by Beth Bolden
She made a frustrated noise and turned to go back to the bathroom and finish getting ready. Why should he help her? Jemma wasn’t sure anybody else would either.
“Wait,” he said patiently, reaching out and grabbing her arm before she could leave. He sighed. “I want to help. But it’s probably better to text her first, see if you can get any details, see if we can arrange something via text, rather than just doing something crazy and desperate and likely unsuccessful.”
Jemma smiled. “And if the crazy and desperate is necessary?”
He looked resolute. “Then we do something about it. But before we run in, guns blazing, let’s do a bit of reconnaissance.”
As they sat in the stands waiting for the first beach volleyball match to begin, Gabe even helped her type out a reasonable response, hopefully something that could create a conversation between them that might give Jemma a better idea of where to start.
It was a great match between the Australian and the Chinese women; both teams agile and clearly determined, score quite close, but Jemma couldn’t take her eyes off her phone. Gabe looked over at her a few times, and just sighed as she checked it for the millionth time.
As for Jemma, with each passing hour that she didn’t hear anything back from Kimber, her nerves wrenched a little tighter.
By the time she and Gabe walked back to the hotel, the sun had fallen lower in the sky, and Jemma began to fill with dread.
“I don’t think she’s going to reply,” Jemma said for probably the tenth time since they’d left the volleyball arena.
Gabe had brushed her off the first nine times, but this time, he glanced down at his watch, and then up at the sky. “Is there any reason she’d be away from her phone for hours? Practice?”
Jemma shook her head. “Kimber mentioned they have some stretching and loosening they do over the course of the Games, but they don’t hold regular practices.”
“An interview maybe? A race?”
“I checked the schedule before we left the room,” Jemma reminded him. “There are no interviews scheduled that I can see, and she doesn’t have a race tonight.”
“So she’d be in the Olympic Village,” he stated, punctuating it with a final, resigned sigh.
“Probably,” Jemma ventured. “From what she said, her mother wasn’t really letting her do much of anything. No tourist stuff, no watching other events, nothing really.”
Gabe shook his head. “Caging someone like a prisoner,” he grumbled. “It’s not right.”
“It’s not right,” Jemma agreed as they walked through the lobby. He hesitated behind her as she pushed the elevator button to go back up to their floor.
“What?” she asked. “I thought we were going to go back to the room and get ready for dinner? You said there was this place you wanted to take me.”
“I did. I do,” Gabe soothed, reaching out for her hand. He drew her aside, away from the crowds getting on and off the bank of elevators. “But I think you might be right.” His expression was solemn.
“Right about what?”
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so intensely serious. Maybe that first day, when he’d been out of his mind with worry over Nick and he’d picked her from the airport. But this wasn’t life or death, the way it had been then.
“I think maybe this has moved past text messages,” Gabe said. “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. She’s smart. You said she was smart.”
“She’s brilliant, you saw it in the interviews yourself.” He had remarked on her intelligence when an interviewer managed to relax her more than once. Of course, that hadn’t happened in at least a week. When Kimber was tense she tended to give shortened, awkward answers.
He nodded. “I think maybe she was sending a message.”
Jemma shot him an incredulous look. “She actually sent me a message, Gabe.”
“I mean,” Gabe said, taking her hand and pulling her further into one of the darker corners of the lobby, practically behind one of the potted palms. “I think she was trying to tell you that she couldn’t send any more messages. That was the one message she could send without giving too much away.”
Jemma felt ice coalesce in her stomach. “Her mother is reading her text messages.”
Gabe gave a sharp nod of agreement and Jemma felt sick.
“She didn’t say more because she couldn’t. She didn’t reply to my messages because she couldn’t.”
“I’ve seen people with that hunted look before. It was always when they were being watched.” Gabe’s voice had the grimmest edge.
“What can we do?” Jemma asked, her tone pleading.
“We can make sure she’s okay,” Gabe said. “We can go to the Olympic Village and make sure.”
“That’s . . . we can’t just go there,” she said, because she wasn’t quite sure he really understood. “We aren’t allowed in. No press allowed.”
“That’s why I’m not coming to the room with you,” Gabe said.
Her eyes widened and Jemma realized finally what he was trying to tell her. “We’re going to sneak in!” she exclaimed before she could stop herself.
He slapped a hand tight over her mouth. “For the love of god, don’t say that so loud,” Gabe hissed. “This is an improved Rio, but I can’t promise what’ll happen if we get arrested. There is still corruption in some of the police bureaus.”
“So we can’t get caught,” she whispered. “How do we do that?”
“I’m working on a plan,” he said, his voice growing even grimmer. “I should be back in an hour. I’m afraid our dinner date is going to have to wait.”
“It’s not important,” Jemma said, flustered that he’d called it a date and even more flustered that instead of going to dinner, they were going to sneak into the Olympic Village.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Jemma exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest and frowning at the skimpy bikini top and bottom that Gabe had pulled from the plastic bag he’d brought in. “I’m not wearing that!”
“I thought you wanted to talk to Kimber? Make sure she’s okay?”
Jemma glowered. “I do. I’m just not going to wear that to do it. Where’s your disguise?”
“I don’t need one, really,” Gabe smirked. “I speak Portuguese. I can easily pretend to be what I already am—private security. You’re the problem.”
“I’m still not wearing it,” Jemma retorted testily. “Find me something else.”
“You’d really abandon Kimber because of a little bare skin?” he asked teasingly, dangling the swimsuit closer to her face. “I’ve seen it, and it’s all amazing. No need to be ashamed.”
Jemma gritted her teeth. “In the hotel room isn’t the same as flouncing around the streets of Rio in a bikini!”
Gabe inwardly counted to ten, dragging out Jemma’s frustration a hair longer, mostly because he was enjoying himself. “Oh, of course you’re wearing this over it,” he said, whipping out a track suit from the plastic bag he’d carried everything in after liberating it from the beach volleyball pavilion.
Jemma’s glare grew darker and she grabbed the jacket from his outstretched hand. “I don’t like you,” she said, taking off to the bathroom with a definite flounce in her step.
“I thought you were gonna let me see you wear it, babe?” he called out to her retreating back. She merely held up a hand and flipped him the bird. He chuckled, vastly amused by her reaction, which had been even funnier than he’d imagined.
He hadn’t lied, he didn’t really have a disguise, per se. But Gabe still let himself out of her hotel room and crossed to his, quickly exchanging his jeans and t-shirt for a pair of khaki slacks and a plain black polo.
It would have been better if he’d brought one of the polos he wore working extra hours doing security at the Staples Center embroidered with their private security logo, but he hadn’t brought any of those with him. He hadn’t exactly anticipated sneaking into the Olympic Village, but then he hadn’t really anti
cipated Jemma.
He couldn’t ever remember having more fun than he’d had the last few weeks, and he’d realized, to some not-insignificant guilt, that he wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much if he’d been with Nick.
He’d told himself that this made perfect sense because he wasn’t sleeping with Nick, but still the thoughts lingered, because it wasn’t just the sex, though that was fucking fantastic. It was everything. It was the way he took so much joy in the joy in her. He’d never enjoyed someone else’s happiness so much before. And while he’d only originally intended to be with her during this time in Rio as a fling to keep her occupied and compliant, he knew deep down it had always been more.
He’d not meant to tell her that he’d considered their dinner tonight a date—he hadn’t even realized it himself until the words had just fallen out of his mouth. The pleased look on her face told him that this wasn’t something she exactly minded, either.
When they got back to real life and LA, they were going to have to figure out how this thing between them was going to work, but that was then, and this was now, and he was going to enjoy the stress-free, fun ending of their trip.
When he let himself back into Jemma’s room, she was still glaring at him. She had donned the clothes he’d brought, but unfortunately she’d decided to punish him by zipping up the jacket as far it would go, and instead of exposing more of her glorious fair skin, she’d covered it all up.
“You changed!” she exclaimed, smacking him on the arm. “I thought you said you weren’t going to wear a costume.”
He shot her an impatient look. “This isn’t a costume; this is clothes. What security wears, Jemma.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
Like usual, he was torn between laughing at her because she was funny and cute, and pushing her up against the desk and kissing her until they forgot all about this mad plan to sneak into the Olympic Village.
“Fine. When we’re back in LA,” Gabe said, “and I do a security gig at the Staples Center, I’ll bring you along.”
“Would that be a date too?” she asked slyly, and he wavered again between the laughter and the kissing. It was a tough call, but remembering Kimber’s text brought him back to reality. A woman was potentially in danger, and it went against even more instincts to ignore that.
He laughed. “Sure,” he admitted easily and they shared a conspiratorial smile that nearly got him off-track again. God, he liked her so much; the amount scared him a little.
“You ready to go?” he asked, because he could see that soft look in her eyes and that soft look only led to moving five steps back and falling into bed. And they couldn’t afford the extra time to do that.
She’d pulled her dark wavy hair up in a high ponytail and washed her makeup off. He gave her a quick once-over, not as a man, but as a cop. “Will I do?” she asked.
“You’ll do. We’ll go over the details in the car.”
“The car?” Jemma asked as they exited the room, headed toward the elevators.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to brave the traffic. An athlete wouldn’t take the tram or public transportation.”
They’d only taken the car a handful of times, before finally just dealing with the transit system because it had reserved lanes, while the rest of Rio struggled with the additional congestion.
The elevator opened to the garage level of the hotel and they moved toward the car. “No, the back,” Gabe said, as Jemma went to sit in the front. “You’re the client, you sit in the back.”
She didn’t protest but rolled her eyes.
He’d cleared leaving whenever he wanted with a quick conversation with the valet attendants and a handful of reals stuffed into their pockets.
As they drove up out of the garage, Gabe outlined their plan.
“When we get up to the security checkpoint, I don’t want you to say a single word, okay?” he said, hoping he was being clear enough. “You . . . don’t speak English, or Portuguese,” he improvised, “and I’m also your translator.”
Gabe could feel the heat of the glare from the backseat. “I don’t like being useless,” Jemma retorted in clipped tones.
“Trust me, you’re important,” Gabe said, though he didn’t say how important because he didn’t want to scare her. They didn’t have a security pass, and he wasn’t wearing the proper uniform. Their chances of getting in were entirely dependent on how lenient the security staff was being and how much official authority he could convey in the handful of sentences that he would get to convince anyone he was legit.
But most importantly, he was hoping that security would take one look at the athlete in the back of the car and wave him through.
As they drove closer to the Village, Gabe started to sweat a little. This wasn’t by any means the most stressful operation he’d ever been part of in his career, but he’d also never put anyone he cared about right in into the thick of it with him before. Having Jemma in the backseat, even just as a character to lend authenticity, made his blood pressure rise.
There was a long line of cars waiting to be processed through the security checkpoint, so Gabe and Jemma had to wait, slowly inching their way up to the front of the line.
Gabe observed the pattern set by the security officers. Luckily—unluckily, actually—they gave each car passing through only a perfunctory glance before waving them through, checking only that they had the appropriate pass hanging from their rearview mirror.
And that was the unlucky part. Since they were absolutely not licensed to access the Olympic Village, they didn’t have a pass.
That might have defeated someone else, but Gabe had a few tricks up his sleeve, though he did wonder when Jemma might notice that they were lacking an important piece of documentation.
Her quiet exclamation came when they were one car back. “Oh shit,” she hissed, “they’re looking at the passes!”
He nodded. He’d lowered the window when they were already a few cars back, to give the impression that he was open and ready to talk and wasn’t hiding anything. But then he also couldn’t explain to Jemma, so all he could do was single hard shake of his head, and then he was pulling up to the security checkpoint.
The security officer leaned over, glanced into the car for the pass, his eyes sliding lazily over the dashboard and then to the empty spot under the rearview mirror. He straightened and then Gabe saw him look over all the possible locations again.
“Sir, you have no pass,” he said in Portuguese. Gabe, who’d been holding his breath, hoping that they wouldn’t get a hard ass, let it out. This particular officer was more concerned about moving things along and keeping all the important guests happy and unbothered than he was actual security.
A true issue for the organizers of the Games, but one that Gabe was going to happily exploit.
“Ah, they forgot to give it to me,” Gabe replied back in flawless Portuguese. He gave an expressive shrug and he and the officer exchanged a commiserating look. “You know how it is. Pick up her, drop him off, run these people across town in the next five minutes.”
Gabe saw the moment the officer hesitated, and he was almost sure he was going to wave them through, but then he straightened again. His face closed off, as if he’d just, unfortunately for them, remembered his training.
“Sir,” he said, just as politely and deferentially, which Gabe counted as good sign. He hadn’t kicked them out or called for an actual cop to arrest them, either. There was still wiggle room and Gabe was really good at wiggling.
“Excuse me,” Jemma spoke up then, more imperiously than he’d ever heard her before. Her tone was rather like some of the pop divas he ended up protecting when they came through the Staples Center, and he wondered how she’d managed to copy it, because it was flawless and it caught the officer’s attention instantly.
“Excuse me,” she repeated, lowering her window. The officer forgot about Gabe and took in the uniform that he’d borrowed and the haughty lines of her face, and whil
e Gabe was still mentally searching through methods to get them waved through, the officer waved them through.
Gabe couldn’t believe it—his air of authority and certainty and all his excuses hadn’t been enough, but one look at Jemma pretending to be a beach volleyball player in a stolen tracksuit and that was all it took. Gabe would’ve been annoyed but he was having too much fun, finally letting his laugh loose as they drove around toward the central parking garage.
“How did you learn that?” he asked when he was finally able to get himself under control. Jemma too was helplessly giggling in the backseat, clearly a side effect of the adrenaline.
“Some of Colin’s friends. One of the wide receivers in particular. He was such a diva,” Jemma said, though from her fond voice, she’d clearly liked him.
Gabe was even more amused. He’d assumed a pop star, and yet she’d been impersonating a football player.
They parked and Gabe observed the niceties, opening her door and politely escorting her from a respectful distance toward the main Village commons.
He’d reminded Jemma that once they made it through the initial checkpoint, they still weren’t safe. They could still be thrown out at any point if someone took a good look at them and realized they didn’t belong.
With that warning in mind, he was pleased to see her slip the bitchy expression back on as they walked through the courtyards in between the main residential dormitories.
Thankfully, during the morning they spent together Kimber had mentioned being able to overlook a certain area of the Village, which had narrowed the particular building she was housed in from eighteen to one. Now they just had to find the room and the floor.
Gabe expected that he would have to remind Jemma at least once that he was doing all the talking, but considering how well the security checkpoint had gone, he kept quiet. She was smart and had a level head on her shoulders. If she deemed it necessary to speak up, he was going to assume it was worthwhile.
When they walked through the sliding glass entryway into the dormitory that Kimber had mentioned, Jemma felt her heartbeat start to pick up again.