Heat Seeker (8 page)

Fuck.

He clenched his fists and moved from the table once more as the other men read over their files and discussed various aspects of the operation as it stood.

Everything hinged on Bailey and her decision to accept him as her lover. She wasn’t an agent who would sleep with any man for a mission. She might pretend to, and she could be a damned good actress. But John didn’t want an act, he wanted the woman. Just one more time. Just a few nights to store inside his soul and hold him over in the bleak, lonely days to come.

She was like a ray of sunshine that he hadn’t known he’d missed until Atlanta. Until he had looked up and seen her haunted green eyes, her hollow expression as she watched Micah and Risa leave their apartment building.

He’d known why she was there. The assassin Orion had been hired to kill Risa, an assassin suspected to have been involved in her parents’ deaths, and proven to have been involved in her cousin’s death in Israel. She’d lost everyone in her life, and she had hungered for vengeance, for absolution. It had been a hunger he’d had to deny her.

Hell, he was fucked up here and he knew it. This mission had the potential to blow up in all their faces. The players involved weren’t just the richest men in the world, they were the most powerful. They seated politicians and had the ears of presidents and kings. They weren’t men whom any government agency dared to trifle with, which was why Jordan had taken the operation himself. It was one they had been working for years, gathering intel from various agencies, tracking movements, shipments, and weapons.

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 conscience.

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.

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.