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“Okay. Call me if you need me.” There was a hint of longing in Quin’s tone that reminded me of when we’d been younger and hearing it felt like a punch to the gut. When all this shit with the painting was over, I needed to make an effort to reconnect with Quin. I missed him.
“I will. I promise.”
He hung up right as the door to the room opened and Jack walked back in. I sat up, the room tipping a little with the speed of my movements. Definitely needed to move food up the list of to-dos.
“How’s the boat?”
“Fine. It’ll work well for getting around while we’re here.”
“Good. Should we go get some food?”
“Yeah.”
We opted to eat in the hotel lounge. Jack brought his tablet, and we reviewed everything we had on Azzura Scivolo while we ate.
“Tomorrow, I think we should take a ride to her estate and see if it looks like there is anything of interest happening. If we don’t find anything worthwhile, we can stake her out.”
“When you say see if anything is happening at her estate you do mean breaking in and taking a thorough look around, right?”
Jack sighed, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, Cal. I mean going to take a look at her property to get a lay of the land and see if there is any suspicious movement.”
“You don’t think breaking into her place and searching for the painting is the better plan?”
“No, I absolutely don’t. This is the finesse part of the op, the spy work, remember? If you go in guns blazing, whoever has the painting, whether that’s Scivolo or not, is likely to get spooked. I don’t think you fully appreciate how quickly information travels in the art world.”
“Isn’t part of spy work, oh, I dunno, spying?”
“We are.”
“I disagree.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m taking point on this.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
One side of Jack’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smirk. “You sure about that, sweetheart? Because I can think of at least”—he pretended to count on his fingers—“four different times you had zero problems taking orders. Pretty sure you even liked it.”
My face felt like it was on fire as snippets of each of the four times Jack was referring to raced through my brain, making my cock hard as steel beneath the table. “Fuck you, Jack.”
“Just say the word.”
Ignoring him and biting my cheek until I tasted blood in an effort to get my hard-on to stand down, I tried to get us back on track. “It just feels like all of this”—I gestured at the table—“is going to take a long time. I thought we needed to hurry.”
“We do, but we also can’t let anyone else who might have the painting know we’re looking for it. I know you’re not used to the recon side of things, but this op is more wait and see than search and rescue.”
“I’ve done plenty of recon.”
Jack waved my comment away. “Debatable. And it doesn’t matter. The way we find out if Scivolo has the painting is by observing her movements.”
“Fine.”
We charged our dinner to the room and went back upstairs.
“I’m going to get in the shower,” Jack said, pulling a pair of boxers out of his bag.
I nodded, flopping back on the bed.
“Do you really have to lie there with your dirty clothes on?”
