Obsession Falls (42 page)

“Out of all the Jimmys you knew, how did you miss this guy?” She took the underwear and pulled the tight material over her legs. As the heated black silk slid over her chilled thighs and butt, she hummed with delight.

“As far as I was concerned, when James Brachler went into prison, he was dead to me. But more than that, I was told by one of my senior executives, a man who knew us both, that Jimmy had died in prison. I trusted Brandon. I believed him.”

“Those are your excuses?” She stretched out her legs. Ah, yes. Long underwear, guaranteed to kill a man’s desire.

Except Kennedy didn’t seem repulsed. Those blue eyes were alive with appreciation—and apology.

Goddamn right, he should apologize. Yet she would bet he was apologetic for all the wrong reasons.

He was sorry to have involved her in Jimmy’s vendetta. But etched on her memory was that moment at the party when she had reached out to him, and he turned away.

He told her, “When you said I had a selective memory—you were right.”

“I was right, you say?” She pretended astonishment. “Here’s a moment I will hug to my bosom and put in the treasury of my memory.”

“You’re being sarcastic.”

“Damned straight I am.” She got the jeans off the seat and worked her way into them.

The car slowed. “Got another tent and another GPS,” John said loudly. He removed the earphones and jumped out.

“What are you going to do with your senior executive?” she asked Kennedy.

“Right now he’s been neutralized. Brandon tried to kidnap my sister and my nephew. She stabbed him.” Kennedy smiled unpleasantly. “Don’t screw with my sister. She’s a lot like you. She’s not afraid to defend herself.”

Summer relaxed a little. “So Tabitha and Miles are safe?”

“They are. Brandon’s in the hospital under arrest. I have already started backtracking his activities. I expect to find other betrayals.” Kennedy took a breath. “I promise he will spend a lot of years in prison. Loyalty is my number-one requirement in an employee. But if you wish to be sarcastic about my unwarranted trust in this man, you would be right there, too.”

“We all trust people who don’t deserve it,” she said meaningfully.

He winced.

“Yeah,” she said. “Anyway, how would you recognize the signs of betrayal? You have fewer people skills than most.”

From the open tailgate, John said, “Lady, you’re rough on him, considering what he did to find you.”

She pulled the blanket back around her and shivered. “I’m grateful to
you,
John. But Kennedy’s the reason I was kidnapped in the first place. At the first sign that I didn’t meet his standards, he decided I was weak and treacherous.” Her voice rose. “
Like his mother.
He doubted me immediately. So he owed me a rescue.”

“Yes, ma’am.” John flung the tent in and slapped the tailgate shut.

When John hoisted himself into the front seat, Summer locked eyes with Kennedy and said, “Besides, John, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him and this damned … game.”

“Yes, ma’am,” John said again.

In an overly reasonable voice, Kennedy said, “While I can’t argue with that, I would also like to point out that you wouldn’t be involved at all if, rather than rescue my nephew, you had remained hidden in the woods. And you did tell me you took responsibility for your actions.”

Okay. He got to win this one. “Tell me about the game,” she said.

“When I was in college, I had goals—primarily, before I was thirty, I wanted to be wealthy. To do that, I intended to own a successful business.” His already firm jaw firmed even more. “I had plans, ways to achieve those goals. I knew with the world proceeding as it was, the need would be for a business that could interpret and investigate the changes in business and government. I also knew I needed a team who would be sufficient to the challenge. So I developed a role-playing game.”

“Empire of Fire.”
She took the faded red sweatshirt out of Kennedy’s hands and warmed it with the vent. “I read about it in your bio. You and your friends played it while you were in college, and when you graduated, you sold it and used the proceeds to finance your business.”

“That’s right—as far as it goes. I attended MIT, probably the most prestigious technical institution in the world. My friends were all highly intelligent and focused. But not all of them had the skills I required for my business, and of those who did, I wanted the best.”

“I never doubted it.” Of course. That explained so much.

He continued, “So we all played
EoF.
I was able to see firsthand who comprehended the
EoF
world and its ever-changing challenges, and who was the best and fastest strategist.”

She was appalled. “You used the game to interview them.”

“Yes.”

“My God. You’re a ruthless bastard.”

Kennedy looked surprised. No doubt he
was
surprised. “Why do you say that? It was a logical, intelligent plan on my part, one that has reaped great rewards.”

“But you didn’t tell them, did you?” She pulled the sweatshirt over her head. “That you were interviewing them?”

“That would have defeated the purpose.”

“I’ll bet you also used them to refine the game.” The T-shirt sleeves had bunched at her elbow. Of course.

“Yes.”

He didn’t even get it. The immorality of using a game to test his comrades, his friends, to judge them worthy or not, to discard those who were undeserving and gather the ones who excelled. What he said was a lesson, one she intended to remember. “Tell me more about the game, the parts we’re playing. You’re a warrior, of course, in opposition to all the other warriors.”

“Yes.” Without a single sign of impatience, he helped her wrestle the sleeves down to her wrists, and when he was done, his touch lingered.

She removed his hands. “And what is my role in this game?”

“You are the Prize.”

What bullshit. “The
pawn.
”

“At times,” he agreed. “But the Prize was not—is not—a thing. It is a person. The game chose the Prize randomly from among the players, and as the person played that position, that gave me the clearest view of the value of a player.”

“Because?”

“The Prize is the game-changer. By any means at its disposal, the Prize can take control of the game. The Prize can make alliances, break them, trick the warriors into fighting among themselves, defeat all opponents and ultimately win. Because the Prize is up against the warriors, it is the most difficult role.”

“So as the Prize, I’m playing in opposition to you and Jimmy.”

“Yes.”

She contemplated that. “Interesting.” Then she regained her senses. “But also not the point. How did the game become real?”

“That is Jimmy’s doing. Apparently—and I am interpolating the facts I learned last night from a prison guard—in prison, he was beaten and cut, his face destroyed.”

“Which is why you didn’t recognize him.” She hated to abandon the heat vent, but her butt hurt. So she eased herself up on the seat, fastened her seat belt, and set to work putting on her socks and shoes. “Why was he in prison?”

“He was convicted of running the drug and prostitution trade at the university and the surrounding area.”

“Ohhh.” Now she understood. “You discovered his crimes and reported them.”

“I did not
discover
them. The university asked me to determine who was behind the massively increased on-campus drug and prostitution problems.” Kennedy stared out the window, where the snow swirled and danced its way into the oncoming night. “I had no suspicion at all. I admired Jimmy. He was brilliant. He was my only competitor.”

“In the game.”

“In … everything! I hoped I could hire him. I imagined he had intentions of starting his own business.” He turned back to her. “I did not realize he already had.”

She looked at Kennedy.

After a moment, he said, “Yes, I reported him.”

“Then you washed your hands of him, and forgot about him.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever see him after turning him in?”

“Once. He wanted to know why I had betrayed him. Why
I
had betrayed
him
. He didn’t seem to understand that what he had done was illegal and immoral. I had badly miscalculated—he was, and is, a psychopath.”

“You spit on him.”

“I did not.”

“Metaphorically.”

No hesitation this time. “Yes.”

Sometime during one of the stops, John had failed to put on his headphones, and now she met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

They both shook their heads.

She waved her hand at Kennedy. “Okay, back to the story of how you talked to a guard from the prison where Jimmy was incarcerated.”

“Jimmy had disappeared off the public records, so what I needed was someone who remembered him. It was not as easy as one might have hoped. He’s eliminated or intimidated everyone who knew him.”

An image flashed through Summer’s mind, of Jimmy peeling off his face.

She screamed, hid her face in her hands and sobbed with fear. Monsters were real, and this one was going to toss her out of the helicopter.

He laughed. He took her wrist and said, “Look at me.”

In trepidation, she did.

He looked like Jimmy again, sexy and alluring. He had revealed his true features. He leaned toward her, kissed her …

But they weren’t his true features. He was a chimera, a creature of many faces, and the soul behind those faces was rotten with corruption.

Yet his kisses had not tasted like corruption. They had been sweet, chaste, then as she warmed to him, skilled and elegant.

She felt ill.

“Are you all right?” Kennedy asked. “You’re flushed.”

She busied herself arranging the blanket over her legs. “The drug … I’m still fighting off the effects.”

“No barfing in my Hummer!” John said in alarm.

Kennedy found her a bottle of water and handed it to her.

“Thank you.” She took a sip. The water helped subdue the nausea, gave her an excuse to avoid Kennedy’s gaze, helped steer her away from unwanted memories. Such a powerful little bottle of water. “The prison guard told you Jimmy had killed people for talking about him?”

“Yes.”

Yes. Of course. She had kissed a cold-blooded murderer. She knew that. She had seen him kill a man, his friend. She had seen Jimmy blow Dash’s brains across the wine cellar …
No! Don’t think about that.
Firmly she put her mind to work on the conversation at hand. “Then why did the guard talk to you?”

“He is dying. Cancer. It’s expensive. I paid off his medical bills and agreed to give his wife a stipend every month.”

“He had nothing to lose.” Summer knew that feeling. Yet here she was fighting for her life. Again. And this time … her sanity? “You must have been up all night.”

“Yes.” Yet except for a heaviness around his eyes, he didn’t look tired.

Not fair, especially when she was rapidly descending into depression and exhaustion. “What happened after Jimmy was almost killed?”

“When he recovered, he eliminated the competition and took over as the director of the rampant corruption that plagued the prison. When he got out, he had business capital, a business plan, and within the prison, he had vetted his future employees by using them as delivery boys and gang bosses.” Kennedy met her gaze. “I don’t know that he explained he was interviewing them, either.”

She laughed. Reluctantly, but she laughed. “I already knew you two were opposite sides of the same coin.”

“You are looking pale,” Kennedy said. “We brought soup. Would that help?”

Would soup push the memories away? No. But despite the fact she wanted to know more, she was suddenly trembling and on the verge of collapse. “I think so.”

He rummaged behind him, produced a thermos, and poured out chicken broth. “Then perhaps you should stretch out across the seat and sleep.”

She examined the size of the seat. “Will you move up front?”

“You can put your head in my lap.”

She eyed him skeptically.

“You know I won’t take advantage of you.”

She did know it. She needed to remember who she was dealing with, and why.

She drank the broth, then reluctantly, awkwardly reclined on the seat. His thigh was too well-muscled to be a good pillow, but he was warm and she was tired. “When Jimmy carried me out of the ballroom, he said you didn’t recognize him. But that you would recognize him now.”

Kennedy arranged the blanket over her shoulders. “He was right.”

“He also said you were stupid.”

“In that, he was wrong. I may have blind spots, but when we played
EoF,
we were evenly matched.” He petted her hair in a slow, soothing motion. “I will win this match.”

“If you were evenly matched, how do you know that?”

“The Prize is on my side.”

“You’re wrong.” She closed her eyes. “The Prize is on nobody’s side but her own.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Kateri shooed the last patron out the library door, flipped the “Closed” sign around, and turned off most of the lights. A good day: one fight between twelve-year-old girls, one four-year-old who vomited on the floor, and one new mother bursting into tears because her breast milk hadn’t come in.

Kateri considered it one of the ironies of her life that she, motherless, sisterless, and infertile, gave advice on how to breastfeed. Actually, all she did was find a book on breastfeeding, but the poor woman was so exhausted from caring for her constantly hungry newborn that Kateri had had to read it and explain the process step by step. If she ever found a different job, she couldn’t imagine what it would be. Counselor? Know-it-all? Servant to the Frog God?

Oh, wait. She already had that one nailed. Or so her people believed. And today, she would prove it, one way or the other.