Imagine (Black Raven Book 4)

by Stella Barcelona

  Fuck. I was delusional. Until right goddamn now.

  “Ling Wen’s playing craps,” Leo whispered. “Two tables down.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Ace had spotted Wen entering the casino with his wife and four personal, Tier Two bodyguards. Wen was one of the top five wealthiest men in the world and the wealthiest man in China. He had an assortment of businesses, including weapons manufacturing and shipbuilding. A high-stakes gambler, he was coveted by casinos.

  Imagine had been built in one of Wen’s shipyards. His appearance on the ship’s inaugural cruise had drawn other noteworthy gamblers to the tournament, making the cruise the hottest place to be in the gambling world.

  A young looking sixty-two, with only a bit of gray in his dark hair, Wen had attained celebrity status in Beijing and beyond due to his spearheading of reforms in Chinese law that governed philanthropic giving. The new laws had paved the way for China’s wealthy to fund charities. Wen had personally funded a scholarship program that now eased the way for millions to attend college. Wen and his wife, May, were both HUG clients with K & R coverage.

  Even without the aura that came from being unimaginably wealthy, Ling and May Wen were an eye-grabbing couple. Ling was conservatively understated in a custom-tailored suit. With a shrewd, focused gaze, he had a way of looking people in the eye that was disarming. That gaze, coupled with his thoughtful smile, created a charisma that was riveting.

  May, a bit younger than her husband, wore a deep-v cut, blood red, silky dress that skimmed her slender body. Pursing lipstick-colored lips that matched her dress, she kissed her husband on the lips. Before Ling Wen threw the dice, his dark brown eyes rested briefly on Ace. He gave Ace a slight nod.

  “She’s beautiful. Right?”

  Leo’s comment came as dealers announced that Ling Wen’s roll resulted in a ten. While gamblers at their table erupted into a celebratory chorus, Ace almost said, ‘she’s got nothing on you.’

  Instead, he managed to mumble, “Smoking hot.”

  Leo rolled her eyes, then turned to face the table. Her halter dress was backless, save for leather strings at her neck and waist. It was bad enough to look at the way the mesh hugged her breasts, but it was even worse to see the bare skin of her toned back. She worked out regularly, and it showed. Somewhere along the way, as in right-fucking-now, Ace had apparently developed a sex-oriented thing for every square inch of his best friend. Even her shoulder blades. Her ass, which glided along his hip as she leaned over to push a rack of chips across the table, was also a turn-on.

  To the dealer, Leo said, “A hard eight.”

  Her naturally breathy tone, the equivalent of testosterone fuel enhancer, carried a suggestion that she was talking about something far different than a pair of fours materializing with the roll of dice. He held back a groan.

  Ace wasn’t the only one who noticed the all-out sexiness in her voice. Across the table, Ace watched Randy Howell, originally of Seattle but now with homes around the world, glance Leo’s way. Howell was a forty-nine-year-old tech entrepreneur, whose fortune was subject to success or failure of the businesses in which he chose to invest. He’d gotten an early start in video-gaming innovations. He had a head full of dark hair that was graying slightly at the temples. With his gaze resting on Leo, he pushed a tall stack of chips towards the dealer. His fiancée—Miranda Lake, a willowy blonde, from Iowa—saw where Howell was looking. She frowned. She moved closer to Howell. He gave his fiancée a kiss, even as his gaze slid back to Leo.

  While players continued to call their bets, and push tall stacks of chips towards the dealers, Leo whispered, low, so that no one would hear it, “This is a lot of money. Holy crap. Are you seeing what’s on this table?”

  “Yeah.” But he wasn’t counting chips. Howell was now staring at Leo—and not just her face. Through square, black-rimmed eye-glasses, Howell’s gaze was locked onto Leo’s cleavage. Ace had seen most of Leo. In bathing suits. In exercise gear. They’d even changed at the beach, in a car. He knew how perfect her perky breasts were. What he couldn’t understand was why her breasts had never been a turn on for him before, because Howell was apparently figuring it out with clothes covering her and without even knowing her. Jealousy surged within Ace as he watched the man lick his lips.

  Funny thing was—he wasn’t the jealous type. At least he never had been.

  Son of a bitch, but this is a day of firsts.

  “Going for a walk,” he mumbled.

  Leo nodded as he turned from the craps table, her attention focused on the action in the playing pit in front of her, as James Ye lifted his hand in preparation to throw the dice once again.

  She’s working. So am I. Remember that.

  As Ace turned, he almost bumped into Black Raven Agent Amy Ryan, who dodged him without spilling any of the cocktails that were crowded onto her silver platter.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not a problem,” Ryan answered, with a dazzling smile that didn’t quite match the focused look in her eyes. She’d had three years in the Navy. Four years in Black Raven. Specializing in cyber support in fieldwork, Amy Ryan was Leo’s backup for the job. This was her first day ever as a cocktail waitress. She didn’t normally wear six-inch heels, fishnet stockings, green-velvet micro shorts, and a gold halter that revealed cleavage, but she was doing it well.

  He gave Ryan a nod of encouragement, then strode down the center of the casino, past Agent Paul Stills, who was undercover as a casino host. Under the team’s hierarchy established by Zeus, Ace was Stills’ backup. Stills, like Ace and many Black Raven agents, had prior military experience. The relative qualifications of Ace and Stills made them almost an equal match. Equal—but for the small piece of Ace’s history with the Marines that started with an epic ambush and included death, destruction, revenge, heartache, and Ace’s long struggle with post-traumatic stress.

  Stills glanced at Ace, gave a slight nod, then refocused on the two guests to whom he was speaking. Eighteen of HUG’s clients were currently in the casino, and Agent Stills was talking to two of them—the Blackwells, Nina and Todd, from Texas. Their fortune came from land, oil, and shipping. Todd Blackwell’s luck at the gaming tables was legendary. He was fifty-five. She was forty-five, with an easy smile. She flashed her smile at Ace as Stills finished their conversation with them and Ace walked by her.

  Gamblers were playing to win not only a fortune, but also expensive toys and gambling-world prestige symbolized by an obnoxiously large Baccarat crystal vase depicting the nine muses of Greek mythology. Imagine Casinos was treating the hunk of glass with the lofty symbolism of the Lombardi trophy. The vase was on Ace’s left, perched high on a black marble pedestal in the center of the casino, lit by floodlights and spotlights that made the glass glitter with a kaleidoscope of colors.

  “Omega. Status?” Stills’ voice crackled through the comm system.

  As Ace made his way through the crowded casino, Ace touched his watch, turning down the volume slightly. The Black Raven comm system used state-of-the-art, inner ear implants that picked up audio that was inaudible to the human ear. The implants were a combined receiver and transmitter. Gone were the days of having to wear a mic anywhere near the mouth, as the implant transmitted the speaker’s voice through facial bone conduction. With buttons on their watches, or voice activation and recognition, agents could manipulate volume, tune out background noise, and change channels to communicate with any of the agents aboard Imagine, either individually or en masse.

  The voice of Wade Kamin, leader of the four-agent Omega team, came through his earpiece. In the hierarchy of the job, consistent with the roles Zeus had assigned, Kamin was third in command. Undercover as a ship’s engineer, he was currently stationed in the radio room. “Omega team is in position.”

  The financial incentive provided by Zeus’ team hadn’t resulted in placing all the agents in such important positions, and Ace and Leo were the only agents fortunate enough to be casino guests, with a luxury stater
oom. Omega’s other agents were disbursed around the ship as a line chef, a bartender, and a shopkeeper; their sleeping quarters were bunks in dorm-style rooms. Kamin, at least, had a private stateroom in the section of the ship that housed the officers and the crew. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Except Marks just sold an emerald valued at almost a quarter of a million U.S. dollars.”

  Agent Marks, the young agent who’d almost earned a smile from Zeus during the job briefing, was undercover as a salesman in the ship’s jewelry store. Ace chuckled, relieved to be thinking about the job rather than the mental black hole into which he’d fallen while standing next to Leo.

  “Too bad he won’t be around for payday to get the commission,” Ace said.

  “Who knows? He might sign on permanently.”

  As Ace stepped out of the casino, onto the wide deck, he inhaled fresh ocean air, relishing the moist, salty tang. The ship’s air system, which he’d studied as part of his review, had complex air filtration and ozone injection capabilities designed to keep the air fresh and stimulating. To Ace, the indoor air still felt sterile and fake. It was obviously engineered for more than clean breathing, just as the wordless, fast-paced version of “Jingle Bells” that came from the ship’s speakers was designed to maximize the mood to gamble.

  He glanced at his watch—1820 hours. Clouds on the horizon captured the last orange light of the sinking sun. He walked across the deck and rested his elbows on the smooth teak railing. Pressing his watch, Ace opened a line of communication with headquarters in Denver.

  “Good evening. Status?” Ragno’s voice, crisp and efficient, carried clearly across the continents and oceans that separated them.

  “Smooth sailing.” Training his gaze straight down, on dark water that crested with small waves that foamed and fizzled, he added, “You’d know if it wasn’t.”

  “I sure hope so. For now, though, unless you guys talk to me, you’re just a green blip on my radar. From what I can tell, you’re the only fish in the sea.”

  Ace glanced again at the darkening horizon, which was devoid of other vessels. “As expected.”

  “Correct.”

  Although the South China Sea was one of the busiest waterways in the world, the cruise’s charted course wasn’t in major trade pathways. The cruise had no ports of call. It had activities that revolved around the tournament and keeping the gamblers happy, pampered, and titillated so that they gambled more. And when gamblers took a break, there were spa services. En-suite massages. Cocktail parties. Champagne and caviar bars. “Something Leo just said reminds me that we have to give the dog a different name. Definitely not Noelle.”

  “I was thinking of that. It’s best not to tie the Christmas thing so solidly to anything you give Leo.”

  “Ideas?”

  Ragno was silent for a second. “None. Leo will change anything we think of, anyway.”

  “How is she?”

  “Adorable. If I didn’t love Leo so much, I’d claim her for my own.”

  He’d been around Leo long enough to know that while Christmas wasn’t her favorite season, she certainly loved thoughtful gestures. He’d planned this gift ever since seeing her interact with the dogs in his neighborhood when she’d visited the prior Christmas. The puppy had been produced by the union of a Cavalier King Charles spaniel and a French poodle owned by two of his California neighbors.

  Yeah. The thought that I’ve put into her Christmas gift is a leading indicator of being in love. Jesus Christ, I’ve been an idiot.

  “There’s another reason not to call her Noelle,” he said. “By the time we return to Denver for debriefing, I’m thinking Leo will have had enough of Christmas. Baru’s got good taste, but the theme’s overdone. Christmas trees and holiday music everywhere. Cocktail waitresses are dressed as Santa’s elves.”

  “Tomorrow they’ll be reindeer.”

  Ace chuckled. “Ryan isn’t happy about it.”

  “How’s Chloe doing?”

  With spoken emphasis on Leo’s legend’s name, Ragno was giving Ace a not-too-subtle reminder of who they were, and that they were on a job. “Ahead by a million.”

  “That’s my girl. Playing to win.”

  “Yeah. Playing her heart out. Like always.”

  Despite his off-the-cuff response, his chest tightened. Without regard to her own limitations, Leo never backed down. Tenacity was an admirable trait, one that was greatly valued in a Black Raven agent. As a friend, he liked that about her. Coupled with her ruthless competitive streak, she had a way of keeping him on his toes that he found exhilarating and refreshing. Yet given his personal history with Kat’s death, the potential danger that came with his and Leo’s line of work, and his newfound knowledge of the depth of his feelings for her, acknowledging Leo’s play-all-things-to-win approach to life produced a foreboding that was as dark as the ocean’s dark, roiling depths.

  Chapter Five

  7:10 p.m.

  The Oscar de la Renta, off-the-shoulder silk dress, black with silver-metallic embellishments, was more delicate than anything Leo owned, but perfect for the legend of Chloe. It was exactly the type of dress the flashy gambler would have worn for the first night of the cruise. It was also a hell of a lot harder to get into than Leo’s favorite attire of jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket. As she stepped into the dress, Ace, on the other side of the bathroom door, turned off the water in the shower.

  Hurry.

  The zipper started at the bottom of her butt, where the sheath-like dress was the tightest. It glided easily for a half inch, then stopped midway over her butt. As she tugged, the front fell forward, exposing her chest. Drawing another breath, she readjusted the dress, then reached behind her, pulling the sides together. Tugged again. It moved enough to give her optimism.

  He’d laid out his tuxedo on the bed, giving a solid clue that he planned to dress in the bedroom. She’d spent nights with him in close quarters. Most recently, during the past summer, they’d moved his Airstream from California to Georgia, to a parcel of land he’d purchased near Black Raven’s training facility.

  Now, staying in a room with one king-size bed, soft lighting, champagne on ice on a silver tray, and a vanity that was stocked with candles, condoms, and KY jelly, seemed…awkward. As in I-want-him-to-kiss-me again awkward. Because she did, and she needed to squelch that feeling. Step on it. Make it end. At least not have her butt and boobs showing when he came out of the bathroom.

  Sucking in her breath, she tugged again. Pulled.

  Nothing. Bathroom door?

  She glanced over her shoulder. Still shut.

  Thank you, God.

  Exhaling, she looked at herself in the mirror. Damp hair. Wild eyes. Boobs spilling out over her strapless bra. Considering the scope of their job, the multifaceted planning, the cadre of weapons and gear that the advance team had stowed in the crawl space beneath where she stood, the fact that a stubborn zipper was an obstacle was laughable.

  She twisted the dress around her, so the zipper was in front. She sucked in her belly, which was the only reason she could see why the zipper on the size four dress was stuck, and gave another tug. Could she have really gone from a size four to a six? Dammit.

  The answer? Yes.

  The leather pants she’d worn earlier had been tight. Come to think of it, in the last couple of weeks, everything had been tighter than normal. Too many days of eating P foods. Her favorite letter, because foods that started with ‘P’ had the most of what she considered to be comfort foods—pizza, potatoes, and peanut M&M’s.

  The zipper moved a few inches, then stopped.

  She held her breath, while through her audio, she heard Ace, from the bathroom, checking in with Stills, Kamin, and Ragno.

  Tuning out their chatter, she focused on the task at hand. Dammit. The zipper had moved too far to reposition the dress without unzipping it. She sighed, unzipped it, and moved the dress so the zipper was exactly where it needed to go, firmly over the crest of her butt, right in the middle. She tugge
d. It stuck again, forcing her to acknowledge that she’d been on an eating binge since Halloween, one that obviously defied the hours of exercise she did each day. As though chocolate would make her forget how he kissed her like a man who hungered only for her.

  Ask him for help.

  No.

  Why not?

  He doesn’t know how he makes me feel.

  All that happened in New Orleans was a tequila-inspired kiss. Nothing more.

  She could still remember the day she’d come across a helmet-clad rider on the remote blacktop road that wound its way through foothills as it led to Last Resort, Black Raven’s training facility in Georgia. She’d challenged the rider by gunning her bike ahead of his, pulling back, and doing the same thing again. He took the bait, and she’d ultimately kicked his ass. The rider had been Ace—the quiet new agent whose demons were legendary.

  From then on, they were friends.

  Since that day, nothing had been awkward with Ace. Nudity? They didn’t flaunt flesh, but given the active lifestyle they shared as friends, sometimes skin happened. He’d even stood watch for her when she had to pee on the side of the road on motorcycle trips. Spinach in her teeth? No embarrassment. Not with him.

  He grasped her moods. Bummed and bitchy because her beloved New York Giants, the team her father had once quarterbacked, had lost a game? Not a problem. He understood post-game blues. Got them himself. Pissed because she wasn’t selected for a high-stakes field job? He understood her competitiveness. He could even guess when she was on her period. Sometimes he’d bring her chocolate at that time of the month, with no words to explain the gift or the slightly teasing grin.

  But, since that pedicab ride to end all pedicab rides, things were different between them. Though she’d tried hard to behave like she always had, she didn’t think she was imagining that he sounded different on the phone. He’d even looked different on video chats. He seemed…distant, but not. As though he was thinking of things that he didn’t want to tell her. Which wasn’t the way he usually was with her. He’d tried, in a roundabout way, to talk to her about it. She considered the ease with which she’d manage to deflect his attempts were an indicator that he wasn’t serious about talking about what had happened.