Chapter Twenty

Andrea heard a sound out in the hallway. Her head snapped up, and she glanced expectantly toward the door. Had Mitch come looking for her? She pictured his face, anxious to see him smile. Remembered his softly spoken pillow talk, anxious to hear his voice.

The sound died away once again, and her shoulders sagged for the third time in the last hour. Every hallway sound that didn’t bring him to her door increased the sense of loneliness thickening her blood and pressing on her shoulders.

When the footfalls in the hallway didn’t pass by and a knock sounded twenty minutes later, she forgot to ask who was there and blurted, “Come in.”

He swung open the door, and the sight of him standing there bronzed and beautiful brightened her spirits like a ray of sunshine in the middle of a dreary winter. She smiled for the first time that morning, and her pulse took off at a gallop.

But when he stepped into the office, she was suddenly tongue-tied and confused. Should she mention last night or pretend it never happened? Would he mention it, or pretend they didn’t intimately know each other’s bodies? The irony of her confusion was almost laughable. She’d never been shy with a lover before. But today, she felt like a silly virgin the morning after she discovered sex.

He looked her up and down, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and then he stuck his thumbs in his uniform pockets and gazed around the room without meeting her eyes. “Good morning.”

A small thrill ran through her, and she stifled a grin. He’d obviously noticed what she was wearing. “Good morning.”

“Back at it, I see.”

She crossed her legs and pointed her toe so the skirt would fall away and show off her calf and booted foot. “Yes.”

His gaze landed on her leg and bounced away. He glanced up at the streaming stock quotes as if he were fascinated and considering how many millions he should invest. Nodded. “That’s good.”

She squared her shoulders. Stiffened the muscles in her back. Okay, he wasn’t going to take her in his arms and profess his undying love. Fine. She didn’t do undying love so well, either. Didn’t even want undying love. If he wanted to play at amnesia, be good professional partners, she could do the same.

“So, no one nefarious showed up at Karli’s party,” she said. “What do we do now?”

He looked out the window. “Be patient. Keep waiting.”

“I want to be the best, not do things half-assed. I’ve been here over a week, and we need to get this show on the road. We’ve both been trained to go on the offensive. Maybe you’re content to sit and play defense, but I need to do something proactive.”

His focus finally shifted to her face. His expression forceful and unrelenting. “We’ve been over this before. We work by my rules, and I won’t risk your life.”

She resisted telling him he’d get nowhere if he always followed the rules. He had to stretch and take risks. But she didn’t want to argue. “This lack of action is driving me crazy. I want to do something.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

Andrea ran her eyes over the body that she knew to be firm and warm and erotic. She wanted to jump his bones and repeat everything they’d done last night. Her body wanted his hands on her skin, his mouth on her mouth, his legs entwined with hers. But giving in to temptation and going that direction again wouldn’t be smart. She shook her head. Best to keep her brain at least ten miles off that wavelength.

She studied this man who, strangely, she was tempted to trust. Her experiences growing up burned in her memory, urging her to run from the idea, telling her to avoid any situation where she’d be vulnerable to a man, just like she’d always done in the past.

Yet this time, her intuition was whispering conflicting messages of its own, arguing that her anger at what her brothers and father had done in the past was making her too cynical, turning her into a suspicious bitch.

The conversations she’d overheard at the fund-raiser nagged at her mind, and she wanted to search the boat for bugs. Doing that with a scanner and the help of an experienced searcher would simplify the task. Should she let down her guard and treat Mitch like a true partner? How much of her ideas and theories was she safe to share? So far he’d seemed to be the exception rather than the rule: a man who wasn’t out to grab the spotlight or steal the glory.

She nibbled her bottom lip while questions swirled in her brain. If the search helped find the would-be killer, would he take credit or tell their superiors it was her idea? If the search caused trouble, would he blame her or share the responsibility? She pulled in a breath, filling her mind with images of them lying together in his cabin. What the hell? She’d trusted him with her body, why not take a small chance and find out if he could be trusted in other ways as well?

“How about this?” she finally answered. “I overheard an interesting conversation last night. Two men were arguing about some proprietary information getting out, and one of them said he found a bug on his boat. As long as we have some free time, just to be on the safe side, why don’t we get some equipment and sweep the Black Swan?”

He leaned a shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Our assignment isn’t to guard Stone’s company secrets.”

She stood and paced in front of the desk. “Let’s make it part of our job. I can’t spend every minute combing through data and ignore the threat to my life. Scanning the boat would be something else to do for a couple hours and temporarily occupy our minds.”

“We’re here to protect Karli.”

“True.” She stopped in front of him and planted her hands on her hips. “But wouldn’t Dillon be a likely target for someone planting bugs to steal stock info? Having insider information about the merger could make someone very rich. And someone trolling for that kind of info could hear something that inadvertently reveals I’m not Karli and ruins our setup. If whoever threatened Karli discovers I’m a double, they’ll go after the real thing and her life will be put back in danger.”

She watched him think for a few seconds. Then he nodded, and she sensed his capitulation even before he said, “We might be derelict in not considering every possible leak.”

Her smile flashed, but she managed to hide the component of triumph. “Exactly.”

“Okay.” He pushed off the wall and headed for the door. “I’ll get someone to bring over an electronic sweeper, and we’ll take a look.”

Andrea sat in the sunshine on the upper deck finishing another meatless lunch of tropical fruits, a pasta salad, and warm crusty rolls. In her peripheral vision, she watched a deliveryman walk through the marina, come to the bottom of the boarding ramp, and hand Mitch a package.

She pushed back from the wicker table and, bringing along a yeasty-smelling roll already slathered with butter, rushed down to intercept Mitch as he strolled back onto the main deck. “Is that the sweeper?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to Dillon and get his okay?”

“He was surprised, but agreed a scan was worthwhile.”

A rush of excitement spurted into her bloodstream. “Good, then let’s get started.”

He shook his head. “You can’t be involved. Someone might see.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can be inconspicuous, act casual.” She indicated the scanner in his hand. “Checking the boat was my idea, and I’m helping. Where do you want to start?”

He chuckled. “I’m starting to see that when your mind is made up, you’re as stubborn as they come. I hope you realize that sometimes stubbornness and determination are good, sometimes bad.” When she failed to comment on the warning, he huffed out his breath. “Okay, in this instance you win. The upper decks.”

They climbed to the top deck navigation station and worked their way down toward the living areas. Most of the crew members were occupied with the endless tasks of scrubbing decks and polishing chrome and brass, and Mitch and Andrea progressed through the outdoor areas quickly.

She felt somewhat extraneous, since they only had one meter, and she couldn’t do much more than watch Mitch, but she stuck to his side like peanut butter on crackers. Her intuition told her they were on the verge of something big, and her nerves hummed with excitement. Plus, watching Mitch in action, prowling like a big, gorgeous cat, his intensity a testament to his skills, was far from a hardship.

“We should check the area where Dillon entertained Richard Kress the other night,” she suggested. “If that’s where he usually conducts meetings over cocktails, the bar and table would be prime places for business conversations.”

Mitch checked, but nothing registered on the meter. “That does it for out here.”

He slid open the glass doors, and she stepped inside the main salon. The temperature was twenty degrees lower, and goose bumps erupted on her arms. Her mind flew back to the heat of Mitch’s body as he’d held her in his embrace. She stifled an urge to lean against him, nestle into his warmth.

As he slid the door shut behind them, the sounds of the calling gulls and a siren wailing in the city were replaced by silence. He was so close she heard him breathing.

Andrea looked around self-consciously and remarked, “With all the knickknacks and plants and artwork and furniture in here, a bug could be stashed in a million different places.”

“Put yourself in the perpetrator’s mind. Where would you put one so it wouldn’t be seen?”

She crossed her bare arms to stave off the cold and drummed her fingers on her biceps. Mitch knew where to look, but he wanted her to reason it out on her own. He’d shifted into mentor mode.

“Air-conditioning vents are always good in houses, probably not so much on a boat,” she ventured. “I guess, in this situation, I’d put a microphone or camera under something that’s fixed to the floor, so it wouldn’t slide around or shift into sight in a seaway. The chairs won’t be tipped over for cleaning very often, so a bug could remain in place indefinitely. The small knickknacks and stuff would be low on my list. They’ll be dusted regularly, and any bug could be dislodged or vacuumed away.”

He kept his head down, staring at the tiny meter as they made a slow circuit around the room. “There’s no signal near any of the chairs or end tables. Which means the table lamps are clean, too.” He held the meter higher and checked the four corners of a Georges Braque painting. “Nothing.”

“Let’s move on to the dining room.”

They walked to the formal dining area. As Andrea leaned in to inhale the scent of the rosebud centerpiece on the huge oblong table, Mitch stopped near one end. “I have something.”

Andrea looked around to be sure they weren’t being observed and her un-Karli-like behavior wouldn’t be questioned. Satisfied no one would see her, she got down on her knees, then stretched out on the floor on her back so she could scan the undersides of the tables and chairs. There! A shiny disc the size of a dime was stuck to the wooden support brace that ran six inches in from the edge of the table. “Got it.”

“I’ll be damned. Don’t touch it.” He passed her a vinyl glove. “Put this on first.”

She slid her fingers into the glove, pried the bug loose, and then stood with it lying in her palm. “What do we do with it now?”

Mitch pulled a small bag coated with something that looked like foil from his back pocket. “We bag it and send it to the lab. Maybe they can pull a print.”

He opened the top of the bag, and Andrea dumped the bug inside. She watched him seal the bag and label it with the place and time. “Do you think the tech people can trace where the signal goes?”

“Hard to say. A digital bug like this sends a feed to a blind server. The person who planted it doesn’t have to monitor it live. They can access what’s been recorded from their computer at any time. So unless the server space is rented under our perpetrator’s name, which I doubt, we won’t know who’s listening to the recordings.”

They finished searching the room. The little meter hadn’t registered any other signals since the bug was slipped in the shielded bag. Mitch said, “There’s nothing else here. Let’s try your cabin.”

“I wouldn’t think someone would bother with Karli’s cabin. It’s hardly the place for business discussions.”

“It’s a long shot. But finding one bug leads me to believe there could be more. We might as well be thorough.”

“I suppose someone might assume Dillon would be open with Karli and share business secrets he wouldn’t reveal to anyone else.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Andrea twisted her mouth wryly. “If they put something in Karli’s cabin and they’ve overheard our conversations, our charade could be in deep doo-doo.”

“That depends on who bugged the place and why. Maybe they’re not interested in the information that Karli’s out of circulation. There’s also the possibility that they haven’t listened to any recordings made there in the last couple days. Maybe they haven’t discovered the substitution.”

Mitch stashed the meter out of sight, Andrea took off the glove, and they walked casually to Karli’s cabin. Once they were inside with the door shut, Mitch pulled the meter out again and switched it back on.

Andrea perched on the corner of the bed, jiggling her foot while he scanned every inch of the closet and bath. When he came out the closet doorway and glanced toward her, he paused for a second, and his eyes went dark. She leaped off the bed and wet her lips. “Are you ready to check out the bed? To scan the bed, I mean. You know.”

A slow smile brightened his eyes, stretched his mouth. His voice danced with amusement. “Sure. Want to help?”

She gathered together the fragments of her dignity and reminded herself to stay cool. She knew better than to let a man think he had the upper hand. Why was she getting all flustered? What was it about Mitch that threw her so off balance just because he was in the same room or looking her way? “You seem to be doing okay on your own.”

He nodded. Dropping his gaze to the meter, he went back to work, walking past the bureau, circling the bed, leaning into the sitting area. “Nothing. It’s clean.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Andrea tapped a finger on her bottom lip. “We need to do Dillon’s cabin, too. But maybe we should wait until he’s here.”

“No need. I have his permission to do a complete sweep.”

“Okay.” Andrea cracked open the door and looked both ways. “Empty. Let’s go.”