4

THE JOURNEY

“You don’t know me. You’ve never met me. You aren’t even sure you like me all that much.” Grant holds out his hand. “You’re also very modest and won’t walk around in that scrap of a bikini Tara gave you.”

I slip the wedding ring off my finger and place it in his waiting palm. His fingers close around mine, holding me tight. Grant might be playing the role of suave, commanding federal agent right now, but I can tell he’s starting to get nervous.

And no wonder. My dad was able to get me in on the poker game at the last minute, but he made it abundantly clear that I’m to sever all public ties to the man I call husband for the duration of the trip. My marriage to an FBI agent hasn’t been widely advertised, but it also hasn’t been kept a secret, and gossip in the thieving circuit is worse than a high school. I have to give every appearance of being the same carefree thief I’ve always been, up to and including publicly renouncing the man I love.

I balked at that last part, but my dad put his foot down. It’s not being married to Grant that’s a problem for these people, baby doll, he said. It’s that you seem to like it.

Which sums up my life pretty succinctly. My friends and family don’t mind the times when I use Grant to get ahead. It’s all those times when I’m not using him that trip them up.

In an effort to reinforce my carefree status, our staterooms are located as far away from one another as we can get, and we’ve sworn a solemn oath to have as little to do with each other as possible. Grant might be adept at going undercover—and he’s sporting a shorter, darker haircut to prove it—but I’m a terrible liar. I always have been. Anyone seeing the two of us interact on board will be sure to sense something. The best thing we can do is keep those interactions to a minimum.

“Hey.” Grant chucks me under the chin so I’m forced to look up at him. It takes me a moment to adjust to the sleeker, barbered style he’s sporting, but his smile will always be recognizable. It’s practically cemented in my soul. “It’ll be okay. You won’t be alone out there. All of your friends will be on board, and your room adjoins your dad’s, so he can be your first recourse in any kind of danger.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” I say with a scoff.

“My room is right next to Tara and Riker’s,” he replies lightly. “And Riker promised to protect me with his life. Well, he didn’t say those exact words, but I slipped it in his contract when he wasn’t looking.”

I’m not as amused by that as my husband wants me to be. Riker has some pretty decent moves—when he can be bothered to use them—but he’s not going to be around all the time to bail Grant out of trouble. For the bulk of the trip, Grant’s going to be wandering around alone and unprotected.

“Not that I expect there to be any danger,” he adds, as if reading my mind. “All of this is standard operating procedure for going undercover—something I’ve done countless times before. My cover story is in place, and my support team—you—is prepped and ready. All I have to do is ID this guy and make first contact. I’ll be in and out and no one will be the wiser.”

His words don’t make me feel much better. Not when I caught him examining his scar in the bathroom mirror this morning, wincing as he prodded the edges. Around me, he’s always careful to put on a strong, brave face, swaggering around like he’s king of the castle, but those rare, unguarded moments have a tendency to slip through.

He hates being in a weakened state, I know, but what bothers him even more is letting me see it. He’s my protector, my guard dog, the man who would lay his life on the line for my safety—and no amount of bullets in the back will ever change that.

I’d love him for it if it didn’t make me so mad.

“You’ll keep a low profile?” I ask. “You promise?”

“I promise to pull the plug the second I feel like you’re in danger,” he says, evading my question with neat precision. “Or if, at any moment, I feel unequipped to extract myself. You have to trust me on this, or it will never work. We’re a team now, remember?”

I remember. Being on Grant’s team is like getting picked first for dodgeball. The glory never fades.

“Grant, before you go—” I begin, just as he says, “Penelope, I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but—”

Curious, I gesture for him to go first.

“It’s nothing big,” he says. “I was just thinking how nice it is, you being a part of my professional life like this. I know I fought it at first, but I’m glad we’ve been able to make this work. With the exception of Simon, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have watching my back.”

Well, crap. I shouldn’t have let him go first. That might be one of the nicest things he’s ever said.

“Turns out I really like working with you, Penelope Blue,” he adds, adopting his favorite playful rhyme. There’s no sound I like better, and he knows it. “I’ve always believed an agent is only as strong as his field operatives. The way I see it, having you out there makes me damn near invincible.”

When I don’t respond right away, too busy blinking around the sudden tears in my eyes, he asks, “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

Oh, nothing. Just that instead of having the same faith in him that he seems to hold for me, I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s going to get himself killed out there.

“It’s nerves,” I lie. “You know me—I always get jittery before a big job.”

He looks suspicious at that. I can’t say I blame him. I’ve never shown myself to be prone to anxiety or self-doubt before. Grant has always felt that my biggest asset is the fact that I refuse to acknowledge danger of any kind—at least when it comes to myself. Confidence, he claims, is half the job.

Since the success of our mission depends on us keeping things that way, I toss my hair and distract him with a dazzling smile.

“So, is this it?” I ask. “We’re officially strangers? From here on out, it’s nothing but sunshine and poker and a big, empty bed all to myself?”

The dark glint in his eyes indicates he’s been doing some hard thinking about his own empty bed, but there’s not much we can do about either one. The couple that spies together doesn’t always lie together.

“This is it,” he agrees. “From now on, Oz is going to serve as our go-between if we need to communicate. Otherwise, you and I have never met.”

“You’ll keep an extra eye on Riker and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid? I know you’ll have your hands full, but I’m worried about him.”

“Yes, Penelope. I promise to take care of Riker.”

“I know he’s not your favorite person, but—”

“I said I’d take care of Riker, and I mean it.” He sighs. “I don’t like putting him in this position any more than you do, and if there was any other way…”

I nod, forced to accept his reassurance for what it is. Even if there was any other way, it wouldn’t matter, because Riker would still be on that boat. There are few things more difficult in this world than stepping back and watching the people you love make mistakes, but short of tying Grant and Riker up and begging them to see reason, there’s not much I can do.

“It’s only seven days. Less, if we can pin down Johnny Francis sooner than that.” He gives my hand a yank, pulling me into his arms and holding me there as if we’re going to be separated for a year instead of a week. “You’ll remember what I said about that bikini? It’s practically indecent, and I’m going to have enough to worry about as it is. What was Tara thinking, giving you that?”

A smile curves my lips. She was thinking the same thing as me, I expect. My stepmother and I might not always see eye-to-eye, but she knows as well as I do how damnably attractive Grant is—especially if he’s going to be sauntering around in tuxedos and swim trunks under the gleaming Caribbean sky. His pecs alone are enough to bring the average woman to her knees—literally—and I know what goes on at these kinds of things. Cruise ships are practically floating orgies.

“We’ll see,” I say coyly, unwilling to give him any more than that.

And it’s a good thing, too, because even the mention of me in that bikini has him getting carried away with our embrace. He’s suddenly all hands and lips, both of them moving over my body as if it’s the last time he’ll ever be granted such a pleasure. Despite the fact that we both have a plane to catch, I allow myself to be swept up along with him.

Don’t judge. When you’re married to a man like Grant, a week is an awfully long time.

* * *

“Penelope, stop fidgeting this instant.” My father doesn’t look at me as his voice crackles through the headset. “I will turn this plane around if you don’t get control over yourself.”

There’s just enough dad-threat in his voice for me to still my nervous shifting. Although turning the infinitesimally small Cessna around and traveling back the way we came might have sounded good about half an hour ago, we’ve since passed the halfway mark across the Florida Straits. At this point, it would take longer to head back the way we came.

“Thank you,” my dad murmurs.

I’d like to repay his calm civility with a casual murmur of my own, but we hit a patch of bumpy air before I can draw a breath. All pretense of me being a calm, rational adult vanishes at once. The plane lurches, the nose dips so far downward I’m tossed against the seatbelt, and I can no longer hold back a scream.

“For God’s sake, Penelope.” With a sigh composed of the same granite as his profile, my dad steadies the plane and tosses me his in-flight bag. “You’re acting as though you’ve never done this before. Have some of my sleeping pills.”

I move just enough to shake my head. Pharmaceuticals and undercover espionage go together about as well as pharmaceuticals and jewel theft. In other words, not at all.

“You should take something,” he says. “We still have two hours to go.”

“I’ll be okay,” I manage. “I have breathing techniques I use instead. They’re how I’m able to hide in small spaces for so long during a job.”

“Breathing techniques?” he echoes in disbelief.

Demonstrating the shallow, silent breaths is easier than explaining them, so I give myself over to the cyclical task of filling and emptying my lungs. At first, I’m not sure it’s going to be enough—the rapid in-and-out a poor distraction from the tiny metal walls crushing us at five thousand feet, but my dad’s too-casual voice soon brings all thoughts of imminent and fiery death to an end.

“So,” he says. “Tell me about your friend Riker.”

I pray for another patch of bumpy air. My dad is technically still married to Tara, even though they haven’t been together in years. I don’t know why they won’t just buckle down and get a divorce like normal people, but I suspect there’s more at play, emotionally speaking, than just a fair division of assets.

“I’m worried about him.” I doubt that’s why my dad brought Riker up, but I say it anyway. Mostly because I am worried about him. “The poker game itself might be okay, but being around that many hardened gamblers, all those bets and side bets and promise of more… I’m not sure. He’s never been good at knowing when to stop.”

My dad grunts. “He seems like a man who’s capable of handling himself.”

That’s because my dad has never seen him in the middle of a winning—or losing—streak before. “Maybe, but he’s not going to be of much use to Grant if things start getting out of hand. He could end up hurting him more than he helps him.”

“Your husband also seems capable of handling himself. Crashing a cruise ship full of notorious criminals was, after all, his idea. I warned him how it would be.”

When I don’t respond right away, my dad casts me a quick look and sighs. He dislikes being forced to take sides—especially when one of those sides belongs to the FBI—but that’s something he’s had to do a lot lately.

“I wish you wouldn’t look so worried,” he says. “These people will pick up on it and use it against you without a second thought. It’s not like you to be so anxious.”

“I’m not anxious,” I protest. “It’s the adrenaline of being trapped in this small cabin, that’s all.”

His long pause carries with it a sense of disbelief, but when he speaks, it’s not to chastise me for losing my nerve. “As long as your husband keeps his head down, I’m sure he’ll be fine. It’s not as if this is his first time going undercover. He knows how to keep a low profile.”

I find myself nodding along. That’s exactly what Grant said to me yesterday—that he knows what he’s doing, that the two of us will be fine as long as we work together as a team.

“You’re right—of course you’re right,” I say. “I mean, he caught you, and you were once considered the most elusive jewel thief in the world.”

My dad’s harrumph could be taken as an assent or disagreement, but there’s no denying the facts. The FBI has him on speed dial these days.

“And you don’t, um, mind that Tara invited Riker to go on the cruise with her, do you?” I ask. My dad and I aren’t close—not in a way that makes talking about sexual partners anything but awkward—but I have to ask anyway. “It’s not weird?”

He keeps his gaze trained on the horizon, the bright blue sky separated from an even brighter ocean by a single hazy line. “Of course not. How your stepmother chooses to entertain herself is of no concern to me.”

“She must have known you’d be coming, though.”

“One would assume.”

“And that a lot of your old friends and associates would be there.”

“It promises to be a regular reunion. I can hardly wait.”

I don’t believe him—his tone is too flat, too even—but since delving into his psychology to work out the kinks of his love life isn’t on my bucket list, I let the subject drop. My primary fear is that my dad is plotting some sort of way to kill Riker and dispose of his body while out at sea. Both the opportunity and temptation will be there, especially if Tara packed any bikinis as small as the one she gave me.

Hopefully, murder isn’t part of my dad’s itinerary. Even though he can be scary sometimes, he’s not evil—at least, not to my friends. I try not to think too much about what he’s capable of doing to people outside his immediate circle, but I know his hands aren’t exactly clean. My husband might be the most noble and honorable man in all of creation, but my father is not.

“So,” I ask lightly, hoping to the turn the conversation to calmer, less complex waters. This is going to be an awfully long flight otherwise. “What do you plan to do if you win the Luxor Tiara?”

“When I win it, I’m going to do what any self-respecting man under close surveillance by the FBI would do.”

“I…” Huh. I don’t know what that is. “Bury it and leave a treasure map for posterity?”

He sighs, deeply disappointed, as he so often is, by my lack of ingenuity. “In case you didn’t check the docket, the ship ports at the Cayman Islands at the end of the seven days. Several of the banks there have been in contact to offer a secure vault to the winner, no questions asked. Isn’t that where you keep your money? Or do you prefer working with the Swiss?”

I prefer to squirrel my money away underneath mattresses and inside bus lockers like most petty burglars, but I don’t say so. It hurts my dad’s feelings. Since he abandoned me for most of my adolescence, the gaps in my criminal education are a constant source of guilt for him.

In fact, the only reason he helped me secure passage on the Shady Lady and buy a place at the poker table is because I claimed a wish for family bonding time. Well, that and the fact that I swore I’d sneak inside one of his suitcases if he didn’t. He knows I’m good for it.

“Switzerland is nice this time of year,” I say evasively. “Maybe next time we can take our undercover-sting-operation-slash-family-vacation there.”

Mentioning the sting operation causes him to frown.

“Next time,” he drawls and speeds up the plane, “I’m leaving the entire sorry lot of you at home.”