Midnight Action (36 page)

No, the paper was too glossy for that, she realized. It was a photograph, then, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn it over and take a look.

She should just throw it away. Toss it in the wastebasket, get on her jet, and spend the next two months on her private island, forgetting all about Jim Morgan. Learning to hate him again.

But the curiosity refused to ebb, and eventually, she took a deep breath and flipped the photo over.

Noelle found him on the terrace. His strong forearms rested on the railing as he gazed out at the property, and although he didn’t turn around, the tensing of his shoulders told her that he knew she was there.

After a moment of hesitation, she nervously raked a hand through her hair and walked up beside him.

“It was you,” she said quietly.

Jim turned, his blue eyes somber, his voice gruff. “It was me,” he confirmed.

She swallowed. “When?”

“A year and a half after I left Paris. But you knew that.”

“How’d you do it?”

“You know that too.” He shrugged. “Snapped his neck and shoved him down the stairs. I knew the coroner would blame the broken neck on the fall.”

Her tone turned incredulous. “And then you hung around and snapped a picture of it?”

He nodded.

“Why? Why take a picture? Why kill him at all?”

“I took the picture because I was planning on sending it to you, so you would know it wasn’t an accident. So you’d know that you got your revenge, after all.” He sighed. “And then all that stuff with Ariana happened, and in my anger, I decided not to give you that closure. I’m a real shit, huh?”

“Damn right you are.” She shook her head as the truth of what he’d done sank in. All these years she’d cursed fate, cursed the drunken stumble that had stolen her vengeance from her, but René hadn’t fallen down the stairs like she’d thought. Jim had killed him.

For
her
.

Noelle stared at him with wide eyes. “I can’t believe you did that.” She bit her lip. “You still haven’t told me
why
.”

“I think we both know the answer to that one too.” He shot her a meaningful look. “Don’t we?”

Her throat closed up to the point of suffocation. “You killed René because you loved me.”

“Yes.”

“You kept tabs on me after you left.”

“Yes.”

“And then you went back and killed my stepfather for me.”

“Yes.”

“Because you really did love me.”

“Yes.”

Noelle could barely see his face through the sheen of tears obstructing her vision. “You weren’t pretending. You really did fall in love with me.”

“Yes,” he said once more, and then he brushed away her tears with his fingertips. “I loved you then, and I love you now.”

Her heart nearly soared right out of her chest. She stared into his midnight blue eyes, but this time she didn’t search them, didn’t probe or assess or look for any hint of malice or dishonesty.

Because she knew he was telling her the truth.

“Hey, Jim?”

His gaze never left hers. “Yeah?”

“Will you kiss me?”

He let out a deep growl. “It’s about fucking time.”

And then his mouth crashed down on hers in a passionate kiss that stole the breath right out of her lungs. His lips were as delicious as she remembered, his tongue greedy and dominant, filling her mouth, coaxing and teasing until she was moaning with abandon.

She clung to his broad shoulders, holding on tight, never wanting to let him go. God, she finally had him back. Her sexy soldier, the gruff, intense man who’d swept her off her feet all those years ago and shown her the kind of love she’d never thought possible.

She kissed him back with everything she had, while her heart pounded against her rib cage, lighter and fuller than it had been in a long, long time.

“You have
got
to be kidding me!”

They broke apart as a shocked voice echoed behind them, both of them spinning around to find Cate standing in the doorway.

“For the love of God.” Morgan’s daughter gaped at her father. “The picture actually worked? You two have the most fucked-up concept of romance.”

“Hey,” he said sharply. “Watch your fucking language, young lady.”

Cate snorted, then looked over at Noelle. “Welcome back.”

Noelle smiled awkwardly. “Thanks.”

“Are you going to be my new mom?”

The panic that shot through Noelle almost knocked her on her ass, but then the teenager started to laugh.

“Oh relax. I’m just pulling your leg. I hope we can be friends, though.”

“We can try. But you should know that I don’t have a lot of friends,” Noelle admitted. “I’m not entirely sure how all that friendship stuff works.”

Cate flashed her a grin. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.” The girl edged back to the door and glanced at her father again. “Is it cool if I go into town with Ash? I need to buy a few more things.”

“Sure. Do you still have the gun I gave you?”

Cate rolled her eyes. “Getting overprotective on me already, huh?”

“Hey, I have years to make up for,” he protested.

“Ugh. I guess I’ll let it slide. This time.”

Jim chuckled as his daughter disappeared into the kitchen, then turned to Noelle with a crooked grin. “See what I have to look forward to?”

She grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll be around to put out any fires.”

His eyes suddenly narrowed, as if her words had sparked his memory. “By the way, I got a very interesting phone call yesterday.”

She slanted her head. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. See, I’d sent Sully back to the airfield in Paris to take care of a little rat problem, and what do you know, Sergio was dead in his office when Sully got there. You remember Sergio, don’t you, babe? The man who let a contract killer crash our plane?”

“Hmmm. Sounds vaguely familiar.”

Jim’s lips twitched. “Would you happen to know anything about this little mystery?”

She gave him a sheepish look. “He betrayed you. What else was I supposed to do?”

After a beat, Jim burst out laughing. “God, I love you.”

Noelle looked him square in the eye and said, “I love you too.”

“Being a hermit isn’t healthy, you know.” Bailey paused to shoot a pointed stare at her friend before continuing to wander through the cozy living room of Paige’s isolated Somerset country house.

Wall-to-wall bookshelves took up nearly half of the room, crammed with hundreds of titles, which all looked well-read, and the lingering scent of smoke wafting out of the massive stone fireplace hinted that Paige had lit a fire recently. It was obvious that the woman spent a lot of time in this room, which corroborated Bailey’s belief that her friend was a total recluse.

“Says who?” From her perch on the overstuffed sofa, Paige sipped her Merlot, unperturbed by the accusation.

Watching the other woman daintily hold the stem of her wineglass was almost jarring. With her slight frame, pale red hair, and fair, freckled face, Paige Grant was cute and delicate—and the last person you’d imagine to be a ruthless assassin. But Bailey supposed all of her colleagues were the same in that way. Sweet and harmless on the surface, hardened and deadly beneath it.

Bailey herself was no stranger to death and violence. Seven years in the CIA followed by five working for a dangerous assassin had definitely hardened her. She didn’t see the world as sunshine and rainbows—she saw it for what it was: cold, toxic, and treacherous, with rare moments of warmth, love, and compassion slicing through the darkness like shards of moonlight.
If
you were lucky. She hadn’t experienced a lot of warm-and-fuzzy moments in her life, not as an adult, and certainly not as a child.

But right now was one of those moments. Spending the weekend in a beautiful albeit rundown English farmhouse, sipping on deliciously smooth wine and catching up with one of her best friends. Sunshine and rainbows, all right.

“Says me,” Bailey announced, returning to the couch and flopping down on the other end. “You’re too young and beautiful to be hidden away here. You should be out and about, kicking ass and breaking hearts.”

Paige snorted, then set her glass on the weathered oak coffee table and spoke in her crisp British accent. “First, I kick plenty of ass, thank you very much. Second, I’m not interested in breaking any hearts, but if you’re hinting that I need a good shagging, then don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of blokes at my beck and call. And third, you say all this as if
you’re
a social butterfly, when we both know for a fact that you, my dear, are as big a loner as I am.”

Bailey couldn’t argue with that.
Loner
was her middle name. But still, her friend’s shut-in ways bothered her. Paige’s bubbly personality was completely incongruous to a life of isolation.

“At least I attended our boss’s wedding,” she said mockingly.

“You did not! They eloped.”

Bailey grinned. “Yeah, but I flew to Costa Rica after I heard the news and dropped off a wedding present.”

Paige rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, I couriered a gift. And mine was most certainly better than yours.”

Curiosity flickered through Bailey. “What’d you get them?”

“A ten-book set aptly titled
How to Keep the Sexual Fire Burning After Marriage
.” Paige laughed in delight. “Noelle sent me a text message in reply. Two words.
Fuck
and
off
.”

Bailey burst out laughing. She would’ve paid money to see their boss’s face when she opened Paige’s gift. Poor Noelle had already been annoyed enough that her former-love-turned-enemy-turned-love-again had twisted her arm into marrying him. But Jim Morgan was a stubborn alpha male, and the deadly mercenary had insisted they get married...or else he would have dragged her down the aisle kicking and screaming. And the icing on the cake—he’d talked Noelle into taking his last name, which officially made her Noelle Morgan now.

Maybe Bailey was a jerk, but she found the whole situation hilarious. She’d met Morgan two months ago in Paris after he’d reconnected with her boss, and she really liked the man. She was glad he and Noelle had finally worked through their decadelong issues.

Though their union did have one drawback.

Noelle and Morgan had joined professional forces. Which meant that Bailey and the rest of Noelle’s assassins—chameleons, as they’d been dubbed—now worked for Morgan, too.

“I’m still not sure how I feel about it,” she confessed.

Paige furrowed her brow. “My wedding gift? Why? I think it’s awesome.”

“No, not the gift—it is awesome. I was just thinking about our new working arrangements,” Bailey clarified. “We’re not mercenaries. We work alone.”

“Don’t worry. Noelle knows that. She said we’ll still be working solo, but if Morgan’s team ever needs undercover help, they’ll call us in.”

Crap.

Crappity-crap-crap.

Bailey quickly swallowed the lump of unhappiness that rose in her throat, but clearly she hadn’t managed to mask her expression, because Paige’s blue eyes narrowed.

“What’s the problem? You’ve helped Morgan out before. And God knows I get a call from him or Noelle at least once a week hitting me up for tech assistance.”

“Which you can do from home,” Bailey said, pointing to the insane amount of laptops on the long table across the room.

Cables and electrical bars snaked along the floor, some of them climbing toward the exposed beamed ceiling, all plugged in to power Paige’s command central, as she called it. The woman was a wizard when it came to computers, which was why she was on everyone’s speed dial. If you wanted information, Paige Grant was your first and only call.

Unless it was the kind of information a computer couldn’t find....In that case, that honor went to the Reilly brothers.

AKA the reason Bailey was unbelievably reluctant to call herself a member of Jim Morgan’s team.

“I still don’t see the issue,” Paige said in confusion. “Morgan’s a good guy. You said so yourself. Besides, you were the one just talking about breaking hearts—think of all the hot single men you’ll be working with. Liam Macgregor is a bloody movie star, that Sullivan guy is smokin’ hot, and then there’s the scary sexy badass...D? Plus there’s Sean— Actually, wait. He’s off the team. And the cute rookie—”

“Wait. Back up.” Bailey had frozen at Paige’s last remark. “What do you mean Sean’s off the team? Since when?”

“Since a couple weeks ago, apparently. I spoke to Abby the other day and she said he suddenly quit.”

“Did he say why?”

“He told Morgan he works better alone and that he was wrong to think he’d be able to function on a team.” Paige shrugged. “Or something along those lines.”

Bailey’s brow furrowed. She supposed that made sense. Sean Reilly didn’t take orders well. He was also impulsive to the core, exactly the kind of man who’d join a mercenary team and then abruptly change his mind less than two months later.

A sudden rush of bitterness flooded her chest. Yup, she was well acquainted with Sean’s impulsive nature. She’d experienced it firsthand nearly a year ago, after the cocky Irishman had seduced her under the pretense that he was someone else.

And you let him
.

It was hard to ignore the internal accusation—especially since it was one hundred percent accurate. Truth was, she couldn’t lay all the blame for that night on Sean. The second he’d slid into her darkened hotel room, she’d known he wasn’t Oliver, Sean’s equally gorgeous twin and the sweeter, more mature of the brothers. She’d
known
, yet she’d still allowed him to touch her. Kiss her.

Fuck her.

Aggravation clamped around her throat as old memories crept into her head—wicked images and seductive words whispered in a deep Irish brogue. Damn him for lying to her. Damn
herself
for letting him.

“I guess he headed back to Dublin to join forces with Ollie again,” Paige was saying, oblivious to Bailey’s inner turmoil. “Which is probably where he belongs. The Reilly brothers, information dealers extraordinaire, bona fide Irish heartbreakers.” The redhead slanted her head. “Didn’t you go out with Ollie a while back?”

Bailey nodded, keeping her expression veiled. “Yeah, we went out a couple of times. We decided we were better off as friends, though.”

“Pity. He’s quite cute. Sean, too, though that’s a given, considering they’re identical.”

The conversation was veering into dangerous territory Bailey wanted to avoid. She hadn’t told any of her colleagues about her night with Sean. The only person who knew about it was Liam Macgregor, who, in the past couple of months, had somehow become one of her closest friends. Figure that one out. Maybe she wasn’t as much of a loner as she’d thought.

“Okay, enough man talk. This is our annual girls’ getaway, remember?” She grinned at her friend. “What cheesy rom coms did you get for us?”

Paige looked delighted. “Oooh, I ordered a bunch of them from the movie channel on the telly. You’re in for a treat.”

Bailey laughed as the other woman swiped the remote control from the end table and turned on the television. Back when she’d worked for the CIA, evenings like this hadn’t existed in her life. She’d been a solo operative, spending months undercover and executing covert missions on foreign soil. She still did all that for Noelle, except nowadays she actually managed to squeeze in some downtime. Which was kind of comical—two assassins curled up on a couch with popcorn and wine about to watch sappy romantic comedies. Life was strange sometimes.

“I ordered that movie about the chick who loses her memory and her hubby has to make her fall in love with him again,” Paige revealed as she clicked the remote. The television was turned to a news channel, the broadcast nothing but a square box at the bottom of the screen as Paige scrolled through the channel list. “Hence the box of tissues on the table. Be prepared to sob like a baby.”

Another laugh slipped out, but was cut short when Bailey noticed the line of text running beneath the news report. “Hey. Stay on this channel for a sec,” she said quickly, a frown marring her lips.

Paige stopped scrolling, clicking another button to bring the segment into full-screen view. “Ah, shit,” the redhead murmured. “Obviously the world’s gone to hell again.”

Not the world—just Dublin, according to the screen. Bailey listened in dismay as the reporter quickly recapped the unfolding events to viewers who were just tuning in. There was a holdup in process at a downtown branch of Dublin National Bank. A half dozen masked, armed men had taken the bank employees and patrons hostage, and the law enforcement officers surrounding the bank were attempting to negotiate with the robbers. Apparently the situation was beginning to escalate, with reports of shots fired and hostages screaming.

“Turn it up,” Bailey told Paige, leaning forward when a shaky camera image suddenly filled the screen.

Paige raised the volume, and the urgent voice of the female newscaster blared out of the speakers.

“—courageous woman uploaded a video to her social network page. We don’t know how she was able to record this, but it’s been confirmed that the account belongs to Margaret Allen, a twenty-one-year-old student at Trinity College. Be warned—some of these images are not suitable for young children.”

The screen flickered for a beat before the video began to play. Immediately, loud footsteps and angry shouts filled Paige’s living room. The two women watched in silence as jerky images flashed on the screen, accompanied by gruff orders from the robbers and muffled whimpers from the hostages. It was difficult to zero in on any one image—everything was moving too fast, and the men in charge wore all black, from the ski masks on their faces right down to the boots on their feet.

An uneasy feeling washed over Bailey as she focused on one of the men. Tall and broad, eye color indiscernible, and voice low and deep as he issued a soft command to someone out of the camera’s line of sight.

“Look at these idiots,” Paige remarked with a sigh. “Do they honestly expect to get away with this?”

Bailey didn’t answer. Something niggled at the back of her mind, an intangible flicker of familiarity, a sense of bone-deep dread. But she wasn’t sure what was bugging her. People robbed banks all the time. People took hostages. People killed other people and did seriously stupid, dangerous shit every second of the day.

So why was this particular armed robbery making the hairs on the back of her neck tingle?

Another anguished sob echoed in the bank, followed by a male response.

“’S okay, luv. It’ll all be over soon.”

The husky timbre of that voice, combined with the faint brogue, turned the blood in Bailey’s veins to ice. A gasp flew out, her heart rate kicking up a notch as she stared at the screen in pure and total shock.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

Paige glanced over, big blue eyes swimming with concern when she saw Bailey’s expression. “What is it?”

“It’s Sean.” Her finger trembled as she jabbed it in the direction of the television.

“What?” The other woman sounded bewildered. “That’s nuts.”

Maybe, but Bailey would recognize that voice anywhere. It haunted her dreams every goddamn night.

“It’s him, Paige. One of the robbers—it’s Sean fucking Reilly.” Horror, shock, and confusion clawed up her throat like icy fingers. “It’s
Sean
.”