“I still think we should make him take a DNA test. He’s changed his name a couple of times,” Kala said under her breath.
“I think you’re cool.” Kenzie gave him a wave. “And khakis aren’t bad. Lots of dads wear them.”
By dad she meant old dude. He wasn’t a fool. But then he probably looked ancient to those babies.
The phone rang and the girls started to argue about who should answer it. Tasha opened the door to the inner office. “Don’t mind Kala. She’s in a bad mood because Cooper is at baseball camp and he’s not replying to her texts. I’ve tried to tell her if she wants a boy to reply to her she shouldn’t punch him on a regular basis.”
The ways of those kids were a mystery, and he liked it that way. The big group of kids contained cliques within cliques, and as they got older they seemed to be pairing off. He preferred the youngsters who wanted to treat every surface of a space like their own private jungle gym. “Are they in the big conference room? And my keycard is in my truck. I ran up here and forgot it.”
“They’re in Dad’s office,” she said. “I’m sitting in for Genny. She’s in New York with Wade this week. It’s pretty cool. They’re with Remy and Lisa. The guys are working as bodyguards for this reality star who’s been accused of murdering another reality star. I hope we get to meet her. The alive one, I mean.”
Despite the fact that the man had a whole business in another state, Remy still honored the pledge he’d made to Tag many years before. He came in on some of the higher profile cases. He particularly liked the ones where the company paid for travel.
Up ahead the door to one of the four largest offices on this floor came open and Charlotte stepped out. “Beck, excellent. Come on in. We’ve got something to show you. Adam’s on his way up, and Hutch is already in there.” She smiled at her oldest daughter. “Everything okay out here? Are the twins all right? Yasmin should be back any minute.”
“Kenzie’s answering the phone. Mostly. We shouldn’t lose too many clients,” Tasha promised. “I’ll go check on Seth and Travis and make sure the nursery is still standing.”
Charlotte watched her walk away with a smile on her face. “I have no idea what I would do without that child.”
“Where is Kim?” He wanted to get straight to the point.
Charlotte turned serious. “You should come in.”
He walked into Big Tag’s office. It was bigger than Beck’s apartment and had a glorious view of Dallas. Taggart was standing over his chair, which was occupied by Greg Hutchins. Hutch was the head of cyber investigations and security. He was in his early thirties, but then he’d been one of the youngest CIA employees in history. Recruited by Tennessee Smith for his hacking skills, Hutch had been Big Tag’s man for over a decade.
“Beck, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” Tag said. “You have to know I wouldn’t unless it was important.”
“Where is she?” Only one thing mattered.
“It’s complicated.” Taggart had his hands on his hips.
Hutch looked up from his laptop. “Nah. It’s not really. She’s in Malta. Did you know there was a country called Malta? I didn’t. It’s apparently some weird island in the Mediterranean. It’s super tiny.”
Tag frowned down at Hutch. “What about let me handle this did you not understand?”
Hutch shrugged. “He wasn’t going to listen to a lecture, boss. He’s been looking for Solo for seven years. I spend way more time with him than you do. Now that he knows we actually have a location, he’ll chill.”
“Or he’ll take off after her, and the situation is complex,” Tag insisted.
Malta. She was in Malta. “He’s right. I wouldn’t have stopped until you gave me a location, but I’m not going to immediately run off after her. Unless she’s in some kind of danger.”
“We’ve got some feelers out,” Charlotte explained. “Chelsea is on it.”
“How did you find her?” His heart was racing. Kim was in Europe and she was alive. “What do you know about her?”
“Very little.” Tag came around his desk. “This intel is literally an hour old. I called as soon as we got the report.”
“You know I’ve been tracking Solo’s history for years now. By history, I really mean her family’s business and social connections,” Hutch explained. “It’s this big weird puzzle because the Solomons have family across the globe. Did you realize Solo’s connected to three different heads of state?”
“She didn’t talk about her family much.” It had been a point of contention with her. “I know she trusted a couple of cousins, but she wasn’t close to any of them.”
“From what I’ve been able to gather, she traveled a lot as a kid. She spent a whole lot of time in boarding schools,” Hutch continued.
“Yes. Her parents didn’t pay a lot of attention to her.”
“After I realized that studying her super-classified time at the Agency wasn’t yielding anything, I thought I would go deeper. I looked at her childhood. Sometimes when things are rough we go back to basics. She spent a few years at a boarding school in Austria,” Hutch said. “She had very few visitors, but according to the records I acquired…”
“He hacked,” Tag interjected with an eye roll.
“You say tomato,” Hutch replied.
“Interpol says violation of international law,” Tag shot back.
“Who visited her?” He didn’t care what Hutch had done or how he’d done it. If Hutch got his smart ass taken to jail, Beck would break him out.
Hutch turned his way and seemed to get serious. “According to the records, a man named Francis Bruno came to visit her six times over the course of the four semesters she spent there. He visited on both of her birthdays.”
He thought he might have heard the name. “Was he Italian?”
“Yes,” Hutch replied. “He’s got an Italian passport,
