Elite Ops Complete Series

by Lora Leigh

  She shrugged easily as she sat back in her seat.

  “Did Bailey ever get along with anyone well?” Grant asked then, his nasal accent grating on her senses. “Really, Wagner, I believe you’re the only one of us that she really cared much for.”

  Wagner laughed as Bailey slid Grant a tight smile. “I guess Wagner just wasn’t as abrasive as the rest of you,” she stated coolly. “You should take lessons, Grant.”

  He sniffed in disdain. “I rather doubt it, sweetheart. Perhaps you’ve simply been associating with commoners for far too long. They’ve rubbed off on you.”

  She refrained from making a fist and ramming it into his face. The good thing about associating with real people was the fact that they were simply that, real. They might have an agenda, but it wasn’t nearly as corrupt and diseased as those she had seen when she was younger in the people who believed they were so much better.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, Grant.” She tilted her head as she shot him a tight smile. “The good thing about common people is the fact that they don’t pretend to be anything else, while I’ve noticed far more privileged people have a habit of being more common than those they look down their perfect noses on.”

  “Still a bitch, aren’t you?” He glared back at her.

  “Enough, Grant,” Wagner’s voice hardened with a snap at the insult. “If you want to be an ass, then you can head on to the resort and I’ll meet up with you later.”

  Grant’s lips thinned for a moment as he shot Bailey such a look of dislike that she was certain it should have seared her. Unfortunately, she really didn’t care if Grant Waterstone liked her or not.

  “I think I just might do that.” He slid out of the booth as his lips curled into a sneer. “The company here is growing a bit stale.”

  He stalked away as Bailey refrained from calling out a “Good riddance.”

  “He spends too much time with Father,” Wagner sighed as he lifted his cup and sipped from his coffee. “They’ve become rather close over the past few years.” There was an edge of sadness in Wagner’s voice, almost a regret.

  “You never were much like Ford, Wagner,” she stated. “Be thankful for that. Unfortunately, Grant is too much like him.”

  Wagner shook his head at that before staring back at her. “I’ve missed you, Bailey. It’s almost like having Anna back when you’re here.”

  The pain at the mention of his sister sliced across Bailey’s heart.

  “I miss her, too.” It had been so many years since Anna and her mother had been killed, but the anger and the hatred hadn’t dimmed.

  Nodding slowly, Wagner finished his coffee before sliding to the edge of the seat. Before leaving, he paused and glanced back at her.

  “Father wants you out of Aspen.” His voice was low, warning. “He’ll make things hard on you.”

  “He’s rather good at that.” She smiled as though it didn’t bother her. “I’ve been back for a year now, Wagner. I’m certain he knows by now that he can’t run me off.”

  “But he’s still trying,” he told her. “Be careful, darling, I’d hate to see him succeed.”

  With that, Wagner left the table, stopping long enough to kiss her cheek before he left the bar. Bailey shook her head, wondering if Ford Grace had ever cared that his son was ten times the man Grant Waterstone could ever be.

  He likely didn’t, and if he did, Bailey doubted he cared. Wagner wasn’t cold and power-driven as Ford was, or as Grant Waterstone was. It made sense that Ford was taking Grant under his wing and working with him. Not that Grant needed the help. His own father, Samuel Waterstone, thought his eldest son could do no wrong.

  It was typical of those she had been raised with. It was typical of the society she had been raised within. The children were taught that they had no equals. They were superior, laws unto themselves. Those lessons had created adults with no compassion, no mercy, and even less honor.

  Sipping at her coffee, Bailey bit back the anger that tore through her at the thought of the cruelty that existed here, thinly veiled and shadowed. She’d almost succeeded when she glimpsed Raymond entering the restaurant with his petite, smiling wife.

  Mary was an attractive woman for her fifty years, much too attractive for the arrogant, cruel Raymond.

  Rising to her feet, Bailey moved from the bar to the restaurant, keeping her stride slow and easy, taking her time. Glancing at her watch, she was pleased to see that she would be only be a few minutes early.

  “Bailey.” Raymond rose politely to his feet as the maître d’ escorted her to the table several moments later. “Your timing, as always, is faultless.”

  And what a change. She allowed him to grip her hands with his own cool, baby-soft ones and place a kiss on her cheek with his too-damp lips.

  She had to force back a shudder of revulsion before drawing away from him.

  “Hello, Mary.” Bailey turned to her friend and bent to kiss her pale face. “How are you doing?”

  “Very well, my dear,” Mary declared, a genuine smile gracing her lips. “I hear you’ve picked up a beau since coming home. A very exciting one.”

  Bailey glanced in Raymond’s direction, knowing he would be more than aware of John’s background and wondering how much he had told his wife.

  “Mary enjoys listening to rumor, my dear.” He smiled indulgently at his wife. “I believe one of the guests at a party last night mentioned that he might have a shady past.”

  “John, a shady past?” She grinned as though the thought amused her. “I’ll have to ask him about that.”

  “There you go, spoiling all my adventurous tendencies,” Mary pouted in amusement.

  Bailey forced a believable laugh from her lips and kept her expression light. Rumors weren’t circulating very well; thankfully, they remained for the most part contained. The families she grew up with gossiped among themselves, but it didn’t go farther. Rather like honor among thieves. Or what used to be honor among thieves.

  “Mary has always been fascinated by our pasts.” Raymond’s tone was surprisingly affectionate, as was the glance he shot his wife. “She believes agency work was all danger and romance.”

  “Boring background checks, stale coffee, and sweaty greasy-haired gunrunners and drug lords,” Bailey murmured with amused mockery. “Don’t we miss it so much?”

  “Even after fourteen years?” Mary asked. “You must have enjoyed your work, dear?”

  Bailey shook her head. Joy wasn’t a word she would have used to describe how she felt about her career. “It was a job no one wanted me to have,” she said, wondering if that wasn’t the real reason she had chosen it. “I realized too late what I was turning my back on.”

  “Rebellion,” Mary sighed. “Your parents worried.”

  “And Father screamed and yelled and totally disapproved,” she revealed with a fond smile. “It took me a while to grow up.”

  She didn’t glance back at Raymond, but she could feel him watching her as he took in her words, her tone, her expression. For all her hatred of him, she knew he had been damned good at what he did at the agency. She wasn’t about to discount his instincts or training.

  But she was damned good at what she did as well.

  The conversation shifted to more general topics as drinks arrived. Bailey let herself settle into the routine of it as she forced back the revulsion she felt at sharing a meal with a traitor. She’d shared meals with worse, she assured herself.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Bailey, but I invited a few other guests to lunch,” Raymond suddenly announced as the waiter appeared at the table. “It was rather last-minute.”

  Turning to him, Bailey arched a brow. “Of course not, Raymond. It was very kind of you to invite me as well.”

  His smile was more confident now and if she wasn’t mistaken the thin curve of it was more arrogant. She would have thought it would be impossible for him to display more self-appoval.

  He nodded to the waiter, who hurried off as though he were carry
ing top-secret information on a deadline.

  A few minutes later she looked up and had to fight to control her expression. She could feel the rage rising inside her fast and hard, like a tidal wave beating against a flood wall, threatening to overpower it.

  Where Bailey controlled the rage, held it back and hid it, Ford wasn’t nearly as adept. He approached the table slowly, his weathered face tight, his dark gray eyes almost black with anger as he glanced between his sister and brother-in-law.

  Slender, graceful male hands moved to the buttons of his silk jacket as he released them with an irritated jerk before he accepted his seat from the waiter with a brief “Thank you.”

  Bailey inhaled slowly, evenly. It would seem odd if she didn’t show some reaction to his sudden appearance.

  “You didn’t tell me you had invited anyone else, Ray,” he said stiffly to his brother-in-law.

  “I’m sorry, Ford, Mary mentioned wanting to see Bailey. I felt the two of you should bury the hatchet, so to speak. This enmity isn’t conducive to good business relationships. Besides, I know how you hate gossip,” Raymond said evenly, smoothly. “People are beginning to gossip.”

  Ford tightened his lips as the waiter brought their menus. He ordered a stiff drink, his gaze turning on Bailey once again as the waiter moved off.

  “You’re not stalking off,” he said, his voice low. “Or spitting curses at me.” His gaze was calculating. Bailey imagined she could feel the searing presence of pure menace.

  Bailey swallowed tightly. “Not yet at least.”

  She turned her gaze to the menu, aware of both Raymond and Mary watching them. Mary’s gaze was concerned; Raymond’s, more determined.

  “Your father would have enjoyed a nice lunch with you before his death.” Ford struck at the heart with the first parry and cut deep.

  “So would I.” She looked up from the menu, remembering the fierce arguments she and her father used to have concerning his friendship with Ford.

  The man was a wife beater, a child beater, and yet her father had stood by him at their funeral, clasped him as the fake tears fell from his eyes, and mourned with him.

  “You broke his heart,” Ford muttered.

  At least she hadn’t taken his life, she wanted to retort. Instead, she held back the accusation and stared across the table at him bleakly.

  “We saw each other more than you know, Ford. Father knew I loved him, as I knew he loved me. He couldn’t live my life for me.”

  His lips tightened.

  “Ford, perhaps it’s time to let the past go,” Mary suggested gently. “Give her a chance to return home. You were her father’s best and dearest friend. He would have wanted you to embrace her return, not guilt her over it.”

  Words of wisdom, even if Bailey’s return home was all illusion. This wasn’t her home, and these weren’t her people. There was no one here who knew her, no one here who had ever understood the fight she had tried to undertake when she had left home.

  Even her father hadn’t understood. If he had, he would have never told his friends that she was working with the agency once he had learned what she was doing. He would have never interfered with her job and made certain she didn’t receive the assignments that would have allowed her advancement within the agency.

  Her director, Milburn Rushmore, had ensured she was never involved in anything too dangerous, just as he had always rushed to pull her out of it when she managed to involve herself.

  “Ford and I will always have our differences, Mary,” she told her friend as she glanced back at Ford. “I can live with them civilly, if he can.”

  His jaw tightened as he stared back at her with an odd expression of relief, as though he had expected something else, which he should have. But his expression indicated that the small concession she had given mattered to him. Of course it did. It would be hard to conduct illegal business with her otherwise.

  “Good then,” Raymond announced with a pleasant smile. “I’m still awaiting another guest if you’d like to take your time ordering. He mentioned he might be late.”

  Bailey nodded back at him with regal haughtiness as she maintained her own shield of arrogance. There were certain rules here, unwritten and unspoken, that she had never minded breaking before. It mattered now that she regain the acceptance she had always turned her back on before. It mattered because she finally had the chance to attain the justice she had always sought.

  Raymond was no doubt involved in this. One man couldn’t do it alone. Warbucks would be a group, a small one, with one man pulling the strings. She suspected the man pulling the strings would be Ford. But who else were they waiting for?

  “Ah, and here he is now.” There was a tone of satisfaction in Raymond’s voice as he looked over Bailey’s shoulder.

  Turning, Bailey hid her smile as she watched John make his way to the table. Dressed in black jeans and a white long-sleeved dress shirt beneath a long black leather coat, he looked like the devil he was. Wicked, charming, dangerous. He was breaking the unwritten dress code, and she could tell he really didn’t give a damn. Some rules were just made to be broken and he was damned good at doing so.

  As the waiter pulled out his chair beside her, John leaned down to kiss Bailey’s cheek. “I was wondering where you got off to,” he commented just loud enough for the others to hear him.

  “I wasn’t too hard to find, now, was I?” she said demurely. “And you never mentioned wanting to do lunch today.”

  He took his seat slowly, his wicked lips quirking into a crooked grin. “It should have been understood.”

  Her brow lifted. “You should have been clearer.”

  “I’ll make certain, in the future, that I’m very clear.”

  Bailey pursed her lips and held back a scathing retort. He was establishing possession and dominance and irking her independent streak almost past toleration.

  “Bailey often disregards acceptable limits,” Ford informed John tightly. “She’s not quite tamable.”

  “Taming isn’t what I’m after, Mr. Grace,” he assured Ford quietly, firmly. “I don’t want a servant, I prefer a partner.” His hand covered hers warmly, possessively. “I think Bailey and I make wonderful partners.”

  She left her hand beneath his, cast him a sidelong glance and remained quiet. Silent assent. He had stated their position, he had made his own boundaries clear.

  The game had begun.

  CHAPTER 6

  JOHN COULDN’T BELIEVE that Bailey had actually met with Raymond Greer and Ford Grace, the two suspects highest on her list, without informing him. If it hadn’t been for the late-morning call he’d received from Grace himself, he would have never known where she was.

  The woman was going to make him crazy, that was all there was to it. If he let her. The problem was, he damned sure didn’t know how to stop her. She was independent, she wasn’t subject to anyone’s orders, least of all his and he doubted she would follow them if she was. She had her own agenda in mind and she hadn’t yet deigned to inform him of what it was, exactly.

  That wasn’t going to be allowed to continue.

  He had a pretty good idea of what she was doing, but it was time he heard it from her. It was time he got several things aired out with her.

  If she was still the woman she had been five years ago, then ordering her wasn’t going to work. But he knew what would work. He had learned that little lesson in Australia.

  Pulling into the driveway of the Serborne mansion, he stared up at the imposing two-story cabin, if you could call a fifteen-room mansion a “cabin.” Huge windows looked out on the driveway as weathered cedar siding gave the structure an aged, welcoming look.

  It was a home she had turned her back on. She’d had a family she’d walked away from, a fortune she had rarely dipped into. Because her father hadn’t believed in her, because his friendship with another man had been more important than his daughter’s belief that his friend had murdered his family.

  A wife and a daughter who had be
en trying to escape him. She suspected Ford Grace had hired an assassin to create a convenient accident the night Mathilda and her daughter Anna had tried to run from the Grace mansion.

  She was still searching for proof, still trying to prove to her father that the man he had believed in was a killer.

  Tightening his lips in frustration, he moved from the SUV he had driven back, just as the butler opened the door for her.

  With a quiet “Thank you,” she moved away from the employee who’d helped raise her and entered the house. John followed closely behind.

  “Upstairs,” he told her, making certain his voice carried no farther than her ears. “We’re going to talk.”

  Talk wasn’t all he had in mind, but it would be a good start.

  “Of course.” Her tone was agreeable, but there was nothing agreeable in the tension that tightened her body.

  It was hidden very well. To the casual observer, she was relaxed and smiling—but he knew her. He’d worked with her enough that he recognized the signs of stress ratcheting through her system. Stress that he didn’t think was entirely attributed to their lunch.

  Not that Raymond Greer and Ford Grace couldn’t give the hardiest system heartburn. They could. Their self-importance could be sickening at times. But she had been raised here, she knew them, she understood that attitude and had developed her own, which she used with amazing grace.

  Hell, there had been times he wished he had access to the financial freedom she had, but he was beginning to rethink that wish. It took a type of personality that he didn’t possess, that he would never be able to acquire.

  Moving into the bedroom behind her, John closed and locked the door before moving to her dresser where she had positioned a white-noise device. Turning on the small electronic bug neutralizer, he turned back to her and watched her silently for long moments.

  She didn’t appear the least nervous. Pulling off her leather jacket, she hung it in the large walk-in closet at the side of her room, then toed off her sneakers and placed them perfectly alongside designer shoes.