Fish & Chips (20 page)

He smiled in amusement, suddenly finding the situation incredibly funny. He reached out and took one of her delicate hands in both of his and patted it. “Slowly please,” he requested with a glance at Zane and a wink. “Corbin doesn"t speak the language nearly so well as he pretends.”

“Oh!” Norina exclaimed as she looked at Zane with wide, dark eyes. “I must apologize! In my excitement I forget myself.”

Ty practically sighed in relief. She spoke English. Now he just needed to convince her to continue to do so even when his fake husband wasn"t around.

“No apology needed, Signora,” Zane said pleasantly. “Won"t you come in and sit down? We just ordered refreshments for the afternoon.”

“I told my Norina you would be… comforting each other,”

Bianchi said knowingly. “After such a harrowing experience. But no, she needed to see your Del for herself.”

Fish & Chips | 125

“They said you had fallen,” she told Ty as she put both hands on his chest and gazed up at him. Ty didn"t know if it was because she was Italian, because she knew he was gay and therefore “safe” to grope, or if she was just the touchy-feely type, but he really wished she"d stop touching him quite so freely.

“It was a minor accident, not nearly as bad as the rumors, I"m sure,” Ty assured her as he plucked her hands off his chest and steered her toward the sitting area and the other two men.

“As you see,” Zane said as he filled glasses from the bar with ice,

“Del is up and about, doing just fine.”

“Yes,” Bianchi commented, looking over the cart from room service. “And you ordered a drink from room service to settle your own heart, no?” he said, indicating the shot of whiskey.

Ty raised one eyebrow at Zane. He"d forgotten about the glass.

He wasn"t fond of whiskey, but he didn"t think Zane knew that.

However, Ty didn"t know if Zane had ordered the shot for Ty or for himself.

Zane waved a nonchalant hand at it as he poured tea. “Would you like some tea? Or there"s beer, and I believe we have a selection of sodas in the bar fridge and a couple bottles of wine besides.”

“We had wine with lunch,” Norina said, stepping back from Ty slightly but moving to hold his arm as they walked to join Bianchi and Zane at the table. “I will have tea, please.”

“Tea. Bah. I will have the beer if it is not American,” Bianchi said as he pulled out a chair, looking ready to make himself at home.

Ty had to hold back a sigh. No more massage for him. But this was why they were here, he told himself, to get information from these people. Not to get laid repeatedly by his partner in a luxury suite. No matter how much that appealed.

126 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

Chapter 7

BIANCHI was in high spirits when he joined Zane, Armen, and a few other players in the private lounge. He also carried high spirits—

literally. He had a hinged wooden box, and once he set it down, he pulled out an ornate blue and silver bottle and cradled it in the crook of his arm.

“Gentlemen!” Bianchi greeted expansively. “I come bearing a gift, bought specially with our American friend here in mind.”

Zane looked from Bianchi to the bottle and back, and his stomach turned. “A gift for me?” he asked, forcing pleasant surprise into his voice.

“You have told me how you so enjoy the premium Chivas, yes?

So I have brought you your own bottle of Regal Royal Salute—

although I shall insist you share,” Bianchi said, clearly very pleased with himself.

Zane silently swallowed on the upset welling in his throat, trying hard to deny he was feeling even the slightest bit panicked. Apparently Corbin Porter had a penchant for fine Scotch whiskey, and damn, Chivas Regal Royal Salute? That was fifty-fucking-year-old Scotch, and only a seriously limited number of bottles had even been made.

Bianchi had to have paid a fortune for it… or he"d acquired it in another style of business transaction altogether. “That is such a kind gesture, Signor Bianchi. But I can"t possibly—”

“Of course you can, and you will! I insist. We are here to enjoy ourselves and celebrate our acquaintance,” Bianchi said. The look in Bianchi"s eyes told Zane that Corbin Porter would never decline such Fish & Chips | 127

an offer. The sinking feeling intensified as Zane mentally flailed for an exit. There had to be a gracious way to bow out, but as he looked at the other players, all smiling and appreciative, Zane knew there wasn"t.

A waiter arrived a few moments later with empty tumblers for all the players at the table. Bianchi filled the glasses generously, and when he personally held one out to Zane, Zane knew he was trapped. There was no way to avoid this, short blowing his cover—and Ty"s—over a glass of whiskey.

He gave Bianchi Corbin"s best full-of-shit grin and raised his glass for the toast to their health even as his stomach roiled.

Zane hadn"t had a drink, any drink, in almost ten months.

The first taste of the
very
expensive Chivas was, well, intoxicating.

TY SAT on the balcony of their suite staring out at the rolling ocean, feet twitching as he hummed a tune he was pretty sure was actually two or three different songs. He was bored. It was only the fourth day of cruising, but other than almost falling off the rock wall the morning before, nothing had happened, and Ty wasn"t in a position to
make
anything happen.

He"d spent almost the entire day doing nothing. He supposed that was what some considered a vacation, but it just made him twitchy and nervous.

He understood the necessity for following the itineraries, but he was really beginning to hate those damn things. After dinner last night, Zane had gone off to a high-stakes poker game with Bianchi, Armen, and several other high rollers, hoping to glean information that could prove useful. Ty wasn"t needed there, and his presence probably would have made the other men wonder. They"d decided it wasn"t worth the risk for him to tag along, and the same applied tonight. And even if they"d been able to contact them, none of the other AWOL team members could be there for backup, either, since it was a private game.

Which was another thing that made Ty restless as hell.

128 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

It sort of reminded him of his last float before he"d left the Corps.

Knowing there was action elsewhere but stuck in sick bay, useless, with a bullet hole in his shoulder. Then, at least, his chest hadn"t itched where all the hair had been ripped out by organic scented wax.

He knew it was a self-imposed boredom this time, of course.

They were on a cruise ship. It was, by definition, a floating fun house.

Only Ty wasn"t having fun, and he wasn"t willing to go too far where he couldn"t be found if there was trouble. The four-man support team that was supposedly out there somewhere wasn"t really a lot of help. Ty hadn"t seen hide or hair of any of them. He knew it was out of necessity; they were merely there as a fallback, a last-ditch emergency response team if everything went tits up. Still, Ty would have felt better if they"d been given some way to contact them other than going out on the deck and waving their arms, hoping one of them was watching.

None of that would have made him feel better anyway. He didn"t know any of the other agents, and he didn"t trust what he didn"t know.

He sat there for barely five more minutes before he lost the will to be bored. He hefted himself out of the lounger and turned to head back into the cabin, determined to find something to keep his mind busy that didn"t involve disaster scenarios.

He went to Del Porter"s leather satchel, opened it, and peered inside with a twinge of guilt. He didn"t like going through Del"s personal belongings any more than he liked being Del. Granted, they"d already made a cursory search of all the luggage, including this bag, but Ty had tried not to delve too deep.

Now, though, he was desperate.

Inside the satchel were a few Sudoku and crossword puzzle books, which shocked Ty, since the guy wasn"t exactly supposed to be the intellectual type. He reached in and pulled a few of the books out, flipping through them to find them almost entirely filled in.

He groaned in disappointment. That would have given him something to do, anyway. He"d been avoiding the ship"s fitness areas simply because he didn"t like the crowds, but he would do a few laps around the designated jogging track if all else failed. If he could find Fish & Chips | 129

music, he"d be better off. He remembered seeing an MP3 player in one of these bags.

He set the books beside him on the bed and looked back into the satchel. There was a small, pale green iPod and a set of matching earphones, a stick of deodorant, a pair of reading glasses in a Gucci case, and not much else.

Ty picked up the iPod with a pleased smile. He plugged in the earphones and put one bud in his ear as he turned the device on to make sure it would work before he got ready for a run. He set it to shuffle and put it on his knee as he reached for the Gucci eyeglass case.

He opened the case out of curiosity, wondering if they really were reading glasses. He was almost surprised when he found they were, and he held the stylish frames up to look them over. They were rectangular wire frames with thick, flat legs. Not exactly what Ty would have chosen if he had to wear glasses, and they had probably cost more than he made in a month.

The most interesting thing about these reading glasses was that when he held them up and looked through them, they didn"t alter his vision at all. Ty frowned at them and slid them on as the iPod began to play a spoken word track in a language Ty wasn"t sure of.

The reading glasses were merely glass, and they were heavier than they should have been, slightly reminiscent of the sunglasses he"d been given to take pictures. He took them off and turned them over, bending the legs experimentally. He couldn"t concentrate with the foreign words in his ear, though, and he picked up the iPod to peer at the track name. He"d thought it was an audiobook track, but it was labeled as a song he"d never heard of. Ty huffed and thumbed over to the next song, but it, too, was a spoken word track that was labeled incorrectly.

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.

130 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

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.

Fish & Chips | 131

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.