by Lora Leigh
“I’ll be certain to be just as discreet,” John murmured. “Though I’m not certain how my business dealings could come under the same scrutiny.”
His cover had always remained cohesive: He was an international negotiator between American and foreign interests in various business dealings. The less savory side he was always careful to deny, even to those who knew the truth.
Samuel grinned at his response. “Sticking to your story, huh? My contacts say you’re a bit more extreme than you let on. That perhaps you negotiate more than international contracts. I could use a man like you. We should talk business sometime.”
“Really?” John murmured. “Business in what fashion?”
Samuel glanced around in concern.
“The kind of business that isn’t discussed in company,” Ronald grunted with a fierce frown. “Let’s say Samuel and I have a few business dealings that could require a bit of a rogue. The sort of rogue we understand you can be.”
John stared back at them as though assessing his chances of a true business deal. This weekend was designed for Warbucks to size up the buyers he was considering. John and Abbas were there, obviously the two major players in the running. He’d expected to be contacted, though he doubted these two men were going to hand over information on the CROSSFIRE contract.
“I’m more than happy to discuss business at your convenience,” he stated. “You can contact my assistant for scheduling.”
Samuel’s brows lowered at the information. “There’s no sense in dragging anyone else in on this,” he argued. “We can deal with this among just us men. No sense in dragging in that female. She demands too much information.”
Which meant they had already been in contact with Tehya at one time or another.
“That’s an assistant’s job,” he reminded them.
“Could be dangerous considering your line of business,” Samuel suggested quietly. “For you and her. Possibly for Bailey.”
The thinly veiled warning had John smiling back at them coldly.
“Your influence and power don’t extend to my world, Samuel,” he stated calmly, his tone dangerously quiet. “Remember that before you make the mistake of threatening me, my assistant, or my lover. It could be a fatal mistake on your part.”
He turned his back on both of them, found Bailey again and headed across the ballroom to join her. He didn’t move angrily; he showed no visible signs that he was within seconds of turning this little house party into a brawl.
He had his reputation, just as Warbucks did. His reputation involved taking no bullshit, no threats, no matter the client. He’d stared down men more dangerous than Warbucks had proven himself to be, many times over. Men who would rather shoot him in the back than look at him. And he’d survived it.
Warbucks didn’t trust or deal with men who catered to his ego. He liked a challenge. He enjoyed forcing those he felt beneath him to recognize that he was the superior being.
It was a readily known fact that John considered no one but God as his superior. He wasn’t a humble man and he didn’t pretend to be.
“John, we were getting ready to send a search party out for you,” Kira laughed as he moved in behind Bailey. “Raymond’s known for holding interesting guests for hours at a time in that library of his.”
He moved against Bailey, let his arm circle her waist, pulled her to him, and tucked her against him.
“Raymond enjoys retelling his former adventures.” John grinned easily. “And I enjoy listening.”
“Raymond led such an exciting life.” Mary Greer sighed in delight. “And he gave it up to spend his days with me.” It was obvious she was extremely proud of her husband.
“At least he talks about something other than stock interests and the falling dollar,” Janice drawled with an air of boredom. “Which are the only tall tales I get to hear.”
As the group laughed, John lowered his head to Bailey’s ear.
“Are you ready to retire to our room with me?” he asked her, though he was pretty damned certain she was more than ready.
“Surely you aren’t stealing our girl away from us so soon, Mr. Vincent?” Mary smiled with no small amount of affection as she stared back at Bailey. “It’s so rare I get to spend much time with her.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Greer,” he apologized with what he hoped was the greatest sincerity. “She’s not been sleeping well this last week and I thought she’d enjoy a nap.”
“Oh dear, yes.” A frown instantly marred Mary’s expression as she leaned closer, her arms going around Bailey. “Go rest, dear. We’ll see you at tonight’s party.”
Bailey accepted Mary’s hug and returned it with one of her own as she shot John a reproving look. It really wasn’t nice to lie to such a gentle creature, she thought with a flare of amusement. Trust John to be the one to do it. He was smooth, sincere, and completely unrepentant.
Accepting his hand, she allowed him to lead her from the ballroom and the buffet that had been set up there. It wasn’t as though she had been able to eat while he had been locked in the sitting room with Raymond.
She was just about fed up with being locked out of meetings. John slipped off while she was asleep to meet with his team, Raymond so very politely ordered her to leave the room. As though she were the little woman without a brain in her head to protect herself.
“I’m not happy with you,” she stated with a soft whisper as they moved up the stairs.
“Should I be upset?” She didn’t like the vein of amusement in his tone either.
“You should be scared,” she informed him. “Very scared.”
Rubbing his fingertips against the small of her back, his head lowered closer to her ear as they reach the landing. “I’m trembling in my briefs.”
Damn him, he didn’t wear briefs and they both knew it. He was blissfully naked beneath those jeans he was wearing.
“You should be,” she muttered as they reached their bedroom door.
Handing him the key, she waited until he unlocked the door, then with a smile, stepped back so he could precede her inside.
The laughing glance he shot her was wicked, sexy, and filled with sexual intent.
She’d learned in the past week that he could be incredibly sexual, even more so than she had imagined. It never failed to amaze her just how inventive he could get, how hot he could make her while he was doing it.
Suddenly, the need to be alone with him was like a fever in her blood. The minute they were inside and the room was swept, she had half a mind to demand what she wanted. All of him. Inside her, around her, burying himself deep between her thighs while the world around them simply faded away.
Just a few more seconds, she thought. Just a little longer, and then she could escape the games, the lies and the reality she knew she was going to have to face soon.
CHAPTER 12
AS THEY STEPPED THROUGH the bedroom door, Bailey came to a stop and stared at their visitor as John locked the door behind them.
Tehya was now in disguise as Catalina Lamont, Jerric Abbas’s ex-lover and partner. Her red-gold hair was now a dark, stunning brown, thicker and longer, falling nearly to the middle of her back. Her eyes were a dark chocolate brown, her eyebrows more defined, her cheekbones higher and sharper, her lips a shade plumper.
Dressed in a snug bronze silk dress that barely passed her thighs, with matching heels, she looked like the seductive, dangerous woman she was, both as Catalina and as Tehya.
“Room’s clear.” Tehya held up the small electronic bug sweeper and waggled it in her hand as she propped the other hand on her hip and stared at them with raised brows. “I would have expected them to at least leave one bug. I mean, hell, how else are they supposed to know what the two of you are up to?”
“Give them time,” Bailey snorted as she stepped out of her high heels and moved to the small seating area where a white-noise box was activated. The small black box emitted a low-level static that would interfere with most listening devices.
“No. John does get irritated, though,” he stated.
Bailey glanced up at him, seeing the irritation that did fill his gaze now.
“Samuel and Ronald?” she asked.
He gave a brief, hard nod before relating their conversation to her and Tehya.
Bailey watched as he spoke and wondered if Warbucks would have approached him so blatantly.
“They approached Jerric in a similar manner,” Tehya revealed when he finished. “They could be fishing to see who snaps up the job faster.”
Bailey shook her head. “It would be a test, no more because I still have to submit my choice. It follows Warbucks’s methods, though. He’s been known to approach potential brokers with other jobs, especially new ones to test them on reliability as well as their ability to avoid any traps he sets for them.”
“We’re not playing that game here,” John stated as she watched him shed the jacket he had worn and lay it across the back of the love seat. “Jerric can play the games if he feels the need to. In the end Warbucks will go with Bailey’s choice.”
Bailey stared at him, seeing the confidence and lack of concern in his expression.
“How can we be certain?” she asked. “Warbucks always tests the brokers he has lined up. If they don’t play the games, then they’re out of the running for the job.”
John shook his head. “I have you. As you stated, you have yet to submit your choice, but all the players here know you’ll choose your lover.”
“I expect Raymond or Myron to make their move on me soon,” she mused. “They’ll need to test my loyalty in some way, whatever choice I make.”
“We have another problem as well.” Tehya leaned forward and stared back at Bailey. “Do you remember Alberto Rodriquez?”
Bailey stared at her in surprise. “Alberto is a major Colombian drug runner. Very fanatical, a psychopath. He was captured about three years ago by the Colombian police and imprisoned.”
“Well, he’s out of prison,” Tehya said. “He’s in Aspen and looking for you. Somehow he discovered your identity and decided you’re going to pay for the death of his brother.”
Bailey was aware of John leaning forward almost protectively as she stared back at Tehya.
“Alberto should have never been able to discover who I was,” she said quietly. “No one there knew, not even the authorities. His brother, Carlos, was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch who deserved to die. He killed two young mistresses in two months and he was working on a third when we moved into the hut he’d taken her to in the jungle. He was killed when he turned his weapon on us.”
“He’s blaming you for the hit.” Tehya shrugged.
“Where was he sighted?” John’s tone was clipped now.
“In town last night, flashing Bailey’s picture and asking her whereabouts at a little diner there called Casamara’s.”
Bailey nodded. “It’s one of my favorite restaurants. It won’t be hard to find me.”
“We sent out two of our backup teams to locate him, but he disappeared around daylight,” Tehya reported. “As soon as we know more, I’ll get that information to you. Keep your sat phones on you and keep them turned on just in case.”
“Alberto could throw a kink in the plan here.” She turned to John as she sat back in the couch and breathed out warily. “He’s a true killer. Unlike his brother, he doesn’t let himself be ruled by anger, only cold hard determination. We were on his trail for more than a year before we captured him in Colombia. He won’t be easy to track, especially in these mountains. The good thing about him, though, is that when he decides to kill, he doesn’t do it from a distance. It’s face-to-face.”
“Well, bully for him,” John muttered darkly before turning back to Tehya. “I want him found, now. We don’t have time for this.”
“We believe he was given a bit of help in breaking out of his Colombian stronghold,” Tehya told him. “And he obviously has help here.”
“Warbucks?” Bailey asked. “What would be the point?”
“Unless it’s another test,” Tehya said, shrugging, “we’re not certain at this point, though we’re pulling in new intel at the present. We also have a buyer named Jaeko in Aspen. He’s rumored to have been sent to be in place for the auction when it begins and to verify the product for sale before bidding begins.”
Jaeko. Bailey narrowed her eyes and thought for long moments. “Jaeko doesn’t have the connections or the money for this. He’s a low-level buyer with little or no backing. He mostly buys guns, grenades, and ammunition for rebels.”
“He began branching out about three years ago,” Tehya stated as she glanced at John. “Rumor has it that Jaeko made some high-level friends while he was incarcerated in a Russian prison for a few months before he escaped.”
“There was also a rumor that he was killed by his American wife four years ago,” John said slowly.
“Rumor.” Tehya waved it away. “We have definite sightings of Jaeko after that, and none of them was in a body bag.”
Just as there were sightings of Jerric Abbas and Travis Caine—Caine being the bodyguard and chauffeur who worked for John Vincent.
Travis Caine was once an international two-bit assassin whom no one had ever been able to gather enough evidence against. About seven years before, rumor had circulated that he had attempted and failed to kill the wrong victim. A drug lord, Diego Fuentes. Diego had sent his own assassin after him and that assassin had supposedly returned with proof of the kill. Caine’s head.
Weeks later Fuentes’s assassin was dead and Caine had popped back up, alive and well.
Suspicion began to pound at Bailey’s head and suddenly, she was very interested in meeting Jaeko again. There was no way John or Tehya, or their little group of agents, could know that at one time, Jaeko had been one of Bailey’s Russian informants.
What the hell kind of team was John involved in? She glanced over at him as he and Tehya discussed the various players involved in the upcoming bids. Rumors of terrorist cells, terrorist leaders, and terrorist countries that were getting their money together to bid on the product of a lifetime.
“Do we have everyone in place?” John was asking as Tehya rose to her feet long minutes later.
“Everything’s ready.” Tehya nodded. “Jerric is pacing the floors waiting on a phone call …”
“Jerric doesn’t pace,” Bailey murmured as she looked up at Tehya.
She watched as John stilled, suddenly becoming dangerously wary.
“Really?” Tehya looked down at her, her brown eyes narrowing. “Are you certain?”
“Jerric Abbas doesn’t pace and Catalina Lamont has a jealous streak a mile wide. Don’t forget that when the two of you are playing your little game here. Because trust me, everyone else of interest will be watching as well.”
“Catalina and Jerric are no longer an item,” she stated with a smile.
“Catalina and Jerric haven’t been an item several times,” Bailey said with a shrug. “Catalina still cut off a woman’s earlobe for allowing him to whisper in it. She’s sworn she’d never let him go short of death and he has yet to kill her. That means they’re still an item.” She rose to her feet and stared at John, then Tehya. “I wonder how Jerric’s new wife feels about his new lover?”
She turned to head for the shower when John caught her arm, pulling her to a stop. “Meaning?” he growled, his voice dark, warning.
Bailey widened her eyes innocently. “Oh, do I have my information wrong?” “Jerric isn’t married? How bad of me.” She shook his hold loose. “Excuse me while I go shower. This game makes me feel dirty all of a sudden.”
John watched as she stalked through the bedroom and into the shower before he turned and stared back at Tehya.
Tehya sighed. “It’s a good thing Risa trusts Micah and likes me, huh? Otherwise, we’d be ha
ving problems with this mission.”
John pushed his fingers through his hair wearily. “She knows who Jerric is. I don’t have a doubt in my mind that she’s also piecing together other bits of information we don’t want her to know.”
Teyha shrugged. “She thinks she knows, John. Without proof or someone to verify it, then she’s still in the dark.” She gave him a warning look. “Just make certain you aren’t the one providing the proof.”
John shook his head as a mocking smile crossed his lips. “Jordan thinks he can control this, doesn’t he?”
Tehya rolled her eyes. “Jordan thinks he can control many things. Whether or not he can is another thing.” She glanced around the room, her expression sobering as a hint of wariness crossed her face. “I’d better go. I have to at least pretend to be Jerric’s mistress. Do you have any idea what a bitch he can be when it comes to working with a woman? You’d think he’s possessed by his wife rather than married to her.”
“He’s possessed by his love for her,” John said quietly. “There’s a difference.”
“He’s still a bitch to work with.” She shrugged. “I’ll keep you up to date on Alberto, and you keep an eye on her.”
“I have her back,” he stated as he moved to the bedroom door. “Do you have a viable cover for being in our room?”
A faint grin touched her lips. “Several people heard Jerric more or less order me to come here and attempt to negotiate with you to drop out of the running. Simple business transaction.”
He nodded at that and opened the door, aware that the cameras aimed at the hallway would monitor her exit from the room.
Bailey was getting fed up with the lies, he could see it in her expression, sense it in the tension that was tightening within her day by day. Bailey didn’t suspect anything. Hell, no. She knew …