough to me. And would you like to know what op he was running at the time? Would you like to know why he was ‘honeymooning’ in England?”
Those pages just kept flipping, an English Intelligence book of horrors. His stomach was a wave of nasty suspicion. Ian had married a woman just weeks before Rory had died, and he’d been in England at the time.
When he’d called Ian that day so long ago, Ian had told Liam he was in Dallas. But according to his passport, he’d been in England. He’d been dealing with his wife’s murder.
Had Ian been killing his wife?
“According to all MI6 reports, Ian Taggart was still an active CIA operative at the time of his wife’s death. The US government smoothed the way in the investigation of the incident. At the time, he’d been running an op in cooperation with G2 and MI6.”
Liam shook his head. “No. I never talked to the CIA.”
Weston sighed. “Why would you? You were the grunt, O’Donnell. You were expendable. You’ve worked intelligence long enough to know that the right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing, and most of the time neither hand even realizes there’s a brain behind the actions. Ian Taggart ran the op that killed your brother. It was his baby. It was the whole reason he was in Europe in the first place. He’d tracked those Russians for years. You had worked with him a couple of times. How do you think he managed to get you out of Ireland so easily? Everyone should have been looking for you or your body, but Ian Taggart just bought you a plane ticket to the States? No. The CIA got you out. Taggart made a deal with them. Why the hell would that man risk his newly started company to take in someone who might or might not have killed seven people including his own brother? Even if you discount the potential murder charges, there is no doubt that you fucked up that op. Those bonds are gone because you decided to celebrate with a pint. Why the hell would he bring you in unless he wanted to watch you? He’s been watching you for years, O’Donnell, and when he gets what he needs out of you, you’ll end up like his loving wife.”
Weston revealed a vile photo. A beautiful woman with pitch black hair staring up at the camera, her crystal blue eyes vacant. Charlotte Taggart. Dead and gone.
“Her body went missing from the morgue twelve hours after she was declared dead. I’ve always wondered what he did with it. We didn’t get a chance to do an autopsy. I suspect we would have found evidence against him if we had.” Weston sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Taggart is involved in a lot of nasty business. So why don’t you tell me why he’s come to my island? I need to know so I can form a plan to stop him. He’s every bit as dangerous as anything Molina is into.”
Liam stared at that girl. She morphed into another girl. Younger, less beautiful, but she’d had her life ahead of her. Had he choked that life away? Had his actions that evening, innocent though they’d been, led that small blonde woman to her death? How many women had died because of that single operation?
How would Avery look on a slab, her face devoid of the life that lit her up from the inside?
Would Avery Charles be one more woman on a slab? He didn’t remember the other girl, but he would die with the feel of Avery’s arms around him. He would always be able to taste her on his tongue.
“O’Donnell?” Weston’s voice seemed to come from far away, but it pulled him out of that very dark place. Somewhere in the background, he could hear a phone ringing. It wasn’t real. He knew that. That phone was in his head. In his nightmares. Who had called him? Had it been Ian Taggart? Why couldn’t he remember?
Liam forced himself back into the present. He had enough shit to deal with in the here and now. He didn’t need to get lost in the past. He schooled his expression. No matter what, he wasn’t about to make an emotional decision. He needed time. He needed to sort this out. He’d been played before and people had died. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
“I can help you.” Weston’s voice was smooth, friendly. “I know what it means to be that piece of crap expendable asset. I’ve had to fight the same shit over here.”
Liam doubted that the second son of a duke was really so fucking expendable. Liam had grown up rough. He knew what it meant to go to sleep with an empty belly and rats skittering across the floor. Whatever worth he’d had in this world, he’d had to fight for.
Weston had no idea what it meant to be utterly expendable.
The door opened abruptly, and his evening was complete. Damon Knight walked in looking utterly different than he did at The Garden. His leathers were gone, replaced with a perfectly cut suit and a frown that could freeze a man from ten feet away. He walked in like he owned the place.
“Do you want to explain this to me, Weston?”
Weston glared back. His eyes had flared, and there had been just a second’s worth of panic on the agent’s face before he settled back into a calm but annoyed look. And it was brutally obvious they knew each other. If Weston was shocked the owner of a BDSM club had come walking into his safe house, it didn’t show. “He’s sleeping with my target. I investigated him and discovered he has ties to an American security firm. Not that it was easy to figure that out. They did a pretty good job of trying to hide his true name.”
“Yes, McKay-Taggart,” Knight shot back. “I am well aware.”