Burn

He silently cursed Larkin for being a paranoid son of a bitch and switching the suite assignments around at the last minute. Until then, the plan had been simple enough. From the suite Ryan and Faith had originally had, on the other side of Larkin, they could have set up all the surveillance necessary to gather information: his phone calls, his onboard meetings, his visitors. If Ryan and Faith had been in place, none of this elaborate charade would be necessary, the kidnapping wouldn’t have been necessary. The surveillance equipment would already have been installed and tested, and they wouldn’t be forced to settle, for now, on eyes and ears in the bedroom instead of the living area – and he wouldn’t be forced to listen to the nonstop commentary on what he was doing.

"What are you, a thief? What are you doing? Is that a camera?" He could hear her shifting around in the chair, probably trying to get a better look at the equipment neatly arranged on the floor beside him, as well as what he was doing. "You’re going to an awful lot of trouble for a run-of-the-mill perv."

Cael stopped drilling and checked his progress. Drilling through a wall on a ship wasn’t exactly like drilling through a wall in a house. The requirements for stability and noise reduction were different, the wiring was different, the codes were different.

Larkin’s suite was a big one, about thirteen hundred square feet, with the living room on the other side, adjacent to the suite Ryan and Faith had booked. In the middle was the dining room, and on this side was the bedroom. The equipment he was using was sensitive enough to pick up everything said in the bedroom, and part of what was said in the dining room. No way would it pick up the living room sounds. They’d have to get a bug on his phone, and if Larkin had a computer with him they’d also have to get access to it. They’d have had to do that in any case, but the layout of the rooms would have eliminated most of his problems – and the biggest problem that would have been eliminated was sitting handcuffed to the chair behind him.

If they got through this without her blowing the whole scheme wide open with her mouth, it would be nothing short of a miracle. He would have to ride herd on her every minute of the day to keep her under control; he wasn’t sure any of his other people could do it.

She’d already gotten under Bridget’s skin, and rattled Faith. Tiffany … nothing rattled Tiffany, but with the scene they’d set up, absolutely no one would believe that Tiffany and Redwine could become buddies, so Tiffany spending any amount of time with her was impossible. Matt couldn’t do it, because his cover as a ship employee wouldn’t let him be in her suite, either. That left Ryan, and as good as he was, he was also a married man and he and Faith were known to be very happy, so what excuse could he have for being in Redwine’s suite? Moreover, Larkin was so paranoid that if either Faith or Ryan, the original occupants of the suite adjoining his, suddenly began spending a lot of time in the suite on the other side of him, he would go nuts.

That left Cael. God help me, he thought wryly.

"Whatever your plan is, it isn’t going to work. No one is going to believe that you and I are together. I know some of the passengers on this cruise, and you’re so not my type, plus they won’t believe I’d ever bring you back to my suite for the night right after you just broke up with your girlfriend."

If she kept kissing him the way she’d kissed him up on the sports deck, they would. He stifled that particular memory before it could fully form, because the last thing he wanted right now was to get turned on. He focused on his work, threading two very thin cables, one with a tiny microphone on the end, the other with an equally miniscule camera, through the hole he’d drilled and into Larkin’s bedroom. According to the layout of the suite Bridget had given him, and the exact measurement he’d used to place the hole, the camera and mic were just beside the large plant that filled the empty space in that corner of the bedroom.

He could have used a single cable that incorporated both audio and video, but in his opinion they weren’t as sensitive as the ones with dedicated functions. If he’d been threading the cables through a solid core, the task wouldn’t be half as delicate, but instead he was moving them through empty space. The camera was already operational, inserted just an inch or so, and he used the video from it to guide the audio cable toward the small hole on the opposite side of the wall. Once the audio was in place, he taped the cable so it wouldn’t move, then began working the video cable toward the same hole. The biggest problem was that, at the slightest touch, the audio might fall out of place.

That was exactly what happened. As soon as the video cable touched the audio, the audio cable fell sideways. Silently cursing, he began all over again. He was sweating by the time he got both cables securely in place, but just barely through the hole so they weren’t noticeable. He checked the read-out on the monitor, held his breath as he made minute adjustments to the camera until he was satisfied with the angle, then heaved an inward sigh of relief when both cables remained in place. Carefully he duct-taped both to the floor and wall.

"What kind of name is Cael? You were named after a vegetable?"

Now that he was finished, he gave her a cool look. "It’s spelled C-A-E-L, and yes, it’s pronounced just like kale. You don’t have any room to talk. What kind of name is Jenner?"

She shrugged. "According to my dad, my mother had a huge crush on Bruce Jenner. She couldn’t name me Bruce, so she named me Jenner. Of course, that’s according to dad, so take the story with a grain of salt."

How could she keep that mouth going? She was exhausted; her face didn’t have any color except for the dark circles under her eyes. He suspected she still had some fight left in her, though, just as he also suspected he was about to catch the full brunt of that fight when she realized how they were going to spend the night.