Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
“You didn’t take it well as in you got angry and hurt and wouldn’t talk to her, or you tried to hurt her?” Miles asked.
“I beat the shit out of your bodyguard.” He sort of lied. He’d hit the guy. It wasn’t his fault Declan Burke seemed to be made out of granite. “But I sure as hell didn’t physically hurt Kayla. You can’t expect me to be happy that she lied to me. She used me on every level. I have to say she’s excellent at her job. She knows exactly how to make a man give it all up. I wouldn’t fire her if I were you. A good one is hard to find.”
“A good what?” McKay asked. “Choose the next word you say with some caution. I told Kay I would keep the beast on a leash, but one wrong word out of your mouth and I won’t be able to hold him. You see, Big Tag and Kay understand each other. They know what it means to sacrifice for their country. They know how to make the hard calls, the ones that haunt a person for the rest of his or her life, and they know what it means to care about the very person they’re supposed to be targeting. It can be hard.”
Miles took over. “Someone like Kay doesn’t make mistakes. Never. She’s the solid one, the one we send in when everyone else has fucked up. She knows protocol and that it’s there for a reason. There’s only one possible conclusion I can draw as to why she fucked up here. Of all the intricate and complex cases she’s handled, she’s only let her emotions lead her in one and that’s yours. So please, clarify your last statement because I need to know if I should call in a cleanup crew. A good what is hard to find?”
Shit. He was sitting in a room with three men who’d killed, and likely multiple times. They’d done it in service of their country, but it looked like they would also do it in service of a friend. “Operative. Agent. Whatever terminology you would use.”
“Sure. That’s what was going on in your head. The last time a woman I loved fucked me over hard, I didn’t think of her as an ‘operative.’ You’re smarter than me. Keep it up, kid.” Taggart looked at the other two men. “Why don’t you give me a minute alone with our new friend?”
McKay sighed. “Just remember that you hate paying for stuff and cleaners are expensive.”
Miles shrugged. “I’ll go halfsies for this one. Good luck, Hunt.”
They filed out of the room.
Taggart stared at him for a moment.
Hunt stared back. What was the guy going to do? Murder him right here? “If you’re going to beat the shit out of me, get going, asshole. You won’t be doing a damn thing that hasn’t already been done and by people who were bigger and meaner than you.”
Another lie, but he’d been so much smaller then that proportionally he was probably correct. It was good that he could use math to compare beatings. A gift from playing a numbers savant once. He needed to play a boxer next.
“I can only imagine what you’ve been through.”
He stiffened. “I thought you didn’t listen to the tape.”
“I don’t have to listen to a tape to know that you disappeared from the time you were twelve until adulthood. And that woman you had us search for, she had a history of…well, her records are what nightmares are made of. I have three children, Mr. Hunt. I would never want them to experience a tenth of what you must have. But that’s neither here nor there. Your secrets are your own, though I’ve found keeping secrets is a good way to be miserable. There’s something shitty about the human psyche that punishes us for burying the bad stuff. There’s something freeing about the truth. I’m going to impart some truth on you, Joshua Hunt.”
“Hit me.” It wouldn’t change anything. This stranger knew nothing about him.
“That woman who hurt you could only hurt you because you cared about her.”
He shrugged. “I’ll admit I fell under her spell. She’s excellent at sizing a man up and figuring out what he needs. I didn’t even know I was attracted to weird chicks.”
Taggart’s lips curled in a way that let Josh know the man genuinely liked Kay. “What did she do? Talk to plants? She likes to do that. Says they grow even faster if you sing to them. She does a mean Pink.”
“Dolphins. She talked to dolphins,” he corrected. “And a seal.”
Taggart chuckled and then got serious again. “I’m going to tell you a story. Well, maybe you’ve heard it. It’s the one about this bright-eyed college kid who found out she had a twin sister trapped in a terrible life as a spy for a foreign country.”