plenty. Here, I have the pitcher right here, give me your glass.” Filling both of their glasses with the showmanship of a world-class bartender, she said, “Wow, did you see that? Damn, I’m good, you should be congratulating me for only spilling a little on the carpet. Shit, I’ll have to remember to clean that up before Alex sees it. He’s so anal about that stuff. So, whadda ya think our odds of breakin’ outta this joint is, I mean are?” Jenna didn’t pause long enough for Katarina to answer. “Frack, maybe I’d better watch my margarita intake a little closer, that didn’t really sound like me. And did somebody just tilt the room to the right?”
“Blast if I know, did you see they have two yoyos out on the deck and outside the door? And who knows how many others are hiding in the house. Damn and double damn. Ya know, I wasn’t all that keen on spying on their damned party until they banned us. Just who do they thing, I mean think, they are tellin’ us whad, oops, what we can and can’t do anyhow?” The indignation that she’d intended seemed to be negated by the giggle she’d let out. Oh well, Jenna knew she’d really meant to sound righteous—damn, that was funny… righteous …what a funny word. She fell in to a fit of giggles that soon had Jenna giggling, too. It took them several minutes to get themselves back under control.
“We need to work on our ’scape plan, we can do this...probably. We’re smart woman, those Barney wannabes got nuttin’ on us! Hell, I’ll bet Alex plus two didn’t even give ’em any bullets. Hell, Zach used to be the sweet one and now he’s acting just like Alex, that really sucks, I tell ya’. And that Colt is a whole new level of grim. He doesn’t like me, you know? Have you ever actually seen him smile? Maybe it’s some sort of genetic defect. He might be bigger than me but I’m mouthy and fast, and that’s almost as good as all that fancy-assed training he’s had, right?” Kat’s words were followed by another chorus of giggles before they finally seem to recover a bit. “Yeah, sister, we can outsmart ’em…don’t ya think? I mean really, just because they fought against terrorists, that doesn’t mean they’re smarter than us!” Somewhere in the very back of Jenna’s mind, she knew they were so busted, but it just didn’t seem as important as it had an hour ago.
* * * *
Listening to the woman discuss their plans to spy on The Club’s Beach Party, the guys in the security monitoring command center, known as the Crow’s Nest, were having a great time eavesdropping and watching as the women hatched a plan that would have been doomed to go down in flames even without their alcohol-fogged thinking. There were always at least two people working the bank of monitors in the Crow’s Nest and usually three during events. The Club’s security center was Mitch Grayson’s domain, he was considered the lead for most events, and this evening was no different. He’d been calling Alex, Zach, and Colt with regular updates, well, when he could do so without letting his amusement at the women’s antics show in his voice.
Grayson had been instructed to place monitoring equipment in the sitting room for this evening, it seemed Alex and Zach knew their sister and Ms. McKay very well. They’d said they were sure the two wildcats as they’d referred to them, would not be easily contained. And as entertaining as this had been, their increasing inebriation was starting to cause some concern, it was probably getting close to time to call in the cavalry.
* * * *
Ordinarily the suite only had perimeter-monitoring devices out of respect for her privacy, but Kat knew full well Alex and Zach would have stepped that up for tonight. They were not only worried about the two of them getting out of their gilded cage; she knew they were even more worried about who might get in. On any other day, that might have been valuable information, but right now, Kat was
C. J. Cherryh
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