Heat Seeker (33 page)

“We’re getting closer.” His lips were still close to her ear, caressing the shell with sensual strokes.

“Perhaps.” She couldn’t get over the feeling that something wasn’t right, though. Ford was too damned nice, and too determined to keep Wagner and Jules apart. Just as he was too determined to draw John into any and all business discussions.

This was a side of Ford Grace that frankly terrified her. He wasn’t a nice man and she got nervous when he pretended to be.

“We have company arriving,” he told her quietly before straightening and moving his hand to her hip, where he cupped it warmly.

“Bailey.” Grant Waterstone stepped up to them, his haughty features almost effeminate as he stared down his eagle-straight nose at her.

His hair was perfectly styled, his face smooth and classically handsome, and she knew for a fact his hands were baby soft.

“Hello, Grant.” She turned her head for his brief kiss, accepting it on her cheek despite the vague feeling of distaste that chased down her spine.

There was just something about Grant that she had never truly been able to like—something that just never rang true about him. It wasn’t just his drug habits, or his low-class friends. She had always felt he would sell her out in a minute if he ever had the chance.

“You should be careful of Wagner,” he warned her quietly. “We all know how he enjoys his schemes.”

She arched her brow. “Wagner has never been unkind, Grant.”

“You were just never in reach,” he stated arrogantly. Simply be careful, my dear. I’d hate to see you hurt.”

“Insurance is good for something.” Her lips twitched in amusement.

Grant shrugged. “Just a word of warning.” He turned and moved away from her, his shoulders straight, his head held high.

“Grant’s been buying his drugs from a man associated with a homeland terrorist cell,” John murmured at her side.

Bailey nodded slowly. She knew that, she just wished she didn’t.

“I’ve had enough.” She shook her head. “Get me the hell out of here.”

Immediately he began leading her to the wide double doors that led to the foyer and the staircase. To say she’d had enough was putting it mildly.

They made it back to their room with few interruptions. The flow of champagne in the ballroom was heavy enough that most of the groups that had congregated together were more inclined to stay in one place than seek out other amusements.

Entering the bedroom, she kicked off her heels as John swept the room for listening devices. He found one, stared at it for long moments, then shook his head before crushing it beneath his heel and leaving it lying for housekeeping to clean up.

“That is beginning to get old,” Bailey stated as she unzipped the back of her dress and shimmied out of it.

Laying it across the back of a chair, she moved to the walk-in closet, where she pulled free a pair of loose sweats and a T-shirt.

Re-dressing in the relative privacy of the closet, she tried to push back the weariness that tugged at her. A weariness that seemed to have followed her most of the day. It wasn’t just physical, it was mental. Her adult life had been spent running away from these people, and each day with them now reminded her why.

She felt out of place, out of sync with the men and women she had been raised to consider her family. Couples who considered themselves above her, more intelligent, superior to her simply because she hadn’t spent her life trying to fit in with them.

“When are you meeting with Wagner?” John stepped to the doorway, his gaze brooding, dark. “I don’t like you seeing him alone.”

“Wagner’s harmless.” She sighed. “The information he has could be important.”

“He’s the least dangerous of the entire crowd,” he agreed. “But I’m still not comfortable with it.”

She turned fully to meet him as she pulled a pair of sneakers from a shelf and slipped her feet into them. Bending to tie them, she glanced up at him again, seeing the concern on his face.

“He won’t talk to me if I bring anyone with me,” she told him. “If Wagner has proof against Ford, then it’s something we need to deal with now.”

She made certain to keep their conversation in Ford’s favor, to never speak of the mission unless they were certain of security, and to keep any reference to Warbucks silent.

They had eight days left on this assignment. Eight days to figure out who Warbucks was and prepare for the meeting with him. Eight days to put the past to rest, she thought. Eight days before she lost John, again.

That thought had her pausing as she straightened, staring back at him with the knowledge of how little time they had left together.

How was she supposed to survive this time? she wondered. How was she supposed to sleep at night knowing he was on a mission without her, knowing that another woman could touch, could hold what belonged to her? Knowing that without him, she was alone; that it wouldn’t matter where she lived, because that place would still be unbearable without John.

And she couldn’t cry over it. She couldn’t rage over it. There was nothing she could do to ease the pain burning in her chest.

“It’s going to be okay.” He mouthed the words at her. “Trust me.”

She did trust him, but still, she couldn’t see a way out of this one. Whatever agency had reformed him wouldn’t want her within it. She had been fired from the CIA; she was considered a security risk to any other agency.

“Sure it will,” she mouthed back. An empty platitude.

“I’m going to go talk to Wagner.” She moved to the doorway as he stood in front of her. He didn’t move. He stared at
her, his expression brooding as he obviously searched for something in her expression.

“Are you armed?” he finally asked quietly.

She shook her head. “There’s no place to hide it effectively, and I wouldn’t want Wagner to suspect. If I’m not back in an hour, then come looking for me. But I can guarantee you, I’ll be back before that.”

He still wasn’t moving.

“I’ll need to get past you, John.” A tired smile pulled at her lips as she watched him.

God she loved him. There was something about him now, just as there had been before, that drew her irrevocably to him. She wanted to curl into his arms again and for a little while forget that the world around them existed.

“Not yet.” He stepped forward, his hands moving to her hips before he pulled her against his body.

She felt his erection instantly. There was a hunger, a need in his touch as his hands stroked down her back to cup the curves of her rear before moving back to her hips.

She was waiting on him when his head lowered, when his lips brushed against hers. Her hands slid to his neck, her fingers dipping into the cool strands of his hair as her lips parted for him.

His kiss was like a fire in winter. A sweet benediction of pure hunger, of need. Beneath his kiss she felt both cherished and ravished. Flames leapt through her system and seared her nerve endings as she fought to hold on to her senses just enough to remember what the hell she was supposed to be doing here.

Because in John’s arms it wasn’t as though she could actually think or plan for anything past the brush of his lips or the touch of his tongue.

Long sipping kisses revived that part of her that had grown weary and too tired to face another day of the deceit and manipulations. His hands stroking along her back, beneath her shirt, touching her flesh, caressing it, brought the warmth back to her body and left her sighing in need against him.

“Hurry back,” he whispered against her lips as her eyes
opened languorously to stare into the dark recesses of his gaze. “I need you tonight, Bailey.”

“And tomorrow night?” she whispered. Though it wasn’t tomorrow she worried about. It was eight days from now, when this investigation wrapped up, one way or the other; when Warbucks was either revealed or triumphant over them. It was then that her heart would need answers.

“I need you every night.”

He needed her, but they were both aware that they couldn’t always have what they wanted. That sometimes, you were just left holding an empty heart and an even emptier life.

“I’ll hurry,” she promised as she drew back from him. “Be waiting for me.”

“Always,” he promised.

She just wished that were true.

BAILEY SHOVED HER HANDS
in her pockets as she made her way from the second-story wing—where her and John’s suite was located—to the other side of the house, where Wagner had been assigned a suite.

The structure was huge, more mansion than cabin. It was ostentatious and glittery and a waste of money in the extreme, she thought.

But it was also a work of art in places. She couldn’t take that from it. It just wasn’t her, any more than her parents’ cabin was her.

Moving past the nearly soundproof doors of the other suites, she took several long minutes to make her way to Wagner’s. She ignored the sound of a door opening behind her and the quiet click of it closing. She wasn’t afraid of being attacked, yet. That would come later, if it came at all.

Someone had paid Orion to leave her alone, to let her live despite how close she had come to him several times. Whoever that person was, they wouldn’t allow her to be killed here, within familiar territory. Especially not after the attack by Landon Roth.

Stopping at Wagner’s room, she knocked softly and waited until he opened the door.

He had been drinking. He held a glass in his hand, and the scent of whiskey that surrounded him, though faint, was a testament to the fact that it wasn’t his first of the night.

“Come in.” His tone was cold, icy.

She had rarely seen Wagner like this.

“I only have a few minutes before John will notice me missing,” she told him as she stepped inside the suite and looked around slowly.

The room was immaculate. The bed was made without the first indication to suggest that anyone slept in it.

“I seem to be pouting tonight, according to Father.” He lifted the whiskey glass with a sardonic smile. “It rather sucks when your father falls from the pedestal you’ve placed him upon.”

Bailey watched thoughtfully as he finished the whiskey before thumping the glass on a nearby table.

“Most of us have to face this when we’re in our teens.” She finally shrugged. “Our parents aren’t perfect, Wagner, no matter how much we wish they were.”

“No kidding,” he grunted as he wiped his hand over his face before shaking his head wearily. “But not all our parents are monsters, Bailey.”

“Is your father a monster?”

Wagner sighed wearily at the question.

“You know father’s personal assistant was killed in a skiing accident several months ago?”

Bailey shook her head. “I hadn’t heard.” She had, actually. She had even managed to search the man’s apartment days after his death, but had found nothing that would incriminate Ford Grace.

“Charlie was a good man.” He sighed heavily. “He was only about ten years older than we were, but he was damned smart. He ran Father’s life like a well-oiled machine.”

“That’s a personal assistant’s job,” she stated as she maintained a carefully calm attitude, almost cold. It wouldn’t do to show emotion or curiosity too soon.

“Yeah, ol’ Charlie was smart.” He gave a hard grunt of mocking laughter. “Father had no idea how smart, I don’t believe.”

“What are you getting at, Wagner?” she finally asked tiredly. She didn’t want to deal with this tonight. She wanted
to return to her room and curl against John’s body. She wanted to feel his touch, his possession, and save up another memory for the time she wouldn’t have him any longer.

Wagner shook his head, his eyes narrowing on her. “You’ve surprised me, Bailey,” he stated sadly. “I had thought your sense of justice was much stronger than it appears it was.”

“Wagner, my sense of justice got a clue when I realized how little others really gave a damn,” she bit out impatiently. “Now I really don’t give a damn myself. And what the hell does my patriotism have to do with your father or your relationship with him?”

“There is no relationship with him,” he stated as he turned and moved to the television set to retrieve the remote sitting on top of it. “I realized that the other day when I received a very interesting package.”

Holding the remote, he crossed the room to her.

“What sort of package?” she asked him.

His smile was mocking, disdainful. “What makes the world go around, Bailey?”

She watched him for long moments before a brittle smile crossed her lips. “Power.”

“Not money?” He arched a brow with a mocking curiosity.

“You can have money and still retain no power.” She shrugged. “Power can bring you unlimited funds, though. So power makes the world go around, Wagner. Not money.”

He chuckled at that. “Father says the same thing.”

She lifted her shoulders in a negligent shrug. “So did mine. It was his favorite philosophy.”

“Did you know your father and mine fought the night he died?”