Midnight Action

by Elle Kennedy

  “A ten-book set aptly titled How to Keep the Sexual Fire Burning After Marriage.” Paige laughed in delight. “Noelle sent me a text message in reply. Two words. Fuck and off.”

  Bailey burst out laughing. She would’ve paid money to see their boss’s face when she opened Paige’s gift. Poor Noelle had already been annoyed enough that her former-love-turned-enemy-turned-love-again had twisted her arm into marrying him. But Jim Morgan was a stubborn alpha male, and the deadly mercenary had insisted they get married...or else he would have dragged her down the aisle kicking and screaming. And the icing on the cake—he’d talked Noelle into taking his last name, which officially made her Noelle Morgan now.

  Maybe Bailey was a jerk, but she found the whole situation hilarious. She’d met Morgan two months ago in Paris after he’d reconnected with her boss, and she really liked the man. She was glad he and Noelle had finally worked through their decadelong issues.

  Though their union did have one drawback.

  Noelle and Morgan had joined professional forces. Which meant that Bailey and the rest of Noelle’s assassins—chameleons, as they’d been dubbed—now worked for Morgan, too.

  “I’m still not sure how I feel about it,” she confessed.

  Paige furrowed her brow. “My wedding gift? Why? I think it’s awesome.”

  “No, not the gift—it is awesome. I was just thinking about our new working arrangements,” Bailey clarified. “We’re not mercenaries. We work alone.”

  “Don’t worry. Noelle knows that. She said we’ll still be working solo, but if Morgan’s team ever needs undercover help, they’ll call us in.”

  Crap.

  Crappity-crap-crap.

  Bailey quickly swallowed the lump of unhappiness that rose in her throat, but clearly she hadn’t managed to mask her expression, because Paige’s blue eyes narrowed.

  “What’s the problem? You’ve helped Morgan out before. And God knows I get a call from him or Noelle at least once a week hitting me up for tech assistance.”

  “Which you can do from home,” Bailey said, pointing to the insane amount of laptops on the long table across the room.

  Cables and electrical bars snaked along the floor, some of them climbing toward the exposed beamed ceiling, all plugged in to power Paige’s command central, as she called it. The woman was a wizard when it came to computers, which was why she was on everyone’s speed dial. If you wanted information, Paige Grant was your first and only call.

  Unless it was the kind of information a computer couldn’t find....In that case, that honor went to the Reilly brothers.

  AKA the reason Bailey was unbelievably reluctant to call herself a member of Jim Morgan’s team.

  “I still don’t see the issue,” Paige said in confusion. “Morgan’s a good guy. You said so yourself. Besides, you were the one just talking about breaking hearts—think of all the hot single men you’ll be working with. Liam Macgregor is a bloody movie star, that Sullivan guy is smokin’ hot, and then there’s the scary sexy badass...D? Plus there’s Sean— Actually, wait. He’s off the team. And the cute rookie—”

  “Wait. Back up.” Bailey had frozen at Paige’s last remark. “What do you mean Sean’s off the team? Since when?”

  “Since a couple weeks ago, apparently. I spoke to Abby the other day and she said he suddenly quit.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He told Morgan he works better alone and that he was wrong to think he’d be able to function on a team.” Paige shrugged. “Or something along those lines.”

  Bailey’s brow furrowed. She supposed that made sense. Sean Reilly didn’t take orders well. He was also impulsive to the core, exactly the kind of man who’d join a mercenary team and then abruptly change his mind less than two months later.

  A sudden rush of bitterness flooded her chest. Yup, she was well acquainted with Sean’s impulsive nature. She’d experienced it firsthand nearly a year ago, after the cocky Irishman had seduced her under the pretense that he was someone else.

  And you let him.

  It was hard to ignore the internal accusation—especially since it was one hundred percent accurate. Truth was, she couldn’t lay all the blame for that night on Sean. The second he’d slid into her darkened hotel room, she’d known he wasn’t Oliver, Sean’s equally gorgeous twin and the sweeter, more mature of the brothers. She’d known, yet she’d still allowed him to touch her. Kiss her.

  Fuck her.

  Aggravation clamped around her throat as old memories crept into her head—wicked images and seductive words whispered in a deep Irish brogue. Damn him for lying to her. Damn herself for letting him.

  “I guess he headed back to Dublin to join forces with Ollie again,” Paige was saying, oblivious to Bailey’s inner turmoil. “Which is probably where he belongs. The Reilly brothers, information dealers extraordinaire, bona fide Irish heartbreakers.” The redhead slanted her head. “Didn’t you go out with Ollie a while back?”

  Bailey nodded, keeping her expression veiled. “Yeah, we went out a couple of times. We decided we were better off as friends, though.”

  “Pity. He’s quite cute. Sean, too, though that’s a given, considering they’re identical.”

  The conversation was veering into dangerous territory Bailey wanted to avoid. She hadn’t told any of her colleagues about her night with Sean. The only person who knew about it was Liam Macgregor, who, in the past couple of months, had somehow become one of her closest friends. Figure that one out. Maybe she wasn’t as much of a loner as she’d thought.

  “Okay, enough man talk. This is our annual girls’ getaway, remember?” She grinned at her friend. “What cheesy rom coms did you get for us?”

  Paige looked delighted. “Oooh, I ordered a bunch of them from the movie channel on the telly. You’re in for a treat.”

  Bailey laughed as the other woman swiped the remote control from the end table and turned on the television. Back when she’d worked for the CIA, evenings like this hadn’t existed in her life. She’d been a solo operative, spending months undercover and executing covert missions on foreign soil. She still did all that for Noelle, except nowadays she actually managed to squeeze in some downtime. Which was kind of comical—two assassins curled up on a couch with popcorn and wine about to watch sappy romantic comedies. Life was strange sometimes.

  “I ordered that movie about the chick who loses her memory and her hubby has to make her fall in love with him again,” Paige revealed as she clicked the remote. The television was turned to a news channel, the broadcast nothing but a square box at the bottom of the screen as Paige scrolled through the channel list. “Hence the box of tissues on the table. Be prepared to sob like a baby.”

  Another laugh slipped out, but was cut short when Bailey noticed the line of text running beneath the news report. “Hey. Stay on this channel for a sec,” she said quickly, a frown marring her lips.

  Paige stopped scrolling, clicking another button to bring the segment into full-screen view. “Ah, shit,” the redhead murmured. “Obviously the world’s gone to hell again.”

  Not the world—just Dublin, according to the screen. Bailey listened in dismay as the reporter quickly recapped the unfolding events to viewers who were just tuning in. There was a holdup in process at a downtown branch of Dublin National Bank. A half dozen masked, armed men had taken the bank employees and patrons hostage, and the law enforcement officers surrounding the bank were attempting to negotiate with the robbers. Apparently the situation was beginning to escalate, with reports of shots fired and hostages screaming.

  “Turn it up,” Bailey told Paige, leaning forward when a shaky camera image suddenly filled the screen.

  Paige raised the volume, and the urgent voice of the female newscaster blared out of the speakers.

  “—courageous woman uploaded a video to her social network page. We don’t know how she was able to
record this, but it’s been confirmed that the account belongs to Margaret Allen, a twenty-one-year-old student at Trinity College. Be warned—some of these images are not suitable for young children.”

  The screen flickered for a beat before the video began to play. Immediately, loud footsteps and angry shouts filled Paige’s living room. The two women watched in silence as jerky images flashed on the screen, accompanied by gruff orders from the robbers and muffled whimpers from the hostages. It was difficult to zero in on any one image—everything was moving too fast, and the men in charge wore all black, from the ski masks on their faces right down to the boots on their feet.

  An uneasy feeling washed over Bailey as she focused on one of the men. Tall and broad, eye color indiscernible, and voice low and deep as he issued a soft command to someone out of the camera’s line of sight.

  “Look at these idiots,” Paige remarked with a sigh. “Do they honestly expect to get away with this?”

  Bailey didn’t answer. Something niggled at the back of her mind, an intangible flicker of familiarity, a sense of bone-deep dread. But she wasn’t sure what was bugging her. People robbed banks all the time. People took hostages. People killed other people and did seriously stupid, dangerous shit every second of the day.

  So why was this particular armed robbery making the hairs on the back of her neck tingle?

  Another anguished sob echoed in the bank, followed by a male response.

  “’S okay, luv. It’ll all be over soon.”

  The husky timbre of that voice, combined with the faint brogue, turned the blood in Bailey’s veins to ice. A gasp flew out, her heart rate kicking up a notch as she stared at the screen in pure and total shock.

  “Oh, shit,” she whispered.

  Paige glanced over, big blue eyes swimming with concern when she saw Bailey’s expression. “What is it?”

  “It’s Sean.” Her finger trembled as she jabbed it in the direction of the television.

  “What?” The other woman sounded bewildered. “That’s nuts.”

  Maybe, but Bailey would recognize that voice anywhere. It haunted her dreams every goddamn night.

  “It’s him, Paige. One of the robbers—it’s Sean fucking Reilly.” Horror, shock, and confusion clawed up her throat like icy fingers. “It’s Sean.”