Chapter 2
Freya
Ileaped forward, ankles wobbling in those ridiculous high heels.
“I’m here, I’m here!” I sang out, tottering forward. I’d been so anxious and lost in my head, I hadn’t even recognized my own fake name.
Wake up, Sandee. Look sharp. And pray to God he doesn’t recognize you.
The last time Jed had seen me had been years ago, when he’d come home with Shane, both of them on leave from the Ranger Regiment. I’d been almost fourteen, and he’d mostly ignored me while he was there. Or else treated me like a baby bird.
He wouldn’t recognize me. Not in a million years. I looked completely different from that lovestruck, crushed out fourteen-year-old girl. Hell, I’d looked different even before I devised my Sandee disguise.
The drab visitation area reeked of sweat and frustration and despair.
A final spasm of panic seized me as the tall, orange-jumper clad form shuffled forward, blurred behind the scratched panel.
I was usually so cool and detached. Managing the employees in my engineering workroom required a rigorously honed alpha-female vibe.
At the tender age of twenty-six, the only way to get taken seriously was to be a hardass bitch.
But today, when the hardass bitchery really counted, my hands were ice cold, and my knees were like Jell-O.
At least I didn’t have to shake his hand.
Visitation at Cell Block B at Kalaharee precluded physical contact.
I’d be talking to Jed Clearwater, aka James Craig, on a phone through layers of bullet-proof glass. Safe and shielded.
Today I was not Freya Masters, chief designer and CEO of TechMasters Toys.
I was Sandee McGillis, a woman who had fallen in love with him from afar.
Sandee, who lived alone, with just her rescue cats for company, in her single-wide in Gholston Flats, hungering for something to give her life meaning.
I had developed a whole persona, from the ground up.
Sandee’s sad childhood, her trauma, her abandonment issues.
I’d sent “James” reams of letters that laid it all out, every aspect of Sandee’s messed up personality.
I’d gone so deep into it, sometimes I felt as if I had become her.
Kind of scary, considering how compromised Sandee was.
I’d been begging him to let me visit. So far, he’d always refused. Then, a few days ago, he’d finally agreed.
I froze. I couldn’t even blink. God, he was huge. Bigger than I remembered. Physically massive, vibrating with power. The orange jumpsuit strained over his shoulders, his thickly muscled thighs. Shackles did not diminish him.
He was just biding his time. Waiting for his moment.
His gaze cut through the shadows that the harsh overhead lights cast on his angular face.
I remembered his dark hair buzzed short.
It had grown out long, thick and dark, down to his shoulders.
The tribal tattoos on his neck disappeared into the jumpsuit.
His blade of a nose had a bump that I didn’t remember.
He had a short beard. It looked good on him. But then, everything always had.
His pale gaze was so bright, like a flash of moonlight in the eyes of a nocturnal predator, observing me. Comparing, measuring, calculating. So very cold.
He sank into the chair, keeping narrowed eyes on me. One brow had been slashed at some point, leaving a diagonal scar. His full, sensual lips were grimly sealed.
I should not be reacting to him like this. This breathless, giddy feeling, that was such bullshit. No part of me should be admiring or desiring any part of him. Not one single fucking subatomic particle of him was deserving of my positive regard.
The evidence I’d found indicated that Jed Clearwater was the enemy. There was no other explanation. He was a liar and a traitor and a killer…and a resource to exploit. He could be useful—if I got him to tell me what had happened to my brother, Shane.
And for that, I had to be crafty, subtle, patient. And wildly in love with him.
His eyebrow tilted up. He jerked his chin at the phone, urging me to grab the receiver.
I was deer-in-the-headlights immobilized, in spite of having practiced this scene repeatedly.
I’d rehearsed the bubbling chatter. Arms outstretched, fingertips touching the glass, extended in longing.
A stream of flattering blather—Finally! Omigod you’re, like, so much handsomer than your picture! And so on.
Gone. I didn’t remember a fucking word of it. Jed Clearwater blasted out a frequency that scrambled my wits. I felt vulnerable, as if I were sitting there stark naked.
The COs in the visitation were busy laying down the law, vocally and physically, to a bickering couple on the verge of a fight, so no one was monitoring us.
My nipples tightened as if his glancing look was a physical touch. The effect was extremely visible in my sweater, which was a couple of sizes too small.
Smile, Sandee. That was good. A shy, shaky smile. My body was staying in character, helping me out by displaying a very convincing nipple hard-on. That was all.
Yeah, girl. Go on. Keep telling yourself that.
Jed picked up the phone, jerking his chin at me again. I obeyed his silent command before I could stop myself, take a breath, and deliberately choose to pick it up. Thereby proving that the action was generated by my own free will.
It wasn’t. He’d given me an order, and I had followed it. Crap.
Bad beginning. I needed to maintain full control over a lie as deep as the one I meant to tell this man. But that lie was now taking control of me.
I knew from the start this was going to be ambiguous, messy, kind of dirty. But I hadn’t expected Jed to effortlessly put himself in charge. Very slick.
I needed him to let down his guard, and let slip something that could help us find Shane. A new avenue of inquiry, a clue, no matter how slight. It was a long shot, but why not try? The guy was stuck here. Defanged. It’s not like he could hurt me.
Of course, my brother, Ethan, would go ballistic if he knew. But I’d slipped my personal security detail yesterday in Portland. Ethan was probably ripping them new ones, and that was a shame, but I had never liked being shadowed by bodyguards. Or shoved around by my big brothers.
Jed gazed at me calmly, waiting for me to start.
It occurred to me that he might have done this before.
Gone as far as he wanted with a prison groupie.
His mugshot had made the rounds, and been much noticed and remarked upon.
Those piercing eyes, those amazing cheekbones, that chiseled jaw, those sensual lips.
I’d seen the comments. Hell, he’d probably had refused my requests to meet before because he was already double-booked.
Conjugal visits weren’t allowed at Kalaharee, but they could be arranged, with the appropriate bribes, and after selling out my brother, he damn well had the money.
Even if someone else managed it for him.
Yes, he’d certainly toyed with other vulnerable women before this. Because he could. Sick opportunistic bastard. I let the irrational anger energize me, and gathered my energy to speak.
“Um. Hi, James,” I faltered.
“You made it. In spite of the weather.” His voice was so deep. Resonant.
“I couldn’t miss my chance to see you,” I said. “You’d finally said yes.”
He shrugged, a faint, amused smile at the corner of his lips. Asshole. Ironic, that I pretend to be a ditz on purpose, and then get pissed at him for buying it. So I’m contradictory. Complicated. Sure. I’m also very smart. Smarter than him.
I hope so, anyhow. Jed Clearwater was nothing if not smart.
He’d decieved my brother, Shane. They’d served together in the Rangers Regiment, and went into business together afterward.
Jed, Shane, and three others from the Unredeemables group from their Ranger Regiment had founded Ready Line Security after they’d left the military.
Then last year, Shane persuaded Ethan, my oldest brother, to let him use SmokeScreen, Ethan’s latest and most powerful intel gathering algorithm, one that could penetrate any kind of encryption like a hot knife through butter.
Ethan had agreed, on the condition that Shane alone possess the necessary security codes to operate it.
According to Ethan, SmokeScreen was too powerful a tool to share.
Not with national defense, not with private citizens, and certainly not with the criminal underworld.
Ethan was convinced the whole world would devolve into anarchy if SmokeScreen got into the wrong hands.
He hadn’t wanted anyone to use it, not even his own brother.
And maybe Ethan was right, and this was a harbinger of things to come, because our lives had certainly devolved into anarchy eight months ago, when a private army had attacked the Ready Line headquarters, mowing them down and burning the place to the ground.
Shane had been taken, and everyone else had been killed.
Carbonized, identifiable only by dental records.
Except for Jed Clearwater, who’d escaped unharmed.
Jed had insisted he had no idea what had happened to Shane. Then, scant weeks later, he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Which looked pretty damn guilty to us.
Ethan’s working theory was that Jed had sold Shane to someone who wanted SmokeScreen. For the purpose of torturing the codes out of him.
And I spent my nights thinking about that, as I stared up at my bedroom ceiling.