Page 7 of Protect Me

Delicate.

She isn’t Amy, but she is damned close.And she needs my protection, not my lust.

“Motherfucker,” Ian mutters.“It’s like that?”

“Charlie said not to let you curse in front of the girls,” I remind him.

“Then don’t drool all over the client.”

Talia sucks in a surprised breath, and I know my cheeks burn with embarrassment.Damn Ian and his intuition.Of course, I probablyamall but drooling when I look at Talia.

“Tell him what’s going on,” I say, changing the subject.“And now that you’re safe, you have time for more detail.”

I gesture to a chair and pull it out for her to sit.Just as we all settle in, the girls, Kenzie and Kala, begin to play tag around the table.And Ian ignores them.

Talia toys with that locket around her neck and begins to explain her job.“Basically, it comes down to this.The drug can cure a congenital heart defect in utero.But that means the big drug companies lose tons of money providing patients with drugs over the course of their lifespan, whatever that might be.In my mother’s case, it wasn’t long enough,” she says, looking down at her hands.

My heart clenches at her admission.I know her history, that she lost her mom at a young age.I am lucky enough to have both parents, still happily married.I can’t imagine such a loss, times two.Her father passed away as well.

“It sounds to me like big pharmaceutical is somehow involved and they want to stop the cure from getting out there,” Ian says, interrupting my thoughts.

She nods.“Exactly.My assistant called me in a panic, but he wasn’t at the lab.Everything is gone.I’m sure they thought they acquired the entire formula, but they only have the last third.I broke it up.Part two is with us now.”

“We stopped at her apartment to pick up the formula on the way here.The place had been ransacked.And I dropped a tail on the way here,” I tell Ian.

“What?You did?”Talia shakes her head and sighs.“I didn’t see anyone,” she mutters, sounding disappointed in herself and her detecting abilities.

“Got it.How did they miss finding the formula?”Ian asks, his gaze on his girls, whose pace around the table has picked up.

“Because it was beneath the shower in a waterproof safe with her fingerprint as the entry,” I say.

And Talia squares her shoulders with pride.So damned cute, I think, cursing myself for the distraction from what is important.

Ian blinks, admiration crossing his face.One of the girls shrieks, and Ian cringes at the ear-piercing sound.“Keep it down.These guys don’t have your daddy’s ability to tune you two out,” Ian says to the screaming girls.

“Whatever you say,” one of the twins says dutifully, sounding exactly like—

“She gets her sarcasm from her mother,” Ian says too proudly, if you ask me.“Okay, so back to business.Where’s part one?”he asks, following both his girls and the story without missing a beat.

“My mentor.He’s the one who trained me to be careful.”

“Paranoid,” Ian says.“But damned smart.”

Talia nods.“He started this research before he retreated to parts unknown in Oregon.I took it over.But someone stole a piece from him years ago, and he learned to take precautions.”

“So you need to get to your mentor,” I say.“And then?”

She swallows hard.“His ex-wife, Sheila, is head of a pharmaceutical company.He can contact her and she’ll make sure the formula gets into the right hands.”

“You need to call him,” I say.

She scrunches her nose at the question.“I can’t.”

“Explain,” Ian says.

“He’s eccentric.And he trusts very few people.So I have a special way of reaching him.I go to Portland and I have to put a handwritten note, myself, no postmark, not mailed, in a post office box.He comes to town the second and fourth Thursdays of the month.I can ask him to meet with me that way.He won’t know to bring the research with him, but we can go back with him to get it.”

I nod, mentally cataloguing what will happen next, as I have to get her from here to Portland safely.I glance at Ian.“I need a decoy when we leave here.I’m thinking Simon and Chelsea for a match in looks.Meanwhile we need to thoroughly scan and check her things before we take anything with us that could be bugged.”