Red Heat (6 page)

Nikolai stood next to one of the six small rectangular tables that had been squeezed into the open-sided dining compartment. When he saw her, his eyes swept over her outfit, then he gave her a neutral smile—without so much as a hint that he’d just accused her of being a spy . . . or seen her practically nude. He shifted aside, gesturing for her to take a seat at the table. She didn’t want to be this close to him, but once again she seemed to be the last team member to arrive, and there were no other seats open.

She sat down on the narrow bench and did her best to ignore the sexy captain. Which wasn’t easy. If not impossible, what with his firm thigh brushing her arm every time the boat rocked up and down. Which was constantly. Thank goodness she hadn’t gotten seasick. The motion’s perpetual reminder that the dark, fathomless ocean was just inches away was sickening enough.

She took a fortifying breath as a tall, white-blond man stood up at the front of the dining compartment, which was called the mess hall—a grand name for such a tiny room. The guy was so tall—or the space so short—that the top of his head nearly grazed the tangle of yellow pipes crowding the ceiling.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” he said in a melodic accent, loud enough to be heard above the constant background hum of the diesel engines. “For those few who don’t know me, I am Professor Björn Sundesvall from Umeå University, your team leader.”

He went on to thank the captain and crew for their efforts on behalf of the expedition. Nikolai nodded graciously and introduced the few submariners in attendance for the meal, though most, like him, had to stand along the perimeter.

As he spoke, he beckoned to two noncom sailors—called ratings on a submarine—who proceeded to pass out plates of food. To Julie’s vague surprise, it smelled delicious. She noticed that one or two of the scientists looked a little green around the gills and declined the food. But she was ravenous. Being in a state of constant panic took a lot of energy.

“Please, dig in,” Nikolai invited everyone, as his leg brushed her arm again.

She eased away. Surely he was doing it on purpose! “Thank you, Captain,” the professor said, catching the subtle touch between them. He narrowed his eyes briefly at her. She endeavored to look completely innocent. Which she was. The Swede wasn’t fooled, but mercifully, he looked away. “After we eat,” Professor Sundesvall continued, “we will go around the room and everyone should stand and introduce yourself. Tell a little about your project and the type of data you’ll be gathering on the voyage.”

She had already gotten all that information in the project briefing files. Which was a good thing, because she could barely concentrate with the warmth of Nikolai’s muscular thigh blazing through her coveralls like the heat of the sun. She picked up her fork, determined to ignore him.

“Hey, there,” said the guy sitting next to her, startling her attention back to the room. He extended his hand. His face was handsome in an older, well-lived-in kind of way, and he sported a long silver ponytail and twinkling eyes. “I’m Rufus Edwards. How you doin’?”

She shook his hand. “As well as can be expected for someone who seriously hates the ocean,” she returned with a crooked smile. “I’m Julie Severin.”

He chuckled. “Ah. The reporter.”

“Yeah. And you’re the DAMOCLES guy, right?”

Master Chief Rufus Edwards was one of the retired U.S. Navy men on the team, an old-school sonar operator who’d gotten bored sitting around his Florida pool sipping umbrella drinks and started volunteering his expertise to various ocean conservation groups. DAMOCLES was a much-lauded ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system that used sophisticated instrument buoys attached to drifting sea ice to collect weather and water data. No doubt his years of working with the navy’s SOSUS network didn’t hurt his expertise in the field.

“Done your homework, I see,” Edwards said with a pleased expression.

“A little,” she said. “This assignment was a bit last minute, so I’m still catching up on details. Looking forward to hearing more about your project.”

He smiled. “So, you really hate the ocean?”

She grimaced. “Yeah. Almost drowned as a child. Never quite got over it. Being on a submarine is kinda testing the limits of my psychosis.”

He laughed. “Well, sugar, the good news is, if anything goes wrong on this tub, trust me, swimmin’ll be the least of your worries.”

Wow. “Gee, thanks. Ree-ally needed to hear that.”

Still laughing, he caught sight of Nikolai, who was silently following their conversation as he ate standing up behind her. Edwards slid over to the very end of the two-person bench and motioned for her to scoot in closer. “Have a seat, Skipper. We can squeeze in one more. I’m sure Miss Severin won’t mind the close quarters.”

Nikolai’s eyes met and lingered on hers for a nanosecond before he smiled at Edwards and shook his head. “Very kind. But I’m sure Miss Severin will have enough close quarters with me before too long.”

The master chief’s brows hiked. Julie’s suddenly queasy stomach did a somersault.

“We ran out of staterooms,” Nikolai explained, “so I’ve invited her to share mine.”

She couldn’t
believe
he’d made their arrangement public. She was sorely tempted to pack up and move to the torpedo room just to spite him.

Edwards blinked twice, then grinned. “I see.”

No. He didn’t.

Okay, fine. Maybe he did.

God help her.

“I’m afraid I must get back to my duties now,” Nikolai said, scraping the last bite from his plate. “I’ll see you later, Julie. Master Chief.”

“
Julie
, eh?” Edwards said with eyebrow still cocked. “Interesting development.”

“No. It’s not.” She glared at Nikolai’s retreating back. “The captain assured me he’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

Edwards’s gaze slid to the front of her coveralls, pausing on the gold Cyrillic lettering on its left side. His steady grin didn’t fade one iota. “Yes, I can see he already is.”

It was her turn to blink. “Excuse me?”

“The name on your poopie suit.”

Poopie suit? She creased her brow, then realized he meant her coveralls. She glanced down at her chest. “What about it?”

“Has anyone on the crew seen it?”

“Sure. Probably all of them. Why?”

“It says ‘Commander Nikolai Romanov.’ You’re wearing his uniform. Therefore, there isn’t a man on this boat who doesn’t know he’s your . . . protector.”

She felt her face flood with heat. He had
got
to be
kidding
. Her hand went instinctively to her chest to cover up the name. Then she realized the futility of the gesture and dropped it.

Awkward.
“My suitcase was . . . uh, lost . . . when I came aboard.”

“So I heard.” He gave her a lopsided smile. “Tough break.”

“No freaking kidding.”

“I’m sure we can scrounge up some more duds for you. Meanwhile, it’s not such a bad thing to be under the skipper’s protection.”

She made a face. “Are submariners really so dangerous that a woman on board needs protecting from them?” she asked jokingly.

“Submar-
ee
-ners,” he said, correcting her pronunciation. Right. She’d forgotten about that quirk of pride. Something about them not being “sub” to anything, especially not marines. “And yeah, I guess we do have a bit of a reputation with the ladies,” Edwards admitted with another laugh. He leaned in conspiratorially. “But it’s the scientists you really gotta watch out for. They might look like nerds, but they’re Euro
pe-
uns,” he said, drawing out the last word, “if you know what I mean.” He winked.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she drawled.

Just then she noticed that the two men sitting across the table from them were listening with interest to the exchange. Wonderful. So now
everyone
knew her business.

“Hi,” said the one with short black hair, bronze skin, and an exotic look to his dark eyes. He stuck out his hand. Around his wrist was a woven leather thong with something carved in ivory hanging from it. Native American? “Clint Walker. I’m the UUV driver.”

She shook it and introduced herself, recalling him from her briefing papers. He was the other ex-navy man, in his late thirties—much too young to be retired. The file was silent on his current occupation, but on this expedition he’d be running the two remote undersea vehicles the team members would be using to gather various types of samples. Not unlike the kind of UUV that utilized the Chinese guidance system contained on the hidden SD card.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Walker,” she said.

“Clint, please.”

The second man also put out his hand. “I’m Dr. Joshua Stedman. Call me Josh.” Josh of the ice sheet melt, sea ice, and ice floes specialty. He looked very young, maybe mid-twenties. Canadian. And a bit . . . awestruck?

She gave his hand a firm shake. “Julie Severin.”

“Girl,” he declared, leaning in dramatically, his eyes wide, “how did you manage
that
so fast? That man is to
die
for. I am
to
tally jealous.”

Clint and Edwards exchanged a look. Clint edged a fraction away from Josh.

Julie almost choked. “No need. I’m just sharing Captain Romanov’s stateroom. I believe it’s called hot-bunking. And it’s
not
what you’re thinking.”

Josh made a solemn face. “And I
to
tally believe that.”

She wanted to groan.

“Who cares if it is?” Edwards said with a good-natured shrug. “It happens. No one’s business but your own.”

Good grief. Just kill her now. Please.

Luckily she didn’t have to respond further because Professor Sundesvall stood again and started the team in on their intros. Julie pulled out her notebook laptop and started typing away as each one spoke, taking down the details that weren’t included in the briefing files she’d been given. No one looked twice. Being a reporter truly was the perfect cover for this operation.

Now all she had to do was come up with a plan for how to locate a piece of the submarine called the “crown” so she could locate the hidden data storage card. Good thing she had a clue. Otherwise it would be nearly impossible to find it among the insane conglomeration of pipes and instruments.

The size of a thumbnail, the microcard would be harder to find than a needle in a haystack. A task made even harder because people would be occupying every available inch of space on the sub as they worked on their projects, and therefore able to observe every move she made. Especially now that she and the captain would be the topic of rampant speculation and shipboard gossip, she’d be under intense scrutiny. But somehow, she had to find that SD card without anyone becoming suspicious. Except that Nikolai already was. More than suspicious. He knew she’d been sent here and by whom.

But did he know exactly what she’d come looking for? Guessing—or even being certain—she was a spy was a far cry from knowing her actual mission.

Damn it! She had to find out how much he really knew about what was hidden on board his boat.

But how? It wasn’t like she could just walk up and ask him. Even though he’d already confronted her, she could never admit what she was or why she was here. Not aloud. Not ever.

She knew better than anyone what happened to American spies caught operating in Russia. They were killed. Murdered by the notorious FSB security service. Cut down on the street, brutally and without pity.

As her father had been.

Julie’s heart squeezed painfully at the memory of her father’s death when she was just twelve. She stopped typing for a moment, closed her stinging eyes, and took a deep, steadying breath. Pushed the memory back where it belonged . . . as the inspiration for her fierce dedication to her job.
Not
as the source of her life’s biggest sorrow.

“You okay?” Rufus Edwards whispered.

She popped her eyes open. “Yeah,” she said. She plastered a wry smile on her lips and lied. “Just a touch of seasickness. The whole ocean thing . . .”

He nodded, but his concern didn’t entirely melt away. “If you ever, you know, need anything . . . to talk or whatnot . . . just give me a holler.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that,” she returned gratefully, suspecting a deeper, fatherly message in his offer. “But I’ll be okay. Honest. And thanks.”

“We Americans got to stick together,” he stage-whispered with another disarming wink. “All these darn foreigners around.”

Young Dr. Josh pretended to bristle. “Hey!”

“Shit, not you, Doc,” Edwards told him with a laid-back grin. “Hell, y’all up in the Great White North are as American as we are.”

“God forbid,” the Canadian said with only half-mocked horror, and everyone laughed.

Everyone except Clint. His dark eyes searched Julie’s for a moment, then slid away to the female scientist at the next table who was beginning to speak about her project.

A sudden chill trickled down Julie’s spine. She wondered what the UUV pilot had been thinking about to cause such a harsh expression.

Probably nothing relevant, she told herself. How could it be? No one on the submarine knew her true reason for being there. Even Nikolai was only guessing.

She hoped.

Maybe Clint Walker just didn’t like her fraternizing with the Russian commander. Though why he’d think it was any of his damn business, she couldn’t guess.

Not that she disagreed.
She
didn’t like it, either. None of it . . . Not that Nikolai suspected her of being a spy. Not that he’d essentially blackmailed her into sharing his stateroom—for purposes she suspected ran far deeper than just wanting to get lucky. And not that Nikolai was Russian—the one nationality she would never, could never, accept as a friend, let alone anything more.

But she especially hated the fact that, despite all the very compelling reasons to doubt and despise Nikolai Kirillovich Romanov, she was still attracted to him. More than she wanted to admit. To herself. Certainly to him.

It was exactly the kind of dangerous, insidious attraction for the enemy that her CIA training had warned her about, over and over. An attraction that could easily cost her the mission and jeopardize her country’s security.