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“Compliments won’t soften you?” he asked as he set the cup back on the table. “For shame, Bailey. Are you a bit conceited?”
“A bit disbelieving perhaps,” she admitted, amused by him, turned on by him. “Now what the hell do you want? I have things to do today and I don’t have time for your games.”
“I don’t play games.” There was a glimmer of warning in his gaze.
“And I don’t play at all,” she told him. “So get to the point.”
She wanted him out of here. She wanted him out of her sight and out of her life before it was too late. Before she lost more of herself than she already had to a too-charming man and her own hormones.
“An impatient woman as well.” He shook his head as though he pitied her. “I had heard you were quite patient.”
“I don’t know where you heard such a thing.” She widened her eyes in false surprise.
“Orion.”
That shocked her for a brief second. Bailey could feel her training kicking in as she held her expression. Bland amusement, no surprise. She merely stared back at him with innocent curiosity, as though there was nothing Orion could possibly know about her.
She wondered if the bastard had actually kept files. How insane would that be for an assassin—to actually keep records? Of course, if he had, perhaps they held a clue to who or what Warbucks actually was.
“I rather doubt Orion had much to say about me,” she finally said quietly. “What could he know other than how deep to slice my wrists to keep from killing me?”
She heard the anger that filled her tone, the edge of bitterness. And she was angry, just as she was bitter. Orion’s death had been stolen from her. For so many years she had dreamed of being the one to pull the trigger and blow his fucking head off. She’d deserved the chance to do it. She had deserved the right to call his life her own.
“Orion wasn’t that easy to find,” he finally told her soberly, his gray eyes serious as he wrapped his hands around the coffee cup. “You couldn’t have done it on your own. He wouldn’t have allowed the payoffs to continue from whoever sent those deposits to assure that you weren’t killed. You were becoming a risk to him, baby.”
She had meant to become a risk. She had wanted him to come after her, to make that first move that she could have used to identify him and kill him herself. “What do you mean by that?” She feigned surprise at his statement.
John clucked his tongue as he shook his head at her. A smile tilted those beautiful male lips and for a second, all she could think about was kissing him, eating those lips until her need for him was sated.
“You knew he was being paid off to let you live, didn’t you?”
What to tell him, what not to tell him?
She smiled back at him. “Where did you get your information?”
“Why didn’t you tell me everything you knew in Atlanta?” he queried instead. “I helped you, Bailey, I got you out of there. You held back on me.”
“Information wasn’t part of the deal,” she reminded him coolly as she leaned forward and braced her arms on the table. “You released me without conditions, John, remember that. Now, how did you find out Orion was being paid off?”
He couldn’t know who had been paying the assassin to not kill—otherwise, he wouldn’t be here pumping her for information. He would be tracking another of Orion’s employers instead.
“Orion was a very expensive assassin,” he stated. “Only the richest of men, or women, could have afforded his services. He was careful. He was damned good at what he did and he wouldn’t have allowed you to live if he wasn’t being paid handsomely to do so.”
Bailey tilted her head to the side and watched him curiously for long moments. She’d been right last night: He was here to poke his nose into her business again.
“I have no idea who was paying him,” she finally admitted.
“But you knew he was being paid?”
Bailey tightened her lips for a second before nodding. “I knew. He told me in Russia, when he sliced my wrists. He warned me then to stay out of his way. That he wouldn’t let me live the next time.”
John’s eyes narrowed dangerously. For a second, just a second, a flashing memory of Trent with that same look on his face, his body tightening protectively when she had been threatened, flashed across her mind.
“And you continued to search for him?” His voice lowered, became almost guttural with anger.
Bailey smiled at the sound. “Of course I did. If I backed down every time I was warned to do so, then I wouldn’t have had a career for long, now would I?”
“You nearly didn’t have one the way it was,” he growled. “Orion was out of your league, Bailey. No lone agent could have taken him out, no matter how good they were. You didn’t have a chance.”
