Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
NOW I OFFICIALLY worked at Blackwood, I spent less time learning new skills and more time consolidating existing ones. Yes, I still had to keep ridiculously fit, but it was no longer a chore. Thanks to Black and Alex, I now tackled tasks that had seemed impossible just a few short months ago with ease.
And I was onto my fourth language—Spanish—when Black asked me if I fancied spending a month in Mexico. Tanning and tequila? Too right I did.
“Sure, I’d love to. I can inflict my terrible linguistic skills on the locals. Uh, what do you need me to do? Break into somewhere? Follow someone?”
“Not exactly. It’s more of an undercover job.” When he said that, I didn’t realise he meant it literally. “We’re lending you to the CIA, and they owe a favour to the DEA, who heard about you on the grapevine and requested your assistance with a little problem. They don’t have anyone else with the right, er, attributes.”
“The DEA? What kind of problem?”
“There’s been a flood of drugs into Southern California recently. Intelligence suggests it’s coming from one particular resort on the Mexican coast, but nobody’s been able to work out how it’s getting from A to B.”
“So why send me? The closest I’ve come to the drugs trade is the odd bit of recreational use at parties.”
Black rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah. Don’t mention that. And they want you to go because none of the men working for them looks good in a bikini. They might create a distraction but not in the right way, especially as it’s a couples’ resort.”
“So basically, you’ve spent the best part of a year playing slave driver at me so I can parade around on a beach, half-naked.”
He shrugged. “Think of it as a holiday. Now, do me a favour and go pack.”
“When do we leave?”
“ We don’t. I’ve got things to do here.”
“But you said—”
“I know.”
“Then who are you sending me with?”
I could deal with pretending to be Black’s girlfriend. But no way did I want to be pimped out to some government pervert with wandering hands.
“Nick Goldman. He’s an old friend, a good guy. Nate and I used to work with him when we were with the agency, and he came up through the SEALs too. We’ve been trying to convince him to join us at Blackwood, so if there’s anything you can do in that respect, I’d be grateful.”
Right. So all I had to do was pretend to be in love with a guy I’d never met, work out how illegal cargo was getting shipped into the United States, and do it well enough to convince said guy he wanted to quit his secure job with the infinite resources of the US government behind him and come to work with us.
“You don’t ask for much, do you?”
Black gave me a smile, the sly one he wore when he was cooking up a scheme. “Just remember, you don’t have to be good, but you do have to be perfect.”
When I opened the door of the government car sent to take me to the airport, Nick was already inside, phone clamped to his ear. Wow. I’d expected a middle-aged dude in an ill-fitting suit, not a young James Bond. With extra muscles. And dimples.
Oh my.
He hung up as I slipped into the seat beside him, and I willed myself not to blush. Recalling Black’s training in social graces, I figured I’d better introduce myself. Should I shake hands, kiss him European-style, or simply throw myself at his feet?
After a few seconds of awkward silence, I gave him a little wave and said, “Hi.”
He grinned wider. “Hi. Emmy, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” I fumbled with my seatbelt and finally got the flipping thing done up. “So, we have a month in Mexico…”
“We do. And four weeks in the sun can’t be as bad as the three weeks I just spent in Moscow. Snow everywhere, and it was colder than a penguin’s foot.” He looked me up and down. “Company’s better too.”
And just like that, the ice was broken.
After a slightly evasive game of twenty questions, I found out Nick had joined the Navy six years ago at the age of seventeen.
“As a way of giving my old man the finger, I suppose,” he said. “We never saw eye to eye. He wanted me to work in the city.”
“Moscow’s a city.”
“Good point.”
He gave me that smile again, eyes crinkling, and I knew right then the trip wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared. He talked, I talked, and we were almost at the airport when I remembered this was supposed to be work.
“What’s the plan, boss?”
“We’re newlyweds on our honeymoon. Vegas wedding, baby.”
He passed over the picture the CIA had thoughtfully provided as a memento of our joyous occasion. Our heads had been artfully photoshopped onto a couple standing under bawdy neon lights shaped like wedding bells.
“Ugh. That dress is hideous,” I said. “The woman’s practically falling out of the top, and it does nothing for her waist.”
“The guy’s not much better. Someone should have fixed his tie.” Nick looked at his reflection in the window glass. “And my skin’s three shades darker in that photo. I need some sun.”
I nodded my agreement as he took an envelope from his pocket and tipped out a pair of trashy-looking gold rings. Eighteen years old, and the closest I’d got to the beach was the Dirty Name at Little Creek.
“Nice,” I said as Nick slipped a ring onto my finger.
“I should have gone out and bought these myself. Everyone’s gonna think I’m cheap.”
I batted my eyelashes at him. “You, cheap? But honey, you’ve shelled out for the honeymoon suite.”
“At least the expense account’s generous.”
The plane ride passed quickly as I flipped through the file of suspects, memorising names and faces. Once I was happy I’d recognise them, I switched my attention to a map of the area so I’d be familiar with the terrain when we arrived. I wanted to ace this job for Black.
And, I realised, for Nick.
The honeymoon suite turned out to be a secluded villa that fronted onto the hotel’s private beach. Nice. Perhaps I should become a smuggler? They sure had chosen somewhere idyllic to do business.
“Not bad, is it?” Nick said as we walked inside.
“It isn’t quite the Ritz, but it’ll do.”
“The Ritz?” He raised an eyebrow. “Black, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Black probably has more money than the CIA, so I’m afraid we’re slumming it.”
Nick ordered us a late lunch of grilled fish and pineapple, and we sat under a shady palm on our terrace to formulate a plan. My plan would have been to lie out on a sun lounger all week, but it was the CIA’s dollar, so unfortunately we had to do some work.
“I thought we’d go for a walk this evening to see the lay of the land, then we should get an early night,” Nick said.
“Sure. Do you have plans for tomorrow?”
He nodded, and my stomach dropped as I recognised the same look Black gave me on many occasions. Right before he made my life a misery.
“Tomorrow, I’m giving you a scuba diving lesson. Black said he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
Wonderful. My week on the beach had just disappeared underwater. “What about equipment?”
“I brought it all with me.”
“I wondered why you had two suitcases.”
“The second one’s full of sunglasses and hair products.” Nick’s hair, the colour of freshly ground coffee, was half an inch long.
“Tart.”
He grinned back at me and pretended to fluff his hair. Did I mention he’d taken his shirt off? Well, he had, and those tight pecs and perfect six-pack were incredibly distracting.
As my heart flipped, I blew out a long breath, forced myself to focus, and wondered how far he planned to go with this marriage charade.
The main hotel building turned into the Mary Celeste in the evening. We had the restaurant to ourselves for dessert, a bored waiter and a by-the-numbers pianist our only company. What with it being a couples’ resort, I could well imagine why. I ordered an extra slice of chocolate cake to-go. And an individual cheesecake. And a small portion of churros. What? Without Toby’s beady eyes on me, I could eat what I liked and I was determined to take advantage of it, especially with the CIA paying. The chef packaged it up for me in a cardboard box covered in multi-coloured hearts and gift ribbon.
“Carry this for me?” I asked Nick.
“Not on your life.”
The soft chirp of crickets sounded from the bushes at the side of the path as we ambled back towards the villa just after eight, hand in hand. After a short walk up the beach to get an idea of the locale, we decided to call it a night.
“What are we doing about sleeping arrangements?” I asked, seeing there was only one bed. An enormous bed with enough cushions for an entire sorority to have a pillow fight, but still only one nonetheless.
Nick made a face. “Black told me before we left I’d be sleeping on the floor. I brought a camping mattress. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to tread on his toes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, spending the night in bed with his girlfriend would hardly help our future working relationship, would it?”
“I’m not Black’s girlfriend.”
Nick turned and stared at me. “You’re not? I just assumed you and he were…well…you know…”
“We’re not.”
“But I thought you lived together?” Nick raised an eyebrow.
“I have a bedroom in his house. I didn’t know how long I’d be staying in Virginia initially, and he had sixteen to spare, so he let me use one. And sometimes at parties, we pretend we’re a couple so neither of us gets bothered by unwanted attention.”
“Oh. Right. Why’s he so protective of you then?”
I shrugged. “I’ve had some experiences with men in the past that have been less than ideal. I think he’s just looking out for me.”
Nick flipped back the lid of his suitcase and pulled out the mattress. Before unrolling it, he paused in front of me and put a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“I promise I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
But the question was, did I want him to be?
Scuba diving soon became my second favourite activity, not quite as fun as flying but close. A magical world existed under the surface of the water, full of colour and beauty, and I found a peace down there that escaped me on land. Nick warned me it wasn’t always like that, and that diving in the balmy waters off the Mexican coast was a far cry from being tossed overboard in the North Atlantic and being expected to swim in near-freezing conditions to a landing point two miles away. But for now, I revelled in the power of the ocean, bewitched by its charms.
As a former SEAL, Nick made an excellent teacher. He lacked Black’s pushiness and Alex’s impatience, and I looked forward to each lesson. Even the horrid parts, like the mask-off drills and having to remove all my diving gear underwater then put it back on again, didn’t seem so bad under his tutelage.
Sunbathing on the beach wasn’t exactly a hardship either, and by watching the comings and goings at the nearby marina, we soon noted patterns of unusual activity. People would get on yachts at dawn and never disembark, and a couple of boats had endless boxes of cargo loaded without ever leaving to deliver it. Occasionally, we’d spot another ship on the horizon, and Nick took photos with a long lens while I cavorted in a bikini in the foreground.
“Left a bit. Now smile.”
Who did he think he was, David Bailey? I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see the ship disappear over the horizon. Even with a telephoto lens, there was no way those pictures contained anything useful.
“You git.”
He gave me a heart-stopping grin, and two women to the right of me sighed.
“I’m having fun. Aren’t you having fun?”
I marched up to him. “What are you planning to do with those?” I pointed at the camera. “Keep them as souvenirs?”
“What if I said yes?”
“I thought you were a gentleman?”
He pinched my bum then grabbed my hand as I went to slap him. “I lied.”
Nick’s colleagues confirmed several of the suspect boats had been seen in the Gulf of Mexico just off Texas, but they’d never docked in the United States. Despite careful surveillance by the coastguard, nobody saw their crews throw anything overboard, either.
We’d have to keep digging.
There was only so much time I could spend on a sun lounger without turning into a lobster, and we couldn’t skulk in the shade without looking suspicious. So, with the CIA’s funds at our disposal, we solved that problem by signing up for all sorts of water-based activities.
“How on earth do you stand up?” I asked, after my attempts at wakeboarding resulted in a near-drowning. Nick, of course, had probably surfed out of the womb.
“Try pointing your toes,” he called from his position in the back of the boat.
What do you know? It worked. Before long, I was zipping from side to side waving one arm in the air. At least, until I tried to copy one of Nick’s jumps and gave myself whiplash.
“Don’t worry, baby. I’ll massage it better later,” he said, purely for the benefit of the boat captain of course.
At least, I’d assumed it was for the benefit of the captain. Turned out it wasn’t.
After flying and diving, Nick’s fingers became my new favourite thing. Actually, maybe they even topped that list. Our married couple act became natural, and I held his hand through instinct rather than obligation. Kissing him was hardly a chore. When his lips touched mine, the golden sands outside our veranda weren’t the only thing feeling the heat.
“You might as well share the bed with me,” I told him at the end of the first week. Hearing his spine crack every morning as he rose from the tiled floor was giving me a backache.
“Are you sure Black won’t mind?”
“Even if he did, it’s my decision, not his.”
Despite starting off on separate sides of the mattress, my subconscious had other ideas, and I woke up in Nick’s arms. In that floating, dream-like moment between sleep and wakefulness, I nuzzled into his neck, relishing the warmth of his body in the chill of the air conditioning.
“Uh, Emmy?” he whispered.
Oops. “I’m sorry!” I rolled away, putting some space between us as I re-joined the land of the living.
“I’m not.” He stretched out his arm, inviting me back in.
I gladly went.
The more time I spent with Nick, the more I liked him. After the challenge of Black and his complexities, Nick’s easygoing charm was exactly what I needed. With Black, I constantly had to listen for what he wasn’t saying. Read between the lines. Nick was straight-up, and did I mention hot? Yesterday alone, three women had walked into solid objects after being distracted by him, and we had a side bet as to what the total would be by the time we left.
Double figures, for sure.
At the beginning of the third week, a hotel security guard caught us sneaking around the boathouse on the edge of the marina. His face clouded as he reached for his radio.
“What are you doing?”
I thought back to the glimpse of Nick I’d caught in the shower last night, which made my cheeks redden rather nicely.
Nick’s lips curved up in a cheeky smile as he pulled me tight against him. “What do you think?” he asked the guard.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Don’t worry, we’re leaving.”
Nick swept me up in his arms, and I gave a convincing shriek. The guard followed at a distance, still suspicious as Nick carried me back to our room. On the doorstep, Nick paused, checked discreetly behind us, then attempted to find my tonsils with his tongue while he fumbled with the lock.
At times like that, I couldn’t believe I got paid to do this job.
We stumbled into the villa, landing on the bed as the door bounced off the wall and slammed behind us. Nick kept up his search, and I was only too eager to assist. His hardness pressed into my thigh and I ground against it, my body taking over as my mind went blank. As I wrapped my legs around him, he levered himself up and we paused, nose-to-nose.
“Nobody’s watching anymore, baby,” he whispered.
“Good.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
Time slowed as I thought of my past. Of the other times I’d been in that position and how it made me feel. Used. Dirty. But Black had laid those demons to rest. Quite literally, in the case of one of them.
I bit my lip. Nick was offering me a way out. But the very fact he’d offered meant I didn’t want to take it.
I shook my head.
“No, I don’t want you to stop.”
Nick continued my education for the rest of our time in Mexico, when we weren’t busy working, of course.
“I don’t know what the future holds, baby, but I know I want to hold you until we go home,” he said.
“Black’s probably planning my life as we speak, but you’re right—we should make the most of this.”
After all, Black had told me I didn’t need to be good.
The job still took priority, though, and having ruled out other avenues, Nick began to suspect the use of submersibles in the smuggling operation. As the sun rose one ordinary Wednesday morning, we made a dive into the marina and found cleverly concealed doors in the hulls of two of our suspect boats. The crew had covered the cracks with fake barnacles, and unless you were inches away, the openings were impossible to spot.
Three days later, Nick visited the harbourmaster to enquire about the possibility of berthing his imaginary yacht there in the marina for a couple of weeks. Alas, the cost proved prohibitive, but as he dropped his cigarette into the wastebasket of the operations office, he still managed a smile. The paper smouldered for a while before the flames took hold then chaos broke out. Smoke poured from the windows, blurring the view as I snuck onto our target boat with Nick’s camera.
“And?” he asked half an hour later as I slipped back into the villa.
“A mini-sub. I need your laptop to upload the pictures.”
There was clearly big money in drugs. As well as the mini-sub, I’d seen stacks of cash, gold coins, and even a photo of the yacht’s owner with his pet tiger.
“Here, I’ll help.”
As the encrypted email flew through cyberspace to Nick’s bosses, sadness swept over me. I almost wished we hadn’t found the submarine, because now Riverley beckoned. My last night in the honeymoon suite wasn’t something I’d forget in a hurry, though. Even now, I still flush thinking of the things Nick did to me.
“Could you put your seat belts on, please?” the flight attendant asked as the plane descended towards Dulles.
I buckled up and turned to Nick, resting my hand on his thigh. “Thanks. For everything. I’ll never forget this.”
“You’d better not. I’m hoping for a repeat performance one day.” He leaned over and nibbled my earlobe. “Maybe in Virginia.”
“Does that mean you’ll give some thought to working at Blackwood?”
“Yeah. I’ll call Black and have a talk about it.”
I couldn’t hold in my smile—mission accomplished, even if I’d used slightly unorthodox methods. One last kiss before the plane landed, and I was soon on my way back to my mentor.
“Job well done, Diamond,” Black said. “My contact at the DEA’s a card-carrying member of your fan club now.”
A week later, Black beckoned me into the conference room for a call with the DEA. One of our boats had been raided by the DEA and the coastguard as it crossed from international waters off the coast of California.
The haul? Six million dollars’ worth of heroin, plus four illegal immigrants.
Not bad.
“Makes the two hundred grand they paid for my holiday look like a bargain, doesn’t it?” I said to Black.
“I’ll charge them double next time.”
Next time? I kept my fingers crossed.