“I was thinking he’s super stretchy,” Adam countered.
He managed to tamp down his irritation. “I take it Kyle’s been talking.”
Big Tag’s jaw went tight, and he sat back. “He writes a detailed report, and he’s sending them to the head of his department every morning. Fisher thought I should see this one since it involved a developing relationship. That was how Kyle put it in his report. I read the subtext. I’m right about you sleeping with Noelle?”
“It’s okay because I apparently was neither stretchy enough or upper body strong enough for her.” He wasn’t going to let the humiliation get him down. It was his old friend. “So it’s not going to be a problem.”
It was good to know Kyle was a tattletale. Although at least he’d been somewhat discreet. Big Tag could read between almost any line though.
“She told you she didn’t like the sex?” Adam asked.
“I am not doing this. I made a mistake. I’ll fix it.” He’d thought about it a lot. There was a simple solution, and he thought Noelle would appreciate it. They didn’t need another awkward encounter. “The truth of the matter is it’s not necessary for me to stay at Noelle’s. Kyle is the bodyguard. I can come and go as needed.”
“That would have been an option had you not introduced yourself around as her boyfriend,” Big Tag shot back. “I think there would be a bunch of questions if you left and your so-called brother was living with her. Unless you haven’t met any of her friends yet. How did you introduce yourself when you went against Genedyne security and found Noelle in the locker room?”
“I suspect you know exactly how many people I’ve met.” Kyle seemed thorough. So his plan to drop all the in-person work into Kyle’s lap seemed like a long shot now. Or a no shot. Like his relationship with Noelle. “I’ll handle it.”
“See that you do,” Big Tag intoned. “So I sent MaeBe away for a reason.”
Now they would get to why Adam was here. Everything he’d heard so far would have been handled by McKay-Taggart. “All right. Is this about the case? Because I trust MaeBe implicitly.”
“Not about this you won’t.” Tag nodded Adam’s way.
“Yesterday Jake met with a member of the Senate about the search for her missing daughter,” Adam explained. “Julia Ennis was reported missing in Hong Kong, where she’d been working with the American embassy there. That was three months ago. The government hasn’t been able to find her. Her mother is frustrated.”
Adam passed him a folder.
Hutch pulled it toward him. Almost everything they did now was done on tablets. If Adam was giving him a hard copy it was because whatever was in that folder was sensitive enough, he didn’t want any chance of it getting hacked.
He opened the folder and saw a picture of a stunning woman with long blonde hair and green eyes. She stared at the camera with a ready smile, but there was something cold about her. “This is the daughter? And you said she was working with the embassy, not at the embassy?”
“Yes. She actually works for a large conglomerate. She speaks three different languages and has a business degree from Yale. She’s in charge of coordination between the arms of the company, and apparently that means she travels a lot,” Adam explained. “From what we’ve been able to put together, she was on the road roughly thirty weeks last year alone.”
“What does this have to do with my case?” Hutch asked.
“You’ve gotten impatient.” Tag took over. “You know I’ve tried to stay out of the spy shit for the last seven years.”
Hutch sat up straighter because that statement was correct. The last seven years had been peaceful in their way. Tag had told the Agency to fuck off, and he’d concentrated on the Dallas and London offices and his family. It had been ages since Hutch had found himself in the middle of an international conspiracy. “You think she’s a spy? Why would a missing woman drag you back into Agency business?”
“I think she might be trying to bring back an old enemy. She’s visited ten of the most important CEOs in the world over the course of the last year, and I’m seeing a familiar pattern,” Tag said, his tone grave.
A chill went through Hutch. “The Collective broke up a long time ago.”
Adam sighed. “As they might say in royal circles, The Collective is dead. Long live The Collective. They might call it something else, but eight of those ten she visited were suspected Collective companies back in the day. The daughter of a senator would have a lot of opportunities a member of The Collective could use. We suspect she’s brokering between the companies.”
“And none of that would be my business because I’m not going to work with the Agency again.” Tag’s fist clenched. “But they found a way to drag my ass back in. Turn the page, Hutch.”