In a Fix (29 page)

He groaned (breathing heavily himself, I was happy to note) and began inching apart the blanket I was still wearing, dragging the soft pile across my bare skin until it opened in front. A hot hand snaked between the folds, up to my breast, cupping it softly, grazing my nipple with the callused pad of his thumb.

Whoa. Now
there
was sensation, and damned if he wasn’t right again. It
was
going straight to my head, where Inner Slut and Thirteen-Year-Old Me were fighting over who would get custody. Inner Slut won. Thirteen was way too young for a feeling like that.

His mouth left mine—it would have been the perfect time to cry uncle, except I was half-afraid he might listen—and went exploring on my neck, from under my chin to behind my ear and back again. I bit my lip against a whimper. My neck is entirely too sensitive for its own good. As he tickled the pulse under my jaw with his tongue, his hand slid lower, finding my navel and dipping in. I was all set to protest—honest—but then his mouth was right there with mine again, and my lips decided they had better things to do than listen to my brain. I bit his bottom lip hard enough to make him suck in his breath and deepen the kiss. He
had
to be feeling this, too. It couldn’t just be me.

“Hey, Mark.” Laura’s voice jolted me, calling from below.
Crap
. Again? I tore my lips away from Mark’s. “SÄPO called. They said they’d—” She stopped when she saw us, both brows jumping this time.

Mark held me against his chest, so she wouldn’t see where the blanket had come apart.

“Never mind. Tell you later.” She turned and went back below.

Mark held me until my heartbeat slowed. “So, hey,” I said finally, avoiding his eyes. “I, um, guess you were right about those sensations, huh? Sneaky little bastards, aren’t they?”

I tried to disengage myself, but he held on to me. “Howdy, I’m sorr—”

“Don’t you
dare
say it.” I pushed away from him, surprised at the strength of my reaction to his attempt at an apology. Guess I was a little upset at being caught by Laura. Twice. In a short span of time. With different guys. What must she think of me?

Shit
. What did
I
think of me?

“But I shouldn’t have—” Mark tried to continue.

“No, I’m the one who shouldn’t have.” I straightened my blanket and got hold of myself. “Look, just forget it, okay? You were right. Lesson learned, Professor Fielding. Class over. Now, hadn’t you better go see what Laura wanted to tell you?”

He swore softly. “Yeah, I better. We’ll pick this up later, Howdy.”

“Hey, Mark,” I said as he walked away. “Are
you
the kind of guy you’d want your kid sister to get involved with?”

He stopped and turned back to me, eyes serious. “No. I’m the kind of bastard I would castrate before letting him near my kid sister. Maybe you better think about that.”

Chapter 26

Cripes. Think about that? On top of thinking about Billy? Oh, and why not contemplate what a skeeze Laura must think I am, while I’m at it.
Shit
. What in the hell was going on with Mark and Billy, anyway? Did Billy suddenly want me because he thought Mark did? And was Mark interested only because Billy was paying attention to me?

Fuck it all. I made up my mind. I wasn’t having any more to do with either one of them after this escapade was over. I was done with the both of them. Finito. I’d redouble security at my office, so they wouldn’t be able to track me on my jobs. I’d avoid family gatherings where they might be present—there had to be at least a dozen severe illnesses I could credibly fake as excuses. And if that didn’t work, I could always tell Thomas. He’d kill both of them for me.

Back below, I went straight to the head, and rinsed my face with cool water until I felt in control again. I could do this. I could be strong. Helping free Trey from the Vikings would be my focus. Getting him for Mina was my job. Nothing else mattered.

*   *   *

Other than a half-grin and a suspicious twinkle in her eyes, Laura didn’t let on that she’d seen anything unusual—thank goodness for inbred spook discretion. I had to wonder, though: if she could be so sanguine about the whole thing, maybe she
wasn’t
involved with Mark. Unless the pair of them were a whole lot more open about relationships than I was.

Not that it mattered anymore, of course, since I was no longer interested.

Laura was a whiz with disguises. After being introduced to a bottle of peroxide, Billy bore more than a passing resemblance to Spike, of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
fame. By the time she was finished with me, my hair was orangey-red, my freckles had disappeared beneath a thick layer of foundation, and my lips looked considerably thinner and paler. She said she hated to mess with my mouth, but that any man who’d ever seen it wasn’t likely to forget it, so she had to.

“Your eyes are spectacular, Ciel—I’ve never seen such a clear, spring green,” she said when she was done with my makeup. “Really distinctive. Unfortunately, distinctive is what we’re trying to avoid. I have some noncorrective colored contact lenses—could you give them a try?”

I agreed, and chose a plain medium brown. I managed to get them into my eyes after several failed attempts. Not liking the way they felt, I waited until her back was turned, removed them, and adapted my own eyes to the same color. Surely that wasn’t cheating. Though judging by the gleeful look on Billy’s face,
he
considered it cheating.

She didn’t have to do much to herself because she had barely been in view since they’d arrived in Sweden, and of course Mark was free to adapt at will. He didn’t have to do a thing except put on a costume, in hopes of blending in at the periphery of the Viking group. Laura, Billy, and I wore typical, touristy day-hiker clothing made of state-of-the-art synthetic materials in various shades of tan. Ho-hum.

The plan was to get as close as we could to the Viking encampment, under the pretext of bird watching. With luck, Laura would overhear enough to tell us if they were holding Trey there, and what their plans were. If our presence was detected and questioned, we would feign total ignorance of anything other than Gotland’s bird life.

According to the new passports Laura had modified for us by making good use of a digital camera and compact photo printer, she was now Rose, Billy was Hubert (which made me laugh and him wince), and I was Sarah. Mark gave us a brief inspection after we were fully outfitted. I refused to meet his eyes.

He lifted my chin and said, “Look at me, Ciel.”

I did, but kept my lips compressed. I had nothing to say to him. He turned my head from side to side, in full professional mode, his manner giving no hint of the passionate embrace we’d shared. I knew good and well he could tell I wasn’t wearing the contacts, but he couldn’t call me on it in front of Laura. Finally he said, “You’ll do.” He barely looked at Billy and Laura as he left, trusting them to handle their disguises without supervision.

Fifteen minutes later, after receiving the designated signal via text message, the rest of us followed. Billy had found a prescription-less pair of black-framed glasses in Laura’s bag of tricks, and was wearing them to dorky effect while training his binoculars on every passing feathered creature. He assumed a slightly pigeon-toed walk that totally altered his gait, and would have cracked me up but for the warning look Laura gave me. I knew I couldn’t keep up something like that myself for any length of time, so I didn’t even try. Laura’s transformation of my face and hair would have to do for me.

I hung my binoculars around my neck, got out my book, and tried to look fascinated by nature. It would have been a nice outing under most other circumstances. Heck, if I was honest with myself, I was having fun under
these
conditions, as long as I kept my head in the moment, and didn’t think too much about Mark or Billy. No wonder it wasn’t difficult for covert agencies to recruit people to do this stuff—it was a rush.

We walked for a mile, maybe a little more, never far from civilization but sticking to the wooded areas, with Billy checking his compass every now and then in a big, nerdy production. I doubt he needed it—he had the most obnoxiously keen sense of direction of anybody I knew—but it fit in with Hubert’s persona. I, on the other hand, would have been lost inside fifty yards, even with the compass. When it comes to directions, I depend upon the kindness of strangers. Honking big landmarks help, too.

As we neared our destination, we came upon our first neo-Viking. The tall, barrel-chested, ginger-bearded fellow seemed amiable enough as he approached, greeting us in Swedish. Laura answered him in kind, and asked him a question, also in Swedish. After hearing his response, she grinned and said, in English, “Pretty good, Mark. I wouldn’t take you for a Swede, but you pass—barely—for a somewhat slow Dane trying to speak schoolroom Swedish.”

A hearty laugh rumbled through him. “You got me. Now, let’s go—I need you to listen for me. I heard Trey’s name mentioned again, but couldn’t cipher out the details. If we hurry, they may still be discussing him.”

“What now?” I asked Billy once they were gone.

“Now we work our way closer to the camp, looking at all of our fine, feathered friends. I need to get myself better situated to help. Presupposing Mark is right about what he heard.”

“Okay,” I said, falling into step beside him. “Um, how precisely do you propose to get Trey? Their team is a little bigger than ours, in case you haven’t noticed.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think about the bridges.”

“Bridges?”

“You know—the ones you cross when you get to them—I don’t think about those. Something will come up. There’ll be an opening, and we’ll take it.”

“Oh.” It didn’t sound like the most reassuring of plans to me, but since I didn’t have a better one to offer, what else could I say?

We wandered on, moving quickly without appearing to be rushed, Billy sweeping the area visually with his binoculars, making occasional, clearly audible comments to me about this or that bird. “Oh, my God,” he gushed in a loud whisper, sounding like he meant to be quiet but just couldn’t contain himself. “Is that a Radde’s Warbler? Could it be? It is!”

I lifted my binoculars and pointed them where he indicated. Saw a small, brownish bird with a lighter underbelly, and what looked like long, cream-colored eyebrows.

“Why, yes. I believe you’re right. Shall I, um, make note of it?” I said, and then added, ultra-low volume, barely moving my lips, “How the hell do you know what bird that is?”

“I paged through the book while we were waiting for Mark to call. Didn’t you?” he said.

Not actually, no. A bit of musical birdsong interrupted before I had to admit it, though. I scanned the area. “Did you hear that? Why, that’s a … what would you say that is, Hubert?”

“My phone,” he said drily.

Well, how clever to think of programming birdcall ringtones, just exactly as bird geeks might do, I thought, irritated for no valid reason. Weren’t Billy and Mark just so good at everything. Sailing. Spying. Kissing. Why not ringtones? I kicked a rock.

Okay, so maybe I was ticked about the kisses. Both of them. And maybe, if I were honest with myself, I was more ticked about my reaction to the kisses than the fact that either one of them had kissed me. Ticked and confused.

Crap. Being honest with yourself
sucks
.

Billy slid open the tiny device. “Hubert here.” He listened intently for several seconds. “Where?… Is he still…?… Got it.”

My cranky confusion was doused by a sudden splash of adrenaline. “What? Did they find Trey? Is it time?” I whispered urgently. “Are we going to bust him out? Did anybody bring a gun?”

Billy laid his hand over my mouth and spoke softly. “Laura thinks she knows where they have Trey, but they could be moving him at any time. It won’t be a simple extraction. We—by which I mean Mark, Laura, and I—are going to try to sneak him out without being noticed by the horde.
You
are going to head back to the boat—”

“But I can—”

“The boat,” he repeated firmly. “You will wait there, out of sight, until one of us calls you. Mark decided it was too dangerous for a civilian around their camp after all. The natives are getting restless.”

I opened my mouth to argue. Thought ahead to the likely outcome. “Okay,” I said instead. Agreeably, seeing as he was in a hurry.

For some reason, that seemed to piss him off.

“Damn it, Ciel. I mean it. If you don’t do as I say, next time I’ll throw you in the locker myself, screw your claustrophobia. You are
not
going to get into the middle of this and get yourself hurt.”

His eyes were thunderclouds behind the dark frames. I got the feeling if he removed the glasses, I’d be struck by lightning.

“I said okay, didn’t I?”

He still looked totally suspicious. Huh. Some people.

“So what are you waiting for? Go,” he said gruffly.

“All right, I’m going.” After two steps, I looked back over my shoulder at him. “Um, which way?”

“The way we just came,” he said, not very patiently.

I looked around. “And that would be…?”

“Good God, you mean that, don’t you? You have no idea how we got here, do you? Weren’t you paying attention at all?”

“Well, I was following you. It got kind of twisty there at the end,” I said defensively.

He took a deep breath and walked me over to a large evergreen. “Sit,” he said.

I sat, settling myself comfortably on a blanket of rusty-brown pine needles.

“Now, get out your bird book and binoculars, and start finding birds. Do not move from this spot. If a Viking approaches you, play dumb. Shouldn’t be tough.” The last bit was under his breath as he turned to go, but I heard it.

He fell for that, and he thought
I
was dumb? Ha. We’d just see about that. I spent a few minutes doing exactly as I was told, sure he would double back and check on me at least once. He did; I pretended to be too intent on following his instructions to see him.