by Elle Kennedy
She implored the manager with her eyes, silently begging him not to reveal that they were total strangers. He must have heard the unspoken plea, because he kept his mouth shut, his lips tightening in a thin line.
Her captor shoved her to her knees beside the bank manager. “Sit down and shut up,” he said curtly.
She did both, and the masked man stalked off, leaving her with the group of fifteen ashen-faced hostages. The second he was gone, she assessed her surroundings and pinpointed the threats. Three gunmen remained in the lobby, two on opposite ends of the plate-glass window, one near the teller counter. All masked and armed with sawed-off shotguns.
The bulge at the small of her back was reassuring as hell, as were the two knives tucked inside her boots. But the fact that Sean had let her keep her gun meant he thought she might need to use it—and that was not at all reassuring.
God, he’d looked so ravaged back there. Tired and pale, as if this was the last thing he wanted to be doing tonight. And that told her she’d been right. Sean wasn’t a criminal. Somehow he’d been coerced into carrying out this heist.
“Who are you?”
The barely audible inquiry came from the manager beside her.
Bailey kept her gaze straight head, speaking as softly as he had, but not answering the question. “It’ll be okay. It’ll all be over soon.”
God, she hoped she wasn’t lying to him, but she didn’t think she was. Because she’d glimpsed something else in Sean’s eyes before, something other than desperation and exhaustion.
Determination.
He had a plan; she was certain of it. She just hoped it was a good one. You never knew with Sean, though. He was impulsive to the core, all snap decisions and rash actions without any prior thought.
She’d picked up on that recklessness the moment they’d met. Five years ago, when she’d first started working for Noelle. Bailey had taken one look at the cocky Irishman and known she’d wanted nothing to do with him. Oh, he’d been gorgeous back then, as gorgeous as he was now, with those dark green eyes and rumpled blond hair and the sexual confidence oozing from his pores. But looks meant nothing to her; they never had.
Sean had tried working the charm on her from second one, but Bailey had been immune to it. She knew from experience that charm could be deceiving. The charismatic ones always harbored the most secrets. They were the ones who hurt you the most if you let them, and so turning down Sean’s numerous hookup offers had been easy for her.
Turning down Oliver, though . . . not so easy. Sean’s twin was equally charming, but in an understated way. He was strong, dependable, and endearing, the kind of man you wanted to fall in love with. When he’d asked her out after she’d hit him up for information last year, she hadn’t been able to say no. One date had turned into two, then three, but no matter how badly Bailey had wanted to make a connection with Ollie, he’d felt more like a brother than a love interest.
Fortunately, Oliver had felt the same way, and their failed love connection had transformed into a friendship she valued. At least until Sean’s masquerade. After that, she hadn’t been able to look at Oliver without remembering her night with Sean.
“You’ve caused enough trouble for one evening.”
The irritated male voice penetrated Bailey’s muddled thoughts. She lifted her head in time to see the masked leader march into the lobby.
Holding a gun to Sean’s head.
Bailey immediately saw through the ploy. Sean was clearly feigning his fearful expression, because she knew damn well that the man wasn’t afraid of anything. Hell, that was his biggest problem—not being afraid. Diving headfirst into dangerous situations without any regard for the consequences.
Whatever Sean and his “accomplices” had come here for, Sean was now in possession of it. And the only way to get it out of the bank was for him to deliver it himself.
Sean the robber had become Sean the hostage.
“You wasted my goddamn time,” the gunman snapped. “And now you’re going to sit here like a good little lad and keep your mouth shut.”
Sean flinched as he was forcibly pushed to his knees, playing his part to a tee. He was breathing hard, his panicked gaze darting around the lobby like a pinball. In his khakis and sweatshirt, he looked like a terrified college student rather than the badass Bailey knew him to be.
Avoiding his captor’s harsh eyes, Sean settled next to Bailey, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. The Sean Reilly she knew didn’t exist at the moment. This Sean radiated weakness rather than power, and the transformation made her want to smile. Evidently he was a much better actor than she’d thought.
As the gunman marched off again, Bailey and Sean continued to stare straight ahead. She kept her gaze trained on the two men by the window. One of them suddenly made an abrupt move, taking off in a brisk walk toward the rear corridor. Voices spilled out into the lobby, laced with anger, rising in volume.
A moment later, a gunshot exploded in the air.
The sound was deafening, bouncing off the walls and mingling with the screams that erupted from the hostages. The remaining gunman at the window raced over to the frightened hostages, ordering them to shut up, waving his weapon around in a frantic attempt to calm the whimpering people. In the blink of an eye, another masked man burst into the lobby, sprinting to the window and raising his arms in the air as if trying to signal the cops beyond the glass to stand down. He held up the phone in his hand, gesturing wildly.
Bailey held her breath as silence crashed over the room. She studied Sean from the corner of her eye, saw the rigid set of his jaw, but he didn’t look over.
Every single hostage jerked when the phone suddenly rang.
The man at the window relaxed, his shoulders sagging with visible relief. Then he raised the phone to his ear, his boots slapping against the floor as he retreated to the back again.
Urgent murmuring wafted into the lobby. Bailey’s peripheral vision caught a muscle twitch in Sean’s jaw, but he remained expressionless. The air was thick with tension, which only deepened when the gunman returned, tailed by two other men, and signaled for the remaining robbers to join them. As the five men gathered in a tight huddle, Bailey used their distracted whispering to touch her earpiece.
“Rafe,” she murmured. “Abandon post. Request pickup.”
She felt Sean stiffen beside her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. Whatever was about to go down, she had to be ready. She and Rafe had already arranged for a rendezvous point if she needed one.
And it looked like she was about to need one.
“All right, on your feet, boys and girls.” The brusque order came from the man holding the cell phone.
When nobody moved, he let out a frustrated shout.
“Now!”
Everyone shot to their feet, Bailey and Sean included. God, just looking at the other hostages upset her. They were like a group of miners who’d been trapped underground for weeks. Swaying on their feet, pale and disoriented.
She donned the same petrified mask, trembling as she awaited further instructions.
The masked man pointed to the door. “Let’s go.”
Not a single person made a sound as the group headed for the entrance. The gunman unlocked the door, opened it, and hooked a thumb at the barricade on the street.
“Go,” he told them.
There was a split second of hesitation, and then the hostages ran out the door as if the room was on fire. Bailey was jostled, shoved out of the way, and almost knocked down as a dozen people streamed past her in a mad race for the street. Two police officers in full assault gear sprinted forward at the freed captives, urgently guiding people away from the bank.
“We need to clear the area,” a male voice barked. “Everybody move. Now.”
A hand landed on Bailey’s shoulder, ushering her toward the blockade of law enforcement vehicles. Someone urged her along, pushed her forward, and she lost sight of Sean amid the crowd. The other hostages were crying with
relief and stumbling to safety as half a dozen officers moved past them with military precision to form a line in front of the bank.
Where the hell was Sean?
She searched the faces around her, spotted him, and breathed in relief. Someone urged her through the line of crime scene tape, a young garda who swept his gaze over her as if assessing her for injuries.
“Are you all right, Miss?”
She quickly turned on the waterworks, blubbering incoherently as she threw herself into his arms. “Oh my God. It was so scary! I thought they would kill us!”
“It’s okay.” A hand awkwardly patted her head. “You’re safe now. You need to go to those ambulances over there. The people there will check you out and take your statement.”
Bailey nodded rapidly, feeling Sean on her six as she made a beeline for the ambulances. She didn’t dare to turn and look at him, but she sensed his urgency, knew they had to make a move before they reached the emergency vehicles.
They were ten yards away when Sean halted in his tracks. Bailey turned, saw his green eyes focus on the bank doors. The five robbers had just stepped outside. Their guns were lowered, but the way Sean’s shoulders stiffened, you’d think they were gunning down the police.
“Son of a bitch,” he mumbled under his breath, clearly seeing something Bailey wasn’t. “Damn it, Gallagher. No.”
A frown marred Bailey’s lips at the exact moment that all five men raised their weapons.
Shit.
Sean tried to take a step forward, but Bailey grabbed his arm, keeping him in place. “Don’t. You can’t—”
A gunshot cut her off, summoning a wild curse from Sean’s lips.
One of the men had fired. Nowhere near the Garda officers, as far as Bailey could tell, but she knew he hadn’t aimed to kill anyone.
Just to provoke.
And it worked. The police brigade opened fire as screams echoed in the night. The robbers’ bodies fell like bowling pins, their blood spilling onto the pavement as they jerked and twitched from chest and head wounds. As they died in a hail of bullets that made Bailey’s ears ring.
When the last body hit the ground, shocked silence crashed over the street.
“Bailey,” Sean murmured. Grim, stoic.
She snapped out of her horror. Nodded.
The two of them veered past the waiting ambulances and disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 5
Those crazy bastards. Bloody morons. Sean almost wished Gallagher and the others were still alive so he could murder them himself. They hadn’t needed to go out in a blaze of glory, damn it! They could have done their bloody time, trusted Rabbit to find a way to get them out.
But no, he supposed they couldn’t have. The Irish Dagger had too many enemies. A stretch in the Joy for a Dagger member was the equivalent of a death sentence.
Sean stared out the car window, too preoccupied to pay attention to the city scenery whizzing by him. Christ. How was he going to explain to Rabbit why five of his soldiers had died tonight?
And how the hell was he going to get rid of Bailey? He didn’t want her anywhere near this mess. It was too bloody dangerous, and Rabbit was too damn unpredictable.
She was in the passenger side of the sedan, sitting beside the dark-haired man who’d provided their pickup. Rafe. She’d introduced him as a colleague of hers, apparently trusting him enough to assist her, and damned if that didn’t spark a flash of jealousy. God knew she’d refused Sean’s help time and again. But obviously his woman was perfectly content letting a total stranger drive her getaway car.
She’s not your woman, mate.
His possessiveness over her was too much even for him. She was Oliver’s girl. Or at least she had been before Sean had swept in and screwed things up for them. He hated himself for what he’d done, and yet each time he thought back to that night . . . he didn’t regret it. He’d wanted Bailey for so long, and for that one night, she’d been his.
Which only made him an even bigger asshole. What kind of man went after his brother’s girl and didn’t fucking regret it?
“My flat is ten streets west of here.” Sean addressed the driver in a curt voice when he became aware of his surroundings. “You can drop me off there.”
Bailey twisted around in her seat, storm clouds darkening her eyes. “Are you kidding me? You’ve been giving me the silent treatment for twenty minutes and that’s the first thing you say? Drop me off at my flat?”
Sean set his jaw, responding with a cool look that only intensified her anger.
“I deserve an explanation,” she snapped. “I risked my life for you tonight.”
That triggered his own anger. “I didn’t bloody ask you to! You shouldn’t have come to Dublin.”
“God. You’re such a stubborn ass! You were in trouble.”
Maybe it made him a masochist, but he found her so damn attractive when she was fuming at him. Her eyes always went from gray to metallic silver, her fair skin taking on a red flush that made her come alive.
He’d wanted her from the second he’d met her, years ago in South America. She’d been on a job and needed information about her mark, and she’d looked so tiny and delicate during their first meeting that he’d wanted to yank her into his arms and never let go. Didn’t matter that she’d hated him on sight. Her standoffish attitude had been a challenge, triggering the urge to win over the elusive Bailey.
To make her his.
But he’d failed. Instead of warming up to him, she’d run straight into his brother’s arms.
“I was doing just fine before you showed up,” he muttered. “I got out of the bank, didn’t I?” He shot her a pointed look. “Without your help, I might add.”
“I don’t care that you got out! I care about why you went in!”
The next thing he knew, she’d unsnapped her seat belt and climbed into the backseat. The car hit a pothole just as she went to sit, and her hand landed on his thigh as she tried to steady herself.
Sean’s groin instantly stirred at the feel of her palm on his leg, his entire body flooding with heat. It should have been impossible, getting hard at a time like this, but Bailey had always evoked that response in him.
Seeing the look in his eyes, she snatched her hand back and settled in the seat next to him. “Why were you robbing that bank?” she demanded.
“Why else do people rob banks? For money.”
A genuine rush of laughter left her mouth. “You have more money than you’ll ever be able to spend. Lord knows you charge us an arm and a leg when we hit you up for intel. But fine, let’s pretend you needed the money. Where is it?” She swept her hand in the air in front of him. “Where’s your bucketload of cash, Sean?”
He stifled a groan. “The heist didn’t go as planned. We had to abort before we could get into the vault.”
“We, huh?” she echoed. “O’Hare’s foot soldiers, you mean. So, what, you’re suddenly back in the IRA?”
“The IRA no longer exists, luv. You should brush up on your Irish history.”
Another laugh, this one heavy with scorn. “Bullshit. We both know a new splinter faction pops up every other week. There might not be an official militant republican army anymore, but the IRA fucking exists. The Irish Dagger exists. And Eamon O’Hare is still leading it, same way he’s led it for decades.”
Sean gave up on contradicting her. It was no secret that Rabbit was, and remained, a staunch supporter of a united Ireland. Just like Sean’s father had been.
Colin Reilly had been heavily involved with the Dagger since his youth. He’d lived through the protests and riots in the seventies and eighties, witnessed the escalating violence. Hell, he’d contributed to that violence.
Shootings, bombings, and stabbings had been a daily occurrence in Sean’s life. He and Ollie had seen their father get stitched up in the back room of O’Hare’s Pub. They’d watched the Dagger members drink to successful bombings. Heard the men make plans to take down government officials or opponents of t
heir cause.
Sean had never understood what his father was fighting for. The Reillys were from Dublin, yet they were battling over the North, a place Sean had never even visited as a child. As he’d gotten older, he’d come to understand the politics behind it, but the cause hadn’t interested him and Ollie. They’d left Dublin to work as mercenaries, eventually becoming some of the most sought-out information dealers on the map, and neither one of them had looked back.
But the past had a funny way of dragging you back in.
“The question is,” Bailey went on, interrupting his thoughts, “why are you letting O’Hare call the shots again? You and Ollie quit being his errand boys a long time ago.”
He might have been touched that she’d gone to so much trouble to investigate his past, but he knew damn well she hadn’t done it out of curiosity. Bailey liked to know her enemies, and Sean had been placed squarely in that camp when he’d deceived her last year.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “We left his crew years ago.”
“Then why are you working for him again?”
“Who says I am?”
Frustration clouded her face. “Stop playing games with me. You may as well tell me the truth, because if you don’t, I’ll just get Paige to look into everything you’ve been doing this past week, and we both know Paige is very good at her job.”
Shit. The threat didn’t bounce off him the way most threats did. Paige Grant was good, and the last thing he wanted was her investigating his recent movements. He’d made too many little side trips that he didn’t want Bailey knowing about.
But Sean didn’t want her involved in this either. Rabbit was a dangerous man. Once upon a time he’d possessed some semblance of honor, but his actions of late proved that he wasn’t above using anyone he could to advance his agenda.
Still, Sean figured he could give her something. He’d learned a long time ago that the best lies were always rooted in truth.
“You win, luv. I’m working for Rabbit again.” He met her eyes. “Happy now?”
