Love and Let Die

Prologue

London, England

“Mr. Taggart?”

Ian Taggart heard the doctor speaking, but all he could do was stare at the sight in front of him. She’d been alive when he’d left this morning, and now he was standing in the morgue of a London hospital looking at her body laid out on a metal table, covered by the thinnest of sheets. He wanted to smash the glass between them. How was it possible?

Charlotte couldn’t be dead. Not his Charlie. She couldn’t be in that cold exam room while he was standing in the hall staring at her body.

“Mr. Taggart?” The man’s voice grew more agitated, his accent losing its clipped sounds and betraying the fact that the medical examiner was likely from somewhere in the country. “The authorities will need to have a word with you.”

He fucking bet they did. They would want more than a word. They would want to arrest him. They would want to set him in a cell and leave him with absolutely no defenses and then someone would very quietly and calmly end him because this was a setup and he knew it. This was about making sure he was vulnerable.

Someone knew about the Irish mission. It was set to take place in a few hours. He was supposed to be on his way to Dublin to meet with the G2 team he had in place, some kid named Liam and his brother, Rory.

Charlotte couldn’t be dead. He’d made love to her hours before, driving into her body again and again while she clung to him. She was the strongest woman he’d ever met, and he’d managed to tame her. He’d managed to get a ring on her finger and a collar around her neck. He’d known the minute he’d laid eyes on her that she would belong to him.

Mine. His whole fucking being still called out to her. Mine.

“Are you listening, Mr. Taggart?” Ian could hear the voice, but it seemed far away, like someone was talking to him from a great distance.

His vision had narrowed to one thing, blocking out everything else.

God, Sean didn’t even know he’d gotten married. He hadn’t told his brother about the wedding and now his wife was dead. His life was in shambles and he couldn’t even reach out to his brother. Sean was somewhere in Afghanistan. Sean thought Ian was with a team in Iraq. Sean had no idea he worked for the CIA. None of them did. Alex might suspect it, but he would never ask.

Would they even tell his brother that he died in prison or would the US government cover it all up? Would he even die or would he be renditioned somewhere by god only knew who?

Why was he fucking thinking this way? He needed to move. He needed to get the fuck out of here. He needed…

He needed to be with her.

One of the technicians moved in and started to close the drawer that held Charlotte’s body. They would autopsy her later in an attempt to prove that Ian Taggart killed his wife. Ian had no doubt that they would come up with all types of evidence against him.

“Don’t you fucking close that!” He slammed his fist against the glass but it didn’t shatter like he wanted it to. It held firm. The tech guy looked like he was about to pee himself though.

And Charlotte was still dead.

“She doesn’t like closed spaces.” She was terrified of really tight places. Something about her childhood. Her father had been a controlling asshole who had tortured his daughters, and one of the ways he’d abused them was by locking them in small spaces. Charlotte hated even being in elevators.

Until he’d wrapped his arms around her and let her hide her eyes against his chest. At first he’d wondered if it had all been a game, a way to seduce him. She seemed to figure him out so easily, but there had been genuine fear in her eyes and her pulse had sped up.

It’s different with you, Master. I’m safe with you. Tell me I’m safe with you, Ian.

Charlotte was dead. He’d brought her into his life and now she was dead. She hadn’t been safe with him at all.

“Mr. Taggart, the police are here. You have to go with them now.”

The police had escorted him to the hospital, a couple of bobbies who had treated him with some respect, but he had no doubt he would get a visit from the detectives of New Scotland Yard. They wouldn’t be so careful with him. Or someone else would show up, the type of men who didn’t have restrictions on the way they treated a suspect. Men like Ian himself.

God, she was still so fucking gorgeous. Her skin was pale, but it was always pale. It didn’t make sense. She had to get up. She had to walk out of here with him.

He loved her.

If he went with the police, he might be able to be with her again. Maybe all that shit about heaven was right and he would be able to see Charlie. Maybe he could leave everything behind—all the lies and manipulation.

He’d been a different man with Charlotte, a softer man, a man who might have had a future.

God, he’d even thought about children in a vague, undefined way. Just a little fleeting vision of how sweet his Charlie would look with a baby in her arms.

Something touched his right shoulder and he reacted without thought, his elbow coming up and back. He felt the impact, heard the cracking sound of cartilage giving way, and then a flurry of curse words as the nightsticks made their first appearance.

He put his hands in the air, giving up this particular fight. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to get taken down in a goddamn morgue.

Oh, god, he was leaving his wife in a morgue.

He forced the pain down. Someone had killed Charlotte, and it likely had something to do with the operation he was working. He was tracking a Russian national who was attempting to buy nuclear material. Charlotte had ties to the Russian mafia. She hadn’t tried to hide it. She’d shown up at the club he was playing at while he worked in Paris, and he’d thought she would be a pleasant way to spend a couple of weeks and gather intelligence. It was only supposed to be some short-term sex, but somehow it had become more. Then he’d brought her to London with him and she’d been his lover, his wife, his submissive.

Now she was his mistake and someone was going to pay.

He got to the ground because there was nothing else for him to do but comply for the moment. The hall was too crowded for him to move. Once they got him in cuffs, he would only have his legs to work with, but he’d been in worse situations before. He couldn’t let them put him in a cell. The minute he was in a cell, he was a sitting duck.

A million scenarios ran through his head, but at the end of the day, he was alone. This was his operation, and he’d fucked it up.

Cold metal circled his wrists, and he let his body go limp. The cops struggled to get his six-and-a-half-foot frame upright, but he wasn’t going to help. No fucking way. A tired cop was a cop he could get away from. He would let the fuckers drag him the whole way.

A man in a suit and tie walked in. He was different from the cops, but there was no mistaking his authority. He had a partner with him, a slightly smaller male, still tall but leaner. They pulled badges out, showing off their credentials.

Ah, Scotland Yard had finally made their appearance. These men looked like they could handle themselves. These weren’t paunchy, over-the-hill detectives just trying to make their way to retirement. No. These were predators.

Maybe they were really Scotland Yard and maybe they weren’t. He was about to find out one way or the other.

The Agency would disavow any knowledge of him. He was utterly on his own. His brother had no idea where he was. His best friend was in Washington working at the FBI.

Ian Taggart would disappear into the system and another operative would take his place.

After a few moments of arguing, the larger of the two men stepped forward, having won the right to the prize at hand—him.

“Come with me,” the big man said with an elegant British accent. Ian bet he wouldn’t lose his perfectly upper-crust sounds when he was angry. He had an aristocratic look about him.

He had to run. He had to find a way to get to his contacts.

Ian looked back at the window as they began to haul him along, but the little fucker technician had shut the drawer, sealing Charlotte away from him.

He was in a daze. His eyes didn’t seem to want to function. His stomach was in knots. He didn’t want to leave her. How could he fucking leave her?

He struggled, reason fleeing. He needed to hold her again. He needed to be sure. Things in his world could be false, manipulative.

“Just a little more, mate.” The man he was walking beside never looked anywhere but toward the elevator. “And don’t bloody well try anything. I’ve had a rather rough night and would like to get home in one piece. I believe my handler would prefer to be the one to take me apart.”

His partner stepped up beside him, a smile on his face as he winked at one of the nurses. “Oh, aren’t you a pretty little bird. Are you sure we don’t have a minute, Damon? I won’t take long, and the Yank there looks like he could use a rest.”

One thing had gone right. One fucking thing. The elevator doors dinged open. “You’re MI6.”

The dark-haired one gave him a tip of his head. “Of course. Should have been here sooner, mate, but my partner insists on afternoon tea. The name’s Damon Knight.”

“And I’m Basil Champion the third, but obviously the third time’s the charm. You can call me Baz. I think the three of us are about to spend a bit of time together. We’ve hit a snag with the Irish. Into the lift you go before the police figure out we’re not really Scotland Yard and we all get fucked.”

They all stepped into the elevator.

Damon Knight pushed the button to go up and turned to him. “What do you know about a man named Liam O’Donnell?”

O’Donnell was an Irish operative, the very one he’d hand selected to meet with the Russian. He felt numb, but compelled to ask the question. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Everything.”

The doors closed and despite the fact that he had two other men with him, Ian suddenly knew he would always be alone.

* * * *

Charlotte Dennis came awake in complete darkness. For just a moment she thought she’d gone blind. The drugs she’d taken could cause numerous horrific side effects. Maybe this was just one of them. But the pain in her shoulder was pure gunshot wound. Fuck. Had they taken the bullet out? She’d known they would have to leave it in for a while. If they had taken the fucking bullet out, they might have noticed she was still bleeding. Corpses didn’t bleed. She was sure someone had given her a drug to stop the bleeding but removing the bullet would have started it again. Was she still bleeding? Still pierced by metal?

God, she was in so much pain, and the ache in her heart was worse than the bullet wound.

“Hello?”

Someone was supposed to be here to take her to Chelsea. She and Chelsea were supposed to be free of their father now.

“Hello?” She felt weak, but then her body had been so close to death that no one would suspect she was alive.

Where was Ian now? Had they arrested him? She wasn’t stupid. She knew what Eli Nelson was trying to do. He wanted to “distract” a CIA operative. What better way would there be to distract him than to kill him?

The trouble was, her husband was damn hard to kill.

God, if she found out he’d been arrested and killed while in custody, she would lie back down and she wouldn’t need drugs. She would die, just fade away.

Why did Ian Taggart have to be the one man in the world for her?

Charlie took a breath, her head still groggy. She needed to get to her sister. She hadn’t seen Chelsea for months. What if their father had hurt her again? What if he’d killed her? She had to see Chelsea, make sure she was alive.

And she had to save Ian. She had to find a way.

But first she had to find the light switch.

She tried to move her good arm and felt cold metal at her fingertips. Her hands began to shake in a way that had nothing to do with the drugs she’d taken.

The lights weren’t off in the room. She wasn’t in a room.

She sent her hand out, desperate to prove her instincts wrong, to prove she wasn’t trapped in a box.

All she found was more metal. She wasn’t trapped in a box. She was trapped in a coffin.

The scream that came from her throat nearly split her ears. She was fourteen years old again and trapped in that box her father would lock her in when she rebelled. Sometimes, she wasn’t alone in the box. Sometimes a rat or a snake had managed to find its way in and Charlie had to kill it with her hands or feet. She could still remember that snake biting her over and over and over before she’d found a way to kill it. Luckily it hadn’t been venomous, but she hadn’t known that.

She smashed her hands against the walls that held her and screamed the way she had when she was a kid.

No. Not the same because now she screamed a name.

Now she screamed for her husband. The husband she’d betrayed.

She felt her whole body jerk back and then light flooded her vision.

“Shut the fuck up, Charlotte, or you won’t see your sister again. You can’t see her if I have to kill you.”

She went utterly silent. She’d given up everything for Chelsea. Everything. Because Ian Taggart had become her everything. Tears blurred her vision as she started to be able to make out shapes. A dark figure loomed over her.

She forced herself to sit up, every muscle achy and twitching. Her stomach rolled and suddenly there was a trash can in front of her as she began to heave.

There was a long sigh. “The drugs will do that to you. An unfortunate side effect.”

Eli Nelson, the man who had promised to save her if only she would do this one little teeny tiny job for him, stood next to her in his suit designed to attract the minimum of attention. Everything about the man was calculated to make him look as bland and normal as possible. From his average height to his nondescript hair, he fit into the crowd.

She’d decided Eli Nelson was the devil.

She finished emptying her stomach and turned, her legs dangling. She looked at her left shoulder. A bandage was wrapped around her.

“Yes, dear, I rather thought I should have them take the bullet out before you woke up. I couldn’t have you unable to run. The pain must be excruciating. I congratulate you on your fortitude.”

“Who took it out? They suck.” She now had one more scar on a body full of them.

Nelson’s lips lifted in a ghastly imitation of a smile. “I took care of it. I didn’t want to leave any pesky evidence behind. I have a man on the inside here who let me in after all the formalities were over. The sutures might not be perfect, but they did the job.”

God, would she ever stop shaking? It was so cold. Had it really been hours ago that she’d been warm in Ian’s arms? Now she was here. She recognized where she was.

A morgue.

She was in a morgue because she’d died and now she was alive again. Lazarus in high heels. Her clothes were covered in blood. What the hell was she going to do now? She couldn’t think about the future. All that mattered was the answer to one question. “Where is Chelsea?”

Nelson gestured to someone behind him and the door opened.

“Charlotte.” Her kid sister shuffled in, her braces scuffing across the floor.

Chelsea was all of twenty-two years old, but she seemed so much younger. She was thin and weak because their father kept her that way. To their father, Chelsea was nothing but a tool to get Charlie to do what he wanted. Despite the fact that they were technically adults, their father still ruled them with an iron fist. After he’d found them and kidnapped them from Mama, he’d made it impossible for them to leave Russia. Until Eli Nelson had shown up with his devil’s bargain. Now Chelsea was here and they could run. They could hide.

Would he find them?

“Your father is dead,” Nelson said bluntly. “I kept up my end of the deal. MI6 will likely find his body in a couple of days and they’ll believe that everything is over. Eventually they’ll figure out that your dear papa wasn’t the one trying to buy uranium, but for now they’ll believe what I want them to believe. Thank you, dear. That little bit of chaos wouldn’t have been possible without you.”

With shaking hands, she clutched her sister, pulling her behind her body in case everything went to hell. “I don’t understand.”

Nelson shrugged a little. “You aren’t supposed to. You did a halfway decent job leading Taggart around by his dick, and I appreciate that. You’re looking at me like I’m going to kill you. If I had wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have faked your death. I would have made it real. Do you understand how complex this was? No, dear, I want you alive. You’ve proven to be very resourceful when it comes to information retrieval. I could use you in the future. In fact, I want you to start tracking a few key players, including your beloved.”

Ian. Ian wasn’t dead. She breathed a deep sigh of relief. If Ian had been dead, she might have crawled back into that coffin-like box and let the madness take her. “I thought this was a play to kill him.”

Nelson chuckled. “Oh, no. I never sacrifice a pawn until I need to. Right now our mutual employers are working so hard to deal with Mr. Taggart’s issues that they’re not looking at me, and that’s how I want it for a while. I have some plans for Mr. Taggart’s operatives that require that his attention be aimed elsewhere. Not that you need to know what my plans are.”

No. She was just another of his pawns, exactly like she’d been for her father.

Nelson handed her a set of keys. “There’s a BMW in the parking lot with new passports, plane tickets, and a briefcase with fifty thousand dollars inside. Contact me when you settle in the States. I expect great things of you, Charlotte Dennis.”

She almost said it, almost corrected him. Her name was Taggart. She’d been Charlotte Marie Taggart for thirty-two days, and she would never have another name because she would never take another man. She belonged to her Master and always would.

Nelson turned and started out the door. “You should hurry, dear. Your corpse will be missed soon. It’s not every day one just goes missing. I’m leaving enough evidence behind to point to your husband or the family who so dearly loved you. I wouldn’t want Taggart asking too many questions after all. Scotland Yard will suspect Taggart, and Taggart will suspect your recently deceased father and his men. My guess is I went easy on dear old dad. I just slit his throat. I bet Taggart would have done something worse.”

He whistled a little as he let himself out of the morgue, his cronies following along behind. The door shut with a little swish and they were alone.

“Charlotte, are you okay?” She asked the question in the language of their childhood, the language of their mother—English. Their mother had baptized them with American names. She’d managed to run, to get away for years, before their father had found them again. For years all they had spoken was Russian. Except in their secret places. When they were alone, they had kept up their English. Their true language. When she’d heard it, she’d known she was safe.

Chelsea. She had to think of Chelsea. Chelsea was completely helpless, and her husband could take care of himself. “We have to go. He’s right. I can’t be found here.”

“They drugged the night guard and apparently Nelson has some of the employees on his payroll. We have a few minutes. Is your arm okay?”

“I think it still works.” They would be a pair. Chelsea with her limping walk and she with a bullet wound in her arm. Yes, they were real physical threats.

“Charlotte, do you think he’s really dead?” Chelsea asked, the question ringing in the near-silent room.

Vladimir Denisovitch. Their father. Their abuser. The man who had beaten Chelsea so badly that her legs had never been the same again. The one who had turned Charlotte into a trained killer because no one would suspect such a soft girl. “I don’t know.”

She wouldn’t believe it until she saw it. But her father’s death would only solve one of her problems. It probably opened up a hundred more, including the fact that her husband would eventually suspect she’d been lying to him. She’d worked so hard to gain his trust, and it was all shattered now.

“Are we going back to the States? I want to go home, Charlotte. Not to where we lived, just back to America. But what if Dad’s men find us?”

“Then we’ll have to kill them.”

Chelsea looked up at her, and for the first time Charlie saw the deep strength in her sister’s eyes. For so long, Chelsea had been her burden. She loved her sister. She’d also sacrificed most of her life for her. But now, Chelsea reached for her hands and steadied them. “Did you really marry that man? Ian Taggart?”

“I love him.” At least one person in the world should know the truth. “I didn’t mean to. It was stupid, but I love him.”

“Can we go to him?”

And risk Nelson taking them all out? God, would Ian even speak to her after everything she’d done? “I don’t think so. I don’t even know where he is. I’m not sure why Nelson thinks I’ll be able to track him. Ian is an operative and a damn good one at that. I think I need time to figure everything out.”

She needed to find a way to be worthy of him. If she walked back into his life now, he might actually kill her. Her husband was a dangerous man, and she’d placed him and his entire operation in peril. He would take that seriously. There would be no light spankings followed by a little withheld orgasm.

No, his sub had betrayed him. He wouldn’t trust her again.

Unless she found a way to make it up to him.

Chelsea nodded. “Then we take our time and we get strong. I want to be strong now. I’ve figured a few things out. We’ve been trying to get out of this world, but we can’t. It will always pull us back in. We will always be Denisovitch’s daughters. We can shorten and Americanize our last name all we like. The men like Nelson will always know and they’ll want to use us.”

“We have to stay away.” She’d been trying to get out for years, but she’d become known for everything her father had trained her to do. He’d found her again at the age of thirteen and hadn’t waited long to start teaching her what it meant to be his daughter. He hadn’t had any sons, so he’d treated Charlotte like one. She’d run her first long con at fourteen. She’d made her first kill at the age of fifteen. Robbed her first bank on her seventeenth birthday. She’d done it all because her father would have killed her if she didn’t, but the stains were on her soul all the same.

And when she was twenty-six, she’d finally figured out what love was when a man who looked like a Viking had taken her in his arms and shown her an entirely different world. A world where she could trust someone enough to submit to him.

“He won’t let us. You heard what he said. He expects you to call him.”

Charlie nodded. “Yes. Me. Not you. When we get back to the States, you’re going to college, and I’ll handle this.”

Her sister held on to the table and looked her straight in the eyes. “I am done with letting you ruin your life. Hear me and hear me now. I know you think I’m just a cripple.”

“Chelsea, no.” Her sister was fragile, but she never meant to make her feel bad about it. Since their mother had been killed, Chelsea was her whole life.

She shook her head. “Yes, it’s how you see me and until now, it’s how I’ve acted. I’ve been a scared little mouse. I’ve let you give up everything for me. But not anymore. When we go home, I’m going to help you. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years. Papa made me learn how to hack into systems. I’m really good. I can write code, too. I can be helpful.”

“I don’t want that for you.” She’d been trying to get out of this world for her sister’s sake.

“And I don’t want you to lose the man you love, but I have to deal with it now, don’t I? No, if we can’t run from this world, then there’s one thing to do.”

Her heart hardened slightly as she realized the truth of her sister’s words. “We have to rule it.”

Chelsea nodded. “This world runs on information. So we become the center of it all. We use them the way they used us.”

She found her feet, her sister steady against her. They were just two girls against a world of black operations and money-fueled crime.

Suddenly she knew that she would win. She would have her husband back and she would bring down everyone who tried to stop her. Optimism. She had to have it. She had to believe that she could do everything she needed to.

If there was one thing she’d learned in her lifetime, it was that the world was a game.

She would win or she would die.