CHAPTER EIGHT
I didn”t make it three steps across the back of the Serenade before I knew something was badly wrong.
Sure, Marco was hosting a party—a closed one, with cartel heads openly on the water in front of me. These were men I knew from the flick through of potential guests in Archer’s folder that were hot prospects. The hottest sort that rarely showed their faces to an area with CCTV, and certainly not together.
And every single one of them were banded together on the back of the yacht, drinking and making fucking merry.
The only one missing was Marco.
“Cognac, sir?” a server offered politely.
“Thank you.” I swallowed my misgivings and selected a cup from the tray he held, inhaling the scent appreciatively, wishing I had Skye by my side to slap some sense into me.
He nodded and moved on, leaning in to speak quietly with the next tuxedoed attendant.
Damnit, everywhere I looked I saw a threat. To her, to everyone in the bay.
We just got here and the whole place looked ready to go right to hell in a heartbeat. I didn’t have my girl by my side, no matter how much she fought against the need that linked us both.
Over a week on the beach in Tijuana, a road trip and now this operation...she hadn’t slapped me yet, though I was fairly sure she would have if she didn”t expect to get herself fired for the effort.
Something told me that Archer wasn’t that sort of boss, unless the occasion truly called for it, and it was one of the reasons I crossed state lines to meet him in Texas. Skye’s reasons for not trusting him...they were her own, along with the hang ups she had about relationships.
If we survived tonight, that girl and I were sitting in the pinked out room that looked like a certain panther got toey with a paint brush, and hashing it out.
Right before I fucked her to sleep, and not in the boring way.
As if the girl wasn’t complicated enough without tonight’s clusterfuck in the making ready to burst from the wings.
“-ing, sir?” One of the cartel heads—I couldn”t recall a name on the spot—brought me out of my day dreams and left me floundering on the back deck of a multi-million dollar yacht.
“I’m sorry. Honeymoon and all. My head is still...” I shrugged and let a goofy smile slide across my face as I caught the eye of a stocky Mexican looking man and nearly fell flat on my ass.
The one ace I had up my sleeve should I need it.
Brodie Martinez.
I wondered if Archer gave Skye the same undercover talk I got, or if Brodie was here to babysit the newb? Right now I didn’t care. I was in over my head and would take all the help I could get.
“He’s got his head up something, that’s for sure.” The stocky long term undercover Ranger with ties to cartels going back a long way elbowed my ribs and gave me a slightly leering grin. His stare hardened, daring me not to play along.
I put on the only persona I was able to come up with at short notice: the dumb ass goofball of a man with more money than sense.
As long as Skye stayed out of trouble, I’d be able to hold onto it.
“That’s what new wives are for, before they become old wives,” someone said to a round of jeering laughter. “Salute.” The man raised his glass, clinking mine and everyone else’s as they drank their varied spirits I could barely identify, being a JD and coke boy from way back.
Brodie laughed along with them, his foot hitting the back of my calf until I joined the hilarity that went on and on. Then I made the mistake even I knew not to make. I downed my cognac in one.
It took me less than a minute for the boat to sway beneath my feet, and then I couldn’t feel the rest of me at all.
****
I woke with numb hands linked tightly behind my back. The silver bracelets bit into my skin, but the only thing I saw before me were a pair of tits I didn’t recognise right in my face.
No one likes a dirty cadaver in any case. I ignored the warning voices in my head and looked around at the roof that told me I was somewhere inside the yacht, from the sway of the boat, rather than a luxury warehouse on the dock.
At least there’s still a good chance my body would be dumped in the water.
The stripper attached to the tits in my face ground away on my lap to no avail as I stared blankly up at her.
“Come on, baby. We can have fun.” She cooed, sexy like. Or maybe it was supposed to be sexy, but the girl could do with a mint yesterday and every day for the rest of my life.
“Get off me,” I said softly, trying to keep a rein on my politeness.
“Can’t hold his liquor, eh?” One of the men from the deck called.
I shook my head and managed to slide on my stupid ass grin that was starting to hurt, doing a headcount that told me I was outnumbered five to one. Four, if I counted Brodie.
I’ve attended fires that smelled better than this place.
“Come on, baby.” The girl rubbed her dry crotch over my equally unresponsive lap. “You can get it up.”
“Afraid not. Always was a cheap drunk.” I smiled at her, letting my eyes empty of emotion. Everyone else saw a stupid honeymoon lovelorn; she saw a man who pulled bodies from fires that no longer looked human and lived the last few years having nightmares about them because I wasn’t about to fess up and go to counselling, just to torture myself further.
She got a glimpse of that man, and she moved her string bikini clad tush fast enough that I could breathe again after a few seconds and not inhale her stale-sex scent.
Marco might like another man’s slops or think himself a cuck-king, but there was no chance in hell I was putting my cock in a stripper when Skye was all that consumed me since she announced me as her bodyguard for the summer.
Since the day she first flounced down on the beach beside me.
Fucking fail there.
Hell, I hoped she was alright.
I shook my head, playing it up to the crowd of drinking men, wondering what the hell Marco’s game was. “Come on, guys. I already had my bachelor’s party. The stripper there could shoot things out of her pussy and hit a target.”
Fortunately the stripper they set on me scampered and wasn’t there to claim I was talking shit out of my ass at this point.
Stay with the character. It builds doubt.
And doubt breeds, face to face.
Those were Brodie’s last words to me on the brief call we had before I took off with Skye to our new beach destination. He never told me he’d be here. Though I was grateful, I wasn’t really ready for more surprises.
This was meant to be a surveillance mission, after all.
“I thought we might pay a little game of truth or dare.” Marco appeared through a door at the back of the room, beyond the crowd of men who parted to let him pass. “You see, I ask you a question, and you dare me not to pull the trigger for the answer.”
I kept my inane smile plastered across my face. “I don’t remember this game being played quite that way. But then, maybe California’s a different beast.” I shrugged.
Marco didn’t smile back. “I think you mean Texas, Mister Ranger. Isn’t that right, Skye? Isn’t this the man you had to trap in order to bring him right here, to me?”
Skye slipped out from behind Marco, her face closed, though still stunning. “That’s right,” she said, robotically.
Girl needs acting lessons.Or maybe it wasn’t as obvious to everyone else in the room. Her false front sure as shit was to me.
“Whatcha doing, honey?” I said, mustering a little fake cheer, and letting it drop inch by inch, as though the reality was setting in. A double whammy, really, as this situation was all sorts of FUBAR. My heart wanted to pound, but too many years of firefighting prevented me from losing my shit just yet.
Thank Christ, as the way she looked at me then at Marco left my blood running colder than a chilled beer in winter.
“My job, dear,” she said sugary sweetly, glaring at me.