Burn

But he hadn’t known, and now he was stuck with her. He had the upper hand and he intended to keep it, but she fought for every ounce of power she could possibly get even though the cards were stacked against her. He had the advantage of knowing what was going on, knowing that with the people and power he had behind him he couldn’t lose, no matter what happened.

Even if worst came to worst, she couldn’t cause legal trouble for him. She and Sydney Hazlett would both be released unharmed, no ransom had been requested, and even though legally he and his crew could be nailed for unlawful detainment, she was too smart to file charges. She herself would have gone to a lot of trouble to convince everyone around them that they were lovers, so any complaint she had afterward would look as if she was merely pissed off because they’d broken up. She couldn’t win, but she didn’t know the rules of the game and so she kept playing as hard as she could. He would have felt sorry for her … if it were possible to feel sorry for a cross between a badger and a pit bull.

After escorting her back to the suite, he left her under Bridget’s watchful gaze while he went down to the stateroom he’d been supposed to share with Tiffany, before this whole thing unraveled around them.

Any room Tiffany occupied for longer than an hour always looked as if a bomb had gone off in it, and the stateroom was no exception. The massive amount of jewelry and insanely high-heeled shoes she’d insisted were needed for the job were scattered everywhere; clothes had been dropped on the floor; lug gage was opened, drawers were pulled out and half-filled. She was sharp and sexy and lethal as hell, and she was also a world-class slob.

She sat on the bed, long legs crossed and a high-heeled sandal dangling from her toe, her full attention on her task as she disassembled a chunky, noisy bracelet and removed a tiny but suspicious-looking – to any security guard worth his salt – device. She glanced up at him, a preoccupied expression in her sloe eyes. "How’s Redwine holding up?"

"Fine," he replied, not about to tell her, or any of them, all of the ways Redwine had found to be a royal pain in the ass. They were getting way too much enjoyment out of the situation as it was. Besides, in all honesty, he couldn’t blame Redwine for doing all she could to bust his chops. He sure as hell wouldn’t be taking this shit lying down, if he was in her position.

Tiffany didn’t have his patience, which wasn’t saying much. He wasn’t patient at all, but he had iron control, which was something else entirely. Tiffany said, "If she starts to break, we can drug her and keep her that way for the rest of the trip. Might be easier on you."

Easier on him, definitely, but Redwine was right; her complete disappearance from the social events of the cruise would raise questions he didn’t need raised. "So far it hasn’t come to that, but I’ll keep it in mind."

Tiffany handed him the button camera. In a different place, on a different job, she’d have been assembling firearms. However, getting weapons, even Glocks, aboard a cruise ship was such a bitch he’d made the decision not to even try. It wasn’t as if they actually needed weapons on this job, because it was surveillance only. Still, he felt half-naked without the familiar weight of his 9mm Sig Sauer resting against his right kidney.

As Tiffany put the jewelry back together, sans button camera, she looked up at Cael. "Anything on Larkin yet?"

"No." So far, the man was as innocent as he’d been in the last three weeks, while the other team had been on him. Keeping such a close eye on Larkin while he was at sea was probably unnecessary, but then again, what better place to put together a deal with the North Koreans than in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? "We’re hoping to get Matt or Bridget into Larkin’s stateroom today, tomorrow at the latest, to get the parlor eyes planted." It would’ve been so much easier if Larkin had accepted Bridget as his steward, but he’d brought his own along. Paranoid bastard.

Cael didn’t have all the details, but Larkin was suspected of being the middle man between a traitorous defense contractor employee and the North Koreans. They didn’t know what sort of information was being sold, but the government evidently thought it was important enough to go to a lot of trouble to shut down the deal. They didn’t want just Larkin, they wanted his contacts on both ends of the deal, as well as details on whatever information had already been passed on. That meant they would be taking photos of everyone Larkin spoke to, which was why he had so many people onboard: having the same people hovering around all the time would make anyone suspicious, much less Larkin. They had to swap out times and positions, and they had to use in-place surveillance on his suite. He had to be followed, even aboard the ship. So far he was making things easier than they’d expected, by spending a lot of his time in the suite.

There was a soft knock and Tiffany got to her feet, instantly alert. Going to the door, she looked through the peephole, then pulled the door open.

Faith stepped into the room, with Ryan close behind. Neither of them said anything until Tiffany had closed the door. The room was secure – all of their rooms, including Redwine’s suite, had been swept for bugs – but they couldn’t be sure about the passageway.

Ryan could have delivered the button camera to Cael with a handshake, but Cael liked to pull his people together for a face-to-face every so often. They could communicate by their secure cell phones, though using that method with Bridget and Matt was problematic because of their jobs, but everyone meeting in person triggered an extra sharpness that wasn’t there in phone calls. Maybe it was being able to read each other’s expressions, maybe it was simple group chemistry, that being together heightened the sense of being a team, but he’d often seen problems solved within minutes of simply getting together as a group, after they’d been working for days on something by e-mail or cell phone.