“Ollie and I said thanks but no thanks. Rabbit wasn’t happy, so he decided to force our hand by sending a couple of men to nab Ollie in London.”
“Why Ollie?”
Sean shrugged. “Probably because he was closer. But Rabbit knew that whichever one of us he grabbed, the
other would do anything Rabbit asked to save him. And the role of savior landed on me.” He took a step toward the door, keeping his body language casual.
“Rabbit threatened to kill Ollie if you didn’t rob a bank?” Bailey said warily.
“Yup.” He reached for the door handle. “So I robbed the bank, and I got what he wanted, and now Ollie is safe.” Sean’s fingers curled over the door handle. “So there you go, luv. I don’t need your help. Good seeing you again, though.”
He ducked inside so fast she had no time to respond, slamming the door and effectively locking Bailey out. The look on her face from the other side of the glass was almost comical. Shocked. Amazed. Outraged.
“You son of a bitch!” Her voice was muffled thanks to the barrier between them, but when she pounded her fist against the glass, the whole door shook in its frame as if an earthquake had hit the building. “Open the door! I mean it, Sean! If Ollie’s in danger, then I’m damn well going to help you!”
Sean’s heart squeezed as he stared at her. He knew she loved his brother, but goddamn it, didn’t she realize that Oliver would want to keep her safe? Shutting her out wasn’t just about sparing himself the pain and humiliation of being around a woman who couldn’t stand him. Sean knew his twin would kill him if he allowed Bailey to put herself in harm’s way.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly, moving away from the door.
“Sean! For fuck’s sake, come back here!”
With the regretful shake of his head, he turned on his heel and walked away.
* * *
Bailey stared at Sean’s retreating back in disbelief. The son of a bitch had locked her out. She’d come all the way
to Dublin to save his ass, and rather than show even a smidgen of appreciation,
he’d locked her out
.
Well, screw that. Screw his alpha male bullshit and his arrogance and his damn games. He always treated her like she was a fragile flower that would wilt and fall over from the slightest gust of wind. But she wasn’t. She was an undercover operative who could kill with her eyes closed and take down men twice her size without breaking a sweat.
And he thought a measly door was going to keep her out?
Bailey stared at the lock, tempted to pull out her gun and shoot her way in. But she was in a residential area at nine o’clock at night, and she knew better than to draw attention to herself or Sean.
She walked over to the keypad instead, gritting her teeth as she yanked the plastic cover off. She was fully aware of the security camera pointing directly at her, but she didn’t give a shit. In fact, she
hoped
Sean was already upstairs, watching her on some monitor so he could see that she hadn’t slunk away like he’d intended for her to do. Just in case he was, she flipped her middle finger at the camera, then got to work.
It was easy to find the correct wires. Easy to rub them together and short-circuit the unit. The moment the system was down, the lock released with a loud buzz, and Bailey stormed inside the building. She had no idea which apartment belonged to Sean, but any soldier worth his salt would stick to high ground if he could do so. Quicker access to the roof, clearer visuals of the neighborhood.
She hurried into the stairwell and ran up four flights, bursting through the metal door in the landing onto a corridor with weathered hardwood floors. The hall was
deserted, but she knew Sean had been there. She could smell the faint trace of his aftershave in the air, that familiar scent of spice and sandalwood, the heady, masculine fragrance she’d breathed in when he’d moved inside her. When he’d thrust into her, over and over again, summoning pleasure she’d hated herself for feeling.
There was only one door in the hall, all the way at the other end. She raced toward it, but the door was locked when she turned the knob.
Fuck that.
She didn’t bother reaching into her pocket for a hairpin to pick the lock. This time she used her gun. Aimed the silenced pistol at the doorknob and blew the motherfucker right off.
When she stalked into the loft, she found Sean leaning against an exposed beam near the door, a resigned look in his eyes.
“Screw you,” she said darkly. “Did you really think you’d get rid of me that easily?”
“It was worth a try.” His displeased gaze shifted to the door. “Did you really have to shoot it?”
“Damn right I did. It was either the doorknob or you, and we need you alive if we’re going to rescue Oliver.”
At the thought of Oliver, Bailey’s entire body clenched with unhappiness. God, why was
he
the Reilly brother Eamon O’Hare had decided to abduct?
Sean
was the pain in the ass.
She definitely didn’t buy Sean’s assertion that his former boss had chosen Ollie out of convenience. If O’Hare knew the Reilly brothers half as well as Bailey did, then he was well aware that Sean Reilly was the deadlier of the twins. The one with a higher tolerance for bloodshed and deception, the one who’d undertake any mission, no matter how dangerous.
Well, there was no way she was allowing Sean’s recklessness to lead to some Irish gangster killing Oliver.
From what Bailey knew about O’Hare, the man wouldn’t hesitate to harm Ollie. Although O’Hare’s group was officially called the New Republicans, its unofficial Irish Dagger moniker apparently stemmed from Rabbit’s penchant for gutting his enemies with a blade.
“You know, you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Sean grumbled.
“Damn straight. And I’m not going anywhere, so deal with it.” She scowled. “What’s on the flash drive?”
He shrugged. “No clue.”
“You haven’t checked it yet?”
“I was just about to before you shot up my door,” he said pointedly.
But he didn’t seem concerned that anyone could walk in now, and Bailey understood why when she noticed the security monitors on the wall behind him. More than a dozen of them, displaying both the interior and exterior of the building. Sean had been able to watch her coming up, step by step, from the lobby to the stairwell to his door. Beneath the screens was a row of file cabinets spanning the entire back wall of the loft.
Bailey gave the rest of the place a cursory examination. Small kitchen, unmade futon bed across the room, leather sofa in the center, and a heavy punching bag dangling from the ceiling in the corner. Then she glanced back at the file cabinets, cocking her head at Sean. “Well, aren’t you old-school.”
“Ollie and I keep hard copies of every piece of intelligence we gather. We have dossiers on thousands of people.” He waved an absent hand at the cabinets as he strode toward the adjacent wall, which featured a computer setup that rivaled Paige’s.
Bailey studied the array of laptops and equipment on
the long desk, then shifted her gaze to the numerous world and city maps pasted on the wall. Red and green thumbtacks marked various areas on the maps, but she didn’t ask what the colors stood for. People, she assumed. Operatives, spooks, criminals. Sean and Oliver knew a lot of people—and a lot of dirty secrets. They were intelligence magicians, producing data out of thin air, and Bailey had no trouble seeing why even the most secretive sorts were so willing to spill their guts to the Reilly brothers. They used their charm to lure information from unsuspecting marks, and if they ever needed to apply some pressure, the twins had the good cop/bad cop routine mastered.
Her gaze flicked back to the file cabinets. “Is there a dossier on me in there?” she asked, but she already knew the answer to that. For years Sean had been bragging about having a file on her.
“Yes sirree. I dare you to try and get it.” He flashed a cocky smile.
Curiosity had her wandering over to the nearest cabinet, and she examined it closely as Sean settled on his leather desk chair and booted up one of the computers.
To Bailey’s annoyance, the file cabinets were locked. And couldn’t be
un
locked, not with a key anyway. Opening them required both a security code and a fingerprint on the electronic panel.
“Asshole,” she muttered.
Sean glanced over with another grin. “I’ll open it for you myself,” he offered mockingly. “
If
you fill in the blanks in the file. I couldn’t find a lick of intel on you before the age of eighteen.”
Inwardly, she felt relief—the Reilly brothers were good at their jobs, and a part of her had always worried they might have uncovered her past. Outwardly, she gave him a saccharine-sweet smile. “That’s because there is no
intel. I’m a ghost, remember? I didn’t exist then, and I don’t exist now.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Bailey isn’t your real name.”
“Give the man a gold star.”
His irritation only seemed to grow, but the computer screen came to life at that moment, distracting him from grilling her further. He slipped the flash drive into the USB port, waited, then clicked the track pad.
Her dossier all but forgotten, Bailey quickly joined him at the desk. Sean’s shoulders tensed when she came up behind him, but he didn’t turn around. His handsome profile revealed intense concentration as he stared at the screen.
“All right, let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”
“We?” she said, unable to contain her triumphant tone. “Ha! I see you’ve accepted that we’re working together.”
“Not one bloody bit,” he said cheerfully. “But I’ll get rid of you soon enough.”
“Dream on. I’m helping you get Oliver back whether you want me to or not.”
“Right. You’re here to rescue Oliver.”
She couldn’t decipher the odd note in his tone. Not sarcasm, not even anger. Envy, maybe? But that didn’t make any sense to her. He had no reason to be jealous of Oliver. He’d all but torpedoed their friendship by what he’d done.
“Because you’d do anything for my twin, won’t you, luv?” Sean taunted.
“Yes.”
“Well, so would I, and I know Oliver wouldn’t want you involved in—” Sean hissed out a breath when a folder popped open on the screen.
Bailey leaned over his shoulder to get a better look,
her pulse speeding up when she inhaled his masculine scent. She ignored it, focusing on the computer monitor instead.
Dozens of icons appeared in the folder, subfolders that were organized alphabetically. Bailey furrowed her brow. She recognized several of the names and she’d barely made it halfway through the A section. How many other significant people were on this drive?
Cursing, Sean clicked on the most recognizable A name on the list—Georges Amirault.
The prime minister of France.
“Bloody hell,” Sean mumbled.
Amirault’s folder contained rows and rows of photographs, along with several videos. Sean clicked on a photo, and Bailey’s eyebrows soared when an obscene image filled the screen. The picture showed Amirault stretched out on a canopy bed, his face visible and his features contorted with passion as a woman performed fellatio on him.
A woman that was most definitely
not
his wife, Lena, whose philanthropy and environmental activism had made her beloved in France.
“I guess we’ve found someone’s little black book of filth,” Sean said flatly.
He closed the Amirault file and opened another one, this one belonging to a prominent US senator. The video Sean clicked on was less than a minute long—and it showed the right-wing, Bible-thumping senator having sex with a man.
“Blackmail materials,” Bailey said, revolted. She moved her gaze off the lewd images on the screen. “There’s a scary amount of influential people on this list. Do you think all the files are as dirty as these?”
“Oh yeah.” Sean opened another folder, and a second
later they were staring at a well-known European drug activist smoking crack.
Every file was just as damaging—the data was explosive, to say the least. Career ending in almost every case, and at least half were enough to send someone to prison. The men and women in those files would probably do anything to keep the information from getting out.
“Think these are O’Hare’s files?” she asked.
“No. Rabbit doesn’t have this kind of reach,” Sean said grimly. “And his organization would’ve grown exponentially if he’d used any of this shit. He would’ve been able to expand his smuggling routes, increase his profits. He could’ve forced any of these politicians to throw their support into his cause.”
“Whose are they, then?”
Sean went back to the Amirault file and began scrolling through the photographs of the prime minister with the unnamed woman. He enlarged one of the pictures, a shot that showed Amirault entering a skinny town house with black shutters.
With a sigh, Sean ran his finger over the house’s narrow front door. “That’s one of Ronan Flannery’s brothels.”
Ronan Flannery. Bailey had been around long enough to have heard that name before. Hard not to, considering the man ran one of the most profitable criminal empires in Europe and the UK. According to her sources, drug smuggling was Flannery’s bread and butter, but he also dabbled in prostitution, loan sharking, and other shady activities similar to the rackets Eamon O’Hare ran. Except while O’Hare’s power was isolated to Ireland, Flannery’s was a global empire.
She wrinkled her nose as she stared at the town house in the photo. “How do you know that’s Flannery’s brothel?”
“Because I’ve been there.”
She couldn’t stop the bite in her tone. “A frequent visitor to whorehouses, are you?”
“It was for business purposes only.” He twisted his head to smirk at her. “Would you be jealous if it was for
non
business reasons?”
“Nope.”
One dark blond eyebrow cocked up. “You sure about that?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” She broke the eye contact, refusing to let him see that he had, in fact, rattled her.
Sean closed the drive and popped it out of its slot, then placed it next to the computer keyboard. “Well, it makes sense why Rabbit would want to get his hands on this,” he remarked, right back to business. “What do you know about Rabbit’s history with Flannery?”