by Tawna Fenske
“No, you’re plenty cute. You just don’t fill out your shirt the same way.”
“Few people do,” Jake agreed.
Alex yawned and sat up, swinging his legs out of bed. “Everything go okay?”
“No problems. We should be hitting Bridgetown Port in about six hours.”
“Anything else over the radio?” Alex asked, scrounging on the floor for his T-shirt.
“No word since just before you went to sleep. We’re keeping an eye on them, but they seem to be making a pretty straight line for Barbados.”
“So we guessed right.”
Jake snorted. “Not completely a guess. What the hell would we have done if Juli hadn’t known what they were saying?”
“We would’ve followed the boat anyway.”
“Probably. But we wouldn’t have had a clue how far they were headed or whether we had the fuel to follow them. At least this way we got a chance to plot the route and figure out whether we could make it there.”
Alex tugged his shirt on over his head and smoothed down his hair with his fingers. “So she saved our asses, more or less.”
Jake gave a grudging shrug. “Hate to admit it, but she’s proving to be useful. That’s why I’m not sure what to make of what Phyllis found online just a minute ago.”
Alex looked up at Jake, startled by the sudden grimness in his voice. “What do you mean?”
“Juli wasn’t lying about all the IQ crap,” Jake said, dropping onto the bench beside the bed. “We found a bunch of information about her. She’s pretty damn famous. There have been a lot of scientific studies and articles written about her.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Jake was quiet a minute, toeing a spot on the floor. When he looked up at Alex, his expression was somber. “You know the dead uncle she’s been toting around in that urn? Uncle Frank?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, trying to read Jake’s solemn expression. “What about him?”
“We did some digging online,” Jake said, rubbing his palms against his knees. “Uncle Frank was also known by another name. Frankie-Two-Toes.”
Alex felt a chill run up his arms. “Frankie-Two-Toes the mobster?”
“You know of another Frankie-Two-Toes?”
“Shit,” Alex said as he sat back down on the edge of the bed.
“Yeah.”
Alex was quiet for a long time. He looked up at Jake. “So we’re transporting a notorious mobster’s famous genius niece.”
“Pretty much.”
“Not exactly part of the plan.”
“Nope.”
“It could be a coincidence.”
Jake shrugged. “This trip has been one long string of them, hasn’t it?”
Alex looked around the room. “You notice she took the urn with her?”
Jake nodded. “She even fell asleep with her hand on it. No chance to pry the damn thing away from her and see what’s in it.”
Alex shoved his feet into his shoes and stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t like this.”
Jake grunted. “Me neither.”
Alex pulled the covers up and straightened the pillow, trying not to meet Jake’s eyes. “So we keep holding our cards close to our vest. No details. And we watch her. Constantly.”
“Agreed,” Jake said, nodding. “And Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t get too close.”
With that, Jake turned, patted Alex on the shoulder, and headed toward the door. Alex sighed.
“Too late,” he muttered and followed Jake out the door.
***
Juli was the first to spot land. Of course, it may have been because she’d swiped Alex’s binoculars.
“What do you see?” he asked, trying to wrestle the binoculars away from her.
“Sand,” she said. “Buildings. Trees. Give me a minute. I haven’t seen any of these things for three days. I want to savor it.”
“Savor it later,” Alex said, grabbing the binoculars at last. “I need to see where I’m going.”
All hands were on deck, and Juli watched as the rest of the crew bustled about, preparing for their arrival. For the last twelve hours, they’d been hauling ass—at least three times faster than they’d been going just a day earlier. She had asked Jake about it, but he’d been decidedly vague. She knew the original plan had called for a slower trip out and a fast trip back, but she wasn’t sure if it was a matter of fuel conservation or making a quick getaway.
Now as she watched, she was fascinated by the complexity of the process of bringing a large boat into a small space.
“How big was the entrance channel again?” Alex asked.
“13.5 meters,” Phyllis called.
“Breakwater is 522 meters long,” Jake added.
Juli looked on as Alex performed a series of complicated-looking maneuvers to bring the ship into port. They’d all been oddly hush-hush about the arrangements they were making, so Juli wasn’t sure whether to expect a lei greeting or a hail of gunfire upon their arrival.
One important thing she had managed to pick up—they’d beaten the other boat by nearly two hours. Alex seemed pleased about that.
Things seemed to happen fast once they brought the ship in. There was a lot of hasty dialogue among the crew about port-of-clearance and berthing orders, and Juli tried hard to stay out of the way. She held her breath as they cleared customs, more than a little worried about some of the phony paperwork Jake had thrust into her hands just before they docked.
“Don’t ask,” Phyllis had said. So Juli didn’t.
Instead, she beamed at the customs agent, complimented his tie, held her breath as he studied Uncle Frank’s urn, and finally marched right through as though she wasn’t a member of a fearsome pirate crew.
“Ditch the apron, Cody,” she heard Alex whisper behind her.
“Cookie!”
“Shit.”
Finally, they were all through customs and standing there on dry land with the Caribbean sun beating down on them and waves of jaunty calypso music bouncing through the air from a nearby ice cream shop. Phyllis fiddled with the handheld GPS, while Jake kept a firm grip on the portable radio.
“Now what?” Jake asked, fastening the radio to his belt and looking at the assembled group.
Alex glanced at his watch. “We should catch a cab over to the port where we think they’re coming in. Find a good spot to watch the harbor, maybe find a cheap room so we can shower and set up our land-based headquarters?”
“A shower?” Juli asked hopefully. “You mean one where I don’t have to prop my foot on the toilet to shave?”
“Says she with the master stateroom,” Jake muttered, though he didn’t sound particularly put out.
“You can have the first shower, Jake,” Juli told him, waving frantically as a cab appeared, then zipped passed them. “I want to take my time anyway.”
Alex cleared his throat. “How do the rest of you guys want to work this when we get to a hotel? It’ll be suspicious if all five of us go marching into some place and ask for a room.”
“Shouldn’t we send in the least memorable person?” Phyllis asked, glancing at the assembled group. “Cody’s too big—people will remember him. And Juli’s too pretty, so they’ll remember her too.”
“Phyllis, why don’t you and Jake go in as a couple?” Juli piped, giving Phyllis a gentle nudge toward Jake.
At least the nudge was supposed to be gentle. Instead, Phyllis went toppling into Jake’s chest, an impact that resulted in an unpleasant “oomph” from their colliding bodies.
To Jake’s credit, he caught Phyllis without wincing. And he immediately fastened his arm around her and returned her to an upright position.
“Um, sorry,” Juli said, watching conflict play over Jake’s features as he decided whether to keep his arm there or not.
“A couple?” Phyllis asked, looking nervous.
“Sure,” Juli said. “You’re illicit lovers here on a secret romantic rendezvous
or something.”
At that, Jake grinned. He stole a glimpse down the front of Phyllis’s blouse. She looked up and raised an eyebrow.
“What?” he said. “Just getting into character. I’m a wealthy oil tycoon with a frigid wife who only stays with me for my money and power, while my adoring mistress fulfills all my wildest fantasies and desires.”
“Wait,” Phyllis said. “Am I the mistress or the wife?”
“Definitely the mistress,” Jake said.
“Um, how about if you just ask for a room,” Alex said, waving as another cab zipped past. “A cheap one.”
“And it’s important to stay inconspicuous,” Juli said, stooping to study the sign on the little roadside stand behind them. “Oh, look—they have fresh pelau.”
Cody looked delighted, ducking his head to look inside the booth at the menu scrawled on a blackboard. “Breadfruit cou-cou? Ohmygod, you have got to give me the recipe!”
“Inconspicuous,” Alex muttered. “Right.”
***
By the time they’d all trooped into the room—a free upgrade to a luxury, multi-room suite for the moony-eyed lovers—Alex was getting edgy. Edgy and irritable.
He was sitting in the room next to the window in a chair with one leg shorter than the others, peering past the curtains at the ocean. Jake and Cody and Phyllis were out on the balcony, but Alex felt safer being inside. Every few seconds, he’d stop scowling at the ocean and start scowling at the portable FHS radio.
When he wasn’t scowling at the radio, he was stealing looks at Juli, alternately enjoying her cleavage and wondering what the hell it meant that the niece of Frankie-Two-Toes had stowed away on his boat. Something was going on, but he didn’t have a clue what it was.
“Why aren’t they saying anything else?” he muttered, fiddling with the radio. “It’s been almost ten minutes since the last transmission. They should be coming in soon.”
He glanced up at Juli, who was rubbing her wet hair with a fluffy white towel, looking unconcerned. He tried not to notice the way her robe gaped open a little in front, revealing a lovely triangle of flesh beneath her collarbones.
Juli noticed him not noticing and rolled her eyes, pulling the robe closed with one hand. Strolling over to him, she grabbed the radio out of his hand and set it on the windowsill.
“Gee, maybe because they’ve stolen a boat and don’t feel much like chatting about childhood memories over the radio?”
Alex frowned. “You’re sure you heard that last transmission right?”
“Well, they either greased the palm of the customs guy and arranged to pull the boat into that berth you guys were talking about earlier, or they were sharing a recipe for banana bread. Of course I’m sure, Alex.”
She draped her wet towel over his knee and put one hand on his shoulder, using him as leverage to peer around him out the window. This time, Alex could see right down the front of her robe. He felt his mood improving as all the blood left his brain.
“So that’s where they’ll be coming in, huh?” Juli said, nodding out the window toward the water. “Pretty nice that Jake talked the receptionist into giving them a room with such a great view of the harbor.”
“I’m not sure it was luck,” Alex replied, fixated on an entirely different view. “I think they were just eager to do whatever it took to make sure Jake and Phyllis didn’t start necking in the lobby.”
Juli angled her body away from the window and looked at him. She was so close she was practically in his lap.
“So they played the illicit lover thing well?”
“I’m not so sure it was acting. I think they might actually have the hots for each other.”
She shook her head. “You’re just now figuring this out, sailor boy?”
There was a distinct buzzing in Alex’s brain, and the smell of her shampoo was giving him a craving for lemon and coconut and something else he didn’t want to admit. The sight of all that flesh moving beneath the robe was making him dizzy.
You can’t trust her, a voice reminded him. Just get the damn diamonds and get out of here.
God, he hated that voice.
Alex stood up, glancing at his watch before moving past her and out onto the balcony where the others were gathered.
“Hey, guys? I know it’s nice out here and everything, but don’t you think you look a little conspicuous?”
Three pairs of eyes looked up at him with expressions of identical puzzlement. At least he assumed that was puzzlement behind their gaudy plastic sunglasses. Cody picked up his virgin daiquiri from the arm of his Adirondack chair and nudged the pink umbrella out of the way, taking a big gulp. Phyllis and Jake shrugged and went back to smearing suntan oil on each other’s legs. Alex sighed.
The floral shirts they’d purchased in the hotel gift shop were so bright he couldn’t stare directly at them. And Cody’s garish orange sun visor was covered with pictures of copulating flamingoes.
“We’re incognito,” Cody insisted, slurping on his drink. “We’re just tourists looking at the ocean.”
“Yeah,” Jake agreed, smiling down at Phyllis’s calves. “Regular old tourists.”
“With high-powered binoculars?” Alex asked. “And a GPS tracking device?”
Jake shrugged. “We’re well-equipped tourists.”
“Come back inside,” Alex muttered. “We can see just as well from here.”
There was much sighing and grumbling, but all three filed back through the sliding glass door. All at once, the radio squawked to life. Alex snatched the radio off the ledge.
“What are they saying?” he snapped, thrusting the radio at Juli. “What was that all about?”
“They’re approaching the harbor,” Juli said, glancing out the window. “Hey, look! Is that them?”
Alex stared out on the horizon. An enormous gray cargo ship was barely visible, sliding through the crevice between blue, blue sky and even bluer ocean.
Portelli’s ship.
The radio squawked again and Juli listened as the voices chattered.
“They’re thanking the customs guy who, um, greased the skids,” Juli translated. “They’re laughing about it. They’re being subtle, not really saying anything outright, but it seems like they’re implying something’s going on.”
More words over the radio, more laughter. The boat was drawing closer. Alex looked at Juli. She was scowling now.
“What?” he asked. “What are they saying?”
Juli’s frown deepened. “Well that’s not very nice.”
“What?”
She waved at him to shut up, a gesture that might have annoyed him if he weren’t relying so completely on her translation skills.
“Juli?”
She made a squeak of indignation and glared at the radio. “I don’t believe it!”
“What?” Alex asked. “What’s going on?”
“Honestly, is that all you guys think about?” She turned her scowl on Alex, then at Jake. Jake, at least, had the good sense to look ashamed.
“Juli—”
“Alex,” she snapped as the radio grew silent again.
“What did they say? Please?”
Juli folded her arms over her chest.
“I’m not repeating most of the words he just said,” she said, meeting Alex’s gaze with fire in her eyes. “But I can tell you where our boys are headed the second they hit land. And I’ve got an idea what we can do about it.”
Chapter 13
“Tell me again why you packed a bustier for this trip,” Alex said, staring at Juli as she tugged her curls into a complicated twist on top of her head.
“Tell me again why I’m wearing it,” Phyllis said, frowning down at her cleavage.
Jake was the only one not frowning. In fact, he seemed downright joyful with this unexpected turn of events.
Juli blinked at Alex through six coats of mascara, her blue eyes fringed with terrifying black spikes of lashes. “We’re giving them what they want. That’s it.”
/> “No kidding,” Jake murmured appreciatively, his gaze fixed on Phyllis.
Phyllis tugged at her leather miniskirt and scowled some more. Juli ignored Jake and directed her ire at Alex.
“They’re looking for hookers,” she said, grabbing hold of Alex’s shoulder to steady herself as she stabbed her feet into impossibly high heels. “At least that’s what the guy said on the radio. And from what the guy in the harbor said, there aren’t a lot of hookers in Barbados.”
“Pity, that,” Jake muttered.
Alex smacked his palms on the counter in exasperation. “So you think it’s your civic duty to fill the gap?”
“You have a better plan, sailor boy?”
Alex tried not to stare as Juli made a series of adjustments to the pushup bra that raised her cleavage to dizzying heights beneath her flimsy black cocktail dress. The straps on the dress were so thin she could floss with them after a meal.
“I just think this is a dangerous way to—” Alex sneezed, cutting himself off midsentence as he tried to dodge the cloud of perfume Juli was spritzing into the air.
“They’re coming ashore in search of hookers,” Juli said, setting the perfume bottle down. “If they don’t find them, they’re going to return to the boat. If they do find them, they’ll stick around awhile, maybe leave the boat unattended while they try to figure out the best way to conduct their illicit transaction.”
“It’s too risky,” Alex protested. “For both of you.”
“I can’t feel my left boob,” Phyllis muttered, tugging at the lacing on the side of her bustier.
Jake stood up, grinning like mad. “Here, let me help you feel your left—”
“Stop!” Juli said, throwing her hand up. “Nobody should feel Phyllis’s boob right now except Phyllis. We’re on a mission here, and Phyllis is a smart, sexy, confident woman who shouldn’t be groped while she’s getting ready.”
Jake looked forlorn. Phyllis looked conflicted. Juli sighed and looked back at Alex.
“You guys want to get onto that boat,” she said. “The crew is obviously coming ashore, but they’re not going to want to leave things unattended for long. If they don’t find what they’re after, they’re going back to the boat, right?”
