“Is she still living? Yes, she and my father are alive and well and looking forward to their imminent retirement,” Wes told her.
“Good, happy to hear it. Siblings?” she asked. “I read your file, of course, but it concentrates on you—”
“One younger sister. She fell in love with a navy SEAL and is living in Hawaii. Your turn.”
“Parents also alive and well. One older brother, teaches history, geography and government at the university inTallahassee,” Chloe told him. “They leave me alone because I got into this because my dad was a cop—and because my brother has already given them five grandchildren.”
“Ah, so the heat is off!” Wes said. “So, at least, in this romantic marriage of ours, we don’t need to worry about procreating too quickly! Please, if you will—”
“I’m going, I’m going!” Chloe assured him.
She chose a somewhat alluring and festive dress for the evening, a halter dress in an emerald-green chiffon.
Wes whistled when she emerged.
“Gee, I sure have had much worse undercover assignments!” he assured. “What a hardship! You could be walking down a runway in Paris.”
She grinned. “Flattery! Clean up so we can at least pretend we’re having a great time on a gorgeous cruise!”
He gathered his clothing and disappeared into the bathroom. When he emerged, she was checking her hair.
One thing about even the best dye job, she had to hope she hadn’t lost any of its color. Luckily, the ship’s pools were salt water and treated differently; there wasn’t a ton of chlorine to remove all the darkness with which it had been dyed.
“Well?”
She turned. Wes was out, decked in dark blue jeans, a light blue shirt and a casual jacket. She grinned because he managed to look something like a college-aged beach boy with just enough maturity in him to suggest he might be a decent businessman or, better still, a truly competent dive master.
“Am I, um, equally gorgeous?” he asked her lightly.
“You’ll do,” she said, grinning.
He groaned. “You and your compliments! They’ll go right to my head. Anyway, it’s been a long day, I’m ready for my nonalcoholic beer!” he said.
“Eventually,” she told him, “someone is going to notice that you’re only ordering nonalcoholic beer.”
“I’m going to blame it on the amount of alcoholism in my family,” he told her.
“Oh?”
“I’ve a cousin who has done great in a program. And when the family is together, we respect his sobriety. He doesn’t expect others not to drink. But we’re family. We support him.”
She nodded. “And that’s great! Okay, so...”
He bowed politely to her with a sweeping gesture and opened the door so that she could head out of the cabin.
“No,” he murmured suddenly, closing the door he’d just opened.
“No?”
“Phone vibrating!” he told her.
He pulled it from his pocket. “I got a message out earlier. I wanted to see if someone could crack the surveillance cameras on the ship.”
“But, if there was someone out there, wouldn’t the ship’s security guards have been on it already?” Chloe asked.
He shrugged, shaking his head, studying his phone. “Our cyber guys will make sure that this can’t be tracked. Come over and look with me,” he told her.
She walked to where he stood and came close to study his phone with him. Naturally, as asked, they were shown the footage from the pool area in the middle of the night.
