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She glanced at John as he ate, his attention supposedly on his food and on her, when in fact he was keeping close tabs on everyone in the room.
It didn’t make sense that Jerric Abbas and John had made the final cut with Warbucks, did it?
Both identities were very well established, she had to admit. Both men had the right build, the right information, the right impersonation. But still, there was something that suddenly struck her as off. It was something she was going to have to get to the bottom of before too much longer.
She hated going into anything blind, and suddenly she had the idea that there was a part of this mission that she was definitely blinded in.
After breakfast was cleared away by the servants and the groups of men and women began to form and drift away from the dining room, Bailey watched as John met with Travis and moved to the back of the house. No doubt to the library, where it seemed women were not allowed when the door was closed.
She noticed John casting her several long, concerned looks before he moved off for his meeting. Was she too quiet to suit him? She narrowed her eyes on his disappearing back as a sudden suspicion began to form in her mind.
He had an asset within Warbucks’s ranks, she could feel it. But who was it? It couldn’t be anyone low-level. Did Warbucks even have low-level associates? He was paranoid where his identity was concerned. Bailey suspected that even Raymond might not know his true identity.
She did suspect that Myron did. From Warbucks’s first
appearance fifteen years before, Myron had been there. At first he was a cautious presence overseeing several sales under an alias, acting as broker himself until the deals became too hot for him to risk exposure himself.
It was about eight years before that Warbucks had begun using brokers. The first few hadn’t worked out so well. Money had been lost; the deals hadn’t been the best he could have gotten for the items up for auction.
The emergence of Warbucks as an international procurer of classified information had been a slow one. His reputation had grown in degrees, but always Warbucks had been very careful to keep his identity, or any suspicion of his identity, a secret.
He placed others in the path, disposables. People he had a grudge against, or lives he simply wanted to play with.
Shaking her head at the certainty now that John was hiding something from her, Bailey moved through the house, careful to avoid any of the groups and headed to the evergreen maze and gardens in the back.
It was the most peaceful part of the property. It was the one area where she actually had good memories from her childhood. She had never liked the house, but she had always loved the garden grottoes hidden within the huge maze of evergreen abundance. The heated fountains, hidden shelters, and vine-covered, heated hideaways had always tempted her to linger and lounge. To hide.
Today the spot tempted her to think. Her emotions had been in such turmoil; the decisions she’d had to make, the delicate balance she’d had to achieve had kept her mind fractured. Her ability to assimilate a mission had been affected in noticeable ways.
In dangerous ways.
Making her way through the maze, she found the small hidden areas she had loved as a child, and marveled at the fact that they seemed so much smaller now. So much colder.
The gas fires still burned, the shelters were still shadowed and tempting, but the place didn’t hold the appeal it once had. Or perhaps she had grown past it. The lessons she had learned at the hands of the men and women who now attended this party hadn’t always been pleasant ones. But she had realized as she’d grown older that they were lessons she had needed to know and understand if she was going to stay and survive within it.
Staying wasn’t something she had ever intended on doing, though.
Making her way deeper through the maze, she smiled at the memory of the paths she had taken as a child. She remembered her way through it, her way out of it.
And getting out of it was suddenly imperative.
She came to a slow stop and watched as the shadow materialized from the last, hidden shelter in the maze. He wasn’t tall, perhaps an inch taller than she was. He was burlier, darker. Thick black hair fell in slick waves to his neck as dark, cold eyes stared back at her in satisfaction.
“Alberto Rodriquez,” she said quietly. “Now, how did you get on the estate?”
Raymond Greer had excellent security. Alberto couldn’t have slipped onto the property; he had to have had help.
White teeth flashed in an icy, cruel smile as thin lips curved upward.
“You have made enemies, my dear,” he said quietly. “Let us see now, what name did you use in Colombia? Maria Estova, yes? Ahh, who could have known that our dear faithless Maria was in truth one of America’s richest heiresses. I must say, I was rather shocked.”
She just bet he was.
“So how much would it cost me to convince you to turn around and make your way back to Colombia?” she asked, though she was rather certain no amount of money was going to accomplish that.
“I do not know,” he mused. “What price do you place on a brother’s life?”
His brother, Carlos. Carlos wasn’t nearly as intelligent as Alberto, but he had been more bloodthirsty, less cold, just as merciless. If possible. And she had a feeling Alberto wasn’t willing to accept any price for the part she had played in his brother’s death.
