Chapter Three

 

Ariel stood outside the pretty building that looked absolutely nothing like the hotel she knew Robert had booked their rooms at. They were on a quiet street in the city that their driver had explained was one of Munich’s more upscale neighborhoods. The building looked like something out of a movie with its gold and green façade. She half expected a Victorian lady to step out for her daily walk.

Robert had his hands on his hips, staring up at the four-story building. “This is not the Charles Hotel. Is this where Big Tag decided to put up Dante and Sasha?”

Peter nodded and gestured toward the building. “Yes, this is where Mr. Taggart chose to house you. It’s mine. Well, mine and Lina’s. We don’t actually live here, but you’ll find the accommodations quite suitable.”

She wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “I don’t know that we should break up the team.”

Tucker had his duffel bag over his shoulder as he looked up at the building. “I’m okay with staying here. It looks pretty sweet. Which floor are we on? Are there neighbors? Are any of them women?”

Dear lord. She should have warned their hosts about Tucker’s insatiable need to flirt. And do other things with every woman available. Especially hookers. Did she have any cash, and could that be expensed? There was a reason she’d been happy to let Kayla act as mother hen to the lads all this time. “Tucker, try to remember we’re working.”

He glanced back at her and that grim look she’d seen in his eyes so often lately was back. “I promise I won’t forget we’re trying to figure out how evil I am.”

Yes, maybe she would find a couple of women for him. Perhaps Peter could help. It couldn’t possibly be the oddest request he’d ever received.

“We can’t break up,” Robert argued. “I got us all rooms at a hotel near the city center. I’m in charge of logistics and everything is set up. We’ll pick up Dante and Sasha and be out of your hair.”

“I canceled the rooms,” Peter said as if he were commenting on the weather. “You will stay here. It’s much easier. Big Tag told me to use my brain. My brain tells me you should all stay here. We’re closer to Kronberg. It makes sense for you to be here if anyone in intelligence discovers you are in Germany.”

“You did what?” Robert asked, his voice going icy cold.

She stepped beside him, putting a hand on his arm. Robert was one of the most reasonable men she’d ever met. He tended to be cool and calm under pressure, but he’d had a day. He also took great pride in his work and didn’t like having his plans go awry. Peter was pushing some of his buttons and she needed to make sure he didn’t explode. “Peter, I think what Robert is asking is what happened that you would change his plans. He does handle logistics for our group and he’s excellent at his job.”

“I think what Robert’s asking is how Peter would like to be murdered,” Owen countered with a grin. He looked like he was excited about whatever was going to happen next.

“The answer to this is not at all, though if I had to choose I would pick head shot from a distance and completely out of the blue,” Peter replied, utterly nonplussed. “I’ve thought about this much. It’s why I got out of intelligence.”

“We’re staying here and not the hotel?” Rebecca adjusted her hot-pink cardigan as she slipped her arm through Owen’s. “I was looking forward to it. It looked really nice.”

Peter frowned. “My place is nice, too. Well, it was before you sent along the slobs. You must tell them they have to clean up after themselves. I am not a maid. And I changed the plans because the hotel isn’t secure enough.”

“They require a key to use the elevators.” Robert had spent time working on the plans. She’d watched him as he’d carefully laid out their accommodations. “Do you think I didn’t check it out? I had us on the eighth floor. You literally can’t get to that floor without a key to a room on the eighth floor, and I reserved them all.”

Peter closed the trunk door with a thud. “And I happen to know that German intelligence keeps an operative at that particular hotel. His name is Sebastian and he’s a bartender. He’s excellent at getting intelligence from the many, many wealthy and powerful people who stay there. They usually stay on the eighth floor.”

“Fuck,” Robert cursed.

“Well, we would have checked for bugs,” Owen pointed out, in sympathy with his brother. “We’re not foolish. We’ve got a full complement of anti-spy tech.”

Robert nodded, obviously strengthened by Owen’s words. “You’re right. We have protocols to deal with this type of situation. And we’ll stay out of the bar. I picked that hotel for a reason. Thank you for letting us know what to look out for. We’ll take Dante and Sasha off your hands.”

Ariel hated the fact that she was going to have to be the bad guy, but in this case Robert wasn’t being reasonable. It was precisely what she’d worried about when she’d made the decision to try a relationship with him. “Peter, would you take the others in and show them around? I’m sure we could all use some time to clean up.”

“Of course,” Peter said, walking to the door. “I think you’ll find we have everything you could need right here. Let me tell you a little about the history of the building.”

Rebecca sent her a sympathetic look as she, Owen, and Tucker followed Peter into the house through what looked to be the back door.

“I think we should talk to Ian about that man,” Robert began. “We don’t need a guide who walks in thinking he’s in charge of this mission.”

She stepped in front of Robert, lowering her voice. “I think given what happened on the highway, we should consider staying here.”

“I know your first instinct is to please those around you and you’re a bit conflict averse, but I’ll take care of this.” Robert put his hands on her shoulders. “I think we’ll be more comfortable at the hotel. It’s only a few days. I promise we’ll be careful.”

“I’m not at all conflict averse.” That might be a lie. She wasn’t normally. Conflict was natural, though she didn’t want to be in conflict with him. “And yes, I prefer to please, but Rob, I’m not a doormat.”

His hands came up to cup her face. “I know that. But I want to make this as easy on you as possible. You haven’t really been out in the field, and it can get stressful. I want you to understand that I’ll take care of you.”

It was sweet of him. “I’ve been in the field before. You don’t have to worry about me. Let’s talk about this. What Peter said makes sense.”

His hands came down as if he realized affection wasn’t going to win this argument. “We don’t know this man. We have no idea what his motivations are.”

He was trying to save their time together. She knew exactly what he was doing. “Ian knows him, and we have to trust Ian. He told us to listen to Peter. I know you had plans and they were lovely. But we can’t take the chance. We have to think about Tucker. If German intelligence figures out who he is, they might decide to use him as leverage to get Big Tag or Damon to share information with them. We need to be as careful as possible.”

“I can handle it.”

She hated it, but she had to put her foot down. “We’re not going to the hotel. We’re staying here.”

Robert’s eyes went stony. “Are you saying that as the head of this team?”

“Yes.” She wished he hadn’t forced her into this position. “Yes, I am.”

“Then I’ll get us moved in.” Robert turned and grabbed his bag. He picked up hers as well. “Lead the way.”

He’d lost his soothing tones. “Robert, we should talk.”

“If you’re worried about anyone seeing us here, we should get inside. Apparently we have nowhere else to go. I suspect Peter is going to suggest we stay inside tonight, so I’ll cancel our dinner reservations.”

“Is this some sort of punishment?”

“Would you suggest you and I go out when no one else apparently can without some serious oversight?”

He kept putting her in that corner. “No. I think it would be unfair for us to be the only ones allowed out. But we’re not going to hide the whole time. Rebecca needs to be in that café tomorrow to meet with the researcher from Kronberg. Honestly, we should probably spend the evening going over those plans. It might be a good idea to wait until we get back to London to revisit the state of our relationship.”

He stared at her with suspicious eyes. “Now that sounds like punishment.”

“It’s not meant that way. We need to consider what’s happening. We’re having our first argument and it’s affecting the team.”

“Not at all. We’re doing exactly what you think we should. I’ll go find my room.” He strode toward the door.

She would have followed him but her mobile vibrated. She pulled it from her pocket and sighed at the text. Kim. It was from a number Ariel knew she kept for personal use.

Smooth moves on the highway, Ari. But we need to talk. I’ll be around. And have fun in the sex club!

Sex club?

Today was definitely not going the way she’d planned. She sighed and followed Robert into their temporary home.

 

* * * *

 

Robert stepped into the house and looked around. He’d expected to walk into an elegant foyer, but the place actually did look a lot like a hotel lobby. There was a front desk and a sleek laptop sitting on top. There were a couple of seats off to his left and a bar to the right.

What kind of house was this? From the outside it had looked perfectly normal, but most houses didn’t have reception desks.

He walked down the center hallway toward the sound of voices but not before glancing back to make sure Ariel had gotten inside.

He could have made it work. She hadn’t listened to him at all. The first chance she’d gotten, she’d taken control from him, and wasn’t that the way his life went.

They were being too cautious and didn’t understand that it was starting to rankle. His men were starting to feel suffocated. It was always the same rooms, same jobs, with no hope for anything changing. It was starting to get to him, too, but he’d had some light at the end of the tunnel with Ariel.

Now he would be lucky if she talked to him about anything but the job.

She closed the door behind her and he found himself at the end of the hall looking into a familiar place.

Tucker stood in the middle of a dungeon, his arms spread wide. “Well at least it feels like home.”

They were in a club. Naturally.

“Welcome to Halsbänder,” Peter said, back to his normally cheery self. “This is a club my wife and I founded a few years ago. In English, you would call it Collars. It’s closed tonight, but tomorrow we’re open and we’re happy to extend you the same rights you have at The Garden.”

“Does Big Tag know anyone who doesn’t own a club he can stash us in?” Owen asked. “Surely someone he knows runs a pet store or is an apartment building manager. It ain’t normal to know this many perverts.”

Rebecca sent her boyfriend a glare. “You’re one of those perverts.”

Owen shrugged. “Precisely why I can call us all perverts.”

Tucker sat down on a spanking bench. “This is normal to me. I could nap right here. This is like a couch to me. There is something wrong with that.”

Halsbänder wasn’t as opulent as The Garden nor as technologically advanced as Sanctum. It was an old-school dungeon but it was neat and clean, done in lush colors. It seemed to branch off into smaller rooms, likely scene spaces and specific fetish rooms.

Yes, same place, different country.

“The dungeon is obviously here on the first floor. The second floor serves as the club’s offices and the research library for my tour guide business,” Peter explained. “I have many, many books on the history of Bavaria in there if you should want something to read. Well, and if you can read in German.”

“Do you have a bunch of books on spanking?” Tucker asked, making himself cozy on the spanking bench. It looked like it was set up for a scene, or perhaps the intensely large purple dildo on a tray not far from Tucker’s head was merely there for aesthetic purposes. Tucker didn’t even wince.

“Of course, but those are in German, too.” Peter started toward the stairs in the back. “Your rooms are on the third floor. You’ll find a fully stocked kitchen there and a media room. My wife and I lived here for a few years, but she now prefers the country.”

“Let me guess, all the movies are in German,” Owen deadpanned.

“You have not seen the Avengers until you’ve seen it in German. It’s an excellent dub,” Peter promised. “Come along and I’ll show you where I’ve put you. Mr. McClellan, you’ll need to share with Mr. Tucker. I’ve got Dante and Sasha in one room, Owen and Rebecca in one and Dr. Adisa in her own.”

And she would sleep alone because he no longer had a shot at coaxing her into bed.

It might be a good idea to wait until we get back to London to revisit the state of our relationship.

Wasn’t that what they always did? One step forward and two steps back. When one of them was ready, the other wasn’t.

She moved toward him and took her suitcase out of his hand. “I’ll go settle in. I’ll see you at dinner.”

He watched as she strode up the stairs with Rebecca and Peter.

Owen looked over at Robert. “It’s not that bad.”

“Of course you would say that.” Dante’s voice always sounded tortured, like someone had torn up his throat and he’d never fully recovered. They suspected he was from somewhere in the Eastern Bloc. He spoke Hungarian, Polish, and English. “You get to leave The Garden on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter to you that we’re stuck in a cage again.”

He looked to his left and saw what he hadn’t before. Dante was standing in the shadows. He peeled away and joined the rest of them. He was wearing his normal uniform of a black T-shirt and dark-wash jeans. He rarely wore anything else.

“I thought we were moving to some swanky hotel.” Sasha was with him. He had a beer in his hand. They were almost one hundred percent certain he was Russian. It was hard to mistake that accent. “You promised us this would be a different trip.” He gestured around the room. “It looks very much the same to me. Dante and I have been holed up with the German, who is far too invested in his own history.”

What was he supposed to say? He didn’t hold the power here. He hadn’t truly had any power in…ever when he thought about it. Was this the rest of their lives? Shut up in dungeons, hidden from the world as much as possible because the world wanted to take a bite out of them again. “We got followed from the airport.”

Dante rolled his eyes. “Of course you did. Someone always seems to know where we are. Have we asked the proper questions about why this is?”

Owen glanced up the stairs like he wanted to make sure the women couldn’t hear them. “And what would those questions be?”

Dante looked at Owen, his eyes narrowing. “I think this should be a discussion amongst the four of us. You should go find your pretty girlfriend and make sure she’s safe. There are some unsavory elements around here, after all. I would make sure to lock the bedroom door.”

Sasha sighed and stepped forward as Owen’s eyes flared and he went from happy-go-lucky guy to raging revenge machine in a heartbeat.

“You lay a hand on my Becca and I’ll show you the inside of your own arsehole,” Owen promised.

Sasha waved a hand. “He didn’t mean this, Owen. No one is going to harm the doctor who is trying to help us. That would be rather foolish of us. Let’s all calm down.”

He didn’t feel calm.

“Guys, this place isn’t that bad.” Tucker had sat up. “They even have a media room, and no one has to clean toilets.”

“You might think differently if you walk into one after Dante’s morning ablutions.” Sasha seemed to think the potential for real violence was gone. He walked fully into the dungeon. “The fridge is stocked with beer. If there’s one thing we can get in this country, it’s good beer. But Dante is right. Someone is watching us always, and we should figure out why that is. They find us very quickly.”

“They did not find us at all, Sasha,” Dante pointed out. “It wasn’t until the new group gets here that we’re suddenly in danger and can’t move about like normal humans.”

“Do you have something to say to me?” Owen didn’t look like he was ready to give up the fight yet.

Robert moved to a place where he could easily get in between the two men. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d gotten caught up in a family fistfight.

Of course, from what he understood about the way Tucker, Dante, Sasha, and Jax had been trained, there had been a lot of violence between them. He’d been in what McDonald had called her alpha team. There had only been three men in their unit—he and Victor and Theo Taggart. The rest had been the unit she tested her therapies on before giving them to the alphas. They’d been trained like fighting dogs, and only the strongest had survived.

“Sasha’s right. We need to calm down.” He knew they’d been moving toward this. What had happened in Colorado and then Toronto had to be addressed. “Our host believes someone followed him. We have a tag and we’re going to look into it. This is a couple of days and then we’ll head home. I promise I’m going to talk to Damon about loosening up the leash. They’re only being cautious.”

“That’s good, Rob.” Tucker always backed him up. “Maybe we can have some boys’ nights out.”

“Maybe we could have some actual fucking freedom,” Sasha said under his breath.

“You know why that’s not allowed. You’re both wanted by Interpol. The fact that you haven’t been turned over is reason enough to know we’re safe here.” This was the fight he hadn’t told Ariel about. It was something between the six of them.

“Or McKay-Taggart is playing a game and we are the pawns,” Sasha said. “Think about it…”

Dante’s face went tight and he elbowed his partner. “Not here. Not with him here.”

“Are you actually talking about me?” Owen asked. “You honestly believe I’m…what? Selling us all out to Levi Green? Selling us out to the arsehole who tried to take my girlfriend from me and sell me to MSS for experimentation?”

“We only have your word for it,” Dante pointed out. “Yours and Dr. Walsh. How can any of you trust a doctor again? Any of them. I think we should point out that our kind Dr. Adisa showed up in Toronto just in time for the Agency to make an appearance. I wonder why that was.”

Oh, his reasonable soul was being tested today. “What exactly are you trying to say, Dante?”

Tucker was the one moving now. He placed himself between Robert and Dante. “He’s being an ass like normal. Come on. We’ve all had a rough day. Let’s settle in and grab a beer.”

“Yes, ignoring the problem has worked well to this point.” Sasha took a long drag off his bottle. “You know I’m sure the big boys are telling everyone it must be one of us. One of us has to be the one selling out the team, but I think it’s one of them.”

“Why? Why would anyone in the company sell us out?” He couldn’t believe it. McKay-Taggart had worked hard to free them.

“I can think of several reasons,” Dante said. “Money being the chief. But there are others. Have we considered that perhaps not everyone cut ties to their former agencies? Perhaps there are some divided loyalties. It’s why I feel Owen shouldn’t be considered one of us. His ties to the company run deep. He spends as much time with Nick Markovic as he does with us.”

“I’m sorry I’m not damaged enough for you, mate.” Owen slapped Rob on the shoulder. “I think I’ll go find Rebecca. You know where I’ll be if you need me. Good luck chasing down conspiracy theories.”

He started up the stairs but not before he’d flipped off Dante.

“You can’t shut him out because he wasn’t tortured as long as the rest of us.” Tucker squared off against the duo. “Owen’s been through a lot, too, and he’s always been loyal to us.”

“Says the man who started out as the one who tortured us.” Dante stood. “As the first of us, I was tortured more than any of you bastards. I see things you do not. Think about it. Ariel was in both Toronto and she was here. I happen to know she was kept updated on the mission to Colorado. She knew when Jax went into the woods. Of course, Ezra is an even better candidate. Keeping his old friends in the loop would be an excellent way to get back to the Agency.”

“You don’t stop at all, do you?” Tucker asked.

“If it’s not one of them,” Dante began, “then it is one of us. I can handle it from one of them. I would understand if it was one of them. If it is one of us…”

He whistled as he walked away.

Sasha stood. “He’s got it in his head that we’re being held prisoner again.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? We might not be forced to fight each other but we cannot leave and we must do what our betters tell us to do,” Sasha said, walking to the stairs Dante had recently disappeared up. “It feels not so different to me.”

“Then we remember that time very differently.” The situation was getting dangerous if those two honestly believed being safe was as bad as being held by a woman who routinely tormented every one of them. “When we get back to The Garden we’ll have a team meeting. We shouldn’t do this without Jax.”

“Jax knows who he is.” Sasha’s tone was spiked with bitterness. “And he’s got a pretty wife to keep him company. I’ve got Dante.”

“Then let’s get the information we need to find out who we are and get some power in this game. I promise you, I won’t allow anyone to use us. There’s a life for every single one of us when this is done.” He had to believe it.

Sasha stopped and emotion tightened his face for a moment. “I will hold you to that.”

He held out his hand. Sasha was often the toughest of his “brothers” to get to. Dante would shrug and go back to drinking during an argument, but Sasha would shut down. “See that you do.”

Sasha reached out and gripped his hand. “I’ll go and see if I can talk to him. Or get enough liquor in him that he’s all right to be around. I’ll make sure he comes to dinner.”

He strode up the stairs and Robert looked to Tucker. He knew exactly the words that had gotten to him. It had likely been a direct hit. “We have no idea if you ever set foot in either of the off-site bases where she kept the men. Where she kept us. We only know that you worked with her at Kronberg.”

“We don’t know that I didn’t,” Tucker replied. He shook his head. “I don’t want to think about that now. What happened with Ari? One minute she was holding your hand and then she had that blank look on her face women get when they’re hurt and don’t want to show it.”

“I hurt her? She was the one who told me we shouldn’t have a relationship while we were working together,” he shot back.

“What had you done before she said that?”

Fuck. “I was pissy about not getting to go to the hotel. I pretty much told her she could be my girlfriend or my boss. I was an asshole.”

“You had a rough afternoon.”

He shook his head. “That’s not an excuse. I don’t get to have a bad day and make hers bad, too.” He thought about the problem for a moment. There was a way to make both their days better. “Hey, didn’t Peter say there was a kitchen here?”

“Yeah.”

“Show me.”