Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) (14 page)

W
hile Harry has
a muted conversation a few yards away, Tabby and I stand in frosty silence, staring at each other. I’ve still got her arm in my grip.

Fighting the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I keep my voice controlled when I say, “Tabby—”

“Fuck you,” she snaps, eyes blazing. Her cheeks are bright red, she’s breathing hard, and there’s a good chance I’m gonna get a knee in the balls any second.

I try again. “Tabitha. Listen—”

“Off is where you should fuck,” she hisses. With a swift, practiced move, she manages to twist away.

All my muscles tense. I’m braced to chase after her if she tries to break and run, but she doesn’t do anything except angrily brush her hair out of her eyes. Then she glares at me with what looks to be hatred.

I open my mouth, but she cuts me off.

“Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Asshole
.”

Heat radiates up my neck. I curl my hands to fists and count to ten.

Then I count to twenty.

“You lied to me.” It’s fast and cutting, spoken before she can curse. Her response is just as quick, just as angry.

“Never.”

I have to breathe deeply for a few seconds before I can control the scream crawling its way up my throat. When I speak, my voice is raw. “You said he was ‘wrong.’ That you were the only one who thought so. That you weren’t”—my voice grows louder—“
fucking him
.”

Special Agent Chan, standing off to one side, throws us a curious glance, and then looks away.

“All true! And then you shoved your tongue down my throat before I could say anything else!” she spits back at me, so furious, she’s trembling.

The anger gives me some hope that she’s telling me the truth. I’ve met plenty of people who can convincingly lie, but I’ve never met anyone who can force the physical signs of anger. The red face, the shaking hands, the ragged breathing, the dilated pupils, they all tell a tale. Rage is distinct, and honest.

The only other option, I force myself to admit, is that she’s angry she got
caught
lying.

I lower my voice so Chan can’t hear me. “You’re not gonna want to hear this—”

“Then don’t say it.”

“—But you worked for a
huge
liar for years. You helped Victoria create an entire identity that was a lie. You helped her lie to my friend Parker—”

“Because he screwed her and her entire family over! He ruined her life!” She throws her hands in the air. “Or so we
thought
! You know exactly what happened. Don’t turn it around on me!”

When I don’t respond, Tabby says bitterly, “Why don’t you just say it, Connor. Just say that you think I made up Søren. That I made up
everything
. That I’m the one who pulled the studio job, and being here to watch the chaos is just a big ego stroke. That the blackmailer is really
me
.”

I say nothing. She turns her back on me and stands with her arms crossed over her chest, shaking.

Then Harry walks over and casually says, “Nice guy, your Professor Durand.”

Tabby turns her head, listening.

“Spoke very highly of you. Fondly, in fact. Says you were the most brilliant student he ever had.” Pause. “Aside from one Søren Killgaard, that is.”

The breath I didn’t know I was holding leaves my chest in a gust.

Over her shoulder, Tabby says quietly, “You should send an agent to Durand’s house to verify it was him you spoke with. At some point, it will occur to someone on your team that phone numbers can be spoofed and rerouted, and we’ll be right back to square one. Go to his house and talk to him face-to-face, and then you can be sure.”

Harry looks at Chan, who says, “On it,” and leaves.

Then Harry says to Tabby’s back, “You ever think about joining the FBI?”

* * *

B
y the time
the sun comes up, the COM center has been moved to another building on the studio campus, two agents from the Boston field office have interviewed Professor Durand at his home, and Harry has given me the rundown on the infamous Bank of America incident.

“Took Tabby weeks to convince the cops she was innocent,” he’d said. “Mainly by proving it wasn’t her who opened the bank account where the stolen money was deposited. Security footage showed an older woman, taller, different coloring. They weren’t able to identify her other than to rule Tabby out. The bank employee who opened the account couldn’t recall anything unusual about the woman that could’ve helped the investigation. That, added to the lack of any other evidence linking Tabby to the crime, made the DA decide not to pursue charges. And that was that. Subsequently, she dropped out of school, and Durand never heard from her again.”

“If there was no evidence,” I’d said, “that means the police searched her computers. Which means they searched her home. But you said there was no address on record for her that year.”

“She rented an apartment near the campus a few days before she got nabbed—”

“And before that?”

“She said she’d been living in her car.”

Harry and I had looked at each other then. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Either Tabby lied to us about living with Søren, or she was protecting him by not giving the police his home address.

Neither option worked for me.

“Did the police interview Søren? And why was it handled by the cops, anyway? A case like that, the FBI should’ve been involved.”

Harry had shrugged. “They went to the address the school had on file for him, but it was one of those UPS mail centers. And by that time, he’d stopped attending classes too. Because it had been a woman who opened the account, they assumed Tabby’s insistence it was Søren who did the job was just a case of sour grapes.”

“What do you mean?”

His steady gaze had stayed on mine. “A lover’s quarrel.”

“Lovers,” I’d repeated, feeling sick.

“Apparently Professor Durand often observed Søren sketching pictures of Tabby during class and saw them together around campus. He assumed they were an item.”

“Did he ever see them…”

He picked up on what I’m not able to speak aloud.

“He didn’t say. As for why the FBI wasn’t involved, a decision was made by someone high up at the bank to keep the incident as quiet as possible. Hacks are bad for business. The public gets skittish when they know their money is vulnerable. And for a seventeen-year-old to be accused of making off with millions right under their noses… I guess they decided the public relations shit storm wouldn’t be worth it. Besides, they recovered all the money very quickly. No harm, no foul.”

Something wasn’t making sense. “You said you couldn’t find Søren’s name in any database.”

“Right.”

“What about his school records?”

“Disappeared, like he never existed.”

“But the police knew about him back then?”

“I know a guy in the local PD, asked him to copy the reporting officer’s handwritten case notes. That was the only place Søren was mentioned. After the woman on the video, they decided Søren was a dead end.”

I’d passed a weary hand over my face and asked Harry what he thought. About Tabby, about all of it.

“I think there are a lot of unanswered questions,” he’d said, watching me closely. “But mainly I think this girl is a wild card and dangerous to the clarity of your thinking. Mainly I think you’re balls-deep in trouble, my friend.”

It’s really inconvenient when motherfuckers are so observant.

I’d avoided his all-seeing eyes and stared morosely out a window instead. “I don’t know what it is between us.”

“It’s something, though, isn’t it?”

Respect for him had made me nod instead of offer a denial, which would’ve been a lie anyway.

He’d sighed and downed the dregs of his cold coffee. “You’ve never been one to think with your dick, buddy, so I won’t give you a lecture. Just watch yourself. I have a feeling this thing is much bigger than it looks.”

I wasn’t sure if he’d meant the situation with Miranda and Søren, or the situation with Tabby and me, but for the moment, I’d dropped the conversation with Harry due to sheer exhaustion. I’d been up for twenty-four hours and needed to sleep.

I needed to get my head screwed on straight before I talked to Tabby.

Whether she’d let that happen was up in the air. She’d curled up in a chair in the new COM center and gone to sleep without once looking in my direction. Or accepting my suggestion that she sleep on the sofa I’d had brought in for her.

Harry had asked that we both stay on premises until further notice…though I knew it really wasn’t a request.

So I’d found a quiet spot for a nap in someone’s office and gone to sleep.

And now someone is shaking me awake.

I open my eyes to find a man—goateed, tatted, grinning—standing over me.

“Gettin’ your beauty rest, pumpkin?”

“Ryan.” I’m on my feet and slapping him on the back in greeting before the word is all the way out of my mouth. I’m surprised how relieved I am to see him. Impulsively, I pull him into a hug.

“Gee, boss,” he says, my arms still around him, “one day in LA and you’re already battin’ for the other team? What’re they puttin’ in the water out here?”

“Fuck you,” I say with gruff affection and push him away. “And if I
was
going to bat for the other team, your ugly ass is the last place I’d start.”

Still smiling, he crosses his arms over his chest. At just over six feet tall, Ryan McLean is a few inches shorter than I am, but bigger than pretty much everyone else. We served together in the corps, and as soon as he aged out of Special Ops, I recruited him to Metrix. He’s an expert in close-quarter battle tactics, weapons, and recon.

And despite my teasing, he’s not ugly. His nickname is Thor, because the resemblance to the Norse comic book superhero is uncanny. All he needs is a flowing cape and an oversized hammer and he could star in the movie. Add a sleepy Georgia accent and a pair of baby blue eyes to the mix, and he’s the kind of “not ugly” that melts panties.

Those blue eyes now squint at me. “You all right?”

I drag a hand through my hair, shake my head to clear it. “Been a strange coupla days.”

“So you said. Wasn’t sure what to make of your phone call last night, brother. You sounded…not like yourself. Got on a plane fast as I could.”

I don’t want to get into exactly how much I’m not myself at the moment, so I deflect with a question. “You see Harry yet?”

Ryan nods. “He brought me up to date. And they just got another email from the target. Apparently this Maelstr0m is none too fuckin’ happy someone on our team cock-blocked his malware. Says he wants the name of who did it. Threatenin’ all kind of mayhem if we don’t give it up.”

“Fuck. All right. Let’s hit it.”

I leave the room, Ryan by my side. When we reach the COM center, Miranda is already there, pacing back and forth in front of the windows. Harry and his boys are gathered around a desk set up with computer equipment, staring at a single monitor. Tabby is noticeably absent.

“Heard you had contact,” I say, stopping next to Harry.

With a subtle smile, he jerks his chin at the screen. “Looks like this Killgaard character doesn’t like sharing his toys.” He sends me a sidelong glance, which I don’t take the time to interpret because I’m too busy staring in fascination at the screen.

Appearing in rapid succession on the monitor is a series of pictures of battle: atomic mushroom clouds, planes dropping bombs over targets, buildings exploding under heavy mortar fire. At the bottom left of the screen is a white skull and crossbones—the skull has flaming eyes—with a bar of text. Ryan reads it aloud.

“‘Give me a name, or there is no avoiding war.’” He snorts. “Melodramatic much?”

“That’s Machiavelli, not melodrama.”

Everyone turns to the sound of the voice.

It’s Tabby, standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the room. She’s obviously dead tired, but still sexy as fuck in spite of it. Her eyes are heavy lidded, her hair tumbles over her shoulders in an appealing mess. She’s wearing the clothes she had on earlier, but pared down: unlaced combat boots, skintight black jeans, a black T-shirt that’s about three sizes too small and does an incredible job of showcasing her slender waist and the fullness of her breasts.

She yawns and stretches, arms overhead, arching her back. The T-shirt rides up her flat stomach to display the glittering jewel tucked into her navel and part of the tiger tattoo lower down. I know it’s not my imagination that the temperature in the room seems to jump by several degrees.

Standing next to me, Ryan mutters, “Mercy.”

I don’t like the way he’s looking at her. The way everyone is looking at her.

The way she’s now looking at
me
, with complete disgust.

Harry says, “Pardon?”

Tabby moves into the room. Nineteen pairs of eyes follow her every move. She stops on the other side of the desk from me and stares down at the screen.

“Niccolo Machiavelli, the Renaissance philosopher. It’s part of a quote of his. ‘There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.’”

When no one responds, she looks up and around. “None of you has read Machiavelli?”