Chapter 25
JETT
Something was definitely wrong. The tension in Locke’s body was palpable. His muscles were coiled as if waiting for an attack. But it wasn’t until my nose brushed the pulse in his neck that I realized how rapidly his heart was beating.
“Talk to me,” I said softly. “Please.”
Locke didn’t move or speak, only held me tighter and inhaled me.
I moved my hands up and down his back before trying to massage the tightness at the top of his shoulders. “Mm, that feels amazing,” he said.
“Why do you play Paxis with a drug lord?” I asked, pulling away and meeting his eye.
He didn’t shy away from eye contact, but he didn’t answer me either. So I continued.
“Because there’s no fucking way all these important people are here for a friendly game of chess. I don’t care how fancy the boards are.”
His jaw flexed, the one reliable indicator that he was anxious.
Locke’s hands came up to hold my face, his thumbs moving over my cheekbones.
“I don’t know what you’re implying. When have you heard me do anything other than Maris work or game play?
” he asked. “You’ve seen my email and slept in my bed. ”
He was right, of course. And when he said it like that, it sounded ridiculous. But so had this unlikely collection of supposed chess players, when Rocky had reminded me of it.
The instincts I’d developed as an agent were leading me in one direction. My instincts about Locke, the complete opposite.
Which was I supposed to follow?
“If I challenged anyone here to a game of Paxis…” I began, thinking of how dumbed down their play had seemed.
“They’d all kick your ass in an embarrassingly short number of moves,” he finished, sounding very sure of himself.
“In case you forgot, I’m pretty good at games, John Locke Maris,” I teased.
Locke smiled and ran his thumb over my lower lip, following the movement with his eyes. “You figured out what J stood for?”
I’d always known, of course. He was in the goddamned ESP database now. But it had been fun pretending to guess.
“It explains a lot. John Locke, like the philosopher. ‘What worries you, masters you,’” I quoted, running a finger along the ever-present divot between Locke’s eyebrows. “Which of your parents had a love of philosophy?”
He shook his head, blushing slightly. “Neither. My mother met a famous hockey player at a fundraiser when she was pregnant with me. He was charming and successful, and his name was Locke Bennett. The John is from the original Maris who founded the shipping line. My mother was convinced I needed to be named after him to safeguard my legacy as the family heir. As if being the only son of an only son wasn’t enough. ”
“If you wanted to play more Paxis right now, I could have played with you,” I offered, remembering how stung I’d felt when he wanted to play more Paxis instead of spending time in bed with me.
His fingers continued moving gently over my face as if memorizing it. And his eyes were filled with unexpected affection. “I appreciate that. It’s not quite the same.” He took in a breath and held it before letting it out. “After? Will you play with me later tonight?”
Locke’s lips tightened into a thin line, and he dropped his hands to my hips. “Before you answer that, I should probably warn you that my session with the others might go long. And I don’t want a repeat of other nights, where I say I’m going to be there and then don’t show.”
It was probably pretty sad that this basic courtesy made my heart leap and my stomach swoosh. But it was the first time I’d felt that, even while stressed, I still ranked among Locke’s priorities.
I leaned forward and kissed his chin, then jaw. “I’ll wait for you in your bed. If you feel like more Paxis when you get here, great. If not, we’ll play another time, okay?”
His face warmed with satisfaction in a way that made me second-guess my suspicions. It wasn’t until he’d left me to take a quick shower and shave that I remembered he’d never answered my question about Alvarado.
Curiosity hummed under my skin. I’d been distracted. Locke’s pendulum was a dizzying ride, but it was time to focus.
Locke was right that I hadn’t seen anything suspicious.
I’d been in that room and watched some of the game play.
No one spoke, or they spoke minimally. In and out of that room were serving staff, spouses, administrative helpers.
The boards, while intricately adorned, were regular chessboards, and the pieces the same.
They weren’t electronic, at least as far as I could tell.
Locke had brought his set back to the suite tonight before taking it again, and he’d set it right back in the same place it had been, nowhere near a charging cable of any kind.
I hadn’t seen him pass paper messages, speak in code to anyone, or even spend much time with other players outside of the game session. At breakfast, he’d talked to me. At lunch, we’d been alone in the suite. Dinner was going to be eaten while they played.
Instead of retreating into my own room to change for dinner, I shoved one of my rings deep in my pocket and quickly moved to the empty game room.
The guard outside the room lifted his chin at me.
I made a production of taking my phone out to slide into a slot.
I held up an empty hand with five bare fingers.
“I think I dropped one of my rings this afternoon. Locke said I could come look before the game starts.”
He nodded and let me in. I only had a few minutes to snoop, but what I saw was even more interesting than I’d noticed earlier.
The table itself was filled with symbols.
The design was decorative from a distance, but when you looked up close, it was covered in things like celestial symbols, animals, human figures, structures, plants and flowers, arrows, and intricately scrolled roman numerals.
Elaborate, symbolic design. The kind found on historic art pieces, ancient carvings, and other museum-quality items.
It took me a minute to wrap my head around what I was seeing, what I was thinking.
It’s a fucking code.
My eyes drank it in as quickly as possible, and just as the guard poked his head in to ask if I’d found what I’d been looking for, I noticed the chair arms also had things carved into them, each one different.
What the fuck.
I remembered how each player had the same nervous tics, tapping their pieces while they considered their moves. They tapped them on the board, on the arm of a chair, on the edge of the table.
Jesus Christ. It was all a front for something.
I held up my ring and smiled at the guard. “Thank you. My sister would kick my ass if I lost this. It was a gift,” I said. Which was true.
When I finally arrived at the dining room to play happy host to the non-player guests, the only people there were Liyana al-Qadiri, Santi, and the young woman I’d talked to by the pool after my run.
Rylee Melling was one of the three women who’d accompanied Julien Hartmann, the CEO of Stratos Aerospace. Her face lit up when I walked in.
“Jett! Come join us. I heard you went for a run this afternoon.”
“The weather was beautiful,” I said. “And so are you. That’s a lovely dress. Sheikha al-Qadiri, Mr. Alvarado, good evening. I hope you’re enjoying your stay.”
Santi’s eyebrow arched. “No comment about my beauty?”
“If you had dressed in silk chiffon, things might have gone very differently, Santi,” I said with a smile, trying not to roll my eyes at his constant charm offensive when I hadn’t given him any indication I was interested.
The women chuckled, and we were joined by a few more people. I helped Sheika al-Qadiri to a seat and then took the one next to her. She and her husband seemed closer to Locke than some of the others, so I wondered if I’d be able to learn anything from her about him or his past.
Or the true purpose of the fucking game.
“Mr. Maris mentioned you and your husband have horses,” I began politely.
What followed was a passionate description of the two loves of her life. Kida and Makani were purebred Egyptian Arabians with million-dollar bloodlines and countless awards and medals.
“Do you ride often?” I asked.
She blinked at me, horrified but too well-mannered to show it overtly. “Not my show horses. Riding changes their musculature. But there are other horses in my program I ride.”
When I’d finally learned way more than necessary about Qadiri horse culture, she asked me what I did for fun.
“Collect seashells,” I admitted, knowing this was already part of Jethro Davis’s lore now, the same as it was part of Jett Marian’s real history. “I grew up near a beach and learned early on that hunting for shells was a good excuse to disappear into my head for a while to think big thoughts.”
“Thoughts about what?” she asked with an attentive smile.
I shrugged. “Depends on the year. Some years, it was about who would win in an epic Marvel and DC superhero battle. Some years, it was why my crush didn’t like me back. Other years, it was about what to study in school and whether I was going down the right path.”
“And now?” she asked with knowing eyes. “What would you think about on your seashell hunt today?”
Why the hell am I jeopardizing my career for a straight guy who’s obviously a big fat liar?
“Whether I’m living up to Locke’s expectations,” I said, offering a self-deprecating smile. I needed this conversation to bear fruit if I had any chance of figuring out what was going on in this house.
She patted my hand. “I’m sure he’s very happy with your service, dear. You’ve done a good job making everyone feel welcome. Locke appreciates hard work.”
“Have you known him a long time?”
She smiled thanks to the server who brought out our first course before turning to me. “Since he was a little boy. My own father played in these Paxis tournaments. I used to travel with him. When he got too old to enjoy travel, he passed his game to my husband, and I accompanied Saleem instead.”
“Why didn’t your father pass the game to you?” I asked. I leaned closer and added in a whisper, “Is it because it’s boring?”
She laughed. “Not at all.” Her smile became more guarded. “My father believes Paxis is better handled by men.”
“Handled?”
She let out a puff of air. “Forgive me. My English. I meant played.”
Right. The woman’s English was perfect. She’d meant what she’d said.
“And what do you think?” I asked.
She smiled. “I think I want to send you a picture of a seashell I have at home to ask what kind it is.”
Her deflection was understandable but frustrating. I gave her my cell number, and when I turned back to my own plate, I caught Santi looking at me from across the table.
“We should take a swim later,” he suggested. Instead of his usual flirtation, this seemed more serious.
“Maybe,” I hedged. Could he tell me anything? Would he know what his father was involved in?
“We could talk about John,” he suggested.
I choked on a bite of salad while Santi watched me with dark eyes.
Had he overheard me calling Locke that? Had I somehow left the doors or windows open? Had we been naked at the time? Fucking? My face heated as I scrambled to remember.
I’d given Locke shit about his decree that we should hide our physical relationship, but that was mostly because I wanted the man so badly I was literally risking my career to be here, and it hurt that he didn’t seem to want me enough to even claim me as a lover in front of his friends.
Even so, I’d understood his reasoning, and I agreed with Locke’s desire to protect his own privacy. Ours wasn’t a relationship. It was a business transaction.
I needed to find out what Santi knew about it.
“Okay,” I managed. “Sure.”
Thankfully, one of the other guests began asking Santi about a resort in Colombia, and he turned his focus on them. Meanwhile, my brain finally landed on the only time I’d called Locke John since Santi’s arrival.
Today, when we’d been talking about chess. We’d been fully dressed. But I’d been in his arms. His hands had been on my face. I’d mentioned sleeping in his bed.
Fuck.
What would Locke do if he found out someone knew about our sexual relationship? And if that someone was from a known crime family who probably used information like this to control people, what would that mean for Locke?
Or was Locke part of it? Was all of this a front for a global crime syndicate of some kind?
I couldn’t quite believe it. But I wasn’t sure whether that was because the facts didn’t line up… or because I didn’t want them to.
Somehow, I made it through the dinner with more anecdotes from Liyana al-Qadiri’s elite horse world, which sounded like an obscene way to spend her money.
But then again, al-Qadiri was part of a billion-dollar oil empire.
Liyana’s father could buy her every horse in the world several times over, and it would still be pocket change to him.
When we finally finished, I took the opportunity to check in with Locke by slipping into the game room and standing quietly behind him until he had enough of a break in the play to summon me forward.
“Do you need anything?” I asked softly, keeping my hands behind my back to keep from touching him.
The scent of him filled my nose, and being this close perked up my dick. I hated that my response to him was so damned predictable. Especially in light of my discoveries.
“Ask Minnie to get me a list of all ships traveling through the Kiel Canal in the next twenty-four hours, not just ours, along with their positions,” he murmured. “And please bring me a Sprite or ginger ale or something if you don’t mind.”
After bringing him the drink, I made my way to the suite to email his assistant with the request before changing into a swimsuit.
When I got out to the pool, Santi was already in the water. And we were completely alone.