Elite Ops Complete Series

by Lora Leigh

  Bailey stared at Wagner in shock. This wasn’t the man she had been raised with. The man she had thought of as a brother at one time.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “She didn’t want to help me.” Wagner shrugged as though it were all perfectly acceptable. “I had to teach her better. Just as I always had to teach Anna better.” He glared at his father’s pale, shocked face.

  Bailey shook her head slowly. “It was Ford,” she whispered again. “He was the one beating Anna and your mother.”

  Ford’s head swung around to her, his face almost dazed with shock now as Wagner laughed.

  “Father is a wuss. He wouldn’t have dared to raise his hand to either of them. The few times Mother tried to tell him, he wouldn’t accept it. Would you, Pop?”

  Ford turned back to his son. He was visibly shaking now.

  There was so much pain in his eyes, his face.

  “What have you done, Wagner?” he whispered. “My God, what have you turned into?”

  “A better man than you?” Wagner sneered. “My fortune is twice yours by now, old man. I was smarter and better and you were never smart enough to see it, were you?”

  Ford shook his head as he stared at Jules, then back to Wagner. “You call this smarter, better? Abusing those who love you? Who trust you? Betraying them?”

  “They’re like lambs, they need guidance,” Wagner snapped. “Just like Mother and Anna. I told you those two bitches were trouble but you wouldn’t listen, would you? You just had to let them go that night, didn’t you? You couldn’t see sense. They would have destroyed us. Destroyed me.”

  “They would have convinced Ford that you were the monster you were,” Bailey said painfully, imagining the hell she must have lived with. “To know your child was a monster, that there was something this twisted inside him must have been a horrible weight on her shoulders.”

  “She thought she could actually get away from me,” he screamed back at her. “That I’d ever let either of them go. I owned them. They belonged to me and refused to see it.”

  “God, are you insane?” Ford suddenly yelled back at him. “You don’t possess people, Wagner.”

  “I possessed them,” he sneered. “I owned them. Just as I own the rest of you.”

  “And the disk of your father ordering Orion to kill Anna and her mother? My parents?” She felt as though she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t assimilate what was happening around her.

  He laughed at that, too. “Computers are such amazing inventions, as is the software now available. His insane assistant thought he could blackmail me with that disk. I let him believe he could for a while, then got rid of him when the time was right.” He shrugged again as though it didn’t matter. “I’ve been smarter than you, Bailey. Admit it.”

  She nodded slowly as she stared back at Jules’s dazed face. “You were smarter than me,” she said, barely believing what was happening around her now.

  “I own you too, Bailey,” he informed her cruelly. “I’ve maneuvered you for years, tested you, drawn you in.”

  “And I fooled you, didn’t I?” she mocked him suddenly. “You never suspected, did you, Wagner? Not at first, not until tonight.”

  His head lifted, his nostrils flaring. “You didn’t fool me, bitch. I just hoped you were smarter. Now you can die right along with the bastard that thinks he can tell me how to live my life and the little whore that thinks she can walk away from me.” He tightened his grip on Jules again, causing her to cry out in pain.

  Psychotic, Myron had told her. He had no friends. He was worse than psychotic.

  “Do you think you’re going to get away with this?” she finally asked him. “That you’ll actually manage to escape?”

  “Of course I will. The mercenaries have orders to kill Raymond and Myron. I’ll lose the missiles, but oh well.” He sighed. “And you and Father will kill each other. Just after Father kills Jules.” He stroked the weapon down Jules’s swollen face.

  He had fooled them all so effectively. He truly had. Ford had been the one the investigation had focused on, just as Bailey had focused on him for the past twelve years. She had been so certain it was Ford because of her suspicion that he had been beating Anna and Mathilda, that she had refused to look any further. And now, they were all paying for it.

  Bailey shook her head. “It won’t work, Wagner. You won’t get away with this.”

  His smile was gloating.

  “I will get away with this …”

  “Myron isn’t dead, and neither is Raymond,” she told him, feeling the pain that tore through her. “Myron and Grant are alive as well as Raymond. I knew before I arrived here who to look for because they told me.”

  Silence filled the room. Wagner’s expression cleared for a long second as his grip tightened on Jules to the point that she whimpered. Bailey could see the flash of fear in his eyes, of disbelief.

  Shock creased his face. “You’re lying. Myron wouldn’t betray me!” he suddenly screamed as Mary flinched and cried out.

  He cuffed her head roughly. The next few seconds moved like slow motion.

  Mary stumbled to her knees, clearly close to unconsciousness, as Ford jumped for his son. A curious animal-like howl echoed through the room as Wagner let go of Mary, straightened his arm, and fired at his father.

  Ford’s body jerked, then fell into Wagner, catching him off balance, as Bailey jumped for both of them. She could hear John behind her, yelling out at her as she fought to get to the gun Wagner had dropped.

  His hand curled around it. His arm came up. A smile spread across his face and in the same breath a bloody red hole appeared in his forehead.

  “No. No,” Ford moaned in disbelief as he crawled to his son, lifting his head against his bloody shoulder and hunching over him as grief racked his body. “No. No, Wagner.”

  There were no tears. His voice was broken, though. Agonized. His expression was glazed as he lifted his eyes to Bailey.

  “I don’t believe this,” he whispered. “I don’t believe this. Why?”

  Men were swarming into the room now. Black-garbed, masked, weapons lifted, and hard voices shouting out orders as sirens railed in the distance.

  Bailey crouched next to Ford, John beside her. He’d fired the shot that had killed Wagner. He’d backed her. He’d let her have her moment, he’d let her avenge the past until he’d had no choice but to step in.

  “You didn’t know, did you?” she asked Ford then.

  He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t hurt Anna and Matty, Bailey,” he said, shaken, weak now from the wound in his shoulder. “Your dad asked me about that. I thought you were crazy.” Tears fell from his eyes to his cheeks. “I thought you were crazy.”

  Now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the time to tell him what his son had been, what his son had done. Later, she thought. After he healed, after he had time to accept what had happened.

  “He just had a temper,” Ford whispered as he clasped his son, rocked him. “That was all. He had a temper.”

  He had a lack of conscience.

  Turning from him, she moved to where Mary was being checked over by Catalina and Kira Richards. They had jerked the masks from their faces and were running their hands over the other girl’s body, checking for broken bones.

  “She’s unconscious,” Kira stated as two men moved to Ford. “We have paramedics on their way.”

  “Move out. Law enforcement coming,” a harsh, brooding voice called out. Hard drives were being jerked from computers and files torn from cases. “Black Jack and Wildcard have the upstairs,” another voice called out. “Move out. Move out.”

  Catalina and Kira remained in place as several suited agents rushed into the room.

  “You have it, Director,” the commanding voice said, turning matters over to Milburn Rushmore—Bailey’s former boss and director of the CIA headquarters in Langley.

  John was still behind her. She could feel him.

  “Heat Seeker, move out,” he was ordered ag
ain.

  John stared back at Bailey as she turned to him.

  “You have to go?” she whispered, trying to smile back at him. Trying to let him know she understood. She had known he would leave her again, but that didn’t stop the ache of betrayal from searing her soul.

  His lips tilted into a rueful grin. “Not a chance in hell.”

  Bailey felt the rush of light-headedness that exploded through her system. Hell, she was going to fall to her knees herself.

  His arm wrapped around her as he turned to his commander.

  “I’ll be in for debriefing when it’s over.”

  Dark blue eyes narrowed and reflected irritation. Bailey could see the fight brewing between these two men now. Tension suddenly filled the room as the other men stopped, stared.

  Those brilliant blue eyes moved slowly to her, raked over her, narrowed further in calculation.

  “You’ll regret it,” he warned John, but nodded anyway before leading the way for the others and heading out of the house.

  “You’re staying?” She had to lean against him. She had to feel his arms around her.

  “I’m staying,” he promised. “Forever, Bailey. I’m staying with you forever.”

  She turned back to the scene before her and once again felt the overwhelming disbelief that coiled inside her chest. She couldn’t believe Wagner had pulled it off for so long. That he had remained hidden, worked so hard to place the guilt on his father.

  Had he sensed that Warbucks had gone as long as he could?

  Unfortunately, loyalty just wasn’t what it used to be. Myron had helped raise the children of the men he’d always associated with. He had held them as babies, hell, he’d babysat groups of them at a time. And she believed he’d cared about them.

  He’d known Wagner for what he was, known the joy Wagner obviously found in destroying the security his father and his father’s friends worked to build for them.

  Wagner had hated them all.

  She moved to where Ford was being loaded onto a gurney. An oxygen mask covered his face; he was pale, weak. Tears leaked from his eyes.

  “I loved him,” he whispered again.

  She knelt by the gurney and touched his cheek. “We all loved him.”

  And she had. Like a brother.

  The tears were trapped inside her for now. They would fall later, when she could sit down and assimilate what had happened, and how.

  “Your director is taking care of the police,” John whispered at her ear. “You have FBI and DEA here. The warehouse is secured and the missiles are being packed for transportation. It’s over, Bailey.”

  She stood to her feet and stared around. Yes, it was over. But maybe, just maybe, something else was beginning.

  She turned back to John and let his arms wrap around her once again.

  “Hanging around, huh?” she sniffed against his chest as she felt his heartbeat beneath her cheek.

  “Always,” he whispered, that beloved flavor of Australia stroking over her senses. “Always, love.”

  Two Days Later

  Langley. It had been a long time since she had been here. Bailey moved into Director Milburn Rushmore’s office as his assistant showed her in.

  The last time she had been here, she had been enraged, chafing at the restrictions placed on her, furious at the orders that had held her back for so long. And betrayed. Betrayed that her director, a friend of her father’s, had actually approved her interrogation by agents that had no agency and no name.

  Now, she was mildly curious, distrustful. But the anger was gone.

  “Bailey.” Milburn rose to his feet from behind the monstrous cherrywood desk that was the focal point of the room.

  In front of the desk another man rose. Jordan Malone, former Navy SEAL, retired after the death of his nephew Nathan Malone. Short black hair revealed sharp, darkly tanned features. Brilliant blue eyes stared back at her coolly as his lips seemed to thin further at the sight of her.

  She knew those eyes. She had seen them two nights before in the Grace mansion ordering John from the scene and back to his “death.” John had refused to go. He still hadn’t left for that debriefing, and she knew he was ignoring his cellphone. Demands that he return. Threats perhaps.

  “Director Rushmore.” She moved to the desk and stood before him.

  This time, she wasn’t an angry agent. She was a free agent. And she intended to stay free, at least from the CIA.

  “Meet Jordan Malone. Jordan, Bailey Serborne.” Milburn introduced them.

  “Mr. Malone.” She took the proffered handshake, watching him warily. She had a feeling this meeting had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the agent that he wanted back.

  “Ms. Serborne.” His tone was icy. “Thank you for coming in.”

  She arched a brow mockingly as she glanced back at Milburn.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Malone.” Her tone was just sarcastic enough to assure him that she knew what his game was.

  “Sit, Bailey, please,” Milburn invited as he waved his hand to the vacant seat beside Malone. “I wanted to thank you personally for your help with the Grace situation. None of us could have known what was going on there. Without you, we could never have neutralized Wagner.” His voice seemed to crack as Bailey breathed in deeply.

  Milburn had been her father’s friend. He was Ford’s friend. He was a friend to sheiks, kings, and to four of the richest men in the world. And he had been Wagner’s godfather.

  “He had journals,” she said. “You found them?”

  She needed answers, not just for herself but for Jules as well. There was still an edge of disbelief that it had happened like this. That Wagner had been the villain. No, more than a villain. He had been a monster. A monster that had gone to extraordinary lengths to frame his father for his own crimes.

  “We found the journals. Thank you for letting us know they existed.” His face creased for the barest second with grief.

  Wagner had kept journals since he was a boy. Anna had told her about them once, when they were younger. Strange that she hadn’t told Bailey that it was Wagner who was abusing her. She had never said Ford had done it, that had been an assumption that Bailey had made. An erroneous one.

  “What happened, Milburn?” she asked. “I never suspected Wagner. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t been there.”

  Milburn shook his head sadly. “He was twisted, Bailey. He was a missing a soul, and he was very good at hiding it.”

  “Wagner began early in his teen years learning how to steal information and how to use it,” Jordan broke in at that point. “As Milburn said, he had no soul. As with most psychopaths, he was incredibly intuitive and intelligent. He lived for the power, directing lives, taking lives. Men like that live for a single reason, to attain a god-like status while holding everyone in thrall with fear. He thought he was invincible. He learned better.”

  She shook her head. She would never make sense of it. It was impossible to understand.

  “He was going to kill his father. Make it look like Ford killed me, then killed himself because he knew he was caught.”

  “And he would have succeeded had the men working with John not been prepared for Warbucks to pull a surprise. He’s been rather good at that over the years.”

  Yes, he had been. That should have been their first warning. Warbucks had always kept an ace up his sleeve. He’d always managed to lay evidence at others’ doors and keep suspicions from himself. They hadn’t learned his identity for a reason: because he knew how to keep the attention focused on his father rather than himself.

  “So why am I here?” She turned to Jordan rather than focusing the question on Milburn.

  Jordan leaned back in his chair as he turned to her, his hand lifting to allow his finger to stroke over his upper lip thoughtfully, a considering expression moving over his face.

  “You haven’t guessed?” he asked silkily, dangerously.

  “You want John back.” She wasn’t beating arou
nd the bush.

  His lips quirked in amusement. “I haven’t lost John,” he stated thoughtfully. “Are you under the impression I have?”

  Bailey could feel an edge of panic moving inside her now.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want you to walk away,” he stated carefully. “Go back to your life, however you intend to live it, and walk out of his life. Then, he’ll once again be effective. I’m afraid until you do so …”

  “You’re wasting your breath.” She came to her feet, fighting the anger that had begun to build inside her. “I don’t order John. I don’t tell him what to do, I don’t tell him how to live his life. That’s his decision.”

  He shook his head. “He relinquished that decision when I saved his life in Australia. When I saved yours,” he added. “You owe me, Ms. Serborne.”

  “I don’t owe you my soul,” she argued. “And neither does John.”

  “Sit down, Ms. Serborne,” he commanded, his tone hardening.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Learn how to take orders or you can learn just how powerful an enemy I can be.” He came out of his chair, dominating, commanding. Forceful. “We can do this one of two ways. You can join John in the life he signed up for, of which he now has seven years that he owes to the agency. Or you can learn to do without him for very long periods at a time. And I can do that.” He was in her face then, his gaze icy, steel-hard. “I can send him on missions that will hold him for a year at a time. I am not required to pander to his ego, his sex life, or his emotional promises to a woman. You want him, you can join him.”

  She stared back at him in shock. John had finally explained the agency to her. The Elite Ops, what they were, how he had joined, why he had joined. What they did. The idea of it had intrigued her, but she had never imagined this. Never thought this choice could come her way.

  “Join the team?” she asked carefully. “I could work with him? Not separate from him?”

  His nostrils flared as he straightened once again. “The two of you make a damned good team, and you’ve already fucked my life up by making yourselves a team. John Vincent is more than just a cover. He’s a connection, a pipeline into an underground force that we can’t afford to lose. You’ve already proven yourself as his partner. If you want to keep that position, then you damned well better learn to consider me not just your boss, your director, or your commander. Ms. Serborne, I’m your worst fucking nightmare.”