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“I want to kill him.” She fought to breathe, and John felt his own eyes fill with tears as he tried to comfort her. Without words, because there were no words that could ever ease the pain he knew she was feeling.
“It was right there in my hands,” she sobbed against his chest again. “Right there, John, and I walked away. I walked away.”
Because she had no other choice. She knew it, and he knew it. Warbucks was too important, the recovery of the missiles too imperative to jeopardize it at this point. The needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and the agony tearing through one small woman.
“I have you, Bailey,” he whispered against her hair as he tightened his hold around her, kissed her tear-drenched cheek and wished he could find a way to ease that pain. “It’s okay, baby. I promise it’s okay. We’ll get him. We’ll make him pay for all of it.”
Because John knew what Bailey didn’t. The unit had been called in not to bring Warbucks to justice, but to gain the proo
f against him and execute him.
There was too much power contained here, in one place. If Ford Grace was Warbucks, then he had the connections to have any charges against him tampered with. Evidence would come up missing. Witnesses would die. It was that simple. There was no way in hell to preserve the facts of the case and ensure that justice was served.
No, Warbucks would die. It was that simple. At the hands of a member of the unit, whoever was holding the sniper rifle when the meet was arranged. The order had been signed before the unit had ever taken the job. It had come to them because the law enforcement agencies that had tried to capture him were too hampered by rules, regulations, and laws.
“He’s going to pay for this,” John swore again as he rocked her in his arms and felt a slice to his soul each time a sob tore from her chest.
“I hate him,” she cried out, a strangled low sound that the white-noise generator could cover, a grief-ridden, agonized sound that he knew he would never forget. A sound he would ensure Ford paid for.
“He took everything from me,” she charged. “Anna, my parents. You. He took everything, John. All of it, and never flinched. He didn’t care. God help me, he didn’t care.”
Death was too good for Warbucks, but there was no other way to make him pay. No other way to ensure that he didn’t destroy another life.
Brushing her hair back, he kissed her cheek again and simply let her cry. There was no way to fix this, no way to make it better, and if she was going to mend her shattered control, then she would need a chance to hurt first. To grieve.
The game could continue tomorrow. For now, Bailey needed this chance to rail at fate and at the job she had signed up for.
An agent who had truly turned would have to remain loyal to Ford, no matter what he had done. Thus, for now she would have to keep the end goal in mind and ensure that Ford Grace—Warbucks—had the chance to to continue his treasonous activities.
That would come to an end. John made the vow to himself. If he had to pull the trigger himself, Warbucks’s treachery would end. And it would end soon.
CHAPTER 17
BAILEY OPENED HER EYES as John lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He laid her against the cool comfort of the silk sheets and began to draw the blanket over her body, his expression tortured.
She couldn’t sleep. There was no way she could sleep, no way that she could ever drift off fast enough or deep enough to still the agony, the betrayal she had dealt, or her own guilt.
“No.” She pushed the blankets away as he braced one knee on the bed and moved to him instead. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“You need to rest, baby.” His voice was deep, dark. It was as tortured as she felt, but she felt something more as well. The need for a comfort that could only come from his touch. An affirmation that there was indeed something Ford Grace hadn’t been able to kill. He hadn’t killed the man she loved.
No matter the name he took, no matter the shape of his face. This was still Trent. He was still her soul.
Moving to her knees, she gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it from her body, the cool air of the room striking her nipples, sensitizing them.
So many nights she had lain alone, crying, aching because there had been no justice for those she loved. Because there had been no comfort in the darkness of the night for her own soul.
Her comfort was here now.
She tossed the shirt to the floor, stared into his eyes, and cupped her own breasts, her fingers finding the hard tips of her nipples and pinching them slowly, pulling at them as he suddenly swallowed tightly.
She had never teased him like this. She should have, she realized, because his gray eyes turned almost black as a hard flush mantled his cheekbones.
“Baby,” he breathed out roughly. “This won’t help you rest.”
“I don’t want to rest.” One hand continued to cup a breast as she moved the other down, between her breasts, over her stomach until she pushed her fingers past the elastic band of the loose cotton pants she wore.
She found herself with her fingers. As he watched, his gaze narrowing on the movements beneath the material, she found the dampening folds of her pussy and caressed the sensitive pearl of her clit softly.
