He stopped, his hand on the door. He should walk on, but he owed Joe and he needed to stop letting his confusion and anger turn him into a massive asshole. “I’m sorry, Joe. I have to know.”
“I understand.” Joe stood. “If this is about her and not some kind of revenge, then I refuse your resignation and I’ll need to fully brief you on what we’ve found. We can call Tim back in.”
Well, at least he wasn’t fired. He wanted both. He wanted to know the truth about her and wanted to take down Manny for every evil deed he’d done. He also wanted his friend back. His friends. He wanted Tim back and he wanted Dare. He wanted to be in that damn circle.
He hated that he wanted it so badly.
“Can we call out for Thai?” It was time to get to work. “Tim can be bribed with food. If we get some root beer, he’ll forget we ever fought.”
“I can get you a new tech,” Joe offered.
Ben shook his head, walking back to the table. “No. He’s the best, and he’s been good to me over the years. I’ve been a dick since we got back from Nepal. They left us, and it would have been easy to give us a lift back down. She chose not to, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. My head goes to dark places.”
“I believe you’ll find that Shannon Reed is missing again,” Joe said quietly. “She was supposed to be handed over when they reached the States, but she got away.”
“The bombmaker is out there? They let the bombmaker go?”
Joe passed a file to him. “This is a picture from a CCTV cam of Shannon Reed coming into Canada. She came in under a false passport and was escorted by a woman she called her niece. They flew into Winnipeg, and I believe there was a vehicle waiting for them. Likely driven by this woman’s father or mother.”
He stared down at the grainy photo taken from CCTV. Lucy Brooke Flanders. Oh, most people wouldn’t recognize her because she knew how to hide, but he’d spent time with the woman. She was an Agency operative with ties to Kenzie and the Taggarts. Her father was quite scary. Not as scary as Ian Taggart, but right up there since that old man had taken both him and Tim down. “So they were involved in letting a dangerous criminal go?”
“I believe she’s in a town called Bliss. Have you read her file? What she went through?”
“She built bombs,” Ben replied.
“It’s not always so simple, and I believe Taggart settled her in a place where she can find something beyond mere survival in her last years.” Joe’s voice was calm, like he approved of what Taggart had done. “I suspect if she’d been placed in the hands of the Agency, she would be pressured to build bombs for the US, and I don’t think she wanted to do that. I suspect she wanted to spend time with her son and his new girlfriend. With the son she lost and his new wife.”
Cooper McKay. He was talking about Cooper and Kala. Had Kala asked her sister to leave so she could save the woman who gave birth to her husband? He knew Cooper considered Alex and Eve McKay his parents, but did the man feel something for the woman who gave him away to try to save him?
It was more complicated than he was making it.
The door came open again and Tim was there. He gave Ben a suspicious look before turning to Joseph. “You texted?”
“Ben is going to Dallas and would like you to accompany him. He’s going to spend the next couple of days going over the data so he’s ready to brief the American team next Monday,” Joe said. “I do believe he intends to have serious talks with Kenzie Taggart about how to make things work between them.”
Tim put a hand to his heart. “Thank god. Lou said she’s slipping into some serious depression. Like she’s mourning Ben. She’s wearinga lot of black and listening to way too much Lana Del Rey. She’s worried.”
“Don’t tell her I’m coming. I need to see how she reacts,” Ben warned. “Tim, I’m sorry. I know I’ve been hard to deal with, but I’m going to figure this out. Now let’s get you some pad thai and some mango sticky rice and talk. I also need to call Dare. I think I need to do some research before I get to Dallas.”
Some serious research, and a crash course in BDSM.
Because that was where he would get her. He would learn her language, figure out how to give her what she claimed she needed, and he would find the truth there.
He would risk everything to know if they could work.
“All right. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“And pack a tux.” Ben sat down, calmer than he’d been since the last time he’d held her.
Tim frowned. “Uh, I don’t actually have one of those.”
Ben ignored him. “We’re going to a wedding.”
And he would decide if he was going to join the Taggart family.
Or take them down.
* * * *
