And opened the door.
“Fuck.” He allowed Deke in.
Charlotte was already on the couch. Big Tag’s office was basically a suite. It contained his big desk, a sitting area with a couch and a love seat, and it had its own full bathroom. Deke happened to know that big couch opened to a foldout bed Ian did not mind using in the middle of the day.
Tag lived the dream, in Deke’s opinion.
“Are you talking about the woman we couldn’t ID?” Charlotte sat up straighter. “The one who had tech that fooled Adam’s facial recognition?”
“We better be because otherwise we’re ruining a perfectly good morning.” Tag closed the door behind him. “I was serious about the time off, Deke. You can go out and gather more intel. We have no verification we’re dealing with the same woman.”
“I don’t think we need more. You’ve heard the rumors. There’s a new group filling in the void The Collective left behind.” He understood why Tag had turned down the assignment. He’d been worried that would be exactly the case from the minute Maddie had told him who he worked for. “I know what Byrne almost did to this firm, but if he’s in league with that group, we have to find out. The technology Maddie is working on could be a giant leap forward. That group will kill it if it benefits them.”
“You know I don’t back down from a fight, but I’m also not putting everyone’s jobs at risk over a hunch.” Tag joined his wife.
“It was a hard time in our lives, and honestly, I don’t want to revisit it.” Charlotte put a hand on her husband’s leg as though giving him her comfort.
Deke remembered the time well. Four years before, Byrne had not only tried to stiff the company out of the remaining bill, he’d tried to alienate them from potential clients. He’d used his influence to cost McKay-Taggart. The company had taken a hit, and Charlotte had lost her mind when she’d found out Ian had been talking to Boomer about sniping the man from a distance. They’d eventually settled out of court and things had calmed down, but he understood why Tag wanted to stay away from the man.
“I can do it completely off the books.” Deke took a seat across from the Taggarts. “If anyone asks, I worked alone.”
“But you’re not going to work alone or you wouldn’t be sitting here,” Tag pointed out. “You want a team.”
“I’m the only one who’ll have any contact with Byrne. Boomer’s there as my backup. I need MaeBe, but she’s strictly behind a computer,” he promised. When he thought about it, he didn’t really need a bodyguard. He or Boomer could handle that part. Keeping the team small and agile was to his benefit. “I can get the team down to three.”
“You know they’re a package deal. You get MaeBe, you have to take Crazy.” Tag knew exactly who his nephew was and didn’t mind putting that out there.
“I’ll make sure Kyle stays out of trouble.” He couldn’t let Maddie go back alone, and if he was going, he wanted a team in place. Especially if he was right and they were dealing with the same group who’d worked with Jessica Layne’s company. Because of the contracts in place, Noelle’s breakthrough in helium tech was still out of her hands. She’d found new work, but the trouble had set her back years. He didn’t want that for Maddie. If he could prove something illegal was going on, he might be able to get her out of the contracts and free up her research.
“All right. What exactly did she say?” Big Tag sat back.
“I asked her about the woman she’s seen with Byrne. She doesn’t have a name. I asked if she’s got a picture because we could take it down to Adam,” Deke explained. “She said she’d tried to grab a shot from security cams, but the woman is wearing glasses that disrupted the images.”
Charlotte frowned. “Like the woman who worked with Layne. That tech isn’t available to the public, so we have to assume she’s at least with the same group even if she’s not the same person. I know you don’t like coincidence, but…”
“A woman with crazy secret tech shows up at the side of another billionaire tech giant? Yeah.” Tag sighed and shook his head. “I don’t want to get into this.”
But he would because Tag wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it. “I will make it my mission in life to get a good shot of this woman if you let me go and bring a small team. Maddie said she should be coming to Byrne sometime in the next week or so.”
“She can’t know the schedule.” Tag seemed to be looking for a way out.
“I think we have to take the chance. If The Collective is up and working again, we have to know,” Deke pointed out.
“The rumor is they are calling themselves The Consortium now. Like changing their name means they’re invisible again.” Tag growled a little and took a sip of Scotch. “I hate the fuckers, and if Byrne is one of them, we do need to know. He’s shooting satellites into space, and if he has his way, he’ll control access to space itself. He’ll fucking privatize the moon and charge us all for the tides.”
Charlotte stood, straightening her skirt. “I’ll go and talk to Genny about travel and per diems. Are we sending the whole crew Deke asked for?”
Tag nodded, reaching for his wife’s hand and giving it a squeeze. “Give him whatever he wants. But if he wants MaeBe, he has to take Kyle. I’m not going to listen to my nephew whine that his emotional support hacker is in another state.”
She winked his way. “Will do. And Deke, we’ll expect regular updates. I mean the text group, not Ian. We’re all boring married women. We need some drama. I want to know the minute Kyle and MaeBe throw down. Like I want to know before they do.”
He wasn’t sure how he was going to make that happen, but he would do his level best to provide his group with some entertainment. The group had started out as a way to easily connect a bunch of moms to help with carpool and bake sales and other kidcentric activities, and like all things McKay-Taggart, had quickly dissolved into an amusing shitshow of gossip and speculation and well-meaning nosiness. He fucking loved it. “Will do, boss.”
Charlotte strode out.
“And there goes the best part of my morning.” Tag set the Scotch down with a sigh. “I won’t see her again until we go home, and then we’ll be all about the kids. Getting old and responsible sucks ass. All right, Deke. You’re the most reasonable of all my employees. Tell me what you think.”
It was good to know the boss believed in him. “I think Maddie is the smartest person I’ve ever met, and if she believes something is wrong, then something is wrong. I’m going to explain to her that we will work this op for her, but we have our own mission and that’s to ID the woman meeting with Byrne.”
Ian stared down at the Scotch but didn’t pick it back up. “You’re not worried she’s involved?”
Deke shook his head. “Not at all. She’s solid, boss.”
Ian’s head cocked as though he was considering the situation. “How do you know? You haven’t had a relationship with her since you were both in high school. There are a lot of years between you and the girl you remember.”
“She’s stayed somewhat close to one of my sisters. She and Angie even kept in touch while Maddie was at Yale.” Sometimes he thought his sister had done that so she could tell him about the amazing things Maddie was doing. Not to make him feel bad about himself, rather to let him know he’d made the right decision all those years ago. “Maddie is incapable of doing anything truly morally wrong. It’s why she’s here.”