Chapter 1
Jed
Iswiped the garlic-studded steak over the lake of marinade on the plate until it dripped with olive oil and opened the barbecue on the terrace.
I was having a very hard time prying my eyes away from the kitchen inside, where Freya was cutting up fruit.
There had been some blue sky through the clouds today, and it was unseasonably warm this high up in the mountains, even for early summer.
But the sun was low, making the clouds a ruddy pink on one whole side of the sky.
It was an amazing view, up here in Ethan Masters’ mountain fortress.
Every single window in the place was a picture window, and every view was stunning.
Sunset tinted clouds, resting on the shoulders of the mountains like they were swathed with fluffy white scarves, vividly greened up by new grass and fresh growth, smeared with blue and red and yellow by blooms of mountain wildflowers in the high meadows.
It was all extremely beautiful, but nothing compared to Freya Masters herself. She was dressed in that gauzy pink skirt that swayed around her gorgeous, shapely legs and perfect ass, those straight, strong shoulders, that halo of dark blond curls, long enough now to bounce around her head. So cute.
“Putting the steak on the grill now,” I called, just to make her smile at me.
I got my wish. She looked over her shoulder from the strawberries she was slicing and gave me a smile so beautiful, I had to re-evaluate my grasp on objective reality. Which was to say, to pinch myself—hard enough to bruise.
Otherwise, I couldn’t believe it. I lifted the dripping steak and splayed it out onto the barbecue grill, setting my internal timer to remind me when I had to turn it, and wiped my hands on the towel on the outside table.
Struggling, always, to believe that this was real.
I, Jed Clearwater, was shacked up with Freya, in her apartment in the Masters Complex, which belonged to her genius billionaire brother, Ethan.
I’d served in the Army Rangers years ago with Ethan, and his brother Shane, currently missing.
Abducted. We’d been the best of friends, before what happened with Shane.
And before I started sharing his little sister’s bed. That made it weird.
The disaster of Shane’s abduction was what had thrown Freya and me together, sort of. It had driven us into mortal danger, too. I’d been hunting for intel on Shane, and so had Freya, and we had collided. Spectacularly.
Somehow, we survived the resulting clusterfuck that ensued with my asshole traitor ex-colleague Wex Boer and his hell-harpy associate Nicole Volange. Because of Freya, who had valiantly let herself be captured in a bid to save my sorry ass.
They had tried like hell to torture and murder us. But thanks to Freya, and Ethan, and the Unredeemables who had ridden to the rescue—they had failed.
And here we still were, alive, in one piece.
In love, for fuck’s sake. Engaged, even.
Making dinner on the grill on Freya’s terrace, about to get married.
It sounded so cheerful, so normal. It boggled my mind, which was still polluted with dark thoughts, no matter how I tried to put them behind me.
How could I, if I was the one who kept generating them? They just kept churning out.
I’d been hunting for Wex Boer after he abducted Shane. Everyone wanted the information in Shane’s head on how to render the immensely powerful SmokeScreen algorithm functional. The Masters siblings were the only ones who could pull that off.
Boer took a bullet through the head in that final showdown, before I could question him about Shane’s whereabouts.
That was Ethan’s doing, and I couldn’t really complain, since Boer had been about to blow my head off at the time.
Ethan had saved my life, but the timing sucked.
I had been so close to carving the intel I needed out of that weasely shithead’s brain, and I’d watched that brain dissolve into pink foam before my eyes, and my precious intel along with it.
I guess that it was ignoble to bitch, considering, but a guy couldn’t always be gracious. It sucked that Nicole Volange had gotten away. She was the only person alive who knew where Shane was. Whoever was holding him, whoever might have hurt him.
I wanted that person dead. Wanted it bad.
There were only two other people now who could make SmokeScreen function. Ethan Masters, who wrote it—and Freya, his sister. The love of my life.
That made Freya a target. For Nicole, and for the mystery figure who had taken Shane. We all were. Even little Holly, Freya and Ethan’s niece. Shane’s daughter.
That stark fact made it hard to be smug about my good fortune, my beautiful fiancée, and in general, our continued existence on this earth.
The wedding tomorrow, too. It was just too good to be true, when a hellaciously focused monster wanted the person I loved best to die badly, and would stop at nothing to make it happen.
I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder.
I was constantly calculating and recalculating whether the mountainside across the valley was far enough away so we were safe from a good sniper.
Looking up in the sky while the meat grilled, scanning for armored drones.
Lying half-awake at night, listening for any kind of sneaky, underhanded attack.
We were as safe here as it was possible to be, but still.
On the plus side, after all that nightmarish bullshit, Freya Masters actually wanted me.
The bravest, most brilliant, kickass, gorgeous creature who ever walked God’s green earth, had chosen me, a guy with nothing to recommend him but a talent for warcraft and a deeply suspicious mind.
Those were useful qualities in a security expert, but they were a huge pain in the ass in a boyfriend. Or a husband.
I just couldn’t relax into my own good fortune. I couldn’t bask. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For disaster to strike, tearing her away from me.
Or for her to come to her senses. Realize that I wasn’t good enough, after all.
It hadn’t happened yet. She still seemed convinced.
God knows, I was giving this everything I had, and would keep at it until the day I croaked.
No choice. That woman was just...wow. I was in a perpetual state of overstimulation.
Forced to reset all my base perceptual levels, upping all the limits sky-high, so I could take in her beauty, her brains, her heat, her fierceness, her humor.
She would make me into a better man. With her, I was compelled to give my best.
I checked the steak, and turned it. Then I reset my internal timer for four more minutes, and let myself give in to Freya’s vast gravitational pull.
It dragged me into the kitchen, which smelled great.
She’d roasted new potatoes with red spring onions and fresh sprigs of rosemary.
They sizzled in the baking pan. There was a bowl of some braised greens, and a green salad with roasted wild mushrooms. I was becoming a foodie, hanging out with this woman.
Who would have thought that true love would make a guy eat his vegetables.
I’d put on the radio earlier, since the DJ was playing an extended concert set of one of my favorite bands, one Shane had turned me onto some time back, called Nighttime Visitor.
The band was composed of three pallid, lanky emo guys with extensive facial hair; Naimo on steel guitar, bass dobro, Olsen on percussions and drums, Randall on keyboard and synth.
They had rough, tuneful, resonant voices, and they did amazing harmonies and lush instrumentals.
Their sound was unique, dreamy and haunting on the ballads, with an irresistible groove in the up-tempo pieces.
Right now, they were doing “Until The End of Everything,” one of their hits. The concert version was slower than the album tempo. I held out my arms to Freya in silent invitation. She wiped her hands and came straight into my arms, no hesitation.
Always a fresh miracle, the rush of joy and pleasure and sexual awareness of holding her trim, lithe body in mine, and that floppy mop of curls tucked right under my chin. We swayed together as the words drifted into focus.
…hide behind the shadow of your hair
Your breath gives power to my song
I lean on you and pretend I’m strong
You’re what keeps me keeping on
toward the end of everything.
But it don’t matter, it don’t matter
Drop my heart and let it shatter
There’s nothing left to say today
I’ll do my worst to make you stay
You’re still the star that lights my way
Toward the end of everything.
A soaring electric guitar solo followed. We swayed together, clinging like we still couldn’t believe it was all real. We lived. We were together.
I’d been relieved, to find out that we had a favorite band in common. Something frivolous and mundane, not just our shared blood-soaked adventure, and wild, world-shaking sex. As for the rest of it, I tried really hard to be a grown-up and not to let myself get intimidated.
It was challenging, though. The Masters siblings, Ethan, Shane and Freya, were all freakishly talented.
Even Freya’s apartment here in her brother’s complex blew my mind, the way she’d decorated it, the colors, the woodwork, the furniture, the artwork.
Hanging lamps and mobiles she’d designed for Techmaster Toys, her outside-the-box engineering firm.