In a Fix (8 page)

“You’re in my chem class, aren’t you?” she purred.

I missed Billy’s answer because another girl in the group—short, plump, and still in full orthodontic regalia—swayed into me. I steadied her the best I could, and was mortified to feel my projected penis start to twitch when my arm accidentally brushed her breast. See, this was exactly why I generally prefer not to assume a male aura—I never quite know how to deal with an appendage that has a mind of its own. (Granted, this one seemed to be twitchier than most I’d experienced.) It is also proof positive a man’s penis acts without consulting his brain, because there was no way my brain was the slightest bit turned on by the unfortunate girl beside me. Not that I would have been even if she’d been a super model, but damn.

As we rounded a corner, I saw a cab and quickly hailed it. Billy laid a happy frat-boy kiss on Miss Boobs before I shoved him into the backseat and climbed in after him. He leaned over me and rolled down the window. “See you in chem class,” he called out, and blew her a kiss.

I elbowed him in the gut, garnering a satisfying “Oof!” He pushed himself off my lap. The cabby was familiar with the address I gave, so I settled back, trying unobtrusively to adjust myself.

“Got a little problem there, cuz?” Billy said under his breath.

“Why did you choose this aura for me?” I whispered back furiously.

“You mean old ‘Boner’ Benjamin? No special reason. Just thought he’d make good cover.”

I narrowed my eyes to murderous slits. “You do know I’m going to kill you in your sleep someday, don’t you?”

Chapter 7

Mark lives on a thirty-foot sailboat he keeps anchored in southwest D.C. Lucky for me, it requires maintenance from time to time—that’s usually when he shows up at my place to borrow his old room. I guess he figures I’m less likely than Thomas to have overnight visitors he might disturb (sad but true). Well, other than Billy, but Mark doesn’t really care if he disturbs Billy. If they both show up at the same time, they flip a coin for the couch.

He was waiting on deck for us when the taxi let us off at the marina. Billy and I stumbled our way over and boarded, with me narrowly avoiding an unintentional dip in the Potomac when Mark grabbed me by the waistband and hauled me back to safety. Which says a lot about his strength because, believe me, Benjamin was no lightweight. I was relieved to avoid the dunking, even though the cold water might have helped with my continuing, um, problem.

“Steady there, Ciel,” he said quietly.

“What makes you think I’m Ciel?” I whispered back, embarrassed by my clumsiness.

“Because there’s no way Billy would take that aura for himself.”

“How do you know Bo—uh, Benjamin?”

“Who do you think gave him to me in the first place?” Billy answered for him.

“And you felt compelled to pass him along to me why, precisely?”

“You’ve heard of ‘pay it forward’?”

I clutched my twitching crotch, drawing gleeful laughter from Billy and a look of restrained amusement from Mark. I stomped off toward the cabin. “I will see the two of you inside,” I said as imperiously as my cracking voice would allow.

The windows were mostly covered by the mesh hammocks Mark had rigged in front of them to make extra storage space, so I assumed it was safe to resume my own identity, which I did with an explosive sigh of relief, holding my pants up with one hand so they wouldn’t fall off. I parked myself at one end of the table. Billy chose the opposite end, but I was still close enough to kick him, so I did, right on the shin, with a shoe that was now about ten sizes too big for me.

“Ouch! What was that for?” He switched back to himself as he rubbed his injured limb.

“You know very well what that was for, and you’re lucky I didn’t aim farther north.” I slipped out of the clown sneakers and tucked my feet up under me.

“Hey, I got you here safely and without being followed. Those were Mark’s instructions.”

“Oh, so ‘full caution’ means ‘use the horny drunk slob’ aura? Must be some secret spy code I’m not privy to.”

“Children, children,” Mark said as he closed the cabin door behind him.

I wasn’t quite through bitching yet. “How do you guys put up with
that
? It’s like having a gerbil wake up in your pants when you’re least expecting it.”

They both cracked up, though Mark recovered faster. “Not every guy’s gerbil is as jumpy as Benjamin’s,” he patiently explained.

Billy was more than willing to elaborate. “Some of us have our gerbils well trained. Take mine, for instance—”

“No! You can just keep comments about your gerbil to yourself.” I scooted around the banquette, making room for Mark to sit. “I want to hear what Mark knows. What did you find out from the Swede? And is it connected to my condo getting trashed?”

He hesitated, obviously considering how much—or how little—he could get away with telling us.

“Everything,” I said, knowing full well he’d say only what he pleased. Sometimes I like to pretend he listens to me. Just another one of my spook fantasies.

Before he answered, he retrieved a bottle of Scotch and two glasses from the galley. He put one in front of Billy, the other at his own place, then turned to me. “I think I have some of those wine coolers you like somewhere in the back. Just a sec, I’ll see.”

“You still drink those glorified juice boxes, cuz? We really need to work on your palate.”

I lifted my chin. “Thanks anyway, Mark, but I’ll just have what you’re having.”

Mark paused to give Billy a Look, but fetched another glass. He poured a generous amount for each of us, neat, careful not to skimp on mine. Crap. Now I had to drink it. I don’t even like Scotch, but if I ever wanted Mark to start seeing me as older, maybe I should quit the teeny bopper drinks. Billy had been getting adult treatment from the time he turned twenty-one, and we were the same age, damn it. (All right, so he had a couple of months on me. Well, five. Okay, almost six. Big whoop. Everyone knows girls mature faster than boys anyway.) I lifted my glass and took a hearty swig, figuring the sooner I downed it, the sooner it would be gone. I only choked a little. Billy didn’t say anything—his shin was still within reach—and neither did Mark.

After taking a much smaller sip, Mark began carefully. “Trey has been with us peripherally for years. His import-export business is a legitimate family operation—one of the reasons he was recruited by the Agency to do occasional jobs for us. At the time, he wanted to be more than just a trust-fund boy, but now that he’s ready to marry and settle down he wants out. He agreed to one last job, since it had been in the pipeline for months.”

I was puzzled. “Why didn’t you just do the job for him and let him off the hook? Then he could have proposed to Mina himself.”

“I offered, but it would have taken too long to bring me up to speed on the details. Besides, he thought he could zip over to Sweden, do what needed to be done, and be in the Bahamas in time to pop the question himself. I was only there to cover his ass in case he got delayed.”

“So what happened?” Billy asked.

“Don’t know yet. We lost contact.”

Two creases materialized between Billy’s dark brows. “Shit. That’s not good.”

Worry wasn’t a look I was used to seeing on Billy, and it concerned me more than the simple facts Mark had stated. Something was very wrong.

“No, it’s not good. But don’t invite trouble—it might just be a mechanical failure. Dead battery in his satellite phone, maybe,” Mark said, smiling reassurance at me.

“That’s a crock. Stop treating me like a kid,” I said, not in the mood to be reassured.

He gave me a quick once-over, noting, I was sure, the baggy clothes I was drowning in, probably looking like a twelve-year-old boy. I stared him down.

“Okay,” he said. “Somebody tried to grab Trey in Sweden last week. He got away, checked in with us once, and that’s the last we heard. I think I was taken in the Bahamas—when I was Trey—because somebody picked up on me—him—being there. So far the Swede hasn’t coughed up much information, other than he was getting paid a whole helluva lot of money to return Trey to whoever had him before.”

“Did he tell you who that was?” Billy leaned forward, intent.

“Not yet, but he will.”

“How can you be sure?”

Mark looked at me with eyes so remote they left me chilled. “I’m sure,” he said quietly, and sipped his drink.

“Oh.” I leaned back, shrinking into my clothes even more, trying not to let my imagination loose.

Mark swore softly under his breath. “Are you going to throw up? Do I need to get you a bowl?”

I glared at him. Once upon a time I’d had starry-eyed visions of joining the Agency myself. Mark had tried to discourage me, explaining calmly and reasonably why he thought it wouldn’t suit me. When I persisted, he took me aside and painted graphic word pictures of some of his wetter assignments. (And by wet, I don’t mean water. Think redder.) He held my head tenderly over the toilet while I puked my guts out, and then asked me a simple question: if I couldn’t hear about stuff like that without losing my lunch, how would I handle being in the middle of it?

He had a point. That’s when I decided to start my own business instead.

Of course, he wasn’t overly thrilled with my career as a facilitator either. Thought there was too much exposure inherent in building my clientele. As far as Mark was concerned, the less known about our kind, the better. His bosses knew there were more like him, naturally (hard to keep something like that from the top echelon of the CIA), but Mark had worked out some sort of deal that entailed them leaving the rest of us alone in exchange for his exclusive services.

He was right about there being safety in anonymity—all adaptors know that, and try to preserve it. But heck, you can’t live in a total vacuum. And it wasn’t like I was renting billboards or taking out banner ads on popular websites. Referrals from friends and family worked for me. Discreet word of mouth, too. Kind of like with a traveling poker game. People might start to suspect something funny was going on, but as long as they couldn’t pin it down, it didn’t matter.

“No, you don’t need to get me a bowl. I’m fine,” I said.

“You sure, cuz? You do look a little greener than usual, even for you.”

I glared at him, too. “Shut up, Billy.” I downed the rest of my Scotch and pushed my glass toward the bottle. “You, Mark—keep talking. If they only wanted Trey, why call Mina and tell her to come to the warehouse?”

Mark poured, a much smaller amount this time, and let Billy field the question.

“Leverage over Trey—threaten Mina, and Trey was more likely to give them what they wanted.”

“Why not grab her at the same time, then?”

Back to Mark. “Only one guy—even with a gun, it’s hard to control two grown people. Much easier to nail one down, and then add the other using the first one as bait. If Mina had been first on the scene, she would’ve been taken.”

“Okay. But why blow up the bungalow?”

Mark shrugged. “That was a simple ‘we mean business’ statement.”

It made a warped kind of sense. “The men at the airport?”

“Probably activated when the Swede didn’t come through with Trey in the Bahamas.”

“So where’s the Swede now?” I had to ask. I just hoped the answer wouldn’t make me hurl.

“I dropped him off with some people who have a few more questions for him. They’ll let me know when he comes out with something useful.”

I took a deep breath and drank the Scotch. It didn’t taste quite as bad this time. “All right, then. Unless there’s been a tremendous coincidence, somebody has connected me to Mina. Why else would my condo be ransacked?”

“Somebody must’ve been watching Trey for quite a while. He never uses his own name when he travels for us, but obviously he can’t change his appearance all that much. If someone tagged him on a job, it wouldn’t be impossible to keep him under surveillance, leading right back to his private life. They’d know about Mina, probably followed her to your office. I only hope they don’t know what you really do for your clients.”

“My office! Do you think they’ve been there, too? Maybe we better go—”

“Hold on there, Wonder Woman. I have somebody watching the building. He’ll call if anything looks suspicious outside. We’ll check inside ourselves first thing in the morning.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You and Billy need to sleep. So do I. We are all going to take a nice nap.”

“I call the double berth,” Billy said quickly, patting the cushion beneath him.

“Sorry, bud. That’s mine. And the quarter berths are loaded with some extra gear I’ve been storing. One of you can have the V-berth, and one of you will have to make do with that.” He pointed to the short banquette sofa across from the dinette.

Billy took one look at the narrow cushions and said, “Well, that’s a no-brainer. Shorty, the couch is all yours.”

“Thanks a lot,” I grumbled automatically, though I was just as happy not to get stuck up front. The V-berth didn’t have any windows, and I tend to be claustrophobic.

Billy heaved himself up, chucked me under the chin, nodded to Mark, and left with a cheery, “Night, all.” He crawled into his pointy but ample accommodations and pulled the privacy curtain shut behind him.

I looked at the Scotch, considering one last nightcap—the rich, smoky flavor was starting to grow on me—but Mark removed temptation from the table before I could reach for it.

“You too. Off to bed with you.”

Just as well. I yawned my acquiescence and unfolded my legs for the two-foot journey across the floor. Stood. Stepped. Fell on my ass. Damn baggy cargos.

Mark hooked me by my armpits and lifted me easily—almost right out of my pants. I dove for the waistband, and bashed my face into his chest. He steadied me before I fell again.

“Ow,” I said, cradling my nose. “Geez, are you wearing armor?”

“You okay?” He moved my hand, and gently probed the length of my nose. “Not broken, anyway.”

I scrunched up my face, testing. “Yeah, I’m fine. Nothing bruised but my dignity.”

He smiled, eyes shifting to the dove-gray that always made me go all soft and gooey inside. “A few more scars there will hardly be noticed.” He ruffled my hair and kissed the top of my head. “Good night, Ciel.”