Chapter 21
Chapter 21
A fter lunch Jones took Carol to more places on her written checklist.
“Should I be doing this?” Jones mused.
“Absolutely,” Carol answered.
“Of course you think so. You’re the enemy,” he said.
“I’m not, though. The owners of the resort are the ones paying me to be here judging everything.”
“But it seems disloyal to my fellow employees, some of whom may get in trouble when you turn in your report,” he said.
“If they’re doing their jobs, they have nothing to worry about.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a goody-goody.”
She jabbed him in the solar plexus, but she was smiling. “When a resort makes necessary improvements, it’s a win for everybody. If some slackers have to be sacrificed for the good of the hotel, so be it.”
“You’re giving off solid Stalin vibes right now,” he said.
They turned toward his bungalow to retrieve Ribs, but no need because he was headed right for them.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jones muttered when he saw who walked beside Ribs. Victoria Seymour, the woman who’d caught Jones’s interest the first time he met Carol, strode next to Ribs, deep in conversation.
“Of course the beautiful people would find each other,” Carol said. “It’s nature’s law or something. Why is their lane so pretty?”
“How are they both in the cellulite-free lane?” Jones agreed.
“No halitosis in that lane, either. No adult-onset acne, muffin tops, male pattern balding, moles that grow hair,” Carol added.
“Knees that don’t pop when they stand from a crouch, never green food stuck between teeth,” Jones continued.
“Never accidentally wear two different shoes with a run in the stockings,” Carol picked up.
“Never go in for a hug when the woman goes in for a handshake so you end up grabbing something you shouldn’t like an awkward perv,” Jones said. Carol giggled. He smiled and they high fived.
“What’s funny?” Ribs asked, eyes shifting between them.
“Swimming,” Carol said and Jones snorted a laugh.
Victoria eased closer, entering Carol’s personal space and engulfing her with the smell of expensive perfume. She leaned closer, squinting into Carol’s face. “You are having makeup, no?”
“No. Yes?”
“You are not wearing makeup, yes?”
“Yes. No?”
She gathered a swath of Carol’s long dress in her fist and held it aloft. “This dress is on purpose, yes? How you say, man repellent?”
Carol yanked the dress free. “It’s intentional because I can roll it and it doesn’t wrinkle. Is there a reason French Barbie is insulting me with a sophisticated accent?”
“I am not insulting. I am describing,” Victoria said.
“I had an epiphany when I woke up,” Ribs said.
“You realized it had been twelve hours since you had access to a blond woman?” Jones guessed.
“I realized that if Carol isn’t the asset, the asset is still here.” He made a little flourish toward Victoria.
“You have got to be kidding,” Carol said. “You’re a spy along with everything else?”
“What eez everything else?” Victoria asked, perfectly arranged features tipped toward the perfect angle to appear perfectly confused.
“Oy,” Jones muttered, but he couldn’t stop the hint of intrigue from leaking into his tone. Beautiful and a spy was his perfect combo, like catnip. Carol shot him a look and he shrugged. “I can admire the other lanes.”
She rolled her eyes and faced forward. “How does this change anything?” she asked Ribs.
“They know a woman and man are their contact, not which woman and man. Victoria and I will do it, leaving you two off the hook,” Ribs said.
On a personal level Jones felt mixed emotions—disappointment to still be out of the game, but relief for Carol’s sake. Finally, she was safe. And then he saw her face. Arms crossed, eyes big, staring at Victoria in a way that made her thoughts obvious. And once again he saw her not as she was, but as she had been. The little girl who wasn’t good enough to be included in her father’s life. Before he could think it through, his emotions once again got him in trouble when he spoke.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Carol and I are taking point on this mission. You two will be our backup.”
Jones and Ribs had known each other for nearly a decade. They’d served on countless missions together, spent untold hours of downtime learning each other’s ins and outs, their strengths and weaknesses. Few times over that decade had Jones ever taken what his teammates liked to call The Tone. Usually he was easygoing and fun loving. But when The Tone arrived, they knew he meant it. And while Ribs might be surprised to hear The Tone deployed in this instance, he knew better than to argue.
Hands up in surrender, he gave a little nod of assent. “Your turf, Jonesie.”
Victoria, who didn’t share their long history, was baffled. “What? They are not capable of this assignment. He is a security guard. She is a civilian. This is too much to work with.” Once again she held Carol’s oversized dress in her hand, this time for Ribs’s inspection.
Carol snatched it away. “If David says we’re doing it, we’re doing it.”
She inched closer to Jones and, just like that, he and Gum Lady were a team.
“ I do not do well as backup,” Victoria announced. For the third time since Jones decided he and Carol would run the op. He was still a bit fascinated by her. Clearly there was more to her than beauty, especially if she was a spy. On the other hand she was rather grating.
So is Carol, he reminded himself, except now it was hard to remember. Carol trucked along beside him, smiling a secret little smile like she’d recently learned they were on the way to her surprise birthday party. She hadn’t said a word since he made his dramatic pronouncement, and that was a surprise. In his experience with Carol, she never seemed to miss an opportunity to express a contradictory opinion. On the other hand, if her phone was to be believed, everyone really did call her Sweetie. Maybe he did have it wrong. Maybe she was actually a nice person and he had received the world record for the worst first impression ever. And now Victoria, who he’d believed must be the epitome of perfection, was turning out to be a bit of a yammering harpy. All in all it was very confusing. He wished he could channel Ribs, who had formed some sort of dethatched amusement and was using it as a shield, sly glance bouncing between the two women and Jones like they were actors in some play. Maybe they were. Jones didn’t know anymore.
What he did know was that he was now running this op, and it felt a bit like waking up after a long slumber. His body remembered this feeling of sharp adrenaline, even if his mind temporarily forgot. All cylinders, Jones, he told himself, stretching his neck and shoulders.
“Are you sore?” Carol asked, startling him from his reverie. She rested her hand on his bicep and stared up at him, brown eyes matching pools of warm concern. If he said yes, he somehow knew she’d try to do something about it. Give him medicine, a massage, warm compress or even food to ease his misery. He had no idea how he knew, but he knew: Carol was a nurturer. Something about that knowledge twisted his gut in a way that wasn’t wholly unpleasant.
“No, I stretch before a mission. Usually they involve a lot of muscles that will be sore later if I don’t loosen them up first,” he explained.
“Maybe I should stretch, too,” she suggested. She looked so adorably earnest and—excited?—that he didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no need. He’d be doing the legwork, if any was needed. She was merely along for the ride. But he lacked the heart to burst her bubble, the one where she now envisioned herself as a pint-sized commando.
“Probably a good idea,” he said gravely, purposely ignoring the way Ribs beamed at him behind her back. Shaddup, he wanted to tell Ribs, because he was reading things that weren’t there. Wasn’t he? It was the nice thing to do, to include her, and Jones was nice. Everyone agreed. It was kind of his thing. Mr. Nice Guy. And there was nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
“Odd, I have never stretched before a mission,” Victoria inserted, looking lithe and limber like a professional ballerina.
“And what about you, Ribs?” Carol asked amicably, ignoring Victoria’s veiled jibe, if that was what it had been. Jones wasn’t well versed in the ways of women, but he knew enough to realize sometimes there could be a whole other world going on beneath the surface, like taking a microscope to a tide pool and realizing there was an entire universe of invisible things happening unaware.
“It doesn’t matter if I stretch or not. Somehow I always end up sore now,” Ribs returned in an equally amicable tone that for some reason annoyed Jones. It wasn’t his job to placate people. That was what Jones was for. Except at the moment his mind was too busy with the mission, and that gave him a bit of an epiphany. Maybe the reason the guys counted on him to be the comic relief was because he was always free to do so, because he was never the one in charge. Being responsible for people’s lives had a way of sucking the levity away. Jones had rarely been in that position before. Usually he was along for the ride and it left his mind and emotions free for other things, for distraction, for cheering, for taking care of the emotional wellbeing of those who were in charge. But now this was his baby and he felt stressed and distracted, pressed by the weight of responsibility and, oh no, did he hate it? Too late now, he thought. Ribs would get to be Mr. Fun while Jones led the charge, stomping a little as his mind calculated what it would need to carry himself and Carol safely through the coming hours.
Overhead the wind picked up and the sun dropped behind a cloud and Jones realized a literal storm was nearing, too, adding another complication. As a navy guy he’d learned to calculate for wind, a sometimes cruel mistress for any sailor. Wind could be kind, pushing you gently in the direction you needed to go. Or wind could kill, flipping you off course and burying your location, along with your body. And now it would be a factor, one more thing to monitor on this island that lived and died by weather patterns.
He didn’t realize he was scowling until Carol slipped her hand into his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He glanced down at her. She smiled up at him and he smiled in return, the tension easing out of his features and shoulders. He took a deep breath, more of the tension draining away. Behind Carol Ribs beamed.
“Shaddup,” Jones told him, out loud this time.
Ribs held up his hands in surrender again. “I didn’t say a word.”
He didn’t have to. By now Jones knew him well enough to read his innuendo and faced forward, fighting a blush and feeling nostalgic for the protective safety of his office.