Accessory: The Scarab Beetle Series: #4 (The Academy) (12 page)

“So you think he’s a good guy?” I asked.

“He might be,” Blake said. He smoothed his palm over his cheek as he looked at the papers. The coarse stubble made the tiniest of scratching sounds at the movement. “I’m going to hope, at least. I really want to talk to him. This cruise will be a good opportunity for that.”

Even six people would be a lot to keep track of on this ship, with over a thousand other people walking around. I blew out a slow breath between my lips, folded my arms over my chest and leaned slightly against the table, looking at Blake. “What was your plan?”

He lowered his palm to the table, using it as support as he leaned into me. “Waltz in there all nice and pretty. Pretend we have a lot of money to throw around.”

“Which one of us does,” I said with a smirk.

He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “Little darling, you finish this job, I won’t be the only one.”

I looked down, scratching absently at my arm. I didn’t want to talk about what Raven said, and I hadn’t thought of if I really would reject the money when it came down to it. “So we pretend we’ve got money we want to invest in the charity?”

“No,” he said. “We imply the money isn’t exactly clean, except we do it carefully. Say it vaguely enough, the innocent won’t pick up on it, but those who are interested in helping us launder our money will come to us.”

“Sounds risky.”

“If we have Doyle listening to everything, the best thing we can do is to encourage them to talk. In the meantime, you can have your boys digging into their cell phones and laptops while they’re on board. They tail us for protection and we all do our best to get on their good side and get familiar.”

“What do we do if we find out what’s going on? What if one or more of them is stealing the money from the charity? What then?”

He held up a hand, counting off on his fingers. “One: find out who will help us with dirty money. Anyone willing to help us is probably our target. Two: find out how they do it by getting the details. Three: if they offer to handle dirty money, then we wait, make them wonder. Four: and this is the tricky part, we convince them we’ve found an even better place to put their own dirty cash, most likely an investment they’ll see even more profit from. Once we’ve convinced them and secure the money, we’ll give them false cash reports on their earnings until we can figure out what to do next.”

“Sounds like a long job,” I said. “We’re not going to be able to do all that in five days.”

“We can probably get numbers one through three and a start on four,” he said. “Start with one. We go from there. If that’s all we get through now, then that’s all we get. Some info will be better than none.”

“And how do we get them off the board after?”

He shrugged. “It’s one of those unpredictable things. We’ll know better once we get more familiar with Nightingale. Force them into retirement. Pull them out of the company, into something overseas and then deal with it then. Whatever we can get away with and not draw attention to the Murdock Corporation. Once they are away from the company, we can call cops on them, whatever we need to do.”

I breathed in deeply, looking at the six we were going to focus on, and then at the hundreds of others that would be coming aboard tomorrow. “What about the rest of them?”

“Doyle will pick up what he can, hopefully giving us another lead to work on once we’re done with Nightingale. If we stretch ourselves too thin, we won’t get much accomplished, even with your friends helping.”

I raked my fingers through my hair, combing through it while looking at the stack of papers. This was one company among possibly hundreds. This might not be the only list of companies and people we’d be looking at. I hadn’t really thought of how long this job would take. For a ten percent split of billions of dollars, it wasn’t like I could expect to work for a week and walk away. This wasn’t a job I’d be able to leave for a while.

I wondered about Axel and the others, if I was pulling them away from their homes and work to follow me around. I thought about Wil, who might pop in not only while we were gone, but while we were even further away if it required us to go overseas. Did I want to commit months of my life to this, leaving my brother behind?

“What’s wrong?” Blake asked. I picked my head up, surprised to find he was standing much closer than he had been a moment ago. “Why do you look like that?”

I drew in a long breath, letting it out slowly, and stared at the papers, refusing to look at his face. “There’s a lot to do. We might not get through this anytime soon.”

Blake moved forward, leaning again slightly against the table, his head hovering close to mine. He lowered his voice, talking quietly. “Listen, Kayli, I don’t know what you’re used to.” He touched his palm toward his heart. “Let me tell you about me, though. I didn’t just stumble across the drugs when you came around and decided to hop in. Helping people out is kind of my thing. It’s not always a quick week or two and then it’s over. Sometimes it’s months of research, practice, and a whole lot of patience.”

“I’m not really the patient type,” I said.

“When it means the difference between getting killed or succeeding, you’ll walk a few extra steps.” The gold flecks in his eyes softened as his gaze shifted from my chin to my forehead and then to my hair. “I may go along with whatever your pretty little heart desires, but I’m not about to let you walk into a death trap. You’d ruin that beautiful face.”

It made me uncomfortable since I felt like a slob in the clothes, so I backed away, turned and started toward the wall to give myself some space.

Blake’s footsteps sounded behind me, echoing in the room. When I turned, he’d followed me. He stepped forward, and I was compelled to take a step back. The fox-like smile was back, and his eyes flashed. “Don’t run now.”

“Don’t,” I said, waving him off.

He gently captured my wrist, holding it between his thumb and two fingers. He remained still for a moment, his gaze never leaving my eyes. “Your heart’s beating quickly, Kayli dear.”

I jerked my arm from his hand. “Blake,” I said, although more softly. I tried to focus only on his eyes, to silently tell him to back off. His handsome face made me weak, and my eyes betrayed me by slipping down toward his mouth.

It’d been awhile since I’d been kissed and touched by anyone. The boys had stayed their distance from me since I’d been sick, which I appreciated, but now as I looked at Blake, at his sly smile, his amused eyes, the stylish blond locks that hung around his face, I couldn’t help but admire and dare him quietly to give me a kiss. It was some sort of validation, that someone still cared for me in that way.

He moved toward me, his arms going up and pressing into the wall behind me, caging me in, his face hovering over mine, until it was all I could see. “You know, before you called me when you’d been kidnapped, I was a wreck. A broken man.”

“Because I broke your car?” I asked.

“Because I had been telling myself I didn’t need you. That you were disaster waiting to happen.”

“I kind of proved you right,” I said quietly, meaning the joke to distract him from whatever this was, although regret had started to creep into my heart. I hadn’t meant to do a lot of those things I’d done. It’s not like I’d planned it. “Doyle was right. I turned you all into hostages. And your house...”

“But you don’t understand.” He lowered one of his hands until he was cupping my cheek, holding me, and grazing the side of his thumb across my skin. “It was in those moments that I realized why, why after everything that happened I still came running after you. You curl those pretty little fingers in my direction, and I jump into the volcano to save your ass.” He pulled his head back to close his eyes, and lower his head, shaking it. “I was killing myself before, thinking I could just ignore you. You’ve done something to me.”

I rocked my head back, resting it against the wall. Why couldn’t I resist when he did this to me? My feelings were confused enough. Sometimes he said things so insane, and yet I felt he meant them, and his voice, his smooth, sexy voice left me wanting to say something in return, even if my lips couldn’t repeat the thoughts floating around in my head.

“The problem was, I let you lead me into the fire. I let you talk me into helping you and your friends when you come to me, desperate. Not this time. Not if I can talk you into a job that we start from the beginning. You and me. No more running in when everyone is dying, guns already drawn and the police starting up their reports.” His fingers slid down until he was lifting my chin. He lowered his face close and stared directly at my mouth. “This time, it’s you and I against the bad, scary things we fight against. Neither of us can resist it. Don’t fight it.”

I sucked in a breath, waiting, silently urging him to kiss me. The rational part of my head simply shut down. I puckered slightly, afraid to show even a drop of interest, terrified he’d pull away.

Except he did pull away. He tore himself from me, walking back toward the table.

I put a hand over my chest, breathing in deeply. What had come over me? He did this to me every time he was around. My heart was a mess.

He’d never pulled away before though.

He didn’t look at me anymore. Instead, he focused on the table, on the collection of papers and the schematics and notes he had written out. “You should go back,” he said. “The rest of your boys are on their way. They should be here by the time you get back to the gangway.”

“How do you know?”

He tapped at his ears, continuing to look at his papers. “Doyle let me know.”

Listening device. Maybe I needed one of those. “I should go meet them.”

“Get out of here,” he said. “I’ll make copies of my notes and leave them in your room later.”

I went to the door, realizing I still needed to tell the boys Blake was even here. I opened the door, although I hesitated, looking back at Blake. I wondered why he’d stopped. Had I done something wrong? The lack of his kiss when he’d been so close left me confused.

Blake was still hunched over his table, his back to me. His strong, lean shoulders and back were nice to look at, but nothing told me the answers to the questions that rolled around in my head and heart.

I walked through the door, and then closed it behind myself, grateful that I had a break and a chance to clear my head before returning to the boys. Blake Coaltar. I could be furious with him and at the same time crazy about his eyes and the things he said, the way he touched me. I couldn’t believe how I let him get to me. He drew feelings out of me, feelings I’d felt for the other guys, but that were slightly different for him. There was a danger in him, a thrill.

Since I’d been having a difficult time choosing among the boys, but then was sick and the boys backed off, at first I was grateful. The times I’d been awake and unable to sleep, I kept considering what I would do. Make a steady relationship with one of them and call it off with the rest? Date no one at all and make that a rule? And what if Marc got another girlfriend? Or one of the others? Could I stand it and sit back and watch?

Weeks later, I still didn’t have an answer.

Blake, in a way, provided one more option. If I wanted, I could go off with Blake. It might save the Academy guys from themselves, from jealousy or a fight, if I said I couldn’t date anyone in such a close knit group and went with someone outside the circle.

However, I wasn’t Blake’s equal. I didn’t have any money at all and he was wealthy. I would never feel comfortable feeling like I couldn’t provide for myself and lived off of his generosity.

Maybe this was my chance. Raven told me not to take the money, but the money I made here would level the playing field. I wouldn’t need any of them. I’d be independent, and once that happened, I could feel comfortable. Maybe I would look at them all differently then. Maybe by not feeling like I needed them, then I’d be able to evaluate them individually, and finally be able to make a decision.

I walked quickly, drowning the thoughts as I needed to focus because I was about to face off Axel.

ALLIES

I
got lost at first, but then I noticed maps every few feet on the ship, showing fire escapes and your location onboard. I used them to walk back through the mundane hallways below deck and on up to the more luxurious parts of the ship.

The entire time, I didn’t run into any crew, not one person. It was late, they might have been asleep. Still, I had a feeling, at least in the luxury areas, there was someone watching. Doyle might not be the only one doing surveillance. The halls might be monitored, which was why Blake had wanted to go down into the room he’d picked. There might be more security on this ship, minimal now without many people onboard, but there had to be some.

I looked for security cameras. If there were any, they weren’t obvious. There were globe things in the corners every few feet, and while I thought those could be it, I couldn’t see into it and verify.

And it made me wonder why Blake was stuck in a storage area. Doyle, too. Did they not trust the crew?

The thoughts left me as I managed to find my way back to the foyer’s fancy stairwell. I descended the stairs, and went through the main glass doors out onto the deck near the gangway.

I found Corey first. He was standing by the entrance, facing the dock. Relief flooded through me and I hurried toward him. If I could get Corey to vouch for me with Axel, that would help a lot. Plus, I missed him. Here was this huge ship and he would probably get a kick out of exploring it.

Corey was wearing his Mario Bros. shirt and jeans, a yellow jacket. He folded his arms against the cold as he stood, looking down at the dock. His sun-kissed hair twisted against the breeze. He was so tall, and while he looked like a nerdling, he was incredibly handsome and had a great body under the geek clothes. Corey’s whole countenance exuded friendship. Are you lonely? Tired? Bored? Talk to Corey. He’ll do whatever to cheer you up. I needed that right now.

“Corey,” I said as I reached him, unable to help the smile on my face.