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Bailey had tracked Orion to Atlanta, tracked him to a small group of the wealthiest men in America and had been working tirelessly to connect the dots among Orion, his employer and the deaths of her own family members.
She had gotten so close, so very close, only to be captured by the unknown suspected agents currently protecting Risa. Agents who refused to share information or to allow her in on an operation that she could benefit.
The men were known in underground circles simply as ghosts. The research she’d managed to do, the answers she had come up with concerning them didn’t make sense. Among those men there was a former Navy SEAL, a former drug lord, an arms dealer, and a suspected terrorist. Of the five men she’d managed to identify, none was known as a good guy, but they were all surrounding Risa Clay. Which made her wonder at their covers.
Instead of getting answers, though, she was tied, gagged, and blindfolded as she was transported from the apartment building she had been in to an unknown location where she would be “interrogated.”
Her own agency, her boss, a man who had been a friend to her parents, had betrayed her. He had given them the secret to breaking her, to stealing the information she was refusing to give them.
As though she wouldn’t know that the men she was investigating were the same ones holding her. She’d been close enough to hear each of their voices. She was good at voices, good at identifying agents despite covers or alterations.
Bailey worked her hands against the ropes holding them, feeling the damp warmth of her own blood as her skin abraded. The thought of being drugged, of being forced, terrorized her. She was almost shaking with that fear. Being drugged by men she couldn’t trust was even worse. Men whose names were synonymous with blood and death.
She could hear them talking. It was a hollow sound, a sound that indicated a cavernous area, perhaps a warehouse. She was lying on a cot. The drug would be given through an IV. She remembered that. It had been part of her training when she had worked with the Mossad years ago. It was the drug known to break her the fastest.
Bastards! She bit back the tears, the fury. If she let it take her over now, then she was going to break before they ever inserted the IV.
“The drug will be here within the hour,” one of the men spoke up.
“I don’t like this,” said another, the one she’d heard called John. His tone was irate, and had been growing more so since they had arrived at the location.
“Chill,” another voice advised him softly. “There’s no pain involved. It’s humane and efficient.”
Why would killers worry about humane and efficient?
“Fuck your humanity and efficiency,” John growled, his voice still low. “Let her the fuck go.”
“Her people are on their way,” he was told. “We’ll wait for them outside, lead them in, then begin the interrogation. You keep an eye on her.”
Her would-be knight had also been the same interrogator who had called her “cheap meat” hours before. Threatening to sell her to the local dog food company. But she’d heard the amusement in his tone, heard the playfulness.
Nostalgia had almost washed over her at the sound. If he’d had an Australian accent. If he had light gray eyes rather than dark, if his hair was a lighter blond. If he were another man and another time, then she would have known she was safe. If he were the lover she had lost, Trent Daylen, rather than John Vincent, a suspected arms dealer and killer, then she wouldn’t fear the outcome here.
But Trent was dead. She had to force herself to remember that, to let that pain wash through her again. Trent had been killed in Australia.
Trent was gone.
She heard the men leave, but she was aware there was one still watching her. John. The arms dealer.
He was an agent, she knew he was. They all were. It was the only thing that made any sense. If they drugged her, she’d forget all this. She would forget their names, their identities, and the operation being conducted here. It would all be gone.
She felt movement around her, a brush of air against her cheek a second before the gag was dragged down over her chin.
She stayed silent. At the moment, she decided silence was the better part of valor. It could be her smartest move.
“Picked yourself a hell of a fight here, didn’t you?” His voice was low, filled with anger.
“What do you care?” She kept her own voice equally low.
He breathed out roughly. She felt a low sizzle of electricity as he gripped the back of her neck.
How odd. That reaction was rare. It was a reaction she had only known with Trent. She closed her eyes again and forced herself to breathe through the knowledge that she was truly alone. She had no partner, she had no agency backing. Hell, her own agency was turning against her for these men.
What the hell was going on here?
“I shouldn’t care,” he assured her. “You’ve asked for this. You could have given us what we needed and gone your way.”
“Bullshit.” She gave a hard mocking laugh. “Going my way wouldn’t have taken me very far. Orion is mine,” she hissed. “His death belongs to me.”
