by Elise Noble
“You have a tender?” the tallest of the crew barked.
They did—a small Zodiac RIB with a powerful outboard motor. Drug dealers had the best toys, everything from planes to sports cars to mini-submarines. It was almost enough to make Alaric rethink his career. The FBI paid peanuts. He had a little family money to fall back on so he wasn’t exactly on the breadline, but he hated feeling undervalued.
“Yes, we have a tender.”
“You’ll come alone.”
Go alone? No problem. He’d been ready for that. He’d been ready for almost anything except what actually happened.
From the deck of the Seaduction, the waves hadn’t looked like much, but as he bumped towards the scalloper in a dinghy, they seemed a whole lot bigger. Unlike Emmy, he hadn’t spent much time on the water, and his stomach threatened to heave its contents overboard as he approached the bigger boat. It’s just seasickness, he told himself. Nothing to do with the fact that the assholes on board most likely had guns and he didn’t. He’d considered bringing one along in an ankle holster, but Dyson had specified that he go unarmed, and the information Alaric had managed to glean suggested the man wasn’t dangerous unless provoked. The risks of carrying a concealed weapon outweighed the benefits.
Emmy, on the other hand… Not only was she a weapon in her own right, but when they’d arrived at the marina, she’d hefted a duffel bag up the gangplank onto the Seaduction and dumped it beside the bed in the master stateroom. She hadn’t volunteered what was in it, and Alaric had known better than to ask.
Now he secured the tender’s painter to the bottom rung of the metal ladder attached to the side of the scalloper, then faced the challenge of climbing the damn thing carrying a briefcase in one hand. If Emmy had been in the Zodiac, she’d have laughed her fucking head off. Probably she’d also have brought some kind of strap to secure the briefcase to her back if she’d been the one doing the handover. There was a reason Alaric had chosen to specialise in information gathering rather than hands-on operations. Let him talk his way into a fancy party over bobbing around in a dinghy any day.
Fortunately, the crew of the scalloper saw his predicament and lowered a rope.
“Tie the briefcase on,” the tall guy ordered.
Alaric hesitated. With the money on board, there was a risk they’d cut him loose, or worse, shoot him. His heart hammered in his chest as he evaluated the risks, but ultimately, he came to the conclusion that Dyson had a reputation to protect, even if it was a slightly shady one.
The briefcase disappeared over the metal railing above, and Alaric quickly stuck a tracker to the scalloper’s hull just above the waterline, then clambered up the ladder, puffing as he neared the top. The last month had been manic, and all those missed gym sessions were starting to show. Emmy had given him a workout last night, but that combined with only a couple of hours’ sleep hadn’t exactly helped his energy levels, and he was grateful when two of the crew members helped him onto the deck before giving him a thorough pat-down. They missed his subvocal earpiece and the microphone built into his watch, but he sure was glad he’d left the gun behind.
“Mr. Dyson is downstairs,” the tall guy said, handing the briefcase back to Alaric.
Below decks, their target was working at his laptop in the crew quarters, a four-berth stateroom now converted into a makeshift office with a desk crammed between the bunks. Dyson was undoubtedly not his real name, but it was the only name Alaric had for him. Considering the man’s reputation as one of the art world’s premier fixers, Alaric had been expecting something more than a diminutive guy in his fifties sporting thinning brown hair, flip-flops, Bermuda shorts, and a T-shirt advertising a brand of beer Alaric had never heard of. But when the picture in his head didn’t match up with reality, he mentally chided himself. After years working undercover, he of all people should know that appearances were deceptive.
Dyson looked up. “Mr. Delray. We meet at last.”
That line came from a bad action movie, which unbeknown to Alaric at that moment, was exactly what the situation was about to turn into. He smiled and nodded. The smile was tense, and deliberately so—Alaric’s alter ego hadn’t been keen to meet in the middle of the fucking ocean.
“Difficult trip?” he asked. “The sea’s a little rough today.”
“On the contrary—it’s always a pleasure to get out on the water, even in a boat like this. Do you have the money?”
“Do you have the painting?”
Dyson chuckled. “All in good time. Can I interest you in a drink?”
He waved a hand at a glass-fronted mini-fridge on the floor in one corner, and Alaric spotted a bottle of Dom Perignon as well as soft drinks and a six-pack of beer. Dyson was an enigma, a ghost with many faces, much like Alaric himself was to become after that day.
“Let’s save that for after we’ve completed the deal, shall we?”
“As you wish.” Dyson closed the laptop and tucked it into a drawer, then tapped his hand on the desk. “Let me see.”
Alaric hefted the briefcase onto the table. One million bucks in hundred-dollar bills weighed twenty-two pounds, not much for what amounted to a lifetime’s work for many people. The remainder of the pay-off, the diamonds, consisted of sixty-five stones of three to four carats each, all rated in the top two categories for clarity—IF or VVS1. Alaric had learned a lot about gems over the last few months, and not just because of this case. No, last month, he’d bitten the bullet and bought a ring for Emmy. Would he ever give it to her? He didn’t know. He wanted to. But there was one big obstacle standing in the way, and his name was Black.
Emmy’s husband.
The two of them had never been married in the traditional sense. There was no big white wedding with a kiss and a honeymoon at the end. From what Alaric could gather, it had started off as a green-card deal, a way to tie Emmy to Blackwood Security and her job for good, but the arrangement had lasted for seven years and counting. The pair lived together, and even though Emmy assured Alaric that there was no romance involved, he’d seen the way Black looked at her. The asshole wouldn’t let Emmy go easily.
Did Alaric feel guilty about dating another man’s wife? Not really. It wasn’t as if Black stayed celibate. Emmy said he had a fuck pad in Richmond, an apartment where he took women, but when Alaric did some digging, he found it was so much more than that. Black didn’t just have the occasional hook-up, he had a whole damn harem. The women lived in an apartment complex in Rybridge, usually half a dozen at any one time, and they even had a concierge to look after them. When Black needed to get his rocks off, he just picked out a piece of ass and had her sent over. Did Emmy know all that? Alaric was fairly sure she didn’t. The beck-and-call girls signed NDAs.
And tempting though it had been to let the information slip, he didn’t want to win Emmy’s affections by driving a wedge between her and Black. She obviously cared for the man despite his many faults. No, Alaric needed to tread carefully and bide his time.
The night before the handover, before they’d flown to Virginia Beach and picked up the yacht, Emmy had fallen asleep in his arms for a few minutes, something she never normally did. He’d whispered that he loved her. Did she hear? He wasn’t sure, but when her eyes flickered open, she’d kissed him sweetly, almost tenderly, and he’d sensed her hesitation before she headed back to her own bedroom. She’d wanted to stay.
Why hadn’t she? Because she was dangerous. A combination of nightmares, instinct, and lightning-fast reflexes meant she was capable of killing a man in her sleep, and she’d come damn close once. Ever since that night, she’d slept alone.
But maybe if she got away from Blackwood, away from the source of the strife…
Alaric pushed the thought out of his mind as he unlocked the briefcase. That was a problem for another day.
The first inkling that something was wrong came with Dyson’s sharp intake of breath. What was the issue? Alaric had watched the accountant at the Bureau pack the cash himself, and the amount was
spot on—one million dollars exactly, taken from a slush fund that didn’t officially exist. Alaric’s boss hadn’t been thrilled about him borrowing it, or the conflict diamonds confiscated from a crooked lobbyist, but since they’d be coming right back, he’d grudgingly agreed.
An FBI team would be monitoring the scalloper’s movements by now, thanks to the tracker Alaric had installed. The agents were stationed on a coastguard patrol boat just outside the marina. They’d decided it was too risky to have more vessels in the area in case they spooked the target, and that was a good call judging by the marine radar unit mounted above the scalloper’s bridge. As long as Alaric got Emerald, Dyson and his friends would be arrested as soon as they set foot on the shore. And if the sale turned out to be a scam and Dyson attempted to steal the money? Same outcome—handcuffs and a nice vacation in prison. Sure, there was a chance they’d try to dump Alaric’s body overboard, but what was life without a little danger? He wasn’t worried. He’d been in worse situations, and he had Emmy as backup. Oh, and the other FBI agents, but Emmy was worth ten of them.
“This money is fake,” Dyson snapped. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
What? This was the scam? They’d lured Alaric into the middle of nowhere, only to accuse him of a double-cross? As if he’d do that. Not when Dyson was their best—and only—lead to a ring that had stolen hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of art. Rumour said the School of Shadows had been involved in the Emerald heist as well as the disappearance of a Van Gogh last year and numerous other high-profile thefts over the past four decades, but nobody knew who they were or where they came from. Alaric couldn’t afford to screw this up.
“It’s not fake.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. These bills all have the same serial number.”
A chill started in Alaric’s toes and worked its way up his body. Duplicate serial numbers were amateur hour, and they hadn’t even been sequential let alone identical when he left FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. He grabbed one stack and thumbed through them, and the chill turned to a full-on glacier seeping through his veins. The notes were forgeries, and not even good ones. Instead of puffy clouds drifting over Independence Hall, there was a fucking tempest brewing.
“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.
Meanwhile, Dyson had tipped a couple of the rocks out of their velvet pouch and begun examining them with a diamond tester, a small electronic device that measured the electrical and thermal conductivity of the stone. Diamonds wouldn’t conduct electricity, whereas some imitations would.
Such as the ones in Dyson’s hand, for example.
“This is cubic zirconia,” he said. “I negotiate in good faith, and you, my friend, are a fraud.”
No, no, no. Those damn stones were diamonds. According to Alaric’s boss, every single one had been authenticated by a jeweller when they were confiscated, and they’d been sitting in a safe at the Bureau ever since. Alaric knew it was possible to tamper with a diamond tester, to rewire the inside to skew the readings, and if that had been the only problem, he’d have suspected Dyson was trying to pull a fast one. But the hundred-dollar bills… Sometime between the originals being loaded into the briefcase at headquarters and that moment on the boat, they’d been swapped. What if the real diamonds had been taken too?
He was trapped in a fucking horror story.
“I don’t know where those stones came from.”
At best, the operation was blown. At worst, his entire career had been flushed down the toilet. He’d been entrusted with ten million bucks’ worth of loot, and now it was gone. How the hell would he explain things to his boss? His brain froze, which gave Dyson enough time to get to the door. At that point, Alaric realised that losing his job wasn’t actually the worst-case scenario; losing his life was.
Dyson shook his head, dismissive. “Enrique! Get rid of this man.”
Fuck.
Enrique, the tall guy, appeared with another five henchmen behind him, all with guns in their hands and pissed expressions on their faces. Their bearing said former military, their willingness to accept orders said they’d turned mercenary, and Enrique’s malicious grin said he was enjoying this.
“With pleasure.”
From another world, Emmy’s voice registered in Alaric’s ear.
“Got your back, Prince.”
Her tone said what her words didn’t—he also had her trust, and that meant everything.
When Enrique jabbed the muzzle of his pistol into the small of Alaric’s back, he moved towards the narrow staircase, careful to keep his hands in sight. No sudden moves. No twitches that could encourage Enrique to pull the trigger too soon. Whatever Emmy was planning, he needed to trust her in return and let her do her job.
Except muffled voices told him things weren’t going to plan on the Seaduction either.
“Stand down, Marine,” Emmy said, presumably to Hooper. “We don’t need any heroes.”
“Ma’am, you’re not in charge here.”
“Neither are you.”
“This is an FBI operation, and you’re a civilian. In McLain’s absence, I’m assuming command.”
“No, you’re making a difficult situation worse.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Alaric blinked in the daylight as they emerged onto the deck, and the first thing he saw was sunlight glinting off the gun in Hooper’s hand. Enrique saw it too—only a damn mole could’ve missed it. His pistol shifted to the side of Alaric’s head in order to use Alaric’s body as a shield, and the other men dived behind whatever cover they could find when Hooper began firing. Emmy charged him and pushed the jackass into the water, but not before the damage was done. The mercenaries shot back, and a blossom of red formed on the captain’s shirt as he crumpled to the deck. The last thing Alaric saw before Enrique dragged him behind the pilot house was Emmy taking a running leap across the gap between the two boats. In a gold fucking bikini.
By the time she’d finished playing cat and mouse, six men were dead, Hooper was spewing curses, the helicopter was on its way to pick up the injured captain, and Dyson was nowhere to be found. Emerald, the laptop, the Zodiac, and the briefcase? They were gone too.
CHAPTER 4 - ALARIC
“EARTH TO ALARIC,” Emmy said, her voice loud and clear through the Honda’s speakers. “Don’t zone out, dude. You owe me a briefing.”
Right. A briefing on the job. The whole reason they’d come to London in the first place.
“Sorry.”
“The gallery? Red After Dark? I didn’t see it last night.”
“No, it was never for sale or even on display. Alessandra got ‘lost’ on her way to the bathroom and wandered into Pemberton’s upstairs studio out of curiosity. When he found her in there, she said she was interested in buying it, but he told her it was with him for restoration on behalf of a client.”
“Alessandra? Your contact’s a woman?”
Was it Alaric’s imagination, or was there a hint of jealousy there? Emmy had no right to feel that way—she was the one who was married.
“Why the surprise? I’ve heard I can be very charming when the need arises.”
“No reason. So, the painting? Why did we plant bugs instead of searching for it?”
“One, Pemberton’s got hidden cameras all over the gallery, the private areas and restoration room included.” Alessandra had spotted them—it was her job, since she was an undercover officer with Italy’s Carabinieri. “And two, he told Alessa that the owner was picking it up today.”
“Except the owner asked for delivery service?” Emmy guessed.
“Exactly. I overheard Pemberton talking on the phone this morning, before the gallery opened, and he offered the services of his assistant.”
“Where’s the handover?”
“I don’t know—the owner said he’d email the final details within the hour, and the bug in the hallway by the bathroom picked up Pemberton giving instructions to that bitchy manager chick. Seems he wrote the address d
own.”
“Your team hasn’t hacked his email?”
“Not yet. He doesn’t appear to use it all that much.”
Up ahead, Stafford-Lyons passed the site of the former Earls Court Exhibition Centre and slowed for the traffic lights, positioned in the middle lane. Alaric let a Porsche cut in between them, the driver too busy on the phone to notice when the lights turned green. Ten seconds passed before Emmy got impatient from two cars behind and leaned on the horn.
“Where are you going, lady?” she muttered. “Holland Park? Hammersmith?”
No, Tesco.
Stafford-Lyons signalled and pulled into the parking lot, then slotted her Ford Fiesta neatly into a space near the back. What the hell was she doing? Stopping to buy groceries? Surprise turned to incredulity when she exited the vehicle with only a small purse. Where was the painting? Had she left it in the trunk? Red After Dark was worth a million dollars.
“What the fuck?” Emmy asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Did we get this wrong? Nobody in their right mind’s gonna leave a painting by Edwin Bateson in a parked car while they go into a bloody supermarket.”
Alaric was beginning to wonder the same thing himself. “I guess it’s possible we made a mistake.”
“Maybe the other assistant was meant to deliver the painting and this one’s just out to buy lunch? Did you actually see her load the thing into her car?”
“No, I didn’t,” he admitted. “She carried a package in that direction, and the other girl’s with customers, so I just assumed…”
“Never assume—”
“It makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me,’” he finished. How many times had she told him that? “This job’s cursed.”
“Want to go back?”
“We’d better.”