Undercover Mistress

The spokesman glanced around at them, then gave a little bow and a shrug of resignation. “Ah. Prince Abdul will be disappointed. He had hoped to make this a big surprise. But…I suppose I must explain-perhaps you would keep it a secret from the other guests?”

“Oh, of course,” Celia breathed. Beside her, Roy’s body seemed to hum with tension.

The spokesman looked around, leaned forward and lowered his quiet but strangely staccato voice still further. “We have just taken on a very large selection of fireworks.”

“Fireworks!” someone exclaimed.

“Yes, yes-fireworks. For the New Year’s celebration. As I am sure you are aware, such fireworks are illegal in California. Which is why we are at the moment in the waters of Mexico.” The man’s teeth gleamed as he smiled.

“Ooh, how exciting-I can’t wait for tonight,” Celia gushed, giving a theatrical shiver. She threw a glance in Roy’s direction. “We won’t tell a soul-will we, darling?” She put out her hand and lightly touched the spokesman’s sleeve- and felt Roy give a violent jerk behind her. Breathless, her heart hammering, she ploughed on. “Thank you so much-I think I’ll be able to sleep now, don’t you, R.J.? ’Night, everyone…” Towing Roy behind her, she waltzed out of the salon.

Once in the passageway, she had to fight the urge to break into a run. The shakes hit her about the time they reached their stateroom door, and she handed the key card over to Roy and let him fit it into the slot.

“Fireworks!” she exploded softly as the door closed behind them. She turned to him, out of breath. “Do you believe him?”

He didn’t answer immediately, bending over instead to snatch up the jacket he’d been wearing the night before and toss it onto a chair. When he rounded on her, his smile was painful to see. “Right now, ’bout the only thing I know for sure is that’s the guy who shot me, and every time I get that close to him I get a powerful urge to kill him with my bare hands.” He dragged a hand over his hair and the awful smile disappeared.

He began to pace, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. “Fireworks? Could be… Most likely is, in fact. Question is whether that’s all that’s in those crates. And that is something I’m gonna have to find out.” He threw her a distracted glance. “Where’s your pocketbook? I’m gonna need those sensors. I’m figuring, once people start getting up, maybe while they’re serving breakfast…There’s enough confusion, comin’ and goin’, I should be able to slip down- What?” He halted, having just noticed she was shaking her head.

“No,” Celia said, folding her arms on her chest as she faced him, bracing for the objections she knew were coming. “Not you-it’ll be a lot less suspicious if I do it. I’m a woman-you know how we women are about getting lost.” She paused to roll her eyes. As if. “Besides-I’m an actress. I can play the ditzy blonde in my sleep. I know how to take readings with those sensors-Max showed us both, remember? I’m the logical one to go. If they find me wandering around down in the hold, they’ll more than likely pat me on the head and send me on my way. You-all I can say is, remember what happened to you the last time you were caught doing that? I don’t even want-”

“You’re right.”

“-to think what they might…what did you say?”

He took a deep breath. “I said, you’re right. God…I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…like you said, you’ve got the best chance to do it without raising suspicions. So…you’re the one who should go.”

Shock, love and happiness rushed through her like a gale-force wind, literally taking her breath away. Her voice was faint and airless as she asked, “You mean it?” He nodded, eyes steady and grave. She gazed at him for a long time, wondering whether anything in her life had ever meant as much to her as the fact that he trusted her to do this thing…this thing her life and his and millions more might depend on. Then she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her soft mouth against his grim one.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Roy was fairly certain nothing he’d ever done in his life-not counting surviving being shot and thrown into a dark ocean, of course-had been as hard as the hour he spent later that morning pacing in the confines of his stateroom, waiting for Celia to return from her mission.

He’d never been much of a worrier before. He’d been accused of being happy-go-lucky, but that didn’t seem quite the right way to describe his outlook on life, given the nature of his job and the inherent dangers and life- and-death choices involved. He’d just never wasted much time calculating odds and worrying about outcomes, put it that way. So maybe que sera, sera would have summed it up better. What happened, happened. When his number came up, he figured there wasn’t much he could do about it, no sense worrying about it ahead of time, right? Until it did, he intended to keep on making the best decisions he could, given the information available to him at the time, which was all anybody could do.

But now, here he was, all of a sudden pacing up and down in a box-size room, imagining every possible complication and every bad outcome in the book, and feeling helpless and frustrated because none of it was under his control. Worrying.

It was what came of working with a partner, he supposed. Worse, a partner he cared about-a lot. He wasn’t used to it. He’d always worked solo before. Kind of a lone wolf. Responsible to and for nobody but himself-and the mission, of course. That was the way he liked it.

He wished he could have made himself believe it was Celia’s civilian status, the fact that she was inexperienced and mostly untrained that had him so edgy. But he wasn’t in the habit of telling himself lies. He’d seen her in action enough these past few weeks that he’d come to have a healthy respect for her abilities. The truth was he knew he’d have worried about her even if she’d had the complete course of training all federal agents went through at Quantico.

And where in the hell had that notion come from?

He wasn’t going to have a chance to ponder the answer to that question, though, because right about then he heard the scrape of a key card in the lock. His heart jumped into his throat as Celia came through the door, looking calm and cool and absolutely normal, except for a little bit of pink in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. As if she were having fun, he thought. The time of her life, dammit.

“Well?” he growled, making an impatient “give it here” gesture toward the pocketbook she had looped over her shoulder.

“It went just like I told you it would,” she said as she slipped it off and handed it over, a triumphant smile creeping across her face. “They patted me on my head and sent me on my way. But I got close enough to the storage compartments, I think.” She bit down on her lower lip to contain the smile. “I told them I wanted to see the kitchen. Because I’m such an enthusiastic cook, you see.” Laughter spurted from her and she stifled it with her hand, as if she were ashamed of it.

The specially prepared suitcase lay on the bed. Working quickly and in silence, Roy opened the secret compartment and powered up the instruments hidden inside. He opened the handbag and carefully removed the sensitive monitoring devices from their hiding place. Silent, now, too, Celia watched over his shoulder as he bent over the suitcase, working his way through procedures practiced a hundred times. Nothing moved except his hands and the pulsing of his heart sending blood through his veins. He didn’t breathe…didn’t think Celia did, either. Sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down his ribs. Tension sang in his ears, a high-pitched, nerve-wracking whine, like mosquitoes.

A few minutes later, he straightened and rubbed at his eyes with the fingers and thumb of one hand…maybe trying to erase the images that had been recorded there. He felt cold…cold all over. And sick. And scared.

He uttered a single syllable, blunt and sibilant and crude.

He flicked a glance at Celia and saw she’d gone deathly pale. He wondered if he looked the same.

“Radiation?” she whispered.

He nodded. Cleared his throat. Forced words through the block of ice in his chest. “Could be just radioactive materials, I guess, but given all the other factors-the chatter…the timing-I’m thinking it’s a dirty bomb. They brought it in with the fireworks, and they mean to set it off the same way. At midnight tonight. Happy New Year.”

“Dear God.”

“Yeah. Depending on how big it is, it’s almost a certainty they’d wipe out this boat and everybody on it, and probably a good bit of Catalina along with it. That by itself would make a helluva splash, but that’s not what they’re after. It’s the radiation cloud. With the onshore breeze…”