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.