“I’m fine. Rabbit wasn’t talking out of his ass before—he didn’t want to hurt me.” Oliver shrugged. “He just wanted me and Sean to play ball. It would’ve gone the other way, you know, if it was Sean in London instead of me.”
“His trust in you two is astonishing,” she remarked. “Do you think that’s all it really is? He wants you guys back on his crew because he trusts you?”
“I think so. Rabbit accused us of taking a shit on our father’s memory when we left the Dagger, but he made sure we knew he’d always welcome us back. Except, well, we didn’t want to come back, so he forced our hands.” Oliver raked his fingers through his blond curls. “Now can you please tell me why my brother is still in there?”
Letting out another sigh, Bailey told him about Ronan Flannery’s late-night visit and the man’s “request” that Sean help Flannery’s mole take over Rabbit’s organization.
“That’s bloody insane!” Oliver exclaimed. “And my brother was daft enough to agree to this?”
“He had no choice.”
Wait—why was she defending Sean? She one hundred percent agreed that he was crazy for not skipping town.
“Flannery threatened to kill me if he didn’t cooperate,” Bailey admitted. “And Sean couldn’t show up to this exchange without making it look like he’s following Flannery’s orders. Whoever the mole is, he needs to believe Sean is doing what Flannery asked.”
A wrinkle appeared in Oliver’s forehead. “Rabbit seems to think the mole was Rhys Gallagher.”
“It’s not. Flannery wouldn’t have been so smug and cheerful if his inside man was dead. I bet the mole planted the Gallagher idea in Rabbit’s head.” She paused to take a sip of coffee. God, she needed the caffeine boost. It had been a long fucking day. “Sean’s biding his time until he can figure out how to get Flannery off his back.”
Oliver’s gaze darkened. “Did Sean tell you about Flannery and Rabbit’s history?”
She nodded.
“Well, then you know it won’t be easy to get Flannery off anyone’s back, not when Rabbit is involved. And not when he finally has a real chance to destroy his enemy.”
“You could leave town,” she pointed out. “You and Sean. Go somewhere where Flannery won’t find you. We both know it won’t take much for you guys to disappear. You’ve got contacts in every corner of the world.”
“Oh, we could absolutely do it, but I know my brother, Bailey.” Oliver wrapped both hands around his mug. “He won’t run. And he won’t live on the run.”
“Not even to stay alive?”
“Sean’s the most stubborn bastard on the planet. You know that better than anyone.” Oliver gave a wry smile. “Do you honestly think he’d let someone run him out of town?” He brought his mug to his lips. “No. We’ll have to fight back.”
His use of the word we didn’t surprise her. The Reilly brothers were joined at the hip. They’d clean up this mess together, the way they always did.
“But you’ll need to leave town, Bailey.” Oliver nodded as if it was already decided, proving that he and his brother were more alike than she’d thought.
“I can’t,” she answered. “Rabbit thinks I’m Sean’s girlfriend.”
“Rabbit also thinks Flannery clocked you, which means he won’t bat an eye if Sean whisks you out of town. Hell, Rabbit would probably prefer it—he wants Sean focused on the cause, not a woman.” Oliver set down his cup. “And don’t forget, Flannery has no idea who you really are. Sure, he threatened to kill you, but he can’t kill a ghost, remember?”
The smile that reached her lips faded fast. “I expected this from Sean—I mean, he’s been trying to get rid of me since I got here. But you, Ollie? Do you honestly think I can leave the two of you to fight this battle alone?”
“It would be . . . easier,” he admitted. “You’re a distraction, Bailey.”
“To who?”
“Who do you think?” Oliver blew out a frustrated breath. “My brother’s not right in the head when you’re around. He won’t be able to do what needs to be done if he’s worrying about you.”
“He doesn’t have to worry about me,” she shot back. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know you are. He knows that, too.” Oliver shrugged. “But that won’t stop either one of us from worrying.”
Before she could argue with his chauvinistic logic, her cell phone interrupted them. “This conversation’s not over,” she warned as she grabbed the phone.
She checked the caller ID and frowned. Unknown number. Which was highly alarming, because there was no such thing as an unknown number in her life, not since Paige had pulled her techno voodoo on Bailey’s cell phone. Paige’s decryption chip could detect any number, even when the person on the other end was trying to hide it.
Bailey considered not answering, but the warning bells shrieking in her head were saying she needed to take the call. Unknown variables were too dangerous—she functioned better when she knew who her enemies were.
After a beat, she picked up with a guarded “Yes?”
The voice that slid into her ear turned the blood in her veins to ice.
“Tara, it’s me. I’m afraid we have a problem.”
Chapter 12
Tara.
It wasn’t a name that many people knew. It wasn’t a name that anyone called her, at least not in a very long time. After the CIA had assigned her the handle Bailey, only two people had continued to use her given name.
One of them was her mother.
The other was Isaac Daniels.
Bailey’s fingers tightened around the phone. She noticed Oliver watching her in concern, but she quickly shook her head and pasted on a weak smile to indicate that everything was okay. Then she apologetically gestured to the phone as if to say, I need to take this, and rose from her chair.
She waited until she was on the sidewalk, several yards from the patio, before she spoke again. “What do you want?”
“Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
A friend? They weren’t friends, for fuck’s sake. He’d been her handler for seven years. Her lover for five. And God, what a mistake the latter had been. She’d longed for a partner, and instead she’d found herself at the mercy of yet another man who wanted to control her.
“Let me guess,” she muttered, ignoring the good-natured taunt. “You spoke to Gwen.”
Surprise washed over the line. “Gwen? No.” A pause. “Why, have you spoken to Gwen?”
“Nope,” she lied.
He laughed, that familiar rumble of sound that once upon a time had made her heart pound. “You’re forgetting who you’re talking to, Tara. I was the one who taught you how to lie, remember? And no, this has nothing to do with Gwen—although trust me, I will be having a chat with her once you and I are through.”
“Then what’s this about? Because if you’re calling about a job, I’m not inte—”
“Someone ran your prints through the system.”
Bailey froze. “Which system?”
“All of them,” he said flatly. “AFIS, DOD, military channels, pretty much any database you can think of.”
“Shit.”
“Oh, it gets worse, sweetheart.”
She cringed at the endearment. Every time she spoke to him, Daniels continued to act like time hadn’t passed, like she hadn’t walked out on him five years ago. He still viewed her as the young girl he’d recruited out of high school, the girl he’d molded into an operative and turned into a killer, only to rein her in when he decided the world was too dangerous for her. He’d been a father figure to her—God knew she’d needed one—but then he’d started acting like it, and not like one of those warm, supportive fathers you saw on television. He’d become a bully. Fiercely protective and possessive.
No, obsessive.
“When your fingerprints went online, a red flag popped up in our system,” Daniels said. “Obviously your prints didn’t give our mystery hacker your identity—there
aren’t any files on you in the main databases—but the bastard saw the flag on our end.”
“So? My CIA file is confidential. Can’t be accessed without the highest security clearance, right?” But it still worried her that someone had managed to lift her fingerprints without her knowledge.
And Daniels’s response worried her even more. “Right. But someone accessed the file, Tara.”
A chill blew up her spine. Shit. Shit.
“And we both know there’s only one way that could’ve happened,” Daniels went on. “Someone in the company allowed it to happen.”
“You’re saying one of your people leaked my file?” She kept her voice to a low hiss, but it was impossible to control her anger. “How the fuck did you let that happen, Isaac?”
“Trust me, sweetheart—I’m not thrilled about it myself. Obviously there’s a rat in the company, and it’s someone high up on the food chain. Only senior-level staff can access the spook files.”
Flannery.
It had to be Flannery—the bastard had dirt on every important person in the goddamn world. He must have someone in the CIA too.
And that someone had accessed her file. Which meant that he or she had passed the information on to Flannery. Which meant that Flannery knew her real name, her background, her—
“Oh God. My mother,” she mumbled into the phone.
“I told you, it gets worse,” Daniels said grimly.
Bailey was beginning to feel faint. “Are you telling me this isn’t even the bad part?”
“I just received a call from Josiah.”
“Who’s Josiah?”
There was a long pause.
“Who the fuck is Josiah, Isaac?”
Her former boss sighed. “The agent I assigned to Vanessa.”
Bailey hissed in fury. “You ordered surveillance on my mother? You son of a bitch.”
“That’s what happens when the woman you love disappears off the face of the world,” Daniels snapped. “You do anything in your power to locate her, even if it means monitoring her mother.”
“I didn’t disappear,” she said coldly. “I left. And don’t play that bullshit outrage card—you knew exactly how to contact me.”
“You made it clear you didn’t want me to.”
God, she couldn’t have this talk now. She couldn’t rehash the past with Daniels—it was over and done with. She didn’t love him anymore, hadn’t loved him in a very long time, and she wished he would just accept that.
She gritted her teeth and changed the subject back to the one that mattered. “Is she okay?”
“Your mother’s fine. But someone did pay a visit to her facility, told the nurses they were a friend of the family.”
“Did Josiah question the staff?”
He ignored the bitterness in her tone. “Of course. We’re looking at a white male, early thirties, Irish accent.”
Her heart plummeted as if it was weighed down with cement. Definitely Flannery, then.
“They didn’t let him see her, did they?” God. The second she was through with Daniels, she was calling that motherfucking nursing home and ripping every member of that staff a new one.
“No, they didn’t. You’re the only approved person on Vanessa’s visitors’ list, and the nurses enforced that.” He paused. “I posted two extra agents on-site, though.”
“Thank you.” Bailey almost choked on the gratitude. She hated owing this man anything.
Daniels sighed again. “Are you going to tell me what you’re involved in, Tara?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“Like hell it doesn’t! I’ve got a rat on my team!”
“Who you wouldn’t have even known about if that person hadn’t run my prints,” she said dryly. “So really, Isaac, you should be thanking me. How about we call it square, then?”
“We’re not even close to being square, sweetheart.”
“Fine, I’ll toss in some extra goodies for you. I can find out who your rat is—pretty easily, actually.” All she had to do was go through the copies Sean had made of Flannery’s files and it would be easy to locate the person he was blackmailing in the CIA.
“How?” Daniels said suspiciously.
“You don’t need to know. I’ll text you with a name later, tonight most likely.” She swallowed. “Thanks for the heads-up about all this. I’ll take it from here.”
She disconnected the call even as she heard him protesting, but Daniels didn’t call back. He was a smart man, smart enough to know she wouldn’t answer. Besides, if he talked to Gwen like he’d threatened, he’d know sooner rather than later that Bailey was in Dublin. She just hoped he didn’t send any agents her way. The situation was complicated enough as it was without having to worry about CIA spooks shadowing her.
Taking a breath, she headed back to the patio, where Oliver’s concern had only grown in her absence. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She didn’t bother pretending otherwise. “You know how you told me I should leave town?”
“Yeah . . .” His eyes flickered with wariness.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Bailey—”
“Flannery found me,” she cut in.
When Oliver furrowed his brow, she elaborated. “He found me, Ollie. Me. He knows my name, my mother’s whereabouts—he sent one of his thugs to her nursing home in Virginia.”
“Shit.”
A cold knot of fear circled her belly. “He probably has a bunch of men stationed outside by now. With orders to kill her if Sean and I don’t do what he wants.”
Oh God. She had to make arrangements to move her mother—now. But if Flannery had found her once, the bastard might be able to track her again.
Bailey couldn’t let him. She refused to let some vengeful Irish gangster anywhere near her mother. Vanessa had suffered through enough pain and torture to last a lifetime, and the only saving grace was that she couldn’t even remember it.
But Bailey did. She remembered every gruesome detail of her childhood. Every second of torment she and her mom had endured. Once Vanessa’s condition had deteriorated, Bailey had made sure to keep the woman hidden. It would only confuse and agitate her mom if someone showed up asking questions, if they tried to remind her of events that she’d blessedly forgotten.
Across the table, Oliver stiffened, but Bailey didn’t need his body language to tell her that Sean was approaching. She sensed him. She’d always been excruciatingly aware of Sean Reilly’s presence.
Sean reached their table, looming over them with a scowl. “Let’s go.”
She and Oliver rose without a word and followed him to the car at the curb. Ollie got into the passenger seat next to Sean, while Bailey slid in the back, grabbing the case she’d left under the seat and pulling out her earpiece.
She popped it in her ear as she addressed Sean. “Where are we headed?”
“The loft,” he muttered.
Her hand moved over the earpiece to trigger the mic. “Liam, you copy?”
“Loud and clear, darling.”
“We’re heading back to the loft. Meet us there.”
“No,” Sean said swiftly.
She touched the transmitter again. “Hold on. Possible change of plans.” She met Sean’s hard gaze in the rearview mirror. “Where do you want them to go, then?”
“Tell them to find a hotel near the pub.” He sounded less than enthused as he added, “I’m going to be spending some time there. So if they insist on providing backup, I want them close to O’Hare’s.”
She relayed the message to Liam, then glanced at Sean again. “Does this mean Rabbit bought it?”
Sean nodded.
“So what now?”
“Now we sit in silence while I fucking think about this.”
She hesitated. “Listen, you should know that—”
“Not now, Bailey,” he snapped. “Seriously. I can’t listen to a goddamn thing right now.”
For the rest of the car ride, nobod
y said another word.
* * *
Sean had thought he was pissed off before—and then Bailey told him about her conversation with her former CIA handler, and he understood the true meaning of anger.
“Why in bloody hell didn’t you tell me this before?” he exploded as they faced off in the middle of the loft.
“Because you told me to shut up in the car,” she snapped. “I was waiting for you to calm down.”
“Calm down? Don’t you get it? I won’t calm down until you’re out of Dublin.” He shot his twin a sour look. “Same goes for you, man. I don’t want either one of you involved.”
With a loud curse, Oliver got right up in his face, and it was like looking into a mirror. A mirror that was blasting the same enraged expression back at him.
Ollie’s fuming face only made Sean want to slug the guy, and yet at the same time, he felt like throwing his arms around his twin and thanking the frickin’ heavens that Ollie was safe.
Jesus, he didn’t even know what he was feeling anymore. Mad and powerless and so bloody jealous he couldn’t see straight. He hated seeing Oliver and Bailey in the same room together, and he hated himself for hating it because he had no right to feel that way. He was the one who’d torn them apart, which meant it was his responsibility to bring them back together.
He’d had a plan, damn it. Rabbit had agreed that Oliver should get Bailey out of town to keep her safe, but now there was no chance in hell of her leaving. Bailey was fiercely protective of the people she loved, and apparently her mother topped that list.
Her mother. It drove him fucking crazy that Flannery had learned more about Bailey in twenty-four hours than Sean had in five years.
“I’m not leaving,” Oliver said firmly. “You really think I’d let you handle this alone?”
Sean ran a hand over his scalp, stealing a forlorn look at the punching bag across the room. Wishing he was pounding it with his fists.
He turned back to Bailey, sarcasm creeping in. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag, luv. Are you ready to tell me who you really are, or should I call Flannery and ask him?”
Her gray eyes instantly became shuttered. “I’ll tell you whatever I think is relevant to this op.”