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“You touch a hair on her head…” Zach began.
Chet reached out and grabbed her hand. She wanted to fight but she had to stay calm if she was going to have a chance to save Zach.
Chet pulled her back against his body, his arm snaking around her waist. “I’ve touched her, Zach. Doesn’t that kill you, you pathetic piece of shit? I’ve touched her everywhere. Maybe I’ll touch her again before I let Oakley kill her. He’ll be pissed I didn’t bring him Dare, but I think that fucker will come running from wherever you’ve got him hiding once he finds out Oakley has you. And then Oakley will give me everything he has on Disrupt Australia, and I’ll be a hero. Your father will go after Oakley, and he’ll find that disturbs some people at the Agency. And CSIS.”
Ben. “Ben told us Oakley was dirty, too.”
“Our friend Ben only cares about taking down Huisman. Do you want to know the funny thing? Still have no idea if that doctor has anything to do with it. I think Parker wants revenge, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get it,” Chet explained. “Now we only have a couple of minutes before whoever’s watching figures out I jammed the signals. Mike, do what you have to.”
Tasha pulled away, trying to send her elbow up and back, but Chet held her tight, and she felt something burn against her neck.
Immediately her vision went blurry, but she heard the ping of a weapon going off.
In the distance she heard the sound of a siren even as blood bloomed across Zach’s chest. His eyes met hers as he fell to the carpet.
“Fuck. Let’s go. I would bet those cops are coming here,” Chet was saying, but his voice sounded far away even though she knew he’d picked her up. She was being held in his arms as they started to move out. “Fucking Lou. She would have called the minute she realized the signal was down.”
It wasn’t Lou, but she couldn’t correct him. Lou was at Oakley’s getting the intel they needed, the intel that would prove he was dirty and he was working with Chet. Her team would figure it out.
But it would be far too late for Zach. Too late for her.
She prayed her mom protected Dare as the world went dark.
* * * *
“So I should update you. The CSIS team is planning on raiding Tandy in the next two hours. We should know something concrete by morning.” Charlotte Taggart looked cool and chic as she drove down the road that would take them out of Sydney.
They’d been driving for half an hour without much talk. First they’d dropped Nate off at the safe house where he was going to watch over Kenzie and Tristan, who were planning tomorrow’s op at Oakley’s big cabin. Lou would “clean” Oakley out of any information that might seem useful, and then they would all be leaving Australia by tomorrow night.
Tasha would be back in Dallas. Or DC? “Is the team going to Dallas or do they need to go to DC?”
A brow rose over Charlotte’s blue eyes. “I tell you they’re raiding your father’s facilities and you want to know where Tasha’s going?”
He shouldn’t have asked. But damn it, he wanted to know. Still. “I asked about the team.”
“Sure.” Charlotte expertly maneuvered the Mercedes sedan onto the freeway. “You’re concerned about the team. Well, the team will be back in Dallas, and we’ll get called in on some ferocious conference calls. We don’t actually spend a lot of time in DC. We’ve got a conference room at the office with some high-tech security measures when it comes to the Internet. It’s next to impossible to hack that particular system, though we do go out to Langley if the big bosses are paranoid enough. I doubt that will happen this time.”
“Is she going to be in trouble?”
Charlotte waved him off. “It’s nothing for you to worry about. Oh, I had to tell the flight crew what we wanted for dinner. I hope you like lasagna. It was the best they could put together on short notice. If we were in Dallas, I would have my brother-in-law send over some food. You haven’t lived until you’ve had Sean’s…well, everything.”
He didn’t want to talk about dinner. “How bad could it get for Tasha? Can that asshole mess with her career? I’m surprised he’s still walking around.”
“If I allowed my husband to kill everyone who annoyed him, there would be very few people left on earth,” Charlotte replied cooly. “I know everyone thinks he should be this crazed alpha male who bashes the head in of anyone who looks twice at his daughter, but that’s not a realistic way to live. Tasha made a mistake. I’m glad we figured it out before she was married to him. Chet’s a dumbass, and I doubt very much he’ll try to do something to get her fired. That would attract my husband’s attention. Although sometimes I think he wouldn’t mind. It’s hard to know our girls are out there risking their lives.”
