He stared some more, then turned to Magnus. “I want her.”

“You understand it will cost?” Magnus turned smooth and obsequious. “Lupe Herrera is the only one of her kind.”

“I don’t care,” Danielson said bluntly. “I want her.”

Magnus smiled. “Then you shall have her.”

TWENTY-THREE

Loup stared at the scripted itinerary for the party. “You’re joking.”

“Wish I were,” Henry Kensington said laconically.

“A pirate attack?”

“Not just any old pirate attack, baby,” Pilar said, scanning the details. “Danielson’s hired Diarmuid McDermott to reprise his role as the dashing pirate captain Mick O’Malley.”

“Who?”

“His daughter Rose’s favorite actor,” Henry offered. “Young Irish bloke did a big swashbuckler film last year. Word is he’s got serious gambling debts, bad enough to make him willing to take on a gig like this. The rest of the outfit’s a production company specializing in major spectacles. But it’s a bloody security nightmare, and the sea battle’s the worst of it.”

“And the kid’s gotta be on the ship, huh?”

“Oh, yes.” He looked weary. “In order for the dashing Mick O’Malley to board her and lose his heart to the fair English Rose, declaring her his pirate queen.”

“Jesus,” Loup muttered. “They really oughta cancel.”

“Quite,” he agreed. “But they won’t. We’ll meet with the clients and the event coordinator tomorrow. Since the threat was issued, we’ve been negotiating to determine how many of the crew will be actors, and how many members of the security team. I want you on that ship, Loup.”

“And me, right?” Pilar added.

“Actually, yes.” Henry sighed. “I’d love to staff the entire enterprise with our people. But I can’t guarantee it. They insist on having a certain number of professional actors supplied by the company to provide authenticity of experience. We’re running background checks on all of them.”

Loup read more of the script. “Pyrotechnics, huh? Nothing like a few fake explosions to make things more complicated.”

He winced. “Don’t remind me.”

They met the client, his daughter, and the event coordinator the following day at the Danielsons’ elegant townhouse. The event coordinator was a thin, steely-eyed woman named Jeanne Blondet.

The daughter Rose was a pubescent nightmare.

She took one look at Loup and Pilar and declared, “I don’t want them, Papa! I don’t want them on my ship, and I don’t want them at my party!”

“Hush, pet,” Hugh Danielson soothed her. “I promised you the best of everything, didn’t I? Wait until you see what Ms. Herrera can do.” He shot Loup an urgent look. “Do something, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” Loup looked at the girl’s narrow, suspicious face and decided it would be best to be nonthreatening. She plucked a polished apple from a gleaming silver bowl and tossed it across the salon in a high arc, then flashed across the room to snatch it out of the air when it had scarce cleared its apex. She returned in a shot, bowed, and presented the apple. “Here you go, my lady.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Okay.” Loup placed the apple carefully back in the bowl. “But that’s what I can do, you see? If there are bad guys out to get you, I can protect you faster and better than anyone in the world.”

Rose sniffed. “I’m not a child. Don’t talk to me like one!”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Father and daughter engaged in a silent contest of wills. “Oh, all right!” Rose relented. “She can be on the ship, and she can come with me to the pirate ship. But she can’t be a girl. She has to be a boy.”

“How about your faithful cabin boy?” Jeanne Blondet, recovering from her astonishment at Loup’s demonstration, opened a portfolio and whipped out a sketch of a slight figure in a striped shirt, ragged breeches, and a stocking cap. “That’s a character I’m willing to recast.” She sent an uncertain smile in Loup’s direction. “I think she would be quite charming as the faithful cabin boy following his little mistress into adventure.”

“I don’t want her to be charming!”

“She means it would make the picture you make all the more charming,” Danielson said smoothly. “Isn’t that right?”

“Don’t patronize me, Papa!”

“I don’t know,” Loup said in a dubious tone, examining the sketch. “I’m not crazy about that hat.”

“It’s gonna look pretty silly on you, baby,” Pilar agreed.

“You will wear the hat!” Rose said in a flash of temper. “All day and all night. If you’re going to attend me, I want you to be my faithful cabin boy for the whole party and never leave my side!”

Loup hesitated, feigning reluctance.

“Our client has made a request, Ms. Herrera,” Henry Kensington said in a stern voice.

“All right, all right! I’ll be your faithful cabin boy.”

“Good.” Rose was mollified. “But I don’t want her there.” She pointed at Pilar. “She’s not anything special, is she, Papa?”

“She’s a trained bodyguard, pet. They work as a team. I’ve already agreed.”

“Did you agree she could be on the ship?”

“No,” he said. “I agreed that she could tend bar. Sweetheart, it’s not a bad idea to have security people no one would ever suspect. Ms. Mendez certainly fits that description.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “So as long as nothing happens, she’d just be another servant?”

“Ah…” He paused. “That’s exactly right.”

“Fine.”

They hashed out a few further details of the arrangements, and Jeanne Blondet gave Loup an address to report to later in the day to have the cabin boy’s costume altered to fit her.

“Yikes!” In the back of their sedan, Pilar shuddered. “That child’s a piece of work.”

“She’s a handful and a half,” Henry agreed from the front. “Don’t suppose it’s all her fault, but still.” He glanced back at them. “Nice work, by the way. That bit about the hat. It brought her right around. A little of the old reverse psychology, eh?”

“Yep,” Loup agreed. “If that means what I think it means.”

“It does.”

“I don’t like not being on the ship,” Pilar fretted. “That’s the most dangerous part, right?”

“We’re taking every precaution and then some,” Henry assured her.

“Still.” She eyed Loup. “If anything happens to you on that stupid fucking ship, I’ll never forgive you.”

“It won’t.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” Loup glanced out the window. “Hey, Henry. I thought we were going back to the hotel?”

He shook his head. “Headquarters, first. We’re going to visit the armory and get the both of you outfitted and legal. HQ’s been working on the permits; they ought to have come through. Clive trained the two of you on the Glock 26, yeah? The Baby Glock?”

Pilar brightened. “We get to carry on this job?”

He gave her a look. “I told you. We’re taking every precaution. Pray you don’t need to use it.”

“I will.”

The production company was nothing but efficient. Within twenty-four hours of Loup’s fitting, the costume arrived. She tried it on in the hotel room at Pilar’s insistence and stood before her barefoot in ragged black pants, a black-and-white striped shirt, a cropped vest that concealed a tailored shoulder holster, and a red stocking cap.

“Well?” Loup asked.

Pilar giggled. “You look somewhere between ridiculous and adorable. Which pretty much adds up to charming, baby.”

“Mmm.” Loup caught her around the waist, dropping her voice an octave. “Think we can rewrite the script so the faithful cabin boy ends up with the hot bartender?”

“Is the door locked?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“God, yes.”

Afterward they lounged in bed, both studying their dossiers and memorizing the details of the elaborate itinerary and guest list.

“I kinda feel sorry for the kid,” Pilar said. “You notice there aren’t a lot of other kids on the list? I mean, she’s a spoiled brat and all, but thirteen’s a tough age. I bet she doesn’t have a lot of friends.”

“No wonder.”

“I’m just saying it’s tough. And losing her mom, too.”

“Yeah.” Loup glanced up. “We were thirteen when we met. We’d both lost our parents.”

“True.” Pilar toyed with the tassel on the end of Loup’s cap, which was the only item of clothing Loup was wearing. “But we didn’t have anyone to spoil us. And if there was one good thing about growing up in the orphanage, it’s that we learned that people have to take care of one another—the way Father Ramon and Sister Martha took care of everyone, and the Santitos took care of each other.” She smiled. “You know, I thought you were younger at first.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. You were just this cute, wiry kid with intense eyes. I didn’t believe C.C. when he told me about you and swore me to secrecy. I thought he was just spouting some wild bullshit.”

Loup smiled. “Sometimes it was hard to tell with C.C.”

“No kidding. Then I saw you and T.Y. messing around in the courtyard one day. He was trying to hit you with a tennis ball, and you were zipping around like crazy, laughing your head off. But I still thought of you as a kid.”

“A kid with a hot older brother,” Loup reminded her. “You had a crush on Tommy, remember?”