Raines, Elizabeth - Covert [Wicked Missions 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Free

down, and please pay attention from now on.”
    Hard to do when he could smell Alayna even though she sat at the other end of the table. He whirled to grab his chair, still a bit shocked to see his own blue hands as he reached out. Every time he walked by a mirror he stopped to stare, and he wondered if Alayna and Will had the same problem. Setting his chair back on its legs, he plopped down on the seat, scooted up to the table, and grabbed his e-tablet. “Sorry, ma’am.”
    With a weary sigh, Betinsa folded her arms over the baby bump on her stomach. Judging from the size of her, she had to be due to deliver soon. Like many pregnant women, she walked back on her heels, looking a little like a duck waddling. That thought would have brought a smile to his face if he hadn’t been trained to conceal his emotions so completely.
    “Now,” she said, “your contact has made all the arrangements for the jobs for the three of you, but it will be on your shoulders to find the financial trail.”
    “Yes, ma’am. I’ve done a lot of forensic accounting.”
    “Which is one of the reasons you were chosen for this undercover assignment, but you will also need to let them know you are willing to hide any illegal payments in their books.” She turned to Will. “We have achieved the level of security clearance you will need under your new name. Thanks to that new résumé, you will appear to be a shipping worker whose family is deeply in debt and ripe for the picking.”
    Will nodded. “I’m still concerned about using a pseudonym, though. Last time I went undercover, the guy they sent with me kept fucking up and not responding when someone called him by his fake name.”
    Betinsa leaned forward to press her palms against the table, leveling a hard stare at him. “You believe we haven’t considered that? We are allowing you to use your familiar names.”
    He shot her an incredulous frown. “You are? Hell’s bells, you people need to get this debriefing moving faster, or we’re heading into this operation entirely unprepared.”
    Her indigo eyes drilled into him. “That, Will, is why I am here now.” Standing back up, she settled her hands against her enormous belly again. “Fraiqua has been a closed society for so long, no one outside of the planet knows nearly enough about the culture to assimilate for an undercover assignment. I was brought in by the E.B.I. to help prepare you. What I need from all three of you now is to put your sexual attraction aside and focus on the job.”
    “So we can keep our first names?” Tanner asked.
    Betinsa nodded. “All of them can be considered nicknames for common Fraiquan names. Your family name will be Pariago. The false credentials we created were more than enough to get you hired in at Cosenki Chemicals.”
    Setting down his tablet, Tanner picked up the mock-up of the translator chip she’d given them earlier and stared at it. He’d had so many things done to him recently, one more procedure shouldn’t have meant a damned thing. But it did, because this time they were jamming one of those chips into his brain. “Are we still getting this installed tomorrow?”
    Betinsa nodded again. Her blue finger pointed to her left temple. “Directly into Broca’s area in your left frontal lobe. Trust me on this—Fraiqui is one of the most difficult languages to master. This chip will allow you to speak it fluently, plus we are adding an old Earth language—Hungarian—so that the three of you may communicate without being understood.”
    “Won’t that make people suspicious?” Will asked.
    “Not really. Fraiquans master languages so easily, they often learn nearly dead languages or even invent their own simply to keep family secrets. Speaking only to each other in such a way would not seem unusual. Don’t use it too often, however, or one of them might pick up your meaning. Save it for very important messages only.”
    Alayna crooked her finger at Betinsa. “Ms. Nungio…may I