Chapter 35
SEVEN WEEKS LATER…
Jed
Ijust sat there, at the outermost gate that led up to Ethan Masters rocky fortress.
It was a long and winding drive to the top, where the many-storied building was cantilevered out from sheer rock, overlooking the entire Cascade Mountain range, with views of three snow-covered volcanos.
I’d been there a few times over the years.
It had been pretty dazzling for a guy who had grown up in a squalid, beat-up single-wide.
It wouldn’t dazzle me now. I had much more important things to be dazzled by.
I sat there, fondling my great-grandmother’s ring as if it were a talisman that could confer courage or luck.
I needed both. The hundred-year-old aquamarine was milky and beat up from having been worn constantly for sixty years.
My great-grandmother had never taken it off, not even when she was washing dishes or doing housework, and the stone was soft and battered.
But I liked the effect. The facets glowed with trapped light.
The ring had a personality, history. It was an entity in itself.
At least, I hoped that was how Freya would see it. I hoped a whole lot of things.
I’d been waiting at the gate for an insultingly long time. It’s not like there was any doubt about who I was. There were cameras staring down at me from every angle.
No, Ethan Masters was up there, stroking his chin, wondering if he should let me in at all.
If I were him, I would do the same. As far as he was concerned, I had to be punished.
Not just for banging his baby sister. More importantly, for not keeping her out of mortal danger.
I was lucky to still have balls at all. Ethan Masters was a dangerous man.
I’d hoped to rack up some points out in the field, hunting for that hell-bitch Nicole, but so far, my search had born no fruit.
At least I could move around in the world freely now, using my own name.
With Boer’s machinations revealed, my name was cleared.
Nicole still wanted to kill me, but that was fine. Bring her on.
The gate was grinding open. Either Ethan was letting me in, or Ethan had decided to have me killed, one or the other. Either way, I’d finally have an end to the suspense.
I drove up the thickly forested mountainside, glimpsing cameras at every switchback. When I got to the top, there was another heavily fortified gate. I waited outside that one for several minutes as well. Probably being scanned and X-rayed.
It opened, and I drove inside, into the grounds.
I parked the car on a flag-stoned square as a big, burly guy I didn’t recognize came out the door.
He glared at me, then turned and jerked his head for me to follow.
Usually, Ethan had Unredeemables covering his private compound, but they were out in the field now, looking for Shane and Nicole.
Besides, the Unredeemables didn’t want to take sides in this weirdness between me and Ethan, so they kept their distance whenever possible.
I couldn’t be bothered to take note of the obscene luxury of the place.
Just a general sensation as I strolled through, of fine finishing, huge picture windows, stunning views, gleaming plank flooring, high-end decorating.
Some of the glass-sided corridors were perched over cliffs, others opened onto patios, atriums, landscaped gardens.
In one, I spotted an infinity pool and an enormous sunken hot tub.
And I seemed to recall a helipad on the very top. Ethan Masters denied himself nothing.
Who cared. I just wanted to see Freya.
The big guy ushered me into a huge library. Floor-to-ceiling windows alternating with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. If you looked hard enough, you could probably see the curve of the earth from those windows.
Ethan Masters was seated at an enormous desk. His back was to me, as he tapped at a laptop. Probably dashing off some sort of genius code he’d dreamed up while taking a dump that morning. That was a Masters for you.
I stood waiting, like a dickhead. I had no leverage here. Ethan had it all.
He finally turned, as if noticing only now that I was there, and made an impatient sound. “So? Have you got news?”
“Nothing important,” I said.
His face was a cold mask. “Tell me the unimportant news.”
I let out a sigh, hanging on to my patience.
“We got close to Nicole a couple of times. The first time she opened the algorithm, we almost got her, but she had a bolthole and got away. We questioned her people, the ones we could pin down, but they were useless. The next time she opened the algo, it was a trap, and she almost got us. Darius is still in the hospital with shrapnel in his back. Nicole is in the wind. That’s the status report. ”
Ethan nodded. “You could’ve told me that in a text,” he said. “You didn’t have to drive all the way up here, inconvenience my staff, and waste my time.”
I shrugged. “Live and learn.”
“You said Nicole might be the last person alive who might know who took Shane,” Ethan said.
“She might,” I said. “From the way they interacted, she seemed on equal footing with Boer.”
“That’s good to know, but I told you not to show your face around here until you had something to show for the danger you put my sister through.”
“I’m still working on it,” I said. “But I can’t wait any longer.”
“Sure you can. You have to. Because it’s really not up to you.”
The library door opened. A little girl with long wavy blonde hair burst in. “Uncle Ethan! Could you take me to the—” Her voice broke off as she saw me. Her eyes got very big. “Oh boy! It’s him, right?”
“I’m meeting with a colleague, honey. Go on out until I’m done. Off you go.”
But Holly was not fooled. She gazed at me with fascination. “Are you the one that Auntie Frey broke out of jail?”
A snort of nervous laughter burst out, earning me a dirty look from Ethan. “Uh, something like that,” I said.
“You’re handsome,” Holly said, approvingly.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’ll go tell Auntie Frey!” She bolted out of the room.
“Holly!” Ethan called after her. “Don’t bother Freya! She’s working!”
But Holly was gone, and Ethan was cursing under his breath.
I felt something inside my chest start to relax. Thank God. At least, Freya would know I was here. I had had no way to make that happen other than trusting to luck.
“She did not need this right now,” Ethan said, his voice grim. “She’s still healing.”
The strange thing is, I actually got why he was so angry, but I couldn’t surrender. It wouldn’t be Ethan’s decision, whether Freya and I ended up together.
I wondered if he would ever forgive me, if I got lucky.
Maybe not. He might just hate my guts until one of us croaked.
That would be tedious, but whatever. If Freya would consent to be with me, I would barely notice.
Ethan Masters snorting and snarling would be like a mosquito buzzing in my ear. An adverse weather condition.
An extremely brilliant and rich adverse weather condition.
I was no pauper myself, but I wasn’t in that exclusive billionaire club.
But Freya was just as smart as her brother, and she’d freely decided to consort with the likes of me.
I just had to convince her to do it again and again, for the rest of her life.
And to try to make it worth her while for the rest of mine.
“Hamon,” Masters called. “Bryson. You two, see Clearwater out. All the way back to his car. He needs to get gone, double-quick.”
Hamon gave me an appraising look, flexing his enormous muscles and cracking his tattooed knuckles.
I didn’t bother to read whatever word the letters formed.
The message in his eyes was clear. Another, equally huge guy with a big, bushy blond beard came into the room and joined him, also sizing me up.
“I’m not leaving,” I said.
“Wrong,” Ethan said. “My mistake was letting you in at all. I thought you might have a report, but no, you continue to be worse than useless. Fuck off, Clearwater.”
“Not until I talk to Freya,” I said.
“You’re not getting anywhere near Freya,” her brother said, his voice like ice. “You’ve done enough. You almost got her killed. She barely speaks. You already let Shane fall into a fucking hole in the earth. I won’t let you inflict any more damage on my family.”
I had no coherent response to that, because he was completely right. So my only option was dumb-ass stubbornness. My default setting.
“I’m not leaving until I see her,” I repeated.
The energy in the room shifted as Ethan exchanged meaningful glances with his hired muscle. Hamon and Bryson moved toward me, trying to herd me toward the door.
I was in for a world of hurt, but fuck it. I was so used to pain by now, I’d barely notice. I’d rather have the shit kicked out of me ten times over then tolerate this silence any longer. She’d made no response to calls, texts, emails. Even snail mail letters.
If the answer was fuck off, it had to be verbalized, and come straight from her lips. Then I would accept it, and promptly turn around and walk right off the edge of the world. But not until then.
Hamon went for me first, his gorilla arms swinging in a lightning fast roundhouse that I barely managed to evade. It whipped right past my nose. I bobbed and wove and spun and ducked, avoiding some of the blows, catching some doozies.
Then I backed away and picked up a chair, some fancy designer thing made of bent metal and leather, and flung it at Bryson’s head, dancing back just in time to avoid a crushing kick meant for my balls from Hamon’s huge booted foot—
“What in the hell is going on here?”
We all froze at the sound of Freya’s voice. Hamon made another lunge—
“I said stop!” Freya commanded, with absolute authority.
Hamon stumbled back and looked at his boss, looking confused and agonized.
“Do not touch him,” she bit out. “Or you will all regret it.”
Hamon stood down, giving Ethan a shame-faced, apologetic look.
At that point, I dared to lower my guard enough to turn and look at the door.
The sight of Freya Masters was a whole body experience, like jumping into water.
Holy God, she was so beautiful. Different, though.
So thin. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, and she’d chopped off all the bleached blonde locks, which resulted in a dark blonde raggedy pixie cut, with some paler bleached tips here and there, like some wild woodland creature.
Which only accentuated all the delicate, elegant details of her face.
The wounds from Nicole’s knife were healed, but the scars were still an angry red against her paleness.
But her eyes. So brilliant, so bright. Filled with accusation.
Well, yeah. I had let her down in every possible way.
Fuck, in the end, it had been Freya who had to come and rescue me.
She had to risk getting cut to pieces just to save my miserable skin.
I had made every possible wrong decision, and piled incompetence upon incompetence.
Boer was dead. Nicole was gone. Shane, still lost. A whole host of other people dead. No one still alive worth questioning.
My hands were empty. I was so ashamed of that. She deserved better. And even so, my eyes were starved for the sight of hers.
I couldn’t look away. I felt like a prisoner in a dungeon. Desperate for the sunlight he will only see on the day that he goes to be hanged.