Page 53 of Taylor’s Warrior

“Taylor’s safety was and is my paramount concern,” Nick replied in a no-nonsense manner. “We’d found out enough to realize that whoever was behind whatever had triggered Taylor’s father to send the package might somehow find their way to her, so I arranged for her to leave the area, accompanied by Rhys Dalton, one of my operatives, for protection.”

“Which is how you ended up in California, Ms. Markham?”

Taylor nodded. “That’s correct. And while we were there, Nick managed to trace my father’s whereabouts, with help from Tex. He was in Las Vegas, so we went there with Wolf and Ice—sorry, Matthew Steele and his wife Caroline, and two members of Matthew’s SEAL team.”

This time, both of Livingston’s eyebrows rose. “You certainly weren’t taking any chances. So, you didn’t take this to local law enforcement in California, either.” He turned his piercing gaze on Nick. “Were you responsible for that decision as well, Mr. Blackmore?”

Nick leaned back in his seat and rested his left ankle on his right knee, the very picture of nonchalance. “As the CEO of Spectrum Security Inc., I take full responsibility for all decisions made and actions taken,” he stated with cool confidence. “I decided to take a deeper look into the information that Taylor had received before bringing it to you, because I didn’t want to waste your valuable time. When we found out where Taylor’s father was supposedly located, I was—and still am—of the opinion that she deserved a chance to find out what the hell he was playing at. Quite understandably, she wanted to believe he was still a good man who’d done all this for a good reason. And if that wasn’t the case, she deserved a chance to persuade him to give himself up.”

Taylor sat up straight and squared her shoulders. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I wanted to hear it all direct from Pops. I hoped it would be totally harmless, and if it wasn’t, I hoped to persuade him to hand himself in. But we arrived too late. He wasn’t there—they’d taken him.”

Livingston gave a quiet hum of doubt and displeasure. “I’m willing to take that at face value for now. The reality of the situation is we appear to have a series of federal crimes involving a prominent US defense contractor, now further complicated by a suspected kidnapping⁠—”

“It’s not suspected,” Taylor snapped in sudden frustration. “It’s a fact, and it’s a double kidnapping because they also took the woman who was living there.”

Livingston leveled his gaze at her and gave a brief nod. “Duly noted. Given that lives are at stake, the matter of the kidnappings has to take priority—I’ll be taking the lead on that investigation. We have to assume there’s a relationship between your father and the woman and they took her to give them some leverage over him. The question then becomes what are the consequences, should that leverage be effective.”

“They come after this.”

Nick opened up the attaché case, removed the bundle of papers, and set them down in the center of the table, with two flash drives on top of the pile. “That’s everything we received. The black drive is the one that arrived with the papers—the red one contains the results of our inquiries and our analysis to date.” He pushed the pile toward the agent.

“Thank you. This will give us a good start in our investigation of the contractor. Following my initial discussion with Rachel, I already have a team ready to go.”

“If we are to assume there is a connection between the kidnappers and the data, in my opinion, they’ll prioritize recovering their property,” Rachel volunteered. “If I’m right, they’ll use the woman to find out what he did with it. I also believe it’s safe to assume they searched the house first, then took Markham and the woman when they couldn’t find what they wanted. Removing them to another location would also give the perpetrators as much time as they need to do whatever they deem necessary to achieve their objective.”

“And what happens when they get what they want from Pops—if they haven’t already?” Taylor asked. “I may be wrong, but it seems to me there’s only one thing they can do when they find out he’s sent everything to me, and that’s to use the snail mail setup I described to you to find out where I am.”

“Tay’s right,” Rhys agreed. “An operation like KDT will have access to the kind of technology that can track the progress of a piece of mail through the postal system. They could be working on it right now.”

And if not right now, it was only a matter of time. The chilling thought brought with it a unique clarity. “If they do make contact that way, then why don’t we use it?” Taylor said. “There must be a way to use me as bait.”

The office erupted, with objections flying left, right and center. Nick was furious, Rachel forceful and determined to put across her arguments against the idea, but it was Rhys who stunned them all into silence with a short, sharp, two-word roar that cut through the noise like a hot knife through butter.

“Hell, no!”

Even when the animosity between them had been at its peak, she’d never seen him so enraged. Touched though she was, Taylor had to disagree, and took advantage of the ensuing silence to do so.

“Rhys, think about it,” she urged. She turned to the man on the opposite side of the desk. “What do you think, Special Agent Livingston? All they can get from Pops is my false name and the address of the starting point for any mail he sends to me. Do you think they have the technology to use that and track me all the way here?”

“Weapons manufacturing is a high-tech business, Ms. Markham. It’s also notoriously secretive about projects in development. And while there may be some merit in your suggestion, you’re asking me to put you in an extremely dangerous position⁠—”

“Do you have a choice?” Taylor demanded. “They’ve taken my father, who I haven’t seen or spoken to for years. I have a stake in this. So, tell me—what other options do you have?”

“There’s always a choice, Ms. Markham. They might have the name you’ve been using and the first address in the chain, but they don’t have a recent picture of you. One of my agents could pose as you—if we were to go ahead with such a rash plan.”

“Don’t you think that’s a dangerous assumption to make?” she countered. “That they haven’t seen a picture of me, recent or otherwise?

“Not necessarily. Have you sent your father a picture of yourself recently?”

“No,” she admitted quietly, “but it’s not as if we’re dealing with a situation where a parent was separated from a young child who’s grown into an adult. I haven’t changed that much since I came to Texas, so if Pops had a photo of me and they found it, they’ll have a pretty good idea of what I look like and they’d know your agent wasn’t me. Unless I have a doppelgänger in your office?”

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“You’re not doing it.”

They’d barely pulled away from the parking lot at the FBI field office when Rhys seized the opportunity to lay down the law. If Taylor thought the argument had ended in Livingston’s office, she was sadly mistaken.

She removed her laser-like focus from the back of Nick’s head and aimed it at him. “Did you not listen to what Special Agent Livingston said?”