Elite Ops Complete Series

by Lora Leigh

  Warbucks somehow managed to steal the information or hardware. From there, he engaged the services of a broker to auction the items and transfer the goods. John had handled several smaller transactions with exacting detail. Whoever Warbucks was, John was a trusted entity to him, or them. John was also considered one of the most reliable brokers on the black market, where a man’s word was about as good as the spit on the ground at his feet.

  He was careful, he avoided assassins and betrayal and he had the connections needed to get the highest dollar for each deal. And this deal would demand a hell of a lot of dollars. It wouldn’t be a simple transaction and transfer; even Warbucks would know that. The danger, the secrecy involved, and the weapon itself would require more trust than normal from all parties.

  John had been contacted. The first move had been made.

  “You going to be able to handle this, Heat Seeker?” Noah’s voice was low at his side.

  John turned his head and stared back at the man who had become a friend in the past five years.

  “I’ll handle her.” He shifted his shoulders, preparing for the battle ahead.

  Noah breathed out roughly at the answer. “I didn’t ask if you could handle her. You going to be able to handle walking away again?”

  John stared back at him for long moments, letting the question sink inside him before the anger that had once been carefully banked flared to the surface.

  “Who the fuck says I have to walk away again? No one makes that decision this time but me.”

  “What the fuck do the lot of you think this unit is?” Jordan broke in furiously as he came in behind Noah. “A damned matchmaking opportunity? I don’t send you on these missions to lose your damned hearts and create more risks than we need at this point. We have a job to do, Heat Seeker, try to remember that.”

  “Fuck you!” John snarled. “You don’t own my fucking soul, you just bought it for a while.”

  “And you damned well better remember that your time isn’t up yet.” Jordan flattened his hands against the table as he glared back at John. “Seven more years, that’s what you owe this unit and the men who gave you a fucking life back. Getting married and living happily-fucking-ever-after wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Putting up with your bullishness wasn’t part of the deal, either,” John sneered, the thought of walking away from Bailey a third time ripping at his soul as he shoved his finger in Jordan’s direction. “You don’t tell me what I’ll walk away from, mate. Not you, not anyone. Remember that.”

  He turned and stalked from the room, then from the cabin. He’d had enough. Orders, missions, decisions always based on the good of the unit or the good of the mission. This time, this mission, there was a hell of a lot more at stake. This time, it wasn’t his life, it was his soul.

  NOAH WATCHED AS HEAT Seeker stalked from the room and slammed the door behind him. Minutes later the Hummer he was driving started up and sped out of the driveway.

  The Australian was pissed, and Noah couldn’t blame him. Hell, Bailey had already been taken from him once. In every man’s life there was one woman, one chance, and very few were given another shot if they fucked it up.

  Noah had been given another chance with his wife, Sabella, and he’d almost fucked that one up. Now John was being given another chance with Bailey, and when it came to that Aussie, anything was possible.

  “We’re going to have problems with him,” Jordan remarked as he neared Noah. “I’ll have to have Travis keep a close eye on him.”

  Problems meant that Jordan was realizing the mistake it had been to bring John into this mission to begin with. Not that Jordan could have stopped Heat Seeker from being here, not with Bailey Serborne involved. But for some reason Jordan kept thinking he could control events. When it came to a man’s soul, Noah thought that maybe his uncle was finally realizing that once a man lost his soul to a woman, it was gone forever. And life wasn’t much worth living without her.

  “Give him room, Jordan.” Noah shook his head. “Crowd him and you’ll regret it.”

  “My operatives keep acquiring wedding rings and I’m going to end up with a bunch of useless men as well as an ulcer,” he grunted. “You guys get damned cranky when I pull you away from home and hearth.”

  Noah grinned at that. He did get damned cranky. He liked being close to home and hearth and living again. He’d been “dead” for far too long without his Sabella. Being with her again, being himself, a husband, a lover, and a father, was a miracle for him.

  Pulling his wallet from his back pocket, he flipped it open to reveal the latest pictures of his wife and son. “This is what you’re pulling me away from, man. It’s worth getting cranky over.”

  For a moment Jordan’s face softened as he stared down at the infant. Thick black hair and vibrant blue eyes combined with the dark Irish skin tone that his father and uncle both possessed.

  Jordan was damned proud of his little nephew. He’d been there when the baby had been born, and Noah could have sworn Jordan might have been hiding a tear or two when the nurse laid the baby in Noah’s arms.

  “Gonna be damned hard to say that’s not Nathan Malone’s kid.” Jordan sighed as he shook his head in concern. “You’re taking a hell of a risk. We can’t afford to have others realize that Nathan Malone might not be fully dead.”

  “He is Nathan Malone’s kid.” Noah grinned. “Sometimes we forget who I used to be, don’t we?”

  Noah never forgot. His name might have changed, to some extent he might have changed, but Nathan Malone lived on within him.

  Jordan shook his head at that, his expression becoming almost haggard. “I never forgot, I never forget. And by God, I never stop regretting.”

  Before Noah could say anything, his uncle pivoted on his heel and stalked from the room.

  Noah shook his head and replaced the wallet in his back pocket before breathing out heavily, his gaze connecting with Micah Sloane’s. Over the past months he and the former Mossad agent had found common ground that they hadn’t had before. Wives and children. Micah’s wife had only recently presented him with their first child, and both men worried incessantly when they were away from their families.

  Both men recognized something in Jordan that even Jordan refused to admit to. A man fighting a losing battle with the woman he couldn’t stay away from, as well as a soldier’s battle to fight a war he felt he was losing.

  Jordan’s responsibility for the operatives he commanded and the missions they took often weighed on his shoulders. If they failed, he took the blame. If they succeeded, he gave them the glory. He took nothing for himself, took no solace, and neither man could figure out why.

  Noah knew his uncle hadn’t been like this before Noah had been sent on that near-fatal mission to uncover a spy who’d been attempting to aid a terrorist white slaver in using drug routes to smuggle terrorists onto American soil.

  Jordan had changed during that time. Something had happened, had somehow scarred the soul of the man Jordan had once been, and Noah still hadn’t figured out exactly what. Knowing his uncle, chances were Noah would never know.

  He just prayed his uncle found a way to ease it, because at the rate Jordan was going, he wouldn’t have a soul left when it was finished.

  WARBUCKS.

  John clenched his fingers around the steering wheel of the Hummer and felt his jaw tighten in rage at the thought of the elusive traitor stealing America’s secrets and selling them for billions of dollars at a time.

  Whoever or whatever Warbucks was, he was the number one threat to national security at the moment as well as to Bailey. The missile launcher and accompanying missiles Warbucks now possessed, and the buyers eagerly amassing their money to pay for them, could wreak havoc on the world’s security. They could hold nations hostage.

  How the hell that weapon had been stolen, they still hadn’t managed to track down. Whoever Warbucks was, he had power and connections that no man or group should ever acquire.

  And he had no c
onscience.

  John wiped his hand over his face and fought to hold back the rage that threatened his control. Warbucks had been responsible for several Australian Intelligence officers’ deaths before the strike that had ended Trent Daylen’s life and begun John Vincent’s. Several of those agents had been friends, just as Timmons had been.

  Fucking bastards. John breathed out roughly at the fury pulsing through him. Warbucks had stolen John’s life, he’d stolen the chance he had at love when he’d ended his life as Trent Daylen. Warbucks had stolen Bailey from him.

  He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, remembering the post-surgery pictures he had been shown of his face after that explosion. It had been ravaged. Deep cuts, burns, and shattered bones had required a complete reconstruction. The months of agony had built a hatred inside John that he feared he’d never be rid of.

  Now his search for vengeance had brought him full circle in a way, back into Bailey’s life and whatever game she was playing here in Aspen. Whatever game Warbucks was playing with her.

  John knew his lover. He knew Bailey in work mode, and she’d definitely been in work mode the night before. Somehow she had managed to convince the unidentified Warbucks that she could be an ally. The coincidence was too close, just as her release of the information in Atlanta had been too easy. She had tried to throw him off track. She had tried to help them acquire Orion, hoping she would throw them off the scent of past employers other than the rapist who had targeted Risa Clay.

  Knowing Bailey and he did know Bailey, that was exactly what she had been trying to do.

  Which meant she had more information now, information they needed even more desperately than they had needed the information on Orion.

  She was a slick one, he had to give her that. Cool as a cucumber and just as dangerously calculating when it came to a job. Unfortunately for her, she was going to have to share this one. He had his own interest in Warbucks and he knew well just how far the traitor’s power extended. It was why the Elite Ops had been given the operation: because Warbucks had too many connections into too many law enforcement communities as well as underground and black-market sources.

  Rubbing the back of his neck, he blew out a hard, rough breath. This wouldn’t be an easy one and protecting his identity from Bailey would be even harder. She was damned intuitive and if he knew her, then she knew the man he had been. And the man he had been wasn’t that far removed from the man he was now.

  He was still the man who loved her, who ached for her in the darkest reaches of the night, his arms empty for the feel of her. He remembered her kiss, her touch, and relished each cry he knew he could draw from her lush lips. He was still the man who felt lost without her, and how the hell he had managed to let that happen, he still hadn’t figured out.

  How long, he wondered, before he betrayed his former identity to her?

  Hell, she was going to be the death of him if he wasn’t damned careful here. He had given her a part of himself that he had never given to another woman in his life, a part that still remained with her. His heart.

  CHAPTER 3

  BAILEY WAS AWAKE BEFORE sunrise the next morning. As the first spears of light began to spread into her bedroom, she was staring out the window, waiting, watching.

  He was coming. She could feel him, almost as close as a caress against her flesh, she could feel John Vincent coming nearer.

  Anticipation was sizzling just beneath her flesh. Her heart was beating faster, harder than normal as nervous excitement clawed at her nerve endings.

  Her body was flushed, heated; damn, she was aroused. She could feel the damp warmth heating the flesh between her thighs, the spiked hardness of her nipples. She would have found it amusing if it weren’t for the fact that she knew next to nothing about this man, and what she did know, she wasn’t certain she liked.

  Why, she wondered, was she letting him affect her like this? She’d met him once. Only once. In Atlanta, where he had helped steal the prize she had sought for so long. Orion’s head.

  Where he had kissed her. Where he had touched her as though he knew her and her body had responded with a familiarity that made very little sense.

  Turning away from the window, she shook her head as she drew the thick, heavy robe from the chair next to her bed and drew it over the silk nightshirt she slept in.

  She didn’t have time to sit here waiting on a man who might or might not show up. A man she should pray never showed up. He could only be here for one reason, and that reason wasn’t her. He was here to steal the prize again.

  Grinning at the thought, she left her bedroom and descended the winding staircase of the huge cabin-style mansion her parents had had built more than thirty years ago.

  She had returned here a year ago and begun the very subtle game of drawing Warbucks into her own little web. Her life had been secured time and again by Warbucks for only one possible reason. The Serborne fortune. Now that she had revealed her disenchantment with her country, once she had proven it by looking the other way when several military items had been compromised at a Serborne research facility, she knew she was close.

  Stepping into the foyer, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe and gave a soft sigh before turning and heading to the kitchen at the back of the house.

  Entering the kitchen, she inhaled the scent of fresh coffee before moving to the coffeepot and taking a cup from the cupboard. Filling it with the aromatic brew, Bailey went to the breakfast nook, sat down in one of the opulently cushioned chairs, and stared outside the wide picture windows that surrounded it.

  She knew he would be here this morning. Glancing at the watch on her wrist, she lifted the cup to her lips and sipped as she cast her gaze outside once again.

  A shadow moved.

  Bailey pretended she didn’t see it as she hid her smile behind the cup. It could be someone other than John Vincent, she told herself, but she doubted it. Only John sent this quicksilver punch of excitement rioting through her veins.

  She watched the shadow shift again outside, this time closer to the house. Rising to her feet, she poured another cup of coffee and moved it to the table as those first fragile rays of sunlight lightened the snow-laden trees and evergreen shrubs that filled the property.

  The mountain was beautiful in the winter. The snowy blanket looked pristine and untouched as it piled around the pine trees that surrounded the house.

  There were bare spots beneath the trees, and if she wasn’t mistaken her shadowy visitor was using those bare spots to slip up to the house without leaving evidence of his visit.

  She would have done the same thing. She’d actually helped her mother to plant some of the trees in the back when she had been a teenager. At the time, Bailey had been fascinated by the subject of slipping around undetected. Several of the trees had been planted with the idea of giving her an easy, untraceable route.

  She’d left before she could try it, and now she watched as John used it instead, moving steadily to the patio and the French doors that were unlocked and awaiting his arrival.

  She watched as the doorknob turned slowly, the door opened, and John stepped inside.

  She was caught anew by the shock of primal awareness that surged through her at the sight of him. The dark blond hair that fell roguishly around his face. The high, almost flat arch of his cheekbones, his expressive dark gray eyes. The strong bridge of his nose.

  “Coffee?” She arched a brow as he flashed her a quick, devilish grin and pulled off his leather gloves and ultra-thin protective jacket.

  “It’s a bit cold out there.” He closed the door, locking it carefully behind him as he stared around the breakfast room and the kitchen.

  “We’re alone,” she assured him as she indicated the coffee. “Have a seat, Mr. Vincent, and tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you for trespassing.”

  She slid her Glock from the pocket of her robe and laid it casually on the glass-topped breakfast table beside her coffee.

  His brow arched in am
usement as he glanced at the weapon before moving to the table.

  Bailey pushed out the opposite chair with her foot and waved her hand toward it.

  “At least you’re going to allow me a cup of coffee before actually shooting me,” he said, chuckling. “How would you explain that to the authorities?”

  “Explain what?” she asked with a shrug. “I’d simply hide the body. I wouldn’t have to explain anything.”

  The dark, low laugh that vibrated in his throat sent a rush of sensation chasing up her spine. Damn him, she should shoot him for that alone.

  “I knew you’d be trouble when I first saw you in Atlanta,” he told her as he wrapped one hand around the coffee cup and brought it to his lips. “Pure fire wrapped in the sexiest package I’ve ever glimpsed.”

  She grunted at that as she leaned back in her chair and watched him cynically. He was definitely charming. Something about his smile, the movement of his body, invited a woman to trust him, to lean into him. She knew better than to trust or to lean into anyone.

  “Compliments won’t soften you?” he asked as he set the cup back on the table. “For shame, Bailey. Are you a bit conceited?”

  “A bit disbelieving perhaps,” she admitted, amused by him, turned on by him. “Now what the hell do you want? I have things to do today and I don’t have time for your games.”

  “I don’t play games.” There was a glimmer of warning in his gaze.

  “And I don’t play at all,” she told him. “So get to the point.”

  She wanted him out of here. She wanted him out of her sight and out of her life before it was too late. Before she lost more of herself than she already had to a too-charming man and her own hormones.

  “An impatient woman as well.” He shook his head as though he pitied her. “I had heard you were quite patient.”

  “I don’t know where you heard such a thing.” She widened her eyes in false surprise.

  “Orion.”

  That shocked her for a brief second. Bailey could feel her training kicking in as she held her expression. Bland amusement, no surprise. She merely stared back at him with innocent curiosity, as though there was nothing Orion could possibly know about her.