Burn

"WE HAVE A PROBLEM," Tiffany said flatly. "Sanchez checked the passenger list this morning. The suites have been switched around. Ryan and Faith aren’t next to Larkin."

Cael sat up in bed, cell phone to his ear. "The paranoid son of a bitch," he muttered as he turned on the lamp, a mellow pool of light spreading across the floor. "Who has the two suites now?"

"An older couple, Albert and Ginger Winningham, have been put in the Neptune. That was the suite Ryan and Faith had, and the positioning was perfect. The suite on the other side, the Queen Anne, now has Sydney Hazlett and Jenner Redwine in it. The arrangement of rooms makes that suite more problematic, but do-able."

Cael went across the room to his computer and woke it from sleep mode, then pulled up the suite diagrams in question. All he had was the Platinum suite, which was the owner’s suite, where Larkin would be, and the Neptune suite. The sitting room of the Neptune exactly corresponded to that of the Platinum.

"I don’t have the Queen Anne," he said. "Can you shoot that to me?"

"Hold on."

He heard the tapping of keys, then a melodic tone on his computer signaled a message had just downloaded. He clicked on it, then opened the PDF that showed the floor plan of the suite in question.

"I see what you mean." The common wall between the two suites had the bedrooms situated on it. That was no problem from the Queen Anne side; if they had to use that suite, the room they’d be in didn’t matter, but the fiber-optic surveillance they had to install was more likely to feed them useful information if it went into the Platinum’s living room, rather than the bedroom. Still, as Tiffany had said, it was do-able. More difficult, but do-able. He’d need access to Larkin’s suite, though, instead of just threading the wires through tiny holes between the two suites. The job had just become exponentially more dangerous.

His mind raced. Larkin was notoriously suspicious of everyone and everything, but lately he seemed to be taking his paranoia to new extremes. So, even though Cael hadn’t seen this coming, he wasn’t really surprised. He just wished he’d thought of the possibility beforehand so they’d have a fallback plan. He hated having to improvise, because that upped the odds that something would go wrong.

"The passengers in the suites can’t be moved again," he said, thinking aloud. "Larkin put them there for a reason, and if we have Sanchez switch them around Larkin will know something’s up." A plan was forming, one that involved one of his group switching out with one of the people in either the Neptune suite or the Queen Anne.

"The old couple’s very well known. Anything involving them will attract a lot of attention, plus I gather they aren’t in the best of health." Tiffany might not know exactly what he was thinking, but she was sharp enough to know it would involve the passengers currently assigned to one of those two suites.

"What about the other two guys?" Two gays, obviously, which meant Tiffany wouldn’t be of much use. He himself was paired with Tiffany – professionally, not personally – so perhaps he could move Matt into the primary position on this job. Cael was a little uneasy with that. Matt was damn good at what he did, but his acting skills didn’t extend to portraying a convincing gay. Besides, Matt had already been hired on with the crew, so moving him to the passenger list would send up all sorts of red flags. No, he’d have to do this himself.

"Wrong-o," Tiffany said, having already pulled up their info on her computer. "They’re both women. Sydney – spelled with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i,’ is an heiress. Jenner Redwine won the Mega-Millions lottery several years back. They’re best friends, but not lesbian. At least, if they are lesbian, they’re so deep in the closet they could pass as garment bags."

"Are they, or not?" A tinge of impatience laced his deep tone. Although he appreciated the garment bag analogy, he didn’t have time for humor.

"Going strictly by instinct … no. They’re straight. And they’re stand-ins for Sydney’s father, who had to cancel. My reading is that Sydney was asked to take her father’s place, and she asked a friend to go along for company. Hmmm. The suite that was originally booked was a two-bedroom, but the Queen Anne is just one bedroom."

"That could be a problem for them."

"No, it’s okay. The king beds can be separated into twins. Besides," she retorted, "women don’t have the same hang-ups about sharing a room that men do. With members of the same sex, that is."

He ignored the jab. Tiffany was always trying to ruffle his feathers – that was her nature. His attention to and concentration on the job was legendary, so of course she had to try to jolt him out of his mental tracks.

The sudden kink in their plans had kicked his mind into high gear. "Find out everything you can about Hazlett and Redwine. I want their travel plans, I want to know how they think, what kind of people they are."

"I’m on it."

"Ryan and Faith go to backup," he said. "We can’t move them around again – that’ll alert Larkin. You and I become primary."

"All right!" She sounded disgustingly cheerful. There was nothing Tiffany liked more than being in the front lines.

After hanging up, Cael did some research on his own. They had very little time to get a plan in place, so he had to lay as much groundwork right now as he could, which involved waking up some people who’d be unhappy about the hour. Tough shit. He was awake, doing his job, so they could wake up, too. He didn’t have time to be considerate.

On this special charity cruise of the Silver Mist, before the luxury ship went into commission, he had chosen Ryan and Faith as primaries because they genuinely moved in some fairly rarified financial circles. It just so happened they both had a taste for adventure, and good skills. If Larkin hadn’t shuffled the passenger list around, they would have been good to go.