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CAL
“I’m sorry.I don’t think I heard you correctly. Did you just ask what my plan was?” Jack pretended to look shocked. “Are you actually deferring to me instead of doing whatever you want?”
“Shut up, Grayson. Let’s just say I might have learned a lesson in Venice.”
Jack rested his chin in his hand and batted his eyelashes. “You don’t say. Was it when you got stuck in the canal?”
“Seriously? Am I ever going to live that down?”
“Never. In fact, consider yourself lucky I didn’t snap a pic and send it to your brothers.”
“Yeah, yeah. You can give me shit all you want, but we need to know what’s on those trains.”
Jack cleared his throat. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He tapped on his keyboard and turned the screen toward me again. “Here is the shipping manifest for the train coming in tomorrow. It’s due to arrive at nine tomorrow night. The next train scheduled to depart for Bratislava leaves at four thirty the next morning.”
“If Mazal is going to move merchandise, he’s going to move it overnight.”
“Definitely. So I say we spend some time playing tourist tomorrow while also getting close enough to the commercial train yard to check out the on-the-ground security and figure out if there are any weak points we can use to get in. Mazal’s security system is top-notch, but I’ve hacked similar systems in the past. I’ll work on getting in tonight, then cut the security feeds from my laptop when we get closer to the train yard.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Are we sticking with our cover?”
My cheeks heated a little. Jack didn’t need to know how much I liked the weight of the gold band on my finger. Sometimes when I looked down at it, I let myself pretend it was for real. I wanted it to be so badly I’d almost slipped and told Jack the truth about our connection when he’d asked me about my saddle patch. He’d seen me naked at Reuben’s and again in Venice, and I wondered what it meant that he’d just now noticed the change to my saddle patch. But we had work to do, and I was determined to follow Jack’s lead.
There would be time to tell him he was my mate later.
Maybe.
Maybe it would be better if he never knew.
“Cal?” The way Jack said my name made a shiver roll down my spine and land in my balls. Thank god we had separate bedrooms and bathrooms this time. I was going to be spending a lot of private time with my right hand.
Then I realized he’d said my name like that because I hadn’t answered his question.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, it works, right? And isn’t Prague supposed to be, like, a romantic getaway spot?”
Jack shrugged. “I guess. There’s one more thing from Reuben.” He clicked open the last file in the folder. “Looks like Reuben has gotten us on the list for a modern art exhibition opening at the Museum Kampa, which is being sponsoredby Mazal’s legitimate shipping company for the day after tomorrow.”
“If nothing else, we’ll be able to observe Mazal and see if he makes contact with anyone in particular.”
Jack’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. “Yeah. Exactly.”
A yawn cracked my jaw. “Is that it? Do we need to go over anything else?”
“No. I think we’re good. If there is anything else to work out, we can talk about it tomorrow.”
Pushing my chair back from the table, I stood. “Then I’m going to crash.”
“Me too. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, so feel free to sleep in.”
I gave him a mock salute. “Will do.”
“Good night, sweetheart.”
My heart twisted every time he called me sweetheart, even when he was mocking me, and it damn near did a double back handspring in my chest now. “Good night, Jack.”
As we’d planned, we spent the next day playing tourist. We went to the Grand Palace and walked around Old Town and over a bunch of famous bridges. The city was full of old-world charm, yet so different from Venice.
