Alicia hung up the handset and tried to processes the words. That had been Mac’s voice. And Mac’s room. But she’d been pretending to be talking to the front desk.
Ergo, she wasn’t alone.
At the same time, she hadn’t said any of the key words they’d set up in case someone got captured or arrested, so she didn’t seem to be in trouble.
Alicia checked the clock. She’d been deep inside a local database maintained by one of the criminal syndicates on Borlait. Junior varsity people, but still criminals. They had more interesting contacts than most of the cops did around here.
Still, Mac was up to something. Alicia sighed and backed out of that system. She was pretty sure she could get back in later. The fools they’d hired to set up their systems had left default passwords all over the place, so the first thing Alicia had done had been to give herself super-administrator privileges.
They’d need to pretty much wipe the system bare to the metal to block her out next time.
Instead, Alicia turned on the room’s vidscreen and tuned it to cameras she’d set in Mac’s room when they arrived.
Oh, wow. Mac had herself a date. Cute brunette with dark skin and a rangy build.
Alicia found herself a little turned on, watching the two nude women neck before turning and heading to the bedroom. She switched cameras and played voyeur as Mac turned down the comforter and sheets, then invited the woman to join her.
Except that Mac wouldn’t have called like that if she just got lucky. Well, maybe, but she’d been acting like this was normal, so something must be up.
Otherwise, she’d have said she had company and not to knock too early. So the stranger wasn’t supposed to know that Mac wasn’t alone.
Alicia zoomed the camera and panned it a little to get a good view of the woman. Mac must have been setting the stranger up, because she’d laid down in such a way as to not obscure anything, and they were nude atop the sheets as they necked.
Alicia started snapping pictures. Full body as well as face. At one point, the woman turned almost perfectly face-on to the camera as Mac did something. The look was particularly good, very polite, almost a tiny orgasm. Still, it let her get bones scanned cleanly.
She tuned out the performance and focused on her computer, trying not to get turned on and glad she’d left the sound off from what looked like moans of pleasure on faces.
Female. Middle-aged. Hispanic skin tones, with matching hair and dark eyes. Darker than most of Salonnia, but not that much. Better fit in Aquitaine, or all along the long border the two shared.
And Mac wanted Alicia to know about the woman. Who was she?
She grabbed her comm and pinged Handsome.
“What’s up?” he answered almost immediately. It was late and he’d said he was staying in tonight, after several nights of breaking and entering in various places that had all largely been dead ends, but he was obviously awake.
“Mac has company in her room,” Alicia said. “She just called here like I was the front desk and asked for a wakeup call tomorrow at six.”
“Set your alarm and be sure to call,” Rob said tersely. “And sound like the front desk when you do.”
“Okay?”
“You watching right now?” he continued.
“Sort of,” Alicia admitted. “Mac brought a woman home and they’re rather enjoying themselves in the bedroom as I talk to you.”
“No alarms?” he asked.
“None beyond that phone call.”
“I’ll be right up to see you,” he said. “Something doesn’t smell right.”
Alicia hung up and had to agree. The women were having fun, but why call?
Unless Mac thought that she’d stumbled into one of those enemy agents? Handsome had already gotten more than two dozen folks to walk in front of cameras Alicia owned. They only got positive matches from her records on about ten, so the mission was a huge success on those grounds alone.
Alicia checked her supply of snacks and drinks. She might be suddenly stuck in the room doing surveillance things and didn’t want to get room service too many times in a row. She could always send Handsome for take-out, if the mission had just turned inside out and Mac had someone on the hook.
It was only fair, after all.
He knocked on the door quickly. Alicia confirmed that it was him then opened the bolts to let the man in.
He was wearing a nice cologne tonight. Foresty. He always smelled good.
They ended up on the couch that she’d commandeered as a command post, watching the big screen across from them as Mac and another woman…did things to each other.
Alicia found herself getting a little flustered, watching that while she was smelling him next to her.
“Do we know anything?” he asked, turning to look at her.
Luckily, Handsome was at the other end of the couch. Far enough away. Probably.
“Nothing,” Alicia replied. “She doesn’t show up in my records, but that doesn’t mean anything, since I’ve left our local teams alone. They might know who she was, but they might not.”
He nodded, pensive, then turned back.
Alicia stole sidelong glances at the man, even as she watched the women.
Mac and her friend were oblivious. Someone might blow the door to the suite off the hinges and not get their attention.
Alicia was willing to admit that she was jealous. Like, hungry jealous. That was hot. She was getting uncomfortable, watching it with Handsome and his forest smell carbonating her hormones harder and harder.
“Longshot,” he muttered under his breath.
“What is?”
“Female,” he pointed at the screen. “I’d guess her to be mid-to-late forties, but I could be a six years off either direction. Mac’s definitely not an exhibitionist, so this isn’t just her rubbing our faces in her getting lucky tonight with a hot babe.”
“Babe?” Alicia asked. “She’s not that much. I realize I’m not one to talk, but that one’s only cute. Not anywhere near as hot as Mac. Curvy, but not particularly busty or slinky. Just kinda woman, middle-aged like you said and in good shape.”
She realized that he’d gone perfectly still. Maybe not even breathing.
“You have a face capture of her?” he said without turning this way.
“Sure.” Alicia started typing and brought up several different stills she had extracted from the video. “What are we looking for?”
“Field agents need to be bland,” he spoke quietly. “Mildly attractive, because homely is memorable, as is beautiful. The Service uses me as a blunt instrument or a scalpel these days, rather than an operative, because I tend to stand out. I draw missions where that’s useful. Same with Mac. She sucks all the oxygen out of any room she’s in, which lets me vanish into the background like we did last year. The woman with Mac looks more like the sort of field agent most places recruit. I wonder if she’s one of us.”
It didn’t help that he had all that, AND brains. Alicia could be jealous of him, too. He wasn’t as smart as her or Mac, but he also didn’t try to prove that he was. Instead, he assumed that she was smarter and better at her thing than everybody else, and took advantage of that.
If only she could get him to take advantage of her.
“What was that?” he asked, glancing back her direction.
Alicia realized she’d been muttering and slammed her mouth shut.
Rob turned to face her.
“You okay?” he asked.
Alicia gestured to the screen.
“Flustered, watching that performance,” she admitted. “Turned on and a little horny. No, that is not an invitation.”
He’d opened his mouth to say something, but paused, studying her.
“What I was about to say was that I wasn’t inviting myself,” Handsome turned serious on her. “But if you need, I am available. And safe. You can’t always assure that in the field. Truth be told, I’m kinda wound up watching this, and I know Mac in that way.”
“So if I needed you to take me off-line at some point…?” Alicia began hesitantly.
She wasn’t sure what she’d need, but Mac had whispered a few things. And the man had a reputation in the building as a protege of Jorge Royo.
Maybe she needed to avail herself of the opportunity?
“I’d be happy to help,” Handsome smiled. “Now, or should I go back down to my room before we get a little overwhelmed here?”
She considered it. R E A L L Y considered it.
But that was an open invitation she could claim some other time, when she wasn’t so horny her eyes wanted to cross.
Plus, she had the face of a total stranger that needed to be filtered through every dataset she could penetrate.
Bad choice of words. As was seduce into giving up their secrets.
“Another time,” Alicia managed, in spite of what certain parts of her anatomy might have wanted. “Gonna stay up late and do some homework on the stranger.”
He nodded and rose. The man seemed to be breathing a little heavy.
Like maybe he wanted her? She’d never dated much beyond the nerds in school, but Alicia had known herself to be too squishy and way too wrapped up in her mental and intellectual superiority.
Having a guy like Handsome Rob looking at her with lust in his eyes was almost overwhelming, especially on top of things happening on the screen.
Thank the creator she had the sound off, even if she was recording everything for later.
Not that she’d watch it later in privacy. Heaven forbid.
“Remember to set your alarm,” Handsome said as he moved to the door and let himself out without looking back.
That was good. She might have called him back to take care of things otherwise. Since everything was recording, she fed the face pics into an algorithm she’d written and started it brute-forcing for matches in the background.
That would take a while. She dutifully set an alarm for five-thirty, so she was ready for whatever happened in the morning.
She really needed a cold shower about now.