After a while, when her shaking and sobbing had quieted somewhat, she felt the chest beneath her cheek exhale a long, slow breath. “What a pair we are, eh?” Roy said in R. J. Cassidy’s hoarse whisper. She felt his chin bump her temple as he shook his head, then heard, in pure Georgian: “When it comes to you, I haven’t got a lick o’ willpower, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
She lay quiet as understanding of what he’d just done came inside her like a warm and lovely fragrance. He’d known about her vulnerability. He’d known and had purposefully taken all responsibility for what had just happened onto himself. The sweetness of that was almost as devastating, in its way, as the violence that had come before, and new tears pooled warmly beneath her lashes as she said softly, “What am I gonna do with you?”
His lips touched her temple, along with a chuckle that was barely audible. Even so, she heard the pain in it and lifted her head to find his mouth with a soft kiss of acknowledgment and gratitude. Then he folded her once more into his arms and simply held her, stroking her…petting her, neither of them saying anything.
After a long while, though no words had passed between them, she turned her face up to his and he found her mouth and began to kiss her again, gently this time. Then, slowly, he deepened the kiss, and made love to her for a long, leisurely time, every touch unhurried and tender, sensual and erotic, until every cell in her body felt excited, exhilarated and alive, thankful that the darkness and devastation that had gone before had faded to an already half-forgotten memory.
Celia woke, disoriented, in semidarkness. The muscular chest that had been her pillow was heaving beneath her cheek, the once slow and steady heartbeat now quick and hard.
“What izzit?” she murmured sleepily as Roy eased her to one side and sat up.
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to figure out. Can’t you feel that? We’ve stopped.” He was on his feet, rummaging through the articles of clothing on the floor. He picked up something unidentifiable, stared at it, then tossed it aside and reached for the small overnighter that, still unpacked, held most of his clothes.
She watched him for a moment, propped on one elbow, then threw back the covers. Already half-dressed, he paused to throw her a look. “Where you going? Stay put. I’m just gonna go see what’s goin’ on.”
Celia rose to her feet, folded her arms on her chest and gave him a long, hard look. He looked back at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again. His shoulders sagged in surrender. “Okay, fine. Just…hurry it up.”
He dragged a hand through his hair and turned, preparing, Celia could tell, to pace with typical masculine impatience. She opened the closet-she’d unpacked her clothes-took out a dressing gown, slipped it on and was beside him, still belting it around her waist, before he’d completed a single circuit of the room. He said, “Huh,” and opened the door to allow her to precede him, which she did, regal as a duchess, after giving him a serene smile she hoped would hide the fact that she felt almost light-headed with excitement.
“It’s got to be on the other side,” Roy whispered as they hurried down the dimly lit passageway toward the main salon. From there, through the bank of windows that curved around the bow, they should be able to see most of the way along both sides of the yacht, though not, probably, all the way to the stern.
The salon was deserted, though, as elsewhere on the boat, lights had been left burning. Heart hammering, Celia paused to let Roy take the lead. She was close behind him as he stepped up to the windows, staying to one side behind the bank of open draperies.
“It’s a ship,” he whispered, shifting a little so she could look past him. “We’ve docked with it…they’re off-loading…something. Looks like we’re taking on cargo of some kind…”
Celia didn’t reply. Even with Roy’s warmth beside her she felt chilled as she watched the oceangoing ship’s huge dark shape rising and falling slowly only a few yards away, blotting out the stars…the flickering lights and shifting shadows going about their silent business.
“May I help you?”
The voice was quiet, courteous. Nevertheless, it sent a shock wave of adrenaline coursing through Celia’s body, and, she suspected, judging from the way the hand holding tightly to hers jerked at the sound, through Roy’s, too. Turning, she saw a man she recognized-one of Abby’s bodyguards-dressed now in casual slacks and a dark pullover. The salon’s warm, golden lamplight gleamed in his black hair.
“Uh, yeah, you could-” Roy began in a rasping voice, but Celia squeezed his hand hard, and her own voice, breathless and a little frightened, washed over his.
“Oh-yes! Please tell us-what’s going on? We-I couldn’t sleep, and I felt that we weren’t moving, and I thought…what’s happened? Is something wrong?”
The man’s teeth gleamed in the light. “Oh, no…nothing is wrong, I assure you. Far from it. We are simply taking on a few additional supplies. Nothing for you to be concerned about.”
“Supplies? What kind of supplies?” This, thankfully, was from a newcomer, as some of the other passengers had begun to wander into the salon, looking sleepy, disgruntled and curious, and not nearly as glamorous as they had the night before.
The spokesman glanced around at them, then gave a little bow and a shrug of resignation. “Ah. Prince Abdul will be disappointed. He had hoped to make this a big surprise. But…I suppose I must explain-perhaps you would keep it a secret from the other guests?”
“Oh, of course,” Celia breathed. Beside her, Roy’s body seemed to hum with tension.
The spokesman looked around, leaned forward and lowered his quiet but strangely staccato voice still further. “We have just taken on a very large selection of fireworks.”
“Fireworks!” someone exclaimed.
“Yes, yes-fireworks. For the New Year’s celebration. As I am sure you are aware, such fireworks are illegal in California. Which is why we are at the moment in the waters of Mexico.” The man’s teeth gleamed as he smiled.
“Ooh, how exciting-I can’t wait for tonight,” Celia gushed, giving a theatrical shiver. She threw a glance in Roy’s direction. “We won’t tell a soul-will we, darling?” She put out her hand and lightly touched the spokesman’s sleeve-and felt Roy give a violent jerk behind her. Breathless, her heart hammering, she ploughed on. “Thank you so much-I think I’ll be able to sleep now, don’t you, R.J.? ’Night, everyone…” Towing Roy behind her, she waltzed out of the salon.
Once in the passageway, she had to fight the urge to break into a run. The shakes hit her about the time they reached their stateroom door, and she handed the key card over to Roy and let him fit it into the slot.
“Fireworks!” she exploded softly as the door closed behind them. She turned to him, out of breath. “Do you believe him?”
He didn’t answer immediately, bending over instead to snatch up the jacket he’d been wearing the night before and toss it onto a chair. When he rounded on her, his smile was painful to see. “Right now, ’bout the only thing I know for sure is that’s the guy who shot me, and every time I get that close to him I get a powerful urge to kill him with my bare hands.” He dragged a hand over his hair and the awful smile disappeared.
He began to pace, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. “Fireworks? Could be… Most likely is, in fact. Question is whether that’s all that’s in those crates. And that is something I’m gonna have to find out.” He threw her a distracted glance. “Where’s your pocketbook? I’m gonna need those sensors. I’m figuring, once people start getting up, maybe while they’re serving breakfast…There’s enough confusion, comin’ and goin’, I should be able to slip down- What?” He halted, having just noticed she was shaking her head.
“No,” Celia said, folding her arms on her chest as she faced him, bracing for the objections she knew were coming. “Not you-it’ll be a lot less suspicious if I do it. I’m a woman-you know how we women are about getting lost.” She paused to roll her eyes. As if. “Besides-I’m an actress. I can play the ditzy blonde in my sleep. I
know how to take readings with those sensors-Max showed us both, remember? I’m the logical one to go. If they find me wandering around down in the hold, they’ll more than likely pat me on the head and send me on my way. You-all I can say is, remember what happened to you the last time you were caught doing that? I don’t even want-”
“You’re right.”
“-to think what they might…what did you say?”
He took a deep breath. “I said, you’re right. God…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…like you said, you’ve got the best chance to do it without raising suspicions. So…you’re the one who should go.”
Shock, love and happiness rushed through her like a gale-force wind, literally taking her breath away. Her voice was faint and airless as she asked, “You mean it?” He nodded, eyes steady and grave. She gazed at him for a long time, wondering whether anything in her life had ever meant as much to her as the fact that he trusted her to do this thing…this thing her life and his and millions more might depend on. Then she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her soft mouth against his grim one.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Roy was fairly certain nothing he’d ever done in his life-not counting surviving being shot and thrown into a dark ocean, of course-had been as hard as the hour he spent later that morning pacing in the confines of his stateroom, waiting for Celia to return from her mission.
He’d never been much of a worrier before. He’d been accused of being happy-go-lucky, but that didn’t seem quite the right way to describe his outlook on life, given the nature of his job and the inherent dangers and life-and-death choices involved. He’d just never wasted much time calculating odds and worrying about outcomes, put it that way. So maybe que sera, sera would have summed it up better. What happened, happened. When his number came up, he figured there wasn’t much he could do about it, no sense worrying about it ahead of time, right? Until it did, he intended to keep on making the best decisions he could, given the information available to him at the time, which was all anybody could do.
But now, here he was, all of a sudden pacing up and down in a box-size room, imagining every possible complication and every bad outcome in the book, and feeling helpless and frustrated because none of it was under his control. Worrying.
It was what came of working with a partner, he supposed. Worse, a partner he cared about-a lot. He wasn’t used to it. He’d always worked solo before. Kind of a lone wolf. Responsible to and for nobody but himself-and the mission, of course. That was the way he liked it.
He wished he could have made himself believe it was Celia’s civilian status, the fact that she was inexperienced and mostly untrained that had him so edgy. But he wasn’t in the habit of telling himself lies. He’d seen her in action enough these past few weeks that he’d come to have a healthy respect for her abilities. The truth was he knew he’d have worried about her even if she’d had the complete course of training all federal agents went through at Quantico.
And where in the hell had that notion come from?
He wasn’t going to have a chance to ponder the answer to that question, though, because right about then he heard the scrape of a key card in the lock. His heart jumped into his throat as Celia came through the door, looking calm and cool and absolutely normal, except for a little bit of pink in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. As if she were having fun, he thought. The time of her life, dammit.
“Well?” he growled, making an impatient “give it here” gesture toward the pocketbook she had looped over her shoulder.
“It went just like I told you it would,” she said as she slipped it off and handed it over, a triumphant smile creeping across her face. “They patted me on my head and sent me on my way. But I got close enough to the storage compartments, I think.” She bit down on her lower lip to contain the smile. “I told them I wanted to see the kitchen. Because I’m such an enthusiastic cook, you see.” Laughter spurted from her and she stifled it with her hand, as if she were ashamed of it.
The specially prepared suitcase lay on the bed. Working quickly and in silence, Roy opened the secret compartment and powered up the instruments hidden inside. He opened the handbag and carefully removed the sensitive monitoring devices from their hiding place. Silent, now, too, Celia watched over his shoulder as he bent over the suitcase, working his way through procedures practiced a hundred times. Nothing moved except his hands and the pulsing of his heart sending blood through his veins. He didn’t breathe…didn’t think Celia did, either. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his ribs. Tension sang in his ears, a high-pitched, nerve-wracking whine, like mosquitoes.
A few minutes later, he straightened and rubbed at his eyes with the fingers and thumb of one hand…maybe trying to erase the images that had been recorded there. He felt cold…cold all over. And sick. And scared.
He uttered a single syllable, blunt and sibilant and crude.
He flicked a glance at Celia and saw she’d gone deathly pale. He wondered if he looked the same.
“Radiation?” she whispered.
He nodded. Cleared his throat. Forced words through the block of ice in his chest. “Could be just radioactive materials, I guess, but given all the other factors-the chatter…the timing-I’m thinking it’s a dirty bomb. They brought it in with the fireworks, and they mean to set it off the same way. At midnight tonight. Happy New Year.”
“Dear God.”
“Yeah. Depending on how big it is, it’s almost a certainty they’d wipe out this boat and everybody on it, and probably a good bit of Catalina along with it. That by itself would make a helluva splash, but that’s not what they’re after. It’s the radiation cloud. With the onshore breeze…”
“I can’t believe Abby would do this,” Celia said, hugging herself, her voice tight and furious. “He loves-L.A.-Hollywood-the whole lifestyle. These people are his friends.”
“He might not know about it,” Roy said grimly. “Maybe he’s just the sacrificial lamb. From what I hear, he’s not exactly a role model in the radical fundamentalist world. Maybe they mean to take him out-punish him for his decadent lifestyle-at the same time they make their big statement. Who knows?”
While he talked, he took a laptop computer out of the suitcase and carried it to the small writing desk that was part of the room’s amenities. He’d recovered his equilibrium, a little. The shock was fading. His brain was beginning to function again. “Whatever they mean to do,” he went on as he connected the computer to the yacht’s power and fired it up, “our job is to keep ’em from doing it. Now we’ve got the evidence we need…just have to get this to…” He broke off, stared at the computer screen, tapped some keys, waited a moment, then uttered the same succinct and violent syllable.
“What?” Celia was beside him in an instant, breathless with dread.
He stared at her, paralyzing horror and helplessness creeping around his heart. “They’ve pulled the plug.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re in the middle of the flamin’ ocean. Our only means of communication is through the yacht’s satellite hookup…right? Guess they’re not taking any chances on lettin’ word of their little party get out, because they’ve cut it off. Shut it down. We’re dark,” he said grimly, beginning to pace again. “Incommunicado. Short of puttin’ a message in a bottle and pitchin’ it overboard, we’ve got no way to call in the cavalry.”
“A message in a bottle?” Celia was gazing past him, tapping her lips with a rose-tinted fingernail. “That could work.”
He stared at her openmouthed for several seconds, then snapped, “Come on, this is no joke.”
“No, wait-” She clutched his arm. “I’m serious. We’ve got the GPS thingies, right? I bet they’re small enough to fit into a champagne bottle. All we’d have to do is put in a note, cork it, and-”
“And these guys, who are paranoid enough they’ve shut down their own satellite communications, are just gonna stand there and let us throw it overboard?”
“They will if we stage it right,” Celia said, teeth pressing on her lower lip to subdue her smile. “Leave that to me. I told you, didn’t I, I’ve always wanted to write scripts?”
Powerful emotions filled his chest as he gazed at her, scowling-as if that would hide them. “I don’t know whether you’re a lunatic or a genius, you know that?” he said huskily.
“Neither one, actually,” she said, pink and breathless with something that looked impossibly like happiness. “It’s just…I told you-I have this imagination…”
An hour or so later, Celia and Roy joined the sunbathers drinking champagne and lounging around the spa on the stern deck. She carried a corked champagne bottle in one hand and a half-filled glass in the other; while in no way sloppy or obnoxious about it, as she greeted friends and acquaintances among the gathering it was obvious she’d already had quite a bit to drink.
When she reached the farthest aft part of the deck, she turned and propped her elbows on the railing, leaned back and shook her head so that the wind caught her hair. She lifted the glass and drained it, then held it out to R. J. Cassidy, who was, as always, patient and attentive at her side.
“Darlin’,” she cried gaily, waggling the champagne bottle at him, “I seem to be empty. Pour me some more, will you please?”
In a raspy voice that nevertheless carried to the nearest interested parties, R.J. responded, “I…think you’ve had about enough, don’t you? Here-why don’t you let me have that…”
As he held out his hand to take the bottle from her, Celia opened her mouth in outrage and gasped, “I have not. No-don’t you dare-” She snatched the bottle away from him and leaned backward over the railing, holding it high over her head, as if trying to keep it out of his reach.
Many interested eyes watched as his fingers closed around her wrist. Several people, including Celia, gasped as the bottle slipped from her hand and fell into the foaming wake. She whirled and stared at the bottle, now retreating rapidly behind them, then drew herself up like a duchess and said icily, “Well. I hope you’re satisfied.”
Undercover Mistress Page 24
