by Abigail Roux
Ty stared at it, listening to the words in his ear. He could catch certain words and phrases of the garbled recording, enough to pinpoint the language as Italian and enough to recognize it as a conversation, not a lecture or book being read. He also recognized that it wasn’t a studio recording. It sounded very much like the result of a bug placed close to a person speaking.
Ty’s body went cold as he realized what he’d found.
“Shit,” he drew out slowly. He stopped the track and pulled the ear bud out of his ear. These were wire taps. These were professional-grade wire taps on Del Porter’s iPod. How did the office miss this? He turned the glasses over in his hand again and snapped one of the legs off, not really surprised when he found a thin wire snaking through the plastic. He shook the hollow arm and a flat receiver roughly the size of a dime fell into his palm.
“Shit,” he said again.
He squinted at the mechanism. He didn’t recognize the model, which meant it wasn’t American, Russian, or British.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Del Porter wasn’t who they thought he was. The Bureau had nabbed somebody else’s informant. And whoever was behind Del Porter’s spying probably knew Ty and Zane’s secret as well.
TY STEPPED into the ornate casino room and looked around quickly, searching out Zane or any of the other members of the team who might have been hanging around. Where the hell were all the nosy support personnel when they were needed? Ty still hadn’t spotted a single one of them.
He moved through the crowd slowly, seeking his partner amid the throng of gamblers, but he knew the poker game wouldn’t be out here. The ship-run games and tables were a joke, so the high rollers who had come to play had claimed a private room for hosting their own evening “tournaments.” Ty scanned the back walls over the gaming tables, finally seeing a door behind a strategically placed decorative screen. It was possibly a staff entrance, but more than likely it was the private room that played host to all the whales.
He made his way toward it, the little iPod held tightly in his hand, hidden inside his pocket. Zane had their only gun, and Ty hadn’t even grabbed a knife for fear of not being able to conceal the weapon well, and he felt naked as he moved through the crowd.
He stepped behind the screen to find an intimate, richly decorated room with a private bar and six draped tables. He stopped at the entrance, looking for Zane eagerly. If they could get what was on that iPod to someone who could speak the language, it might be enough for them to end this assignment tonight. Not only that, but the possibility that Del was an informant might be enough to make the FBI pull him and Zane completely off this goat rope. They could be screwing around in a foreign entity’s investigation, and the Bureau hated sticky political messes.
Most of all, though, Ty was concerned that whoever Del was reporting to might be on board with them and may have already made him and Zane as frauds.
He spotted Zane, sitting with his back to the entrance at one of the closer tables. Ty shook his head. Zane must have been the last one to arrive to settle for sitting there, facing the wall. Ty moved slowly, circling around a little so Zane would see him approach in his peripheral vision.
Zane was sitting back, relaxed in his chair, mostly sideways to the table, legs crossed primly as he’d taken to doing when acting as Corbin. There was the faintest of cold smiles on his lips, but his dark eyes were hooded and blank. The look was intensified by his now standard all-black suit ensemble. He held a snifter of something that was a rich caramel color in the hand away from the table—the other men had glasses as well, and the bottle was there on the table. There was a decent amount of chips stacked in front of him. If he saw Ty, Zane gave no sign of it as he watched Vartan Armen, who was considering his own cards.
Ty slowed, looking around the table. He’d never had occasion to play poker with Zane, but he could imagine his partner was good at it. He was a hard man to read and almost obsessively observant of small details. He continued to move closer, carefully coming up on Zane, hoping he looked suitably embarrassed to be interrupting.
He put a hand on Zane’s shoulder, letting it slide up to his neck as he bent next to him. Both Armen and Bianchi looked up at him, as did the two other men at the table, but Zane didn’t acknowledge him.
Ty waited a moment, watching the other players. Armen frowned a bit under Zane’s scrutiny and looked at the stacks of chips in the center of the table. Each chip was labeled as $1,000—and there were a lot of chips out there. Armen smiled, set down his cards, and added two more even stacks of chips to the pile.
Ty watched the game briefly. If it had been Zane’s money, he might have waited, but it wasn’t, and Ty’s hair was blond until they could get out of here. He put his mouth closer to Zane’s ear and whispered, “I need to talk to you.”
Zane’s attention had transferred to the next man around the table, who had just as much a poker face as Zane. “Not now, doll,” Zane drawled as he set down his glass in front of him.
Ty blinked at him in surprise. He looked down at the cards in his hand and then over at the other men at the table. He had a fair hand, but nothing worth writing home about. His eyes strayed to the glass on the table near Zane’s chips. It was nearly empty, and Zane certainly smelled of alcohol. Ty let his hand slide over the back of Zane’s neck, looking up at him as he put his other hand on Zane’s thigh and squeezed.
“It’s important,” he insisted, the accent feeling strange on his tongue as he tried to convey just how important this might be.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Zane replied easily, nodding as the man across the table folded. The next gentleman, an older man wearing a finely tailored smoking jacket, tapped his chips on the table idly as he considered his cards. Zane would be next, if he hadn’t started the betting.
Ty didn’t care about the game, though. He stared at Zane, willing him to look up. In his pocket was possibly their plane ticket home, or more probably a bull’s-eye painted on Ty’s back, and Zane wouldn’t even look at him? Ty fought not to grit his teeth as he dug his fingers harder into Zane’s thigh.
“Darling,” he said pointedly, hating the polite accent and the fact that even cursing made him sound like he was sitting at tea with the Queen.
Zane’s head tipped to one side, and he laid his cards on the table face down. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’ll be right back,” he said pleasantly. And he was out of the chair, yanking Ty up by his upper arm and marching him the fifteen feet over to the door.
“Don’t tell me you’ve run across something you can’t handle,” Zane growled, a clear note of annoyance in his voice.
“Not exactly, but—”
“Then go handle it. Armen, Bianchi, and I are talking business between rounds, and I won’t be distracted. I’ll deal with you later.” With that, he gave Ty’s arm a slight shove, turned his back, straightened his jacket, and strolled back to the table, retaking his seat smoothly without a glance back. The men at his table similarly ignored Ty.
Ty watched his partner go, struck speechless by his careless dismissal. He thought briefly about following him back to the table and kicking his ass, or at least announcing the cards Zane held in his hand, but the urge passed as he convinced himself their cover was more important.
As he stared at the table, he saw Armen throw down his cards with a sniff and Zane rake in the chips, stacking them as he toasted the table with his glass before taking a drink. Bianchi laughed merrily, wagging his finger at Armen before lifting the bottle and starting to refill the glasses.
Ty clenched his jaw, anger welling inside him at the sight of the expensive bottle of Scotch. He turned on his heel to leave the room before he got any angrier. He didn’t need his partner’s help to get something done on this fucking ship. All he had to do was head to the computer center and a nice private corner to tap into the secure server, call it in, and inform someone back home of what he’d found. He’d have a translation of the wire taps by morning, and when Zane came stumbling in from his poker
party, Ty would tell him all about it then.
He stalked through the casino, pushing through the crowd as he muttered to himself in the British accent he was beginning to hate. He’d just barely stepped out of the casino into the causeway when he was grabbed from the side and pushed with a hand that gripped his elbow tightly.
Another man came up on his other side as the two strangers flanked him, marching him toward one of the doors that would lead to an outside deck.
Ty didn’t protest. He remained calm and forced himself to wait until the situation clarified itself. The moment he saw a weapon he’d be breaking bones, though.
“Taci e vieni con noi,” one of the men said to him under his breath.
More Italian. Ty didn’t understand it, but he was fairly certain the man had just told him to keep his mouth shut and move. The tone was pretty much universal.
They pushed through the exit doors and out onto the deck, where the spray from the sea and the wind assaulted their senses and blew their ties into their faces. Ty almost took the opportunity to break away from them. He even flinched in preparation of the attempt, but he stopped himself. Whatever this was, it had to do with Del Porter, and that was who Ty was right then. Del Porter wouldn’t leave these men bleeding on the decks, and Ty wouldn’t either, if he could help it.
The grip on his arms tightened, and the two men led him to the left, toward one of the lesser-traveled causeways on that deck.
They finally released him once there was really nowhere to run, shoving him toward the railing. Ty stumbled toward it, gripping the slick wood before turning around to look at them warily.
“Che cazzo stai facendo?” one of them demanded.
Ty leaned forward slightly, as if listening closer might actually make him understand the foreign language. It was definitely Italian. Which was fucking awesome, because Ty still didn’t speak Italian. Dolce and Gabbana here could threaten him all day long. He still wouldn’t understand what they were saying.
“I don’t….” Ty shook his head helplessly, just barely remembering his own fake accent.
“Do not play stupid with us,” the second man said irritably. He had thin brown hair and a sickly complexion, as if the sea didn’t agree with him. Ty had seen it before. “Why did you miss the meeting?” Gabbana demanded.
Ty blinked at him rapidly, his mind whirring as he tried to decide how to play this. He had no idea who they were or what they were talking about, and sometimes the best thing to do was just… play dumb.
The first man rolled his eyes and reached into his cheap suit, extracting a small Berretta and stepping forward to shove it into Ty’s stomach. His other hand held Ty’s shoulder as he spoke to him in low tones. “You will not fuck around with us, chiaro?”
“I understand,” Ty answered hoarsely with a jerky nod. The muzzle of the gun dug further into his ribcage, and he winced as his hands gripped the railing behind him. The wind was much stronger here by the edge, and it whipped at Dolce’s black hair and tugged at the sleeves of Ty’s thin shirt.
“Where is the information you were to bring us?” Gabbana asked in a bored voice.
“Information,” Ty repeated as he shook his head. Of course they wanted information. This was exactly what Ty had been worried about: Del’s handlers coming to collect. At least they didn’t seem to know Del Porter personally. Ty wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing for him.
The man with the gun pushed into Ty hard, using the leverage and the height of the railing to lift Ty’s feet off the deck and push him backward. Ty gasped and gripped the railing harder, reaching with his other to grab onto the lapel of Dolce’s suit.
He was beginning to think his cover wasn’t worth the effort.
“The tapes, frocio,” Dolce whispered into his ear. Whatever that word meant, Ty knew he didn’t like the connotation.
“Tapes,” Ty repeated breathlessly. His toes just barely brushed the wood of the deck, and his fingers wound into Dolce’s tie. If he went over the edge, he wouldn’t go alone. He briefly wondered if Italian loafers could be used as flotation devices, but then the man put more pressure against his ribs, shoving him even farther backward, and Ty gripped the polyester tie tightly. “Tapes,” he said again quickly. They had to be talking about the recordings he’d heard on the iPod. “They’re in our cabin,” he told them quickly. If he didn’t get his feet on the ground soon, he was going to tear them both apart, cover be damned. He was getting seasick.
Gabbana reached out and backhanded him, hard enough that Ty felt blood trickle down his chin from his newly split lip, and then the man pulled a gun and blatantly shoved it at Ty’s face. Ty felt his heart rate pick up even more, the adrenaline making him a little lightheaded as his upper body hung out over the open sea below. Of course, if the guy shot him in the face, it wouldn’t really matter how far the drop was.
Gabbana’s gun pressed against his cheek, and Ty didn’t try to regulate his reaction, his breathing becoming harsher. Del Porter would be scared shitless, right? Well, Ty figured he was doing that pretty well right about now. Two guns were hard to contest no matter how much ass you could kick.
“You had better hope they are closer than your cabin,” Gabbana said quietly. His gun moved until it was in Ty’s mouth, scraping against his teeth and sending a horrible shiver up and down his spine, like nails on a chalkboard. The man’s dead fish eyes didn’t give much away, and Ty believed he just might pull that trigger. He nodded against the gun, and the man pulled it back just enough for Ty to speak.
“In my pocket,” he said, cursing himself for handing over the one piece of information that might have been worth anything to them so far.
Dolce released his shoulder, and Ty felt himself waver. The railing was thick enough to stop him, though, and his feet hit the deck with a thump as the man dug into his pocket for the iPod. When Dolce pulled it out, the two men backed away, letting Ty’s knees go weak. Again.
“Do not forget who you are working for,” Gabbana said as he slid his weapon back into the folds of his coat. Ty resisted the urge to ask the man to remind him.
“We shall be in touch,” Dolce said almost cordially, and then the two men turned and left him alone, slumped at the railing and breathing hard. He put his hand to his lip, wiped blood away from it, and looked down at it on his fingers.
“I hate this fucking case,” he murmured to himself.
A GOOD two hours after Ty’s interruption, Zane tucked a credit slip for a modest amount of money into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He’d pretty much broken even at the table with Armen, Bianchi, and two other high rollers on vacation, staying enough to the positive that he’d not been able to shoehorn in an excuse to leave until now.
He’d used the time to study his supposed business partners, looking for tells and nervous twitches, tracking how much they won and how much they lost. Bianchi was eternally jovial and content, a personality quirk that almost took its toll on Zane’s patience. Armen was quite the opposite, approaching somber, even after winning a hand. He was not delightful company.
Zane knew Armen had been watching him carefully; he’d been particularly attentive when Ty had shown up. Zane had been on a roll at the point, having won three hands in a row, and a whining spouse seeking attention simply wouldn’t register as important to a high roller.
Despite his show otherwise, the problem had registered with Zane after the fact. Ty just didn’t get that agitated without reason. But Zane had not been concerned until after he’d summarily dismissed Ty. At the time, he’d been more focused on the job, on getting Bianchi or Armen to talk about themselves or their mutual business than he had been on his partner’s state of mind.
So now he walked out of the casino, forcing himself to make his way casually back to their cabin as he grew more and more worried. The warmth of the expensive Scotch lapped through him, making everything around him false and bright. Zane had nursed the first glass as long as he could, but there had been a second, and a third, an
d then it had been too late. He could still taste it now, the burn of the ultra-premium liquor on his tongue and at the back of his throat.
Seeing Ty had gotten Zane’s attention, and he’d consciously stopped emptying his glass. But it had been long enough since his last fall from grace that his tolerance had suffered. He knew how to operate under the influence in the line of duty; it just couldn’t be avoided in the alcohol-soaked underworld. He’d already slipped into that cold and detached state of mind before Ty had arrived, and Zane hadn’t even recognized it. It was like sliding on an old, comfortable disguise, and remembering Ty’s earlier words about his drinking, Zane was worried now.
Even through the worry, Zane felt the relief and succor of the alcohol, the allure that welcomed him, called to him. In the past, alcohol had given him an edge, and it still burned in him, allowed him to slough off the nerves and distractions and brought the most important things into focus. Zane knew himself when he was deep into the drink while undercover. He’d spent too many years living it not to appreciate it. He’d also learned how destructive it could be. How destructive he could be under the influence.
The concern for Ty ate at him as he left the promenade, rode up the elevator, and entered the hallway leading to their stateroom. Zane had thought at the time he was handling the situation the right way; now he wasn’t so sure.
When Zane entered their cabin, he found the place entirely upended. His heart skipped a few beats, and instinctively he dug under his shirt at the small of his back and drew his gun. He shut the door without a sound and silently made his way into the dimly lit room. Suitcases lay turned upside down and emptied, their possessions scattered all over the floor. The mattress was hanging off the bed and still cocked sideways, the bedcovers a shambles. The pillows of the couches littered the floor, and the doors to the balcony stood open. Either Ty had thrown a temper tantrum, or they had a problem they hadn’t expected. Zane was inclined to choose option A, remembering the look on Ty’s face when Zane had turned his back on him.
