After Colleen whined to her husband that she'd caught Edward and Ava (she purposely used the wrong name for Max's cover identity) practically fucking on his desk and that they refused to join the orgy, the Congressman begrudgingly had Eddie and Eva kicked out of the Eilers estate. He seemed physically hurt when he said it pained him to see all that potential walking out the door, though Alec and Max heard 'money' in the place of 'potential.' Apparently, price for admission into this special weapons-buying club really was a couple of group dates with some swingers. Mr. Kondogianis saw them to the front door and bid them adieu with a plastic smile fixed to his mouth.
No wonder Colleen asked about Edward's and Harold's cocks, Max thought. She was literally sizing them up. She hadn't asked about Roberto's, though, and paired with the fact that Esmeralda tried to comfort Libby at Colleen's unabashed questioning, Max could only assume the Jimenezes had already done business with them before, and the Walkers had not. Max felt bad for the wives present and historical, though, because at one time or another, they all had to fuck Teddy. She'd had her share of lousy bedfellows over her career, but she sure as hell was not about to add Teddy to that list. "He's like a walking dick with eyebrows," Max commented to Alec once they began heading back to their car. The downturn of her pout proved how disgusting she found the man to be.
Alec laughed out loud, genuine mirth in his eyes, and said at least they'd kept up appearances about being buyers and investors without compromising their covers or their integrity. As soon as they loaded themselves back into the SUV, he smiled at her as if that was the most fun he'd had in a while, and said that even with the way it all went down, it wouldn't matter because they still had information about the containers at the docks, and would still be able to intercept them.
To make the most of their time now that they'd been eighty-sixed from the Eilers', Alec planned to drive straight to the harbor and find the location of the containers in question. But though he could probably participate in some espionage in his gorgeous suit, Max needed to change.
"Roberto Jimenez is the Seattle Chief of Police," Max finally told him as Alec drove them away from the estate, gravel crunching under the tires of the Aston Martin Luxury Electric SUV. "He's one of Cale's contacts."
"Shit," he said, turning onto the highway and heading toward the harbor. "Do you think he recognized you?"
"No, Cale kept me separated for the most part, so I'd never met him face to face. I saw pictures and video on Cale's network, though." Reaching into the back seat, Max grabbed her bag and rifled through it for her black pants and shirt. "And even if Jimenez reports back to Cale that he met me, he thinks my name is Eva."
He watched the road, but Max saw him glance her way to see what she'd pulled out. "Do you think Cale is buying these weapons through Jimenez?"
One eyebrow rose and she shook her head. "Maybe, but I doubt it. I get the feeling that he genuinely wants those weapons to help protect his men. If Cale is involved at all, it'd be as a silent partner who expected law enforcement leniency when the time came. Or possibly even free use of the weapons."
"At first I thought they were some illegal firearms or maybe bazookas or something - new tech with greater capabilities - but now I'm thinking WMD's. Jimenez didn't want ten thousand, he wanted ten total. And the discount Colleen promised if we went Eyes Wide Shut was over twenty thousand each." Alec shot another look at Max when she bent down to take off her heels and step into her pants.
She sat back up and inched the pants up her bare legs, lifting her hips to pull the waist up under her dress, which was when he noticed she had removed the garter. "If Cale is interested, he'd wait to see the product in action before buying in."
Alec leaned back in his seat a little. "Then we have a chance to keep him from getting his hands on them. Any of them."
"Right."
Max turned her attention to the tie on her dress and the cabin became quiet, save for the low hum thick tires made on the road.
Were they really not going to talk about what happened on the desk less than thirty minutes ago? She kind of assumed he was at least a little attracted to her, if that erection was any proof. Then again, she was no stranger to using alternate techniques to achieve minimum mission requirements. Maybe he was the same way; maybe this Rachel person was Alec's sexual inspiration.
Regardless, she was still wearing her bra, and it wasn't like he hadn't seen it before; hell, he had maybe seen the part of the Dorokov video where she was entirely undressed. With that reasoning in mind, she untied the dress and rocked forward in her chair to remove the item. Grabbing the hem of her black shirt, she stretched it over her head and torso, and reached a slender arm behind her head to pull the back zipper up.
Alec, distracted by all the skin he just saw, shut his gaping mouth when all that glorious smooth skin disappeared with the help of the silver zipper's interlocking teeth. He had fixated on that zipper, and it caused him to drift over the plastic dots separating the lanes. He swerved the vehicle back into the center of his lane and cleared his throat quietly.
Max turned her head toward the window and smiled. She remembered how he'd kissed her, how he seemed so attuned to her fantasy as he bathed his tongue in her skin on the way down to her aching sex. She remembered the white behind her eyelids when he pressed on her clit. And the crushing disappointment when he stopped and all she felt was nothing.
"Hey, where did you hide the disc? I didn't see, I was a little preoccupied," she admitted.
The whites of his eyes enlarged and he drove the car across three lanes of sparse traffic to pull over on the shoulder. Throwing the SUV into park, he tilted his entire torso her direction. "What do you mean 'where did you hide the disc'?"
Her breath stopped short and she felt her face heat up. "I didn't see where you hid the disc," she tried again, unsure how exactly to explain to him that their fake foreplay real-short-circuited her brain and she forgot to do her job. She settled for, "You're very good with your hands."
He grinded his teeth as if holding something back with the action, and recoiled into his chair, hitting the steering wheel with his closed fist. "Fuck." His eyes darted around like he was looking for the exit to a maze. He nodded to himself and shifted the vehicle back into drive.
As he pulled back into the lane, Max asked, "You didn't hide the disc? Then where is it?"
Panic struck her suddenly. This was about to be her greatest failure of all time. She'd been so distracted by her handler that she didn't achieve the mission objective of tonight's dinner. And if Alec didn't know where the disc was, it could be anywhere in the study. It could be in plain sight, like a flashing light that screamed 'I don't belong here, pick me up and figure me out.'
"Fuck," she echoed. "We can go back. Tell them we've had a change of heart. I'll even fuck Teddy as a distraction." She hated the idea as soon as she spoke it, but since she was the one who fucked up, it was on her to make it right. She also hated the idea of going back there and Colleen getting her scheming little hands on Alec, but she wasn't about to voice that concern either.
"No," he said authoritatively. "If they haven't already found it, I can get within a few miles and wirelessly wipe it. It'll just look like a washer. We have the info from the manifests; we just need to find the actual location of those containers and relay our coordinates to a strike team."
His jaw closed and worked while he sped up the vehicle, as if getting to the harbor sooner would somehow make up for the fact that she lost the disc. He seemed so pissed now, and that was almost worse than not having planted the tech.
"I understand if you write me up for this." She wrung her hands and tried not to speak further. It would be her first real career blemish, and that little fact niggled in her brain and burrowed until she felt just as angry at herself as Alec seemed.
"I had the disc in my hand, and I thought I slid it into your hand while we were..." he paused long enough for her to feel even worse, and pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth.
While we were heavy petting, she thought.
"It's not your fault," he started again, voice determined and grouse. Quietly, he added, "I wasn't thinking clearly." He watched the road only. "You're a very skilled Romeo," he said, using Manticore's true classification for her job.
Her mind reeled at his confession. If he wasn't thinking clearly, it may have been for the same reason she had no clue where that little disc was stashed. And that compliment made her believe that he thought she was acting during their entire time in the study.
She smiled slyly. "So are you."
Arriving at the harbor saved them both from an awkward conversation, so while Max laced up her boots, Alec excused himself to the back and changed his clothes in a minute flat. She would have liked to have seen that, but she focused on this part of the mission and gently folded her dress and heels into her duffel.
The two spies found their way to the center of the harbor and located the harbormaster's office overlooking the docks. It wasn't as small of a building as Max expected, nor did it have the level of security she assumed would be there, considering the types of things imported, and their estimated cost. At best, she could only assume Eilers had kept hired muscle to a minimum to keep other criminal suspicion at bay. Too-heavy security would advertise that there was something valuable and/or exquisite on the premesis that warranted protection.
Alec spotted the cameras first, and signaled to Max that someone might have eyes on them. Max quickly deduced the surveillance blind spot and led them both toward a window by the southeast corner. Boosting her up to the jamb's height, Alec waited for her to break the glass, but that cracking sound never came.
"It's already open," she whispered, muscling the green-tinted glass open and climbing through.
He jumped and caught the ledge, and then pulled himself up with ease. "Don't you think it's weird the window wasn't locked?" He returned the glass to its original position and stuck his landing next to the brunette.
"Not necessarily." Max stared around the room, casing it for cameras or alarms. She couldn't see anything flashing or hear any small mechanisms. "Maybe the cameras outside are fake."
"Maybe," he agreed.
The harbormaster's computer sat at a desk facing the eastern side of the structure. The desk itself was sparse with personal effects - only a single picture frame with a relatively hirsute gentleman standing next to a slightly taller and very blonde woman, a little baby in her arms. The frame had a name carved into it: Genevieve. The rest of the desk surface was littered with papers - outgoing manifests and receivers indicating locations of some of the current containers. Max picked through them while Alec woke up the machine.
"Password protected," he said, annoyed. It wasn't like they couldn't crack it, it just took a little more time. He tried Genevieve, but that didn't work. He tried Money, Sex and God, but none of those worked either.
"Maybe try the good ol' password one two three," Max suggested, pulling out the drawer and sifting through the contents. She held up a knife, surprised he might have something like that at the ready.
"Nope," confirmed Alec, while Max returned the knife to its drawer.
Max unplugged the machine and plugged it back in. She pushed the power button and it hummed to life. On the screen, there was a message about the machine not having been shut down properly, and asking if the user wanted to run it in safe mode.
"Let's hope the admin account is enabled," she said. "We can reset the password and log back in if there's anything there."
They were in luck; the administrator login was enabled, and Max logged in. Two sets of eyes scanned the PC's desktop for possible pertinent information - anything labeled with container IDs, or files with any names of the people with whom Alec and Max had met while undercover. Nothing appeared on the desktop, but when she clicked on the recent documents menu, a list came up that included one called simply, 'Eilers.'
Clicking on it, Max waited a split second, but before the document could load, a dialog box appeared indicating the file could not load, because it had either been moved or saved to a different location. "Flash drive," she murmured.
They started their search anew, this time, looking for a flash drive. Over the years, there had definitely been technological improvements, and so many variations of flash drives in so many different shapes and sizes. It could be anything, and it could be anywhere. Just like their little snooping disc - the one probably being kicked around by Eilers' staff.
"If I had a flash drive with info on it elaborating the exact location of a container holding millions of dollars' worth of weapons, I wouldn't leave it in the office," Alec explained. "I'd either keep it with me at all times, or-"
"Or hide it somewhere else," Max finished. "Like maybe at home. Or..." She pulled up the slip rentals and scanned the documents. "On my boat."
Alec peered over her shoulder. "The Genevieve."
The harbormaster had an official boat for business and another for personal use.
Making their way out the window, they each dropped down softly and kept to the shadows as best they could, heading out to the slip at which bobbed The Genevieve. Alec stepped onto the deck of the cabin cruiser and offered a hand back to Max.
The vessel was big enough for four to lounge on deck, they realized as the twosome passed through the sliding glass door which led to the living/bar area. Max thought this must be a new boat - at least new to the harbormaster, because the bar was barely stocked, and the room smelled of wood polish and glass cleanser. Plus, there were almost no signs that anyone had spent any time in here. No personal notes, no pots and pans for the small kitchenette off to the side, nothing even slightly out of place.
After a quick search under the couch cushions, where they only found life preservers and some deck shoes, and under the bar counter where they discovered two bottles of Dom and a few bottles of Smirnoff, they deduced there was no flash drive to be found in this area.
"Back to the bedroom," asked Alec, the whites of his eyes shining with the reflection from the moon on the water filtering through the windows and slider.
God, how she wanted him to ask her that under entirely different circumstances. One where maybe this was their boat and they were sailing away for a summer and could spend as many hours rocking the boat alone, no one's eyes to spy on them, no one to even know where they were. "Yeah," she whispered back.
They silently stepped over the threshold to the bedroom and stopped in their tracks. This room had the same beautiful soft linens and dark cherry wood, but the bed was deep red with a duvet so fluffy-looking it could rival the clouds. An ornate, hand-carved headboard framed the bed, thousands of swirls and fleur-de-lis designs curling throughout the space, accentuating the three posts that made the headboard resemble a crown.
"Oh my god," Max muttered, her knees going weak at the mental image her mind just supplied: riding her handler in decadent, naked opulence and holding onto that headboard while screaming out in lustful bliss. Her eyes rolled back and she felt Alec's hand at her elbow, ready to grab her.
"You okay," he asked, his fingertips sliding down an inch. "You look like you're about to pass out."
"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied. "It's just... this bed.."
"Is really fuckin' sexy," he interjected.
Did he just say that?
"Max, how much do you think a bed like this costs?"
"Not enough," she said before she realized she'd said it out loud. She checked for his reaction, and in the darkness, only parts of him were visible, almost as if highlighted through the shadows. It was probably just her enhanced vision, she reasoned.
His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed twice in a row. He let his hand fall from her elbow and rocked forward onto the balls of his feet. His shirt breathed a little faster. "Max," his voice dripped down her body as if a tiny, heavy stream, thick like molasses. Good god, she loved her name on his lips.
All of her extremities excited and came to life at the idea of him taking her here, on mission, in someone else's bed, on someone else's boat.
He took one terrifying step toward her and reached his hand up to her neck, but the noise of footsteps on the dock broke him out of their moment. He stepped away from her and looked out the window. When he spoke, his voice was a low rumble like a building wave. "Max, you're right. There's no way a harbormaster could afford this bed, this yacht. It's new; he had to have accepted a payoff for keeping Eilers' business off the books."
"Is someone out there," she whispered to him, eyes now wide in the darkness. She quietly started looking around, under pillows, in the nightstand drawers, between the mattress and support frame.
Alec went into the bathroom and searched the cupboards and drawers with haste. Those footsteps sounded like they were getting closer. As soon as he joined Max again in the bedroom, they both heard voices.
"Well, someone's on that boat. I guess he was right," a male voice said. Max imagined, judging by the high tenor of his voice, that this guy was either very short or very skinny.
"Then we are supposed to do what he said," another voice responded. This one was deeper, beefier.
Hazel eyes widening with worry, Alec cased the bedroom and signed to his agent to look for anything out of the ordinary.
Max stood on her tiptoes and peered our the window on the opposite side of the yacht. Looked clear. No other boats docked past The Genevieve, and the only other lights on that side were a hundred yards away. She signed 'all clear' back to him.
"Where's the detonator?"
The beefy guy's question sent a strike of panic through them. Alec jumped up to look out the opposite window. "Max, we gotta go right now."
The two henchmen grumbled between them, arguing which one would push the button. The skinny guy said he'd never 'done one before.'
The pair inside the boat quickly made their way out the bedroom and past the bar. Just outside the sliding glass door, Alec turned to the left and hauled himself up onto the side of the boat opposite the dock. He pulled Max up with a firm grip of the wrist, and they headed toward the back of the vessel.
Beefy told Skinny that he had more experience and didn't want Skinny messing it up.
At the aft of the vessel, Alec found the ladder and lowered it into the water, and then stepped back to let Max go first.
Crouching down, Max swung her knee over the side and found the top metal rung with her foot. The water was cold as it seeped through her clothes, and she hoped they wouldn't have to swim too far to get away. Lowering herself the rest of the way, she clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from shivering.
Her handler came down the ladder next, swiftly and with barely an audible sound. If he thought the water was freezing, he didn't show it. Just floated next to her, signaling with one hand to head toward the side of the boat directly opposite the arguing men.
Treading the water just enough to keep their heads above the water line, they heard Skinny ask how he was supposed to get more experience when they never let him do anything.
"Oh, alright. Go ahead and pop your cherry," Beefy said.
Staring wide eyed at one another, they took one last breath and sank under the surface. Max swam as quickly as possible, but even under water she could hear the muffled blast and feel the force of the current it created push her around.
She broke the surface about thirty feet out to check for Alec. He should have been right behind her.
Scanning the water twice, her blood ran cold and panic set in when she finally saw him floating face down, halfway to what was now a smoldering wreckage.