Chapter Five

 

 

Owen grabbed his bag and followed Robert off the lift. He was in an oddly good mood. He was about to get his arse kicked, and it had been worth it.

She had been worth it, and the truth was he couldn’t wait to see her again. Allowing her to walk away from him had been an indulgence. His instinct was to tangle his fingers in hers and tell her to take him back to her place so they could do things right and proper this time.

Not that it hadn’t felt right. Nothing in his life had felt as right as getting Rebecca Walsh up against a wall and shoving his way inside her.

She’d been hot and tight around him. He could still feel her nails digging into the flesh of his shoulders and back. He wanted to see the marks she’d left there.

He hadn’t marked her. She might like a bite of pain. He would definitely like to look at her shoulder or the nape of her neck and see a mark, one he’d put there. He loved the fact that her nails had scratched down his back, damn near drawing blood.

He would explore it with her the next time they got together.

Because there was definitely going to be a next time.

“Are you all right?” Jax was walking behind them, but he’d noticed River was back at the door to the apartment she shared with her husband and their big mutt.

She winked her husband’s way and they disappeared inside.

“I’m fine, mate.” He wasn’t supposed to know Jax either, but Jax seemed to have forgotten that fact. “I think I’ll take the stairs next time though. I’m Owen.”

Jax stared down at his hand. “She’s gone, man. We’re safe.”

Owen lowered his voice. “You can’t know that.”

He started down the hall toward the flat he was supposed to share with his lover. They needed to put some distance between them and Becca. Once he’d rounded the corner, she wouldn’t be able to see them.

The door to his flat was open and Ezra Fain stood there. Well, well, the gang was all here. “Yes, we can. While the elevator was down, we were able to wire this whole floor. All we had to do was monitor the stairs. We managed to get into her apartment. We didn’t stay long, but we’ve got it bugged now. Dante thinks he can get into her office tomorrow night. But getting into her lab is going to be more difficult. Tucker, what’s she doing right now?”

“She’s smiling at herself in the mirror.” Tucker looked up as they walked into the flat. He sat at the kitchen table, a laptop in front of him. “She went inside, put her stuff down, and now she’s kind of staring at herself.”

Sasha sat beside him, a glass of what looked like water, but was more than likely vodka, in his hand. “She looks incredibly pleased with herself. What did you do, Owen?”

Luckily, Robert ignored Sasha altogether. “Give us an update on everything that happened with her. I’ll be honest, we weren’t entirely sure she was the person with you in the elevator until that kid Colin came in. We thought you might be alone. Jax was about to go into the shaft and rescue you.”

“I’m good at fixing things,” Jax admitted.

“But then Colin, who looks a lot like the human version of a chihuahua, came in,” Ezra explained. “Apparently Dr. Walsh is vocal in the residents’ association meetings. Colin is scared of her, but then I think he might be scared of a stiff breeze. Are you okay?”

“I’ve been in a lift for four hours,” he said because he had something to take care of. He couldn’t have simply pulled the thing off and tossed it aside. He’d been trying to be a gentleman around Becca. “I’m hitting the loo before we have this debrief.”

Because the debrief could turn into his firing. Could they fire him? They didn’t actually pay him, so they probably couldn’t fire him. Of course they could kick his arse out on the street.

And he could show up at Becca’s. He might be able to worm his way in. She was lonely. He was lonely. They could not be lonely together.

Shouldn’t he be more worried about how they would take things? Apparently righteously good sex put him in a mellow mood.

“Need to clean up, do you, Romeo?” Sasha asked with a deep chuckle.

He turned and headed to the bathroom because he hadn’t exactly gotten rid of the condom and it was starting to feel nasty.

He handled his business and washed his hands, looking at himself in the mirror. Was this what Becca was doing? Staring at herself because what had happened in that lift seemed to have changed her somehow? He felt it. Something had shifted in his life, but in this moment all he could think about was his past and how far he’d had to come to get to the second he’d held a hand out and opened the lift doors for the woman. The horrible rash he’d had from the drugs he’d been given had faded over the long months. He was back to being strong again. It had taken him almost two years, but he could hold his own in a fight. He’d had to relearn how to walk practically, and that hadn’t come from his memory loss.

Becca would call it a side effect. Dr. McDonald’s drug would almost surely have a black box warning. Side effects may include complete and utter loss of self, rashes that decimate the skin, and overnight atrophy. That meant his muscles stopped working. At least he thought that’s what the doctors had meant.

He had a handsome face, but it was different from the one he’d had before. There wasn’t a lot of light in his eyes. He didn’t smile the way the bugger in the photos did—like he hadn’t a care in the world. Except he had. He should have cared about the fact that he was a disloyal bastard who should have trusted his team.

Did any of them actually trust him?

Should Becca Walsh trust him?

He picked up his bag and strode back into the room where his whole team seemed to be arguing. Apparently the movers had done their job and the decent-sized apartment was filled with boxes and furniture.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Robert was saying. “Being alone with her probably allowed Owen to lay the groundwork for our cover. Unless they didn’t get along, and then we’re fucked.”

“I would be surprised if that’s the case. River and I like her a lot,” Jax replied. “She’s easy to get along with. You’ll see. We’re having her over for dinner. It’s good that she’ll already be comfortable with Owen.”

“I bet she’s incredibly comfortable with Owen.” Sasha was staring at the laptop screen.

“I don’t know.” Ezra paced in front of the fireplace. “There’s a reason Tag put him in a backup role.”

“Owen can handle himself,” Robert replied with a confidence that Owen was pretty sure he was about to shake because he couldn’t hide this one. “According to all his records he was good in the field.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t remember a damn thing and he didn’t get the training the rest of you had,” Ezra pointed out.

“You mean the training where we were tortured and forced to commit crimes?” Jax’s arms had gone over his chest and his stare was steely.

“The training where a crazy bitch doctor pumped us all full of drugs and then proceeded to force us to try to kill each other? That training?” Dante walked in from the kitchen, a beer in his hand.

Yeah, he hadn’t been forced to survive that. What had happened to him had been brief. She’d only managed to dose him once, though it seemed to have been enough.

Then why have you started to remember things you shouldn’t? Little things like how it feels to stand in a surf with the sun on your face?

He shoved the thought aside because Ezra had his hands up, obviously conceding the point.

“I get it,” Ezra said. “It was hell, but it also trained you all on how to conduct yourselves during an investigation.”

Dante put a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “Yes, this one learned how to nap so his coworkers must clean up all the trash.”

Sasha shrugged it off. “You’re better at it than I am. And Owen knows exactly how to conduct an investigation into what kind of underwear a woman wears.”

His eyes came up, the only one who realized Owen had walked back in the room, and that made him wonder how observant the resident drunken Russian really was. Sasha always seemed to not care, but then he knew things the others didn’t.

Robert sighed and waved for him to come back into the living room. “Let’s get this started. We’ll be alerted if Dr. Walsh leaves her apartment. We’re safe meeting here, but after today Tucker, Sasha, and Dante have to be extremely careful about when they come into this building. You’re working at Huisman. You can’t be seen here by Walsh. It would be far too much of a coincidence.”

Tucker leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been at Huisman for a couple of days and I haven’t even come close to meeting the big boss.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Ezra pointed out. “I don’t want you to engage her too heavily. Keep your head down. Get us an idea of how the foundation works. I want to know how deep the ties to McDonald went. Hope was getting her money from somewhere after Kronberg let her go.”

Kronberg was a large pharmaceutical company that had been involved in a group known only as The Collective. When Taggart had taken down McDonald, he’d also dealt a mighty blow to that group, though from what he’d read, The Collective had cut ties with McDonald long before that day.

Tucker was staring at Ezra. “Uh, bank robberies? You remember the part where a couple of us are wanted by Interpol for robbing places? I think that’s where she got the money.”

“I do know what she made you do.” Ezra sank down to the couch, crossing one leg over the other and getting comfortable. “But I also know roughly how much was stolen and Phoebe, the forensic accountant Taggart uses, doesn’t think it came close to paying for the high-tech facility in France we found you, Dante, Sasha, and Jax in. Despite the fact that the Huisman family is Dutch, they have heavy ties to France as well. When they moved their base of operations to Canada fifty years ago, they were originally in Montreal.”

“Just because they speak French and the facility happened to be in France doesn’t prove anything,” Robert replied. “And you shouldn’t have sat on that couch. Apparently Buster’s found his new happy place. You’re going to be covered in dog hair.”

Jax sent Ezra an apologetic grin. “Sorry. The boy knows comfort when he sees it.” He looked back at Owen. “Did the two of you talk about work at all? What did you think of her? She’s not as serious as she comes off in the reports, right?”

“She’s funny and smart,” he allowed. And sexy as hell. So fucking sexy. What would it be like to be able to have her in a proper bed, with all the time in the world to explore that gorgeous body of hers?

Jax nodded. “She is. I like her.”

Ezra turned his stare Jax’s way. “You’re not out here to make friends, and if River is going to have trouble separating the mission from her friendships, we need to talk about shipping you both back to Dallas.”

Jax’s jaw had gone tight. “We know what the op is and we know how important it is. Don’t forget I’m the one who sacrificed to get us here.”

Robert moved to Owen’s side as Jax and Ezra argued. His voice was low as he ignored the sniping. “Did you have a good talk with her?”

“Yes.” And a good shag. A nice hearty bang with the tightest pussy he’d ever been in. Well, that he could remember being in. “She’s a smart lady.”

He wanted to see her breasts. He’d felt them and they’d been soft and full against his palms. They’d felt perfect crushed against his chest as he thrust up inside her.

Fuck, he was getting hot just thinking about it. About her.

He didn’t like the fact that Sasha was staring at her on the laptop screen.

“Did she seem like the kind of woman who wants a diverse set of friends?” Robert was asking. “Everything we have on her says she’s had gay friends in her life before. She was particularly close to a man and his husband when she was doing her residency in Boston.”

“I’m sure she’s very open minded.” How open minded would she be? She’d responded beautifully when he’d taken over. She hadn’t minded being the aggressor, but she’d practically melted in his arms when he’d topped her.

How would she like more exotic play? How would she respond when he tied her up and tortured her with his tongue, playing with her pussy and her clitoris and her sweet arse?

He wanted to see that, too. He wanted her naked and laid out on the bed, a feast for his senses.

“You remembered our back story?” Robert asked.

“I remembered it.” How to explain this to him without getting into an immediate fistfight? “She knows I’m a bodyguard.”

Ezra and Jax seemed to have ironed out their differences.

“Excellent. So everything is in place,” Ezra said. “It might actually be better this way. She’ll get to know both of you, but let Robert take the lead.”

Because Robert was the smart one. Robert was the one who hadn’t betrayed the team in another life. Robert hadn’t turned over a couple of Taggarts to the wicked witch. Big Tag liked Robert, precisely why he’d wanted Robert in charge and not Owen.

“I’ll take over from here,” Robert assured him. “Now that she understands we’re a couple, I can go over tomorrow and thank her for helping keep you calm. I’ll tell her I was worried because you can be claustrophobic.”

“Did she keep you calm?” Sasha had a knowing look on his face.

Fucker. “She ain’t going to buy that we’re gay, Robert.”

“Of course she will. Don’t stereotype. We can be manly and gay,” Robert said with a prim quality to his voice.

“Yeah, well, gay blokes don’t usually fuck a lady in the lift.” There. It was better to just shove it right out there.

The whole room went silent and then Sasha laughed.

“I told you,” he doubled over. “I knew it the minute he walked in the door. Pay up.”

Dante shook his head and pulled out his wallet. “Asshole texted me a couple of minutes ago. Last time I take a bet from him without investigating myself.”

Wankers.

“You did what?” Ezra had stood up. He might have been more intimidating had he not been covered in dog hair. The man liked to wear black, and now his all-dark look was covered in white fur.

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Owen started.

“It obviously worked, if we’re talking about your dick,” Robert shot back.

His dick had totally worked. It wanted to work again. “She was attracted to me.”

“A lot of women are attracted to you, asshole.” Robert started pacing like a caged tiger ready to pounce. “Then they actually get to know you and they run the other fucking way.”

“Robert,” Tucker began.

Robert wasn’t having it. “Do you understand that you’ve fucked this whole op up? Are you so arrogant that you had to have this one? Ian had reasons for shifting this to me.”

Before he could say a word, Robert was off again, explaining in minute detail every single way Owen had screwed up and put the team at risk. He was worked up in a froth, his face going red.

The man was going to have a heart attack. He bet Becca could handle that. She worked with brains, but she probably knew a lot about hearts, too. She would be pretty when she did CPR. Her breasts would bounce while she did the compressions. And her sweet mouth would come down on his while she tried to breathe life into him.

Not Robert. If Robert had a heart attack, Tucker could save him. He wasn’t letting the bastard watch Becca’s breasts bounce.

“Have you heard a single word I’ve said?” Robert asked.

“Of course. I’m a right bastard and I fucked everything up.” He didn’t have to listen to a ten-minute rant to know that. “But it wouldn’t have worked. If I had played things the way we talked about, she would have run the other way the minute the lift doors opened because she wanted me. She might have been friendly, but we wouldn’t have gotten her to spend time with us. She’s not a masochist and she wouldn’t have willingly spent time with a man she wanted and could never have.”

“You think pretty highly of yourself.” Robert had his hands on his hips, challenging him.

And Owen felt a growl start in the back of his throat. He had no idea where it was coming from. He was the quiet one, the one who sat back and didn’t give anyone hell because he was never sure of his place in the group. The alpha was challenging him, telling him to back down, and bugger all he wasn’t going to do it. “Well, I am the one who fucked the lady a few hours after I met her, so I think I might have just become the expert here.”

“Good for Becca,” Jax was saying. “She seems really stressed.”

“She isn’t stressed now,” Sasha said, still laughing.

“How exactly are we going to explain my presence?” Robert asked, his eyes still steely.

Shite. He’d taken Robert’s op. Owen took a deep breath and tried to soften his expression. “It wouldn’t have worked, mate. I’m sorry you feel like I screwed everything up, but I had to make a call and I was alone with her. Two seconds into meeting her and she was flirting with me.”

Robert shook his head with a long sigh of frustration. “That doesn’t mean she wants you to fuck her.”

“No, but her asking me to kiss her and clawing at my shirt to get it off sent me a real fine signal. You want to see the marks she left on my back?” Robert needed to see that the original plan wouldn’t have worked. “If I’d turned her down, she would have walked the other way the next time she saw me. She would have been embarrassed.”

“And you think she won’t be now?” Robert asked, but his tone had changed to something close to a grudging acceptance.

“Becca is pretty confident,” Jax said. “At least that’s how she comes off. I watched her trip over her own feet on the street and she just got up and bowed like she’d meant to do it. I also think if Owen had turned her down, she would have walked away and not looked back. I don’t know her well, but I think I have a pretty good read on her.”

“We have a way in. Do we need to fight about it because it wasn’t the one we thought it would be?” Tucker moved in, obviously willing to play the peacemaker. “If Owen is dating her, we’ll have a lot of access. Jax and River can play the friendship role. Sasha, Dante, and I will operate from the Huisman Foundation building. This still works.”

“All she knows is I’ve recently moved to Canada,” he explained. “I’m sure she assumes I’m a resident in the building, but I didn’t talk about my roommate. It’s a simple thing, man. Instead of you working for a bank, we both work as bodyguards. We share the place because one of us is usually working.”

Robert seemed to think about it for a moment. “It could work. It’s a new job and we’re both single men. The job would likely require odd hours, so maybe the company put us together here for a couple of months until we figure out the lay of the city, so to speak.”

“Or you could go with the boyfriend thing and offer to share her,” Sasha said with a smirk.

“Over my dead body.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Certainly he hadn’t meant to sound like a crazy person.

Sasha chuckled. “Sorry. We spent too much time in that Bliss place. Of course you wouldn’t want to share a woman you just met with a man who is your friend. It’s perfectly logical that you would already be incredibly possessive.” He stood up and stretched. “I’m going back to the house. It’s obvious you don’t need me. Dante, come along. We have a few days before we have to be back at our shitty jobs.”

Dante started to follow him. “He means that literally. The toilets there are horrific, and I won’t even go into handling medical waste. I want to be the one who gets to fuck the girl in the lift next time.”

“That wasn’t part of his job,” Ezra pointed out as the duo opened the door.

Owen let the door close before turning to Ezra. “I’m not sorry.” He couldn’t apologize for it. He knew he should in order to keep the peace, but somehow he couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth. “I did what I had to do.”

“Tell me you’re not more involved with the woman than you should be.” Ezra brushed some of the dog hair off his pants.

He couldn’t lie but he did have an excellent distraction. He wished he’d had a chance to look at the file he’d snuck out of her bag, but he would always have turned it over. This was a job. Yes, she’d been hot as hell and he couldn’t wait to spend more time with her, but this was a job. “I wasn’t so involved I didn’t nip a file from her tote bag. And before you nag at me, that bag was overflowing, and it would have been easy for her to drop it. Unless she stopped between the subway and the apartment building and checked to make sure it was still there, she’ll have to conclude it fell out or got pinched while she was on her way home.”

“That bag she carries seems to be an issue,” Jax acknowledged. “River said she’s helped her pick stuff up when it fell out at least twice. But I’m not sure what her medical research is going to do for us.”

Tucker stepped up. “I’d actually like to get my hands on it. So far all I’ve done is cleanup work and getting the researchers coffee and lunch. I’m not sure why I needed to fake I’m in med school for that.”

“Internships are more about making connections than actually learning the technology,” Ezra said. “But I would like to see what you get from her files, too.”

What Ezra really wanted was to see how far Tucker’s medical knowledge went. He couldn’t forget the fact that Jax had discovered a Dr. Reasor had worked for McDonald. They’d looked for the man and couldn’t find a trace of him.

But then McDonald had been good at making people disappear.

He put his bag down on the coffee table and reached in. “I haven’t looked at the files. Being in such a tight space bothered her. She did this meditation thing and that’s when I slipped this out of her bag. I would have gone for more, but she’s not good at meditating either. It only lasted a minute or two and then she was back to talking about comic books and her favorite TV shows.”

He pulled the folder free and opened it.

Shite. Not medical research at all.

“What is it?” Robert asked, stepping in.

“It looks like financial reports.” It was a bunch of numbers and accounts. Nothing at all that would tell them about Becca’s research.

He’d fucked up again.

Ezra held out a hand. “Let me see it.”

He passed the folder to his boss. “Sorry. It’s not what I hoped it was.”

Ezra opened the folder and started to look through the paperwork.

“I wish you hadn’t done this,” Robert said.

“I followed my instincts.” He hated feeling this way. It was especially hard because while he’d been in that lift with Becca, he’d felt different. He’d felt like he mattered, like he belonged somewhere.

“Your instincts are crap.” Robert shook his head and backed away. “I’m going across the street. I need a drink. I’m sure you can deal with unpacking the same way you took over the op.”

He turned and walked out.

Tucker grabbed his jacket. “Don’t take it hard, Owen. He’s been touchy as hell since he realized Ariel wasn’t in London. Until she flies back and he knows she’s safely at The Garden, he’s going to be a wreck and he’s going to take it out on everyone.”

“She’s perfectly safe,” Ezra said, his eyes not leaving the pages in his hand. “And I don’t hate having her here to do some sessions after what happened in Colorado.”

He hated sessions, hated having to talk about his feelings, going over the same things again and again and again because his life never changed.

Except it kind of had now. Becca was in it. He would have to talk about her. It might be worth it if Ariel could give him insights on how to manage easing his way into Becca’s life.

“I’ll work on the flat,” Owen offered. “Maybe if I get things in order, he won’t be so angry with me.”

Jax looked up at him. “Are you sure? You usually hit a pub by this time.”

He usually found the bottom of a bottle by seven or eight at night and then opened another. He found the idea unsatisfying tonight. “No. Go on with the others. I’ve got work to do here.”

Jax gave him a smile that let him know that he wasn’t merely surprised, but somewhat pleased, and left.

Or was he mistaking suspicion for surprise?

“This is accounting for the last quarter.” Ezra moved toward the table, sitting down and starting to spread out the papers. “I wonder why she’s bothering with balancing the accounts. She has an accounting department for that.”

“I got the idea she was a hands-on kind of manager.” She seemed fairly type A when it came to work. She would need someone to force her to relax, to enjoy her downtime. She’d needed him to take over before she’d given up and allowed herself to simply take the pleasure he was offering her.

It struck him forcibly that she was exactly the type of woman who could use a Dom.

“I find it interesting that she’s only looking into one account.” Ezra glanced up. “This could be nothing at all, but I’ll send a copy down to Phoebe Murdoch.”

Owen moved to the box marked clothes. It wouldn’t be full. None of them had much to speak of. He found the plain T-shirts and jeans and hauled them out. Robert had some suits somewhere. He would hang them up before they wrinkled.

“Are you sure you did it for the right reasons?”

He glanced over and his boss was staring at him with intelligent eyes. He could never forget that Ezra Fain was a predator, and he often killed what he caught. “I made a call. I think it was the right one. I’m not going to lie to you. The lady is sexy as hell and I enjoyed myself, but I understand that this is a mission.”

“That wasn’t what I was worried about. I’m worried you did it to prove yourself.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t really, but would it be so bad to prove myself? Big Tag still hates me. He’s never going to see me as anything but the man who betrayed his brother. Tell me he doesn’t think I’m the one who gave us up in Colorado.”

“We don’t know anyone gave us up,” Ezra argued.

“Levi Green knew our location. He knew when Jax walked into those woods and he was waiting for him and River. There’s no way that was a coincidence.”

“Levi is a tricky one,” Ezra allowed. “Never underestimate him. And if anything, I think it was Solo who gave us up.”

“That’s not what Big Tag thinks.” He knew exactly what Big Tag thought because he’d overheard him one day at McKay-Taggart. “Big Tag thinks it’s one of us.”

“We disagree on that.” Ezra gathered the papers and placed them back inside the folder. “He can be paranoid and he hasn’t spent as much time with the team as I have. Owen, I don’t think you would betray us.”

“Well, history might have something to say about that.”

Ezra strode over and put a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t do it for money, man. You did it for your family. You should have trusted your team more, but I can understand. It’s time to forgive yourself for something you can’t even remember doing and move on.”

He wasn’t sure it would be that easy for him, but as he started to unpack, he thought about Becca and, for a moment, his life didn’t seem so bad.