I can tell, about halfway through, that I’ve crossed a line.
Grant’s grip moves from my shoulder to my upper arm, the bite of his fingers sharp enough to warn me into silence. The good news is that he yanks me to my feet with such force that my wince of pain and look of fright are one hundred percent real.
“That’s enough out of you,” he says, his voice a low growl. “Save it for the interrogation.”
Peter watches us interact with a slight smile. I get the feeling he likes interrogations.
“I knew I could count on you, Mr. O’Kelly,” he says with imperturbable calm. “You’ll see to it that something like this doesn’t happen again?”
Grant gives my arm a tug, pulling me toward the nearest exit. I’ve never been so happy to see a door in my entire life. “Don’t worry. You can count on me.”
“And make it hurt,” the angry man calls after us.
“Thank you,” Grant replies with maddening calm. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
18
The Interrogation
The interrogation room Grant leads me to is much worse than I expect.
To reach our destination, he leads me down several flights of stairs, each one drawing closer to the ship’s fuel-scented bowels. I don’t remember a lot about the Shady Lady’s bottom deck from my tour with Tara, but I can recall an alarming lack of fresh air.
Don’t let it be the engine room. Please don’t let it be the engine room.
“This is taking things too far, isn’t it?” I ask as we bypass the last of the curious crew members, all of whom clear out with an alacrity that says much about the amount of authority he’s been granted on this ship.
“Be quiet,” Grant says, his voice filled with mock solemnity. “You’ll go wherever I tell you to go—and you’ll like it.”
Well, the first part of that statement might be true, but no amount of Grant-imposed sternness can enforce the second one. I’ll like whatever I want to like, thank you very much, and the dark hold where fuel is pumped and burned to keep thirty thousand tons of metal moving through the ocean isn’t on that list.
Yet that’s exactly where we end up, the pair of us standing at the dark portal to a loudly churning, steel-lined cell that would do a maximum-level federal prison proud.
I balk at the doorway. “It’s awfully close in there,” I say, thinking of my earlier freak-out in the gilded dining room. If a room that size with plenty of exits can cause a reaction, what is this place going to do?
Grant is alarmingly lacking in sympathy as he places a hand on the small of my back and propels me in. I think for a moment that he’s going to banish me in here—alone—but he sweeps in behind me, locking the door as he does.
The click of that lock causes a constriction in my throat, so I distract myself by turning to my husband.
“Did you catch whoever caused the blackout?” I ask. I also don’t wait for an answer before punching him on the arm and adding, “And what the hell compelled you to chase after him in the first place? I swear to God, if you’ve reinjured—”
“Not another word,” he growls, and in such a sinister way, I wonder if I misread the depth of his anger. He doesn’t really believe I caused that distraction on purpose, does he?
“But—”
“Especially not that word.” Without waiting for me to argue, he starts moving around the engine room, running his hand along seams in the walls and bolts where various pieces of machinery are attached. His actions are efficient and assured, his search thorough. I realize after about thirty seconds that he’s looking for bugs.
Safety. It’s always safety first with this man. At least, it is where I’m involved.
Since the room is large enough that his search could take hours, I start at the opposite side of the room and make my own sweep. The clanking of the machinery seems loud enough to render all electronic devices null and void, but we don’t want to risk anyone overhearing us. Especially since I’ve got quite a bit to say.
There are spots of grease on my fingers by the time I’m done, and the heat of the room has my hair curling in damp tendrils at my neck, but I come up empty.
Grant must not find anything, either, because he stops in the center of the room and turns to me. He has a wary look on his face, his brow lowered in concern. “I think we’re clear.”
“Does that mean I’m allowed to speak now?” I ask.
“Yes, but—”
I don’t wait to hear his stipulations. “You stupid, hard-headed, careless idiot,” I say as I march toward him. His lips twitch with laughter, but I don’t let it distract me. “And don’t you dare laugh at me right now, because I’ve never been so angry in my whole life. Take off your shirt.”
“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” he says as he reaches for his shirt hem. He also winces at the contortion of his body, which has me slapping his hands away so I can perform the action for him instead.
“I can’t believe you’re this irresponsible,” I mutter as I slide my hands under the warm cotton to the even warmer skin below. “You know you’re not supposed to be putting this much strain on your injury. How long did you chase after the guy?”
“Not long enough. I didn’t catch him.”
I peer up at him, but his expression is guarded.
“I’m okay, Penelope. A little sore, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
The liar. The angry pink scar on his abdomen looks much as it always does—like an exploded starfish—but when I touch it, he winces and automatically turns sideways to favor the wound. The whole reason I developed the poke test in the first place is because his physical therapist once told me that the best way to determine if he’s lying about his state of wellness is to jab a finger right in there.
His body will stop you, he said. It’s a lot smarter than he is.
I love his physical therapist, by the way. His specialty is working with FBI agents who refuse to accept the limitations of their own bodies.
“Goddammit, Grant. It’ll serve you right if you rip everything open inside and end up on the operating table again,” I say. My words are stern, but the kiss I drop on his poor, tortured skin is anything but.
The action drags a groan out of him. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t do that again.”
“Or what?” I ask and do it again. Despite his convalescence, his abdomen is still chiseled underneath that scar. As is the case with mountains and rocky monuments, eroding a form like his requires more than a few months. “You’ll lock me in an interrogation room? Torture me until I confess to trying to steal the Luxor?”
“Of course not.” He pauses long enough to sigh. “I know this room is a lot smaller than you prefer, but I couldn’t think of any other way to be alone with you. Not without tipping anyone off.”
“Yes, well. Maybe if you weren’t cutting such a conspicuous figure on board this ship, it wouldn’t matter.” I drop his shirt and jerk my head toward a metal chair off to one side. “Grab that, would you?”
He casts a wary glance at it. “I’m okay, Penelope. I don’t need to sit down.”
Yes, he does. He needs to rest, relax, or, better yet, sleep until next week. But, “It’s not for you,” is all I say. “And stop arguing. I don’t know how long an interrogation is supposed to take, but I, for one, would like to get out of this room sooner rather than later.”
He goes to retrieve the chair while I start rummaging in a toolbox, gingerly favoring the arm that had been mauled by the angry man upstairs. I don’t stop until I find what I’m looking for.
“Why do you want zip ties?” Grant asks when I turn to face him. No explanation is necessary, though. He picks up on my intention after only a few seconds, laughter crinkling his eyes. “You think?”
“I know.” I plop onto the chair and hold the restraints aloft. “And you’d better
make them good and tight. We’ll need there to be marks, or no one is going to believe I’ve been properly questioned. Kit O’Kelly strikes me as a man who likes to take his time with these sorts of things.”
When he hesitates, I add, “One of us is going to have to leave this room looking vanquished. I hate to point out the obvious, but I believe it’s my turn to take the bullet.” I cast an obvious look at the hard lines of his abdomen, now tucked away behind his form-fitting shirt. “Don’t wimp out on me now, Emerson.”
He doesn’t blink for a full thirty seconds, determined, I’m sure, to out-stare me. But I’m right, and he knows it. If we’re going to make this look convincing, there needs to be at least some torture taking place inside these walls.
“Fine,” he finally agrees, taking the zip ties from me and beginning the process of binding me to the chair. “But you know I’m more of a handcuff sort of a guy.”
It’s impossible to mistake his meaning. He’s not talking about the kind of handcuffs he uses to bring down bad guys.
“And I won’t make them very tight,” he promises as he wraps his arms around me in a move that’s much more embrace than stronghold.
Even though the engine room is sweltering and the confines of it alarming, I bask in the hot-bodied press of him. Oh, how I’ve missed this man’s touch, his voice, the low-rumbling way he laughs with his entire body.
His head dips to mine, his voice whispering over my ear. “And I won’t give you anything you can’t handle.”
A pang of liquid longing hits me deep in my gut. Those words might sound like a threat, but I know from long and excruciating experience that they’re also a promise. Grant has always had a way of knowing exactly how to push my buttons.
“I can handle anything you throw at me,” I say with a toss of my head and a flippancy that’s mostly feigned. This room might have been tolerable while I was free to prowl and explore at will, but being pinned in place causes the rattle of the engine and the closeness of the air to magnify tenfold. Only by focusing on the brush of Grant’s fingers against my skin and the glint of his strangely dark hair under the engine room lights am I able to accept my confinement with anything approaching ease.
He’ll look out for me. He won’t let me come to any harm. These are the things I know to be true.
“So do you want to ask the questions first, or should I?” I say as he eventually steps back to survey his handiwork. My arms are behind my back, secured to the chair frame at the wrist. Even though the bindings are tight, my limbs are loose. I’m about as comfortable as a person can be while bound.
Not that I expected anything less. Grant is good at this sort of thing. It’s not his first time tying me to a chair, and given the strangeness of our relationship, I doubt it will be the last.
“I warn you, I’m not going to take it easy when it’s my turn,” I add. “You may want to conserve your energy.”
He stands in front of me, feet squared and arms crossed, looking every bit as intimidating as his fake reputation suggests. At least, he looks intimidating until you get to his face. His lips are pulled up in a smile with the crinkles around his eyes to match.
“What’s your name?” he asks, dropping right into the role of interrogator.
I guess he’s going first. “Penelope Marianne Blue.”
“Occupation?”
“World’s greatest jewel thief.”
The crinkles around his eyes deepen. “Who’s your husband?”
“An obstinate brute of a man I’m rapidly coming to regret marrying.”
“That’s fair.” He pauses a beat. “Who’s Hijack?”
I jolt in my chair. It seems he’s not going to be making this easy, either.
“You already know,” I say. “He’s my ex-boyfriend back from when he and Riker and I used to run together. He wants me to help him steal the Luxor Tiara.”
Wordlessly, he scrapes a second chair along the floor until it rests opposite mine. He lowers himself into it using the kind of caution necessary when your body is in agonizing pain you refuse to admit to, sitting so close, our knees bump.
“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” he says, his expression gentle but firm. “Who is he really?”
“I don’t understand the question. I told you—he’s a car thief, a getaway driver, a wheelman. That’s all I know.”
Grant leans forward in his chair, causing his knees to press more firmly against mine. “I’ve spent the past three days sitting across the poker table from him, and every word out of his mouth is something about you. The jobs you used to pull together, how happy he is to have this opportunity to reconnect—to hear him tell the tale, you’re a paragon of every virtue known to mankind.”
My lips spread in a wide grin. Grant is jealous.
“I can’t help it if I inspire men to madness,” I say.
He rests his hands on my legs, his palms hitting me just above my knees. Despite the fact that I’m tied to a chair in order to convince a murderous smuggler that I’ve been questioned within an inch of my life, I’m comforted by those hands. Comforted and, if I’m being honest, turned on. Grant has a way of making even captivity pleasant.
“Madness is a much nicer word than I’d use,” he says with a sigh. “I mean it, Penelope. If Hijack was such a large part of your life, why haven’t you said anything about him before?”
My answer pops out automatically. “Because he wasn’t a large part of my life—not really. We hung out for a few months, pulled off a few jobs. I didn’t think he was worth mentioning.”
When Grant’s expression doesn’t lighten, I say, “Besides, it’s not like you’ve told me about every ex-girlfriend you’ve ever had. Not,” I’m careful to add, “that I want to hear any stories. Keep the subservient brunettes of your youth where they belong.”
He laughs obligingly, but it’s a short reprieve. “Has it occurred to you that Hijack is far more interested in getting his hands on this tiara than anyone else on this ship?”
“You’re only saying that because you don’t know about the guy tunneling up to my room from below,” I joke, but his meaning penetrates a few seconds later. “Wait a sec—what do you mean he wants it the most? You think Hijack is Johnny Francis?”
His only answer is a carefully lifted brow.
“Impossible,” I say. “Most of the time, Hijack is more interested in admiring his own reflection than anything else. He’s lazy. He never follows through. He’s—”
“—the exact type of guy who might sell his secrets to the highest bidder rather than earn money the hard way?”
“Well, yes,” I’m forced to admit, but only because Hijack is the sort who will take any shortcut that’s offered him. That doesn’t make him a criminal mastermind—in fact, it makes him the exact opposite. “It can’t be him. I mean, he’s a lot stronger and more persistent than the guy I used to know, but he lacks finesse. Even Riker agrees with me—he called him a hack.”
Grant’s brow comes down. “I’ve always thought Riker a man of good sense.”
Now I know things are getting twisted. “You have not. You’re just trying to distract me from all this other crap you’ve been doing.”
“What I’ve been doing?”
“Yes, Kit O’Kelly, international securities expert,” I say with heavy emphasis. “Remember that time you convinced me to come along on a dangerous undercover mission by swearing a solemn oath that you’d keep a low profile?”
Instead of answering me, his hands slide further up my legs. I jerk against the soft friction of his palms on my bare thighs, but there aren’t a whole lot of places I can go.
“Don’t you dare try to distract me right now,” I warn. “I have a lot of questions for you. Especially regarding your use of Lola as bait to draw out Johnny Francis.”
His hands halt their upward journey. “Is that what you think I’
m doing?”
“Isn’t it?” I don’t fail to note that he neither confirms nor denies my accusation. “What other explanation can you have for standing by while that poor girl is put in so much danger?”
He glances away. “I already told you that wasn’t my idea.”
“That’s not an answer. What’s going on, Grant? Why won’t you tell any of us what you’re doing?”
“I have my reasons,” he says.
Oh, man. It’s a good thing I’m tied down right now, because that might be the most arrogant comment to ever leave his mouth—and that’s saying something. “Not good enough. Try again.”
“There have been…complicated developments,” he says. “What I need most is for you to keep playing poker and keep watching Lola. I’ve got everything else handled.”
“Oh, really? Does handling things include injuring yourself to the point where you can’t even walk in a room without limping? Does handling things mean flaunting public relationships with people like Eden St. James? She suspects you of being Johnny Francis. Did you know that?”
“Does she?” A wry grimace crosses his face. “That’s going to come as a disappointment.”
“It’s going to come as an attack in the dead of night,” I counter. “Talk to me, Grant. Tell me what’s going on. You’re the one who begged me to come on this trip with you, remember? Backup? Support? The pair of us working as a team? How can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s going on?”
His hands tighten reflexively. The response is one he can’t control—I can tell because his fingers dig deep into my bare legs.
“Talk to me,” I repeat, softer this time.
Something about the earnest entreaty in my voice finally penetrates, because he draws a deep breath and shakes his head. “I know you’re not happy with the way things are set up, but the situation on board this ship isn’t what we hoped it would be.”
“Oh, really?”
“Johnny is proving more difficult to pin down than I thought.”
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