Chapter 20
Jed
Istared at Freya, motionless. My mouth still filled with potatoes. The hell?
This girl was sharp, yes. She was a Masters, after all, and her brothers were whip-smart, way smarter than me. But this was superpower scary. She could look right into my mind and effortlessly pluck stuff out with a pair of tweezers.
Like that image of Mickey in my head, curled up and bleeding on the floor, that I just could not un-see, and probably never would. It would always be with me.
I forced myself to finish chewing and swallowing the food in my mouth, with difficulty. It tasted as dry as sand, all of the sudden. “What are you talking about?”
“The guy with the mask,” Freya said. “He wanted to know what Mickey told you and who else he might’ve told, remember? Is Mickey the inmate you were trying to make a deal with? He’s the reason you went to Kalaharee, right?”
I cleared my throat, staring down at my nearly empty plate and wondered how much I dared to tell her.
“Yes,” I said finally. “And it’s true, what I told Boer.
Mickey didn’t give me any info. He wanted me to break him out first. But Boer will never believe that.
He’ll keep coming at me, and I don’t want you to be with me for our next encounter.
I need to stash you someplace before that happens.
Because he will find me. Or I’ll find him. ”
“I’m not a thing to be stashed,” she said. “Tell me more about Mickey.”
My body clenched up like a fist. “He’s nothing to you,” I said. “He’s out of the picture. Forget him.”
Her dark eyebrows snapped together, a little frown between them. “He seemed pretty relevant to the masked guy.”
“Boer, you mean,” I said. “He was relevant before. Now he’s dead.”
She leaned forward, eyes bright with curiosity. “When did he die? And how?”
I wondered if these revelations would come back to haunt me later. “Yesterday,” I said. “Right before I left the prison. That blood on me? Most of it was his.”
Her eyes got big. “Ah. I see. But…you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off nervously.
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t kill him myself. Boer organized the hit. I was supposed to die, too. They’ll keep trying to finish the job. They’ll never stop trying.”
“Was Mickey a friend of yours?” she asked hesitantly.
I turned away from her worried gaze. Yeah, Mickey had been a friend. Before they chopped him into pieces and left him to bleed out alone on a filthy bathroom floor.
Some friend I was to him, though. I was the one who’d put him there. I’d baited the trap with the promise of freedom from those mobsters who held him down.
I had admired and respected Mickey. He hadn’t ever bitched or whined or felt sorry for himself, in spite of his shit luck. He’d been up for anything if it gave him a chance to not be used by Adriani anymore.
He hadn’t let me bully him, either. He drove a hard bargain, and I respected that.
Mickey had deserved better. His reasoning was, if he had to be on the lam for the rest of his life, at least he’d have a life.
Now he didn’t. And that was on me.
Freya was still waiting. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, he was a friend.”
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“We had a deal,” I said. “He told me he’d left a flash drive with someone on the outside, in case something happened to him.
It had all the information I needed about Boer.
How he faked his death, where his money was.
As soon as he was out, he’d arrange for me to get it.
And it was going well. No one had noticed me.
If things had gone according to plan, he would have been wearing the clothes you have on now.
He would have been eating this food with me. We’d be in Phase Two, on the move.”
Freya looked as if she was bracing herself, her mouth tight. “So what happened?”
“You happened,” I said flatly. “You came bouncing in, flaunting your tits. Boer must have followed you via your phone to the prison. At which point, he copped to the fact that I was there, and arranged to have me and Mickey killed immediately. Consequences.”
Freya’s eyes widened. “Wait,” she said slowly. “You’re saying that it’s my fault they killed Mickey? I just now found out that Mickey even existed!”
“I’m not saying you did it on purpose,” I said. “But that’s what happens when you fuck around with things that are above your pay grade. Mickey was barely alive when I got to him. They cut pieces off his body. He died in my arms.”
Freya’s face had gone deathly pale. She looked at the chunks of meat on her plate, shoved her chair back, and bolted for the bathroom.
Great. Very smooth, Clearwater. My winning personality and charming dinner conversation had made Freya Masters toss her pot roast. That was a shame. I had no idea when or where the woman would get another decent meal.
It was so fucking stupid, to hammer on her like this, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Something about her just yanked on my chain.
I got up and followed her. There was water running in the bathroom. I stood outside, waiting for what felt like hours. Finally, the door opened.
Her face was blotchy, her eyes red. “I’m sorry I messed things up for you.”
I nodded and left it at that. It’s not as if I could say, “it’s no problem.” That would be a lie. Or “don’t worry about it.” That would be really shitty advice.
“I’m glad you’re starting to wake up,” I said. “Took you long enough.”
That brought back the spark of anger in her eyes again. Good. Better than crying or vomiting. That’s one thing about me a woman can really count on. I’ll be sure to piss her off on a regular basis. It’s a special talent of mine.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “So, Jed. Let me ask you this. Are there any circumstances under which you would forgive me for messing up your plans?”
“Nope,” I said. “None at all.”
Her chin went up and her lips flattened. “Ah. Really.”
“I don’t have the energy for social lies.” I told her. “You’re getting the raw, unpolished truth. Which is more than you offered me.” I turned away, heading back toward my computer set-up in the front room.
Freya followed me. “So it’s the lies that bother you? Because I was pretending to be someone I’m not? You did that, too, Jed. And for the same reason.”
“It is not the same,” I said stonily. “I was undercover, scoring crucial intel. You were playing dress-up and fucking with my head.”
“Worked, though. Is that why you can’t forgive me? Because I got you?”
“I don’t know what you got, besides thoroughly nailed,” I said.
Freya sashayed around to the front of the table and perched on the computer table. “Do you want to know something, Jed?”
That struck me as a risky lead-in. I tried to look away from the spectacle of her round, shapely ass, smack in the middle of my field of vision. “Probably not, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“That unforgivable sin of sticking my tits in your business? It’s the same sin that Sandee committed,” she said. “But you weren’t anywhere near as mad at her as you are at me. You weren’t anywhere near as judgmental. Why is that?”
I shrugged. “Sandee was a fiction. How I related to her is not relevant.”
“I disagree,” Freya said. “Why did Sandee get a pass, but I don’t? What’s so different about Freya Masters fucking up? Can’t I catch a break?”
I thought about it. “Sandee has an excuse,” I said finally. “Sandee was a babbling simpleton. Freya Masters should have goddamn well known better.”
“Why should I know better?” Her voice was impassioned. “I don’t know shit! Ethan won’t tell me anything. I have no option but to conduct my own investigation!”
“How did you hunt me down at the prison, anyway?” I demanded.
“I hacked the Drake brothers’ phones,” Freya admitted.
I clapped my hands over my eyes. “Oh God. What dickheads.”
“Not at all. They were very careful, and their encryption was excellent. Just not good enough to keep me out. Not if I have weeks to crack it. That’s a very high bar. The highest bar possible, really. Not to brag or anything.”
“So why aren’t you working for the NSA, or something like that?”
Freya snorted. “Hah. I know how that would go. I’d start off golden, and things would be great, and then I’d say something rude, make somebody powerful mad at me, and in no time, it would all go to shit.
Might as well not even go down that road at all.
I’m better off running my own outfit, by my own rules. I get into less trouble that way.”
I remembered all the times Shane had complained about his little sister always getting into trouble. Rules and boundaries and barriers were so easy for her to break through. She never had to consider that a rule might be there for a damn good reason.
She’d certainly blown right through all my rules, barriers, and boundaries.
“I wouldn’t have fucked you if I knew who you were,” I told her.
“Why? Because of what my brothers would think? I’m twenty-six years old, Jed. I sleep with whoever I want. They don’t have any say in that. They never did.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like being lied to. Or jerked around.”
“You enjoyed yourself just fine, from what I could tell,” she said.
“Yes, but that’s over,” I said. “No reason to whore yourself again.”
Her eyes flashed, and she slapped her hand down onto the desk, making the keyboard rattle. “I did not whore myself.” Her voice rang with conviction.
I looked up at her. “No? How do you figure that?”
“Having sex with you was never part of the plan,” she said.
“I didn’t know about the prison break. I just wanted to establish a connection with you.
I was thinking, long and winding conversations on the phone, with phone sex, at most. Then shit happened, and we were alone together.
And then I realized that I…I wanted it. For real. ”
“Oh,” I said. “So, you just lack impulse control, then. Right. Got it.”
She clapped her hand over her mouth, snorting helplessly. “Don’t make me laugh, or I will cry again. And you will be so sorry.”
She wasn’t wrong about that. I held up my hands in a warding gesture. “Don’t do that to me,” I begged. “It’s been a shitty day so far, and I’m so done.”
“I am sorry I lied to you and complicated your life,” she said. “I’m especially sorry I fell off that stupid cliff and kept you from chasing Boer. He’s an asshole, and I wish you’d been able to catch him, and question him, and seriously fuck him up. And I’m incredibly sorry about Mickey.”
“Understood,” I said.
“This flash drive that Mickey said was on the outside,” she said. “You, ah…you don’t have any idea where it is? Who has it?”
I shook my head silently.
She bit her lip, looking distressed. “Shit. That’s…unfortunate.”
“Yeah,” I said, forcefully. “That puts me back to zero.”
“What would it take to make you forgive me?”
Oh, come on. No hot girl could ask a normal, functioning, straight man a question like that without the obvious crass answer flashing through his mind like neon.
Which, of course, immediately transmitted to her brain. I saw it in her eyes.
“I actually wasn’t suggesting sex,” she said, her voice chilly. “I was thinking in terms of joining forces, helping each other. Working as a team.”
“Then you weren’t thinking at all,” I said mercilessly.
“You were dreaming. I’m unloading you the first second I can do it in a way that I judge to be safe.
Which is tricky right now, but when I do pull it off, I suggest you hole up and wait this thing out.
These guys play rough, and you don’t have the training to take them on.
You should know that after what happened today. ”
“I can’t stand down,” she said. “It’s killing me.”
“Oh, so you want to die quicker, then?”
She just glares at me, her color high. Whoa, genius me.
I’ve made it worse, getting her back up.
I’ve made her cry, made her furious, made her vomit, but here she still is, dishing it right back to me.
All up in my face. So fucking pretty. We’d both be a whole lot safer if she hated my guts completely.
And to that end…it was time to let my inner asshole come out to play.
“The way I see it, the only worthwhile thing you could possibly do right now would be to pull those pants down, turn around, and bend over,” I said. “Go ahead, Freya. If you’re so set on making yourself useful.”
Freya straightened and slid off the table, eyes blazing. She licked her lips. Her breath quickened as the air in the room caught fire. So did mine.
Now we were both turned on. Both actively thinking about it. There was too much heat between us to control. It vibrated, hummed. Made the air syrupy and heavy.
If she called my bluff now, I was toast.