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“But you weren’t about to awaken me and allow me to be a part of the full conversation,” she pointed out. “Possibly because more was discussed than simply Warbucks’s message.”
“Possibly.” His lips twitched. “Some things are on a need-to-know basis, Bailey, you know that.”
“Not in this game,” she snapped angrily. “I’m either a part of it or not. There is no middle ground in this, John, I’ve warned you of that already. If you’d investigated my work background at all, then you’d know that.”
His expression darkened. “I investigated enough to know that you drove the Australian agents crazy with your complete nosiness.”
Ah yes, she was wondering how long it would take him to go down this path.
“All of them?” She arched her brow quizzically. “Oh, there might have been one who handled it fairly well.”
She injected just enough sensual reflection in her tone to make her meaning clear.
“Trent Daylen.” There was nothing in his tone to indicate that Trent was more than a name, a face, associated with her past. “You were lovers.”
This was a hell of a game if h
e was truly Trent. God, she wished she knew one way or the other. She wished the suspicion would go away, leave her in peace. She wished the memories of her time with Trent would stop haunting her.
“We were lovers,” she answered quietly. “Until he was killed.”
He rose from his chair and paced back to the coffeepot, where he refilled his cup.
“Did you know Warbucks was behind Daylen’s assassination?”
He surprised her. Bailey froze as a stabbing pain struck at her soul, one that nearly took her breath and sent her stomach plunging.
She hadn’t known that. Her investigation had shown that his partner had betrayed his identity as an agent to former enemies, not that Warbucks had played a part in it.
“You didn’t know that?” He was watching her now, his gaze hooded, his thick dark blond lashes shielding his eyes. “He was investigating an Australian connection and the identities of several agents who had been sold on the black market by one of Warbucks’s brokers when he was killed. He and one of his contacts were killed the same night.”
Bailey stared back at him, fighting back the tears, the knowledge that Warbucks had taken more than she’d ever imagined from her life. She had placed herself in the perfect position, at first, to find the man who’d hired her friend’s death. Bailey had feared that the investigation had resulted in her parents’ deaths. And now to know he had been responsible for Trent’s death as well sliced through her spirit like a hot, dull knife.
The pain was nearly overriding. It tightened her throat, made breathing hard, and locked a scream in her chest. She was alone, so fucking alone that sometimes she wondered why the hell she made herself get out of the bed in the morning. So alone that she couldn’t forget the one night she spent with a man she had loved, even as another man filled her bed. Or was he the same man?
She couldn’t make herself believe one way or the other, and she feared it was because she was too frightened of what she could lose either way.
“I didn’t know.” She finally forced the words past her throat as she turned her back on him, still fighting the tears. “My investigation didn’t reveal that.”
Where had she managed to miss that?
“It was something he was working on covertly, even outside the ranks of his agency,” John stated.
“How did you know?” She turned back to him, the question snapping from her lips. “How could you have known if it was so secret?”
“His partner wasn’t killed that night.” John shrugged. “He was interrogated by an impartial group that had been investigating the tie themselves. Even the director of Australian Secret Intelligence had no idea what was going on. Trent hadn’t had time to relay the information when the hit had gone out on him.”
She hadn’t known.
She was shaking, rage and bitter fury tearing at her insides as she forced herself to breathe through the pain. She felt as though her guts were being shredded. Burning hot and filled with acid, the pain lanced through her senses and left her fighting back the tremors that would have shaken her body.
“You loved him,” John stated again.
Bailey shook her head as she turned back to him, wiping away the single tear that escaped her control.
“He was my life,” she said simply. “Yes, John, I loved him.”
“Do you still love him?” He paced closer, his expression closed, almost frigid.
