by Blaze Ward
Like now.
He didn’t pull the teenage stunt of burning rubber tires to race out of the parking lot. At the same time, he opened the throttle slowly, but went all the way to the top, letting the feisty horse run.
Yeah, way more power than this class normally had. And someone had added an electronic counter-measures panel in between the pilots that looked just as utterly insane, if someone else started shooting missiles at them at some point.
“Where’s Alicia bunking?” Rob finally asked, when he decided Mac was going to outwait him.
The air was already thinning as it whistled over the hull.
“In the pilot’s cabin with most of the boxes,” she replied evenly.
“I see,” Rob offered with enough of a nod to convey something serious, rather than pique. He’d been figuring the girls could share the big bed while he slept alone. He had a rep that Mac didn’t necessarily approve of, though she’d been more circumspect lately. “You sure?”
She didn’t answer, so he glanced over.
Damned woman was smiling at him.
“Not you,” she finally said, apparently suppressing giggles. “Most men would be utterly thrilled or terrified when they found out they were sleeping with a beautiful woman.”
“Most men are idiots,” Rob noted. “Again, you sure?”
“The mission calls for a rich widow doing a resort, Rob,” she turned a little more serious. “I’ll need to be used to sleeping next to you, and you, me.”
Rob nodded. Made sense. They’d be under some level of observation, he just didn’t know who would be watching the screens.
“How deep into character are you getting?” he finally asked.
“That deep, Handsome.”
Damn, the smile was back.
“We’ll need to fuck a few times between here and there,” she said quietly. Almost disappointed from the way she sounded. “Again, most men would be ecstatic, Rob.”
“I didn’t pack any candles,” he said, maybe a touch sourly. “And there’s no oversized tub to lounge in.”
She blinked, and the smile at least turned warmer.
“We need to be that intimate, Handsome,” Mac said. “All in character.”
He didn’t grind his teeth. She was right.
“Would have preferred other circumstances,” was about as much as he could say right now. Politely.
“You’ve never given any clues,” she said, maybe a little wistful, or at least careful.
“You’re a co-worker, and hopefully a friend, Mac,” Rob said. “Jorge has reminded me more than once that there will be lots of women in my life, but very few friends. Nature of the job. Understand the need to stay in character, but it will change things, afterwards.”
“We’re adults, Handsome,” she said. “The mission calls for this. And I’ve been far more celibate than you have, so I might be looking forward to it a little.”
That brought his head all the way around, but the ship was flying itself right now anyway.
“As you said, most men are morons,” Mac smiled. “They wouldn’t approach this professionally, or be aware that there might be long-term repercussions. At least not until much later. You are much older that you look.”
“Born old, my mother used to say,” Rob shrugged. He thought about it for a long moment. “Tonight, I’d just like to snuggle. I’ll work myself up to seducing you tomorrow, once I get over myself.”
She nodded.
“I’d like that,” she said. “And I’m looking forward to being seduced properly. Hopefully, Jorge has at least taught you a few things.”
“Hey, the rich widow doesn’t keep me around for scintillating conversation,” Rob laughed.
She laughed with him. It felt good.
But it was going to change things.
6
Shravishtha Prime.
Mac had been in the co-pilot’s seat on the way down from orbit, marveling at the beauty of the planet. She was still impressed.
The resort was one of six, each on a separate island strung like a strand of pearls off the tip of a long peninsula where the starport was located.
She had sent a message from orbit when they arrived, making reservations for everything and providing billing information to an account on an Aquitaine bank, of all places.
But this mission required misdirection, from top to bottom.
Esmeralda Morgan, reverting to her maiden name. She’d kept MacTavish, even after Umberto’s various affairs and eventually running off with a waitress.
Here, it added an interesting layer, because someone looking her up and going back far enough might actually find those ancient modeling photos if they were lucky. A seventeen-year-old Esmeralda Morgan, from fashion model to cheesecake and beyond.
Oh, the ghosts that might haunt us thirty-five years later.
They emerged into the sunlight after a much-streamlined customs rigmarole, but this particular port served those resorts almost exclusively, and you had to have a lot of money to book an entire month at a place like that.
Executive suite, the kind with two spare bedrooms, but she only needed the one for Alicia, introduced as a niece without a lot of explanation. The boy toy was obvious, but Rob might have dressed up and dumbed down his act to impress those folks.
She just needed to convey injured beauty, sheltered from true pain from the death of her husband by all the piles of gold coins he had left her after that tragic heart attack.
At least that was the cover story.
A widow with money to burn, a boyfriend half her age, and a niece who was probably in line to inherit a sizeable hoard, if you felt like trying to seduce her. Alicia had giggled herself silly at the prospect when they had refined the various cover stories after reading the files, but Alicia had also informed Mac that she wasn’t above letting pretty boys or girls chase her.
Not like she was ever going out in the sun, but there were casinos on premises, and a cryptographer probably could count cards and possibly hack slot machines without getting caught.
A car was awaiting them. Long and almost predatory. Steel blue with a woman in a uniform that looked too hot for the perfect weather around here. Eighty degrees, except an Aquitanian would say twenty-seven or twenty-eight.
The driver bowed and ushered them into the back of the limousine. Mac had a bag a little larger than a purse. Alicia and Rob both had messenger bags for luggage.
The interesting gear was hidden in various trunks that would be delivered to the resort as soon as they were finished being inspected. Mac was concerned about possibly having their cover blown, but Rob was rather sanguine, and he had far more experience smuggling things past authorities.
Mac leaned in and reached into her purse, triggering the scanner that would look for listening devices transmitting. Not much she could do against something wired into the vehicle, so gestured Alicia to turn up the radio a little too loud.
She snuggled up against Rob now, thanking Jorge again that he had taught the youngster things like cologne and to shave immediately before leaving the ship, just so she could snuggle in the car without rug burn.
She leaned back and studied his face.
He glanced over, still playing the gigolo.
Mac leaned close enough to whisper in his ear.
“Wondering what you might look like with a beard,” she told him. “Older and more distinguished, so it would never do here, but you’ll look more and more like Jorge as you age.”
“My grandfather looks like Jorge without the plastic surgery, fully white hair, and another twenty pounds,” Rob chuckled quietly. “I’m told that was one of the things that brought me to the right attentions, back at the beginning.”
“Huh,” Mac nodded and fell silent.
She hadn’t heard that, but Handsome Rob Segura had just been another one of the pretty boys in Operations, until she had to know him much closer. And he didn’t talk much about his old life.
None of them did. Rob had called it living a
triple life.
The life where your family and childhood friends know you are gainfully employed with some quiet corporation, but you have to lie to them about what you do and why you’re always off-planet missing birthdays and holidays. She had that to look forward to, but didn’t have children and her parents were off gallivanting in retirement. And she had never had many friends outside the building. Just dinner with Miguel and Caroline, where they occasionally introduced her to eligible bachelors, none of whom ever turned out that interesting.
The second life was the job, where they all lived pretty much monastically, lying to everyone an agent meets in the field as part of their job and trying not to talk too much to folks at headquarters, because most of those people weren’t rated to know any details except the people who would keep sending you out to maybe die tomorrow.
This was her first major assignment off-planet. Everything up until now had almost been an extended job interview with the Service, as well as probationary training.
Mac was still wondering about the third life you tried to put together outside the Service, where you knew some folks, but couldn’t really say anything at all to them, because that probably makes them a liability later.
Rob had Ahmed, the cop. She knew they were occasional drinking buddies and Ahmed got introduced to women who bounced off Rob. She supposed she could count the lanky detective as a friend as well, but he couldn’t ever make up his mind whether to be lusting after her or frightened by her.
Neither were particularly endearing traits.
How many more years did she have, if she really wanted to be a field agent? There weren’t many like her, older women still able to use beauty as a disguise. Mrs. Jones and her, perhaps, and she had about eight years on the former stuntwoman for the most beautiful woman in the galaxy.
Others were either younger and could be used as honey pots, or matronly, and they ran an entirely different sort of mission.
Who did Mac want to be when she grew up?
It was an interesting question, and one she didn’t have any answers to.
7
Miguel pushed the button to the hard-wired intercom on his desk and waited.
“Sir?” Ben came back a moment later.
“Do you have a few minutes?” Miguel asked.
“Be right there.”
The rap at the door almost suggested that Ben had run from his new office, but he stuck his head in and Miguel nodded.
The man entered, closed the door, and sat.
Miguel took a moment to study his new Chief of Staff. Before this, Ben Sevier had been his Executive Assistant, one of the most competent and capable Miguel had ever employed. Miguel had lived in sadness and fear that the man would eventually have to take a lateral transfer into one of the departments, but then the Brightmeadow-Gates Affair had shaken the building to the core and opened up a spot where Miguel could reward the man.
Chief of Staff.
Stansfield Brightmeadow-Gates had been the last of the previous generation of spies left in the building. Men and women of an age with Jorge Royo, who was a private mercenary now, on call when the need was great, but otherwise retired.
All of Miguel’s other Chiefs were his age or younger. Mid-fifties for many. Dolf Alcazar, Operations. Dillon Vergrue, Research and Development. Mac had run Data Analysis until recently. Mattie Gutierrez had the job now. At thirty-eight, she and Ben at thirty-five represented the next generation that would take over as Miguel’s current people aged out.
He wouldn’t say that this was a young person’s game, but it did grind on the soul and body. His sixteen years in this chair showed that.
“Where are we with the follow-up team behind Mac and Handsome?” Miguel asked.
He had considered asking Robin, his new Executive Assistant, to join them, but both men needed to grow into their own roles, so Miguel tried to keep the two jobs and reporting lines more separate than in the old days.
After all, Miguel Cabrill needed to consider the future of the Service as well. He had served under three administrations now, and would probably want to retire in another few years, especially if the government changed parties and his lovely boss, Rebecca Zubia, Lincolnshire’s Minister of State, was out of a job.
“Per Dolf’s most recent briefing, the team is ready to fly,” Ben said. “Dillon’s folks have finally broken open the last data store, once we convinced someone to give us the passwords.”
“What threat did we use?” Miguel asked. It was mostly an academic curiosity, as the Service didn’t believe in torture, beyond perhaps dosing someone with a variety of chemicals that left them chatty and helpful.
“To simply usher them out the front door, and then tell everyone we could find that they had turned state’s evidence,” Ben smiled. “Apparently, their old comrades might take that sort of thing badly.”
“Indeed.”
Miguel would have shuddered, but these folks were criminals working with foreign powers to destabilize Lincolnshire’s government. That simply would not be tolerated.
“So the ship will likely depart today?” Miguel continued.
“Thus I am informed,” Ben nodded. “Do you need any more details than that?”
“Only if something strange comes out of the data analysis, once crypto turns it over,” Miguel said.
He sat still for a moment and listened to that little voice at the back of his head. It had never led him astray.
It had qualms now.
“In fact,” Miguel continued, “let’s make arrangements for another fast courier, in case something does come up after Dolf’s backup team leaves. They can always race after both ships, and if we have something fast enough, perhaps arrive simultaneously, or even overtake him. We’ve got the money in the budget for this, especially as we’ve effectively seized all of Guadarrama’s local funds and don’t have to give any of it back until a court orders us to, and we can fight that for a year easily enough to be into the next budgetary cycle. Remind me to brief the Minister when I go see her the day after tomorrow.”
“Will do, sir,” Ben replied. “Is that all you need?”
“It is.”
And Miguel was alone again, with all his paper files arranged in front of him in a manner reminiscent of battlements. But this job left him frequently feeling under siege, so the imagery was acceptable.
It felt like Mac and Handsome were about to walk into a dragon’s den, when they had perhaps been expecting merely a sleeping bear.
But there wasn’t much more he could do.
8
Rob knew that Mac didn’t have any tan lines. Now, the rest of the resort did, too.
He had approached the topic of knowing her intimately and how she slept with the same sorts of professionalism that Jorge and the others had pounded into him. Exactly what she liked, or didn’t like. How to get her there quickly or slowly. Loudly or quiet.
Not exactly a terrible sacrifice in the name of the Service, but it would change things when they got home, just when he was comfortable having a female friend that he wasn’t fooling around with on the side.
Weren’t many of those. Tallia, at Jorge’s bar, he supposed. She only had eyes for Jorge, so that made it easy to just tease her and flirt outrageously without anything behind it.
But not Mac. Not today. Possibly not tomorrow.
He was lying by the side of one of the pools, absorbing vitamin D from a real solar furnace today, rather than the lights in the shower that were always such a poor replacement. Swim trunks, mostly to keep a handcomm, a room key and some cash handy to tip for the exceptional service he’d been enjoying.
Then Mac arrived. Wear a translucent wrap of some sort that just called attention to how long and lean she was, and that there was nothing under it but tan.
He felt his mouth drop open. Let it. He was playing the boy toy, smitten by the rich widow and lusting after her constantly.
Even if he might not be acting right now.
She stretched out on the
chair next to him, face down with that perfect bottom in the air, after giving him a sly smile that reminded Rob that she had once been a fashion model. He hadn’t even been born yet then, and she still had it.
Just glancing around the pool area at the smiles and jealousy was proof of that.
He reached for the bottle of suntan lotion and busied himself making sure that her skin was completely covered. It sounded like she might be purring, but there was enough background noise to mask it, so he couldn’t tell.
Mac was not resisting him at the moment.
When he was done, Rob swam some laps in the pool, rather enjoying himself.
This resort did allow children, but it existed in four lobes from the central lobby and two of the areas were adults only. Not that Salonnia had any hang-ups about nudity. They were more like Aquitaine that way, or Corynthe, but they were also close enough to Lincolnshire for rich tourists to cross the border.
Rob preferred the more adult entertainment options. He could always head over to the water park for a day of goofing off if he got really silly, but doubted that this mission would go that way.
Unless their target, a contact known as Lonelyman, had kids or just stayed in one of those. The information they’d seized hadn’t said anything, but it was a possibility.
Guadarrama would send a messenger who had a protocol to make contact. Lonelyman would meet with that person and make arrangements for another shipment of guns in return for usually cash, but occasionally illicit trade goods he could sell onward.
Showing up as a new messenger would be suicide, as they were all known and vetted, and he’d be an obvious cop, regardless of the song and dance he might have prepared.
Alicia was going to be busy trying to slip into the reservation system long enough to copy things down, looking for either long-term guests, and there were about a hundred of those, or folks on the VIP list that returned more than three times per year.
That ought to filter things down, but not far enough to do much more than eliminate most of the hundred thousand people who had visited this year.
