Page 30 of Beachcomber Danger
“Who have you talked to? Who did you tell about this?” Andrews stepped closer, his anger simmering to the surface and about to boil over. He’d crossed over from good cop to bad now, but the problem was, Dane doubted that Thaddeus Goodley was going to cross over from bad cop to good cop to cover for him. Dane saw Shana tense and shift toward Andrews, saw that Andrews hadn’t noticed her.
Once again, a man was making a big mistake not accounting for the Shana factor, not sensing her as a threat, not taking her seriously enough. And not merely her physical presence, but her tactical presence. She was often the smartest person in the room. Next to him. Sometimes smarter than him too. Maybe most of the time.
“Tell about what? It’s not like you’ve told us much. The Governor already knew about it.”
“You’re lying. You told him. How else would he know?”
“Now you’re fishing. Don’t insult me.” Dane took a breath and pushed his fingers through his hair. He was weary of this game, tired. He decided to play that angle since it was real.
“Look, Liam. I don’t care if you don’t trust me. Because I—we don’t trust you either. So we’re even. Shana and I will go to the airport tomorrow and play your little game where we pretend to be innocent tourists and talk to whoever you want us to talk to, pretending to try and identify your assassins.” He paused then and held Andrews eyes for a beat. Then he reached out for Shana and she came to his side.
“Because we know it’s a game. We know you’re setting us up. You’re using us to flush out the assassins.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who have you talked to?” Andrews shouted the question with a tinge of desperation in his words.
Shana scoffed like only she knew how. “As if that’s the most important thing here? To know how we found out that you’re using us? Rather than the fact that you are using us?”
“We’re not admitting to that,” Goodley said.
Andrews swore under his breath and turned away from Dane.
“We’re not admitting to that,” Goodley repeated louder, more insistently, as if that would matter.
“You want us to appear like a pair of assassins casing the security operation, doing our research, identifying the players.”
Andrews stilled, his expression flicked from caught-in-the act to blank. Goodley’s hostility went to surprise and then if Dane wasn’t mistaken, a shade of fear around the edges. And Dane was hardly ever mistaken about reading faces.
“Maybe . . .” Shana said, “they want us to pose as assassins, to confuse or distract the real assassins.” She gave Andrews a wide-eyed look.
“No, darling. That couldn’t be. That might be dangerous. The real assassins might come after us if they thought we were competing assassins.”
“Enough. What the hell kind of game do you think you’re playing here?” Andrews face reddened like he had a bad case of hives and his mouth flattened like a dried prune.
“We’re trying to play your game,” Shana said. “It’s been tough to come up to speed on our own, with you playing hide and seek with all the most fun details, but we’ve given it our sporting best—how’d we do?”
Andrews simmered in silence. Goodley’s mouth was open and if Dane wasn’t mistaken, a shadow of respect slipped through his mean mask of horror. Anger formed like a quick, yet predictable storm, but Goodley didn’t have a chance to speak.
“How about if we start over and discuss tomorrow morning’s assignment?” Dane spoke in a deceptively reasonable voice, but he knew they recognized the knife edge underneath.
