“Yeah, I’ll bet,” I said lamely. Because god, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted that. Brittany and I had always pushed each other, to be better hackers and to do better in school and just to be more interesting overall. I remembered debates we used to get into, on everything from politics to favorite flavors of ice cream. Granted, some of that stuff we might have grown out of. But again, I just wanted to keep that easy friendship with her.

  I wanted to build a life together with her. But wasn’t that going to be a conversation.

  I pushed those thoughts aside for now and tried to focus on my motorcycle. After all, I had already given her a call earlier, and she hadn’t called me back. I couldn’t call again, not so soon. Just wait for her to get back to me and then…and then what? Take her on a date?

  As unbelievable as it sounded, I liked the idea of it. In all the time I had known Brittany, I had never taken her out anywhere. When we were younger, it was because I didn’t want to screw up our friendship. I hadn’t been sure that she felt the same way as I did. That she wanted the same things out of life. I hadn’t wanted her to feel like I was holding her back, more than anything. I wanted her to be able to do whatever she wanted.

  And I still did. But I was starting to believe that maybe we could make things right between us. That maybe we might be what the other wanted.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the return of Logan. He swung off his bike looking pale and grim—and covered head to toe in blood. Kane and I both stared at him for a moment. I got to my feet. “Jesus, dude, what the hell happened to you?” I asked.

  Kane was on his feet as well, his hands balled into fists. “Who did this?” he snapped. “I’m going to fucking kill them.”

  “Relax,” Logan said, giving him a look. “I handled it.”

  I trailed after him inside. He stopped in the main room of the clubhouse, looking in the mirror at his face. He wiped at a trail of blood dripping down his temple, rubbing his fingers together. He made a noise of disgust. “Fucker,” he muttered under his breath, still seeming more pissed off than worried about it.

  “What the hell did you do?” I couldn’t resist asking. He had mentioned something about going to see that guy who owed us money, but I was surprised it had turned out like this. From the way the guy had been running away, I had assumed he was some idiot coward who shouldn’t have fucked with us in the first place, not someone who could actually fight back.

  I doubted that Logan had realized what a fight he had ahead of him either, or else he would have taken backup. I liked to think so anyway. But then again, who knew when it came to Logan? He was already so pissed that this guy had gotten away from him for as long as he had; maybe finishing the guy on his own had been a matter of pride.

  He certainly didn’t seem too concerned about all the blood, although by now it was dripping off him and onto the concrete floor.

  Logan just shrugged. “What happened is that we never should have done business with that bastard in the first place,” he said calmly.

  I shook my head, watching as he stripped off his shirt and held it up before seeming to realize that it was beyond repair and using it to wipe off his face and hair. He went over to the sink in the corner and wet it a little, dabbing at a couple of the scrapes and shaking his head.

  Just then, Dax came in with a larger man in a suit. They both paused in the doorway, surveying the scene. The newcomer laughed and shook his head. “Well, it’s good to see that you all don’t shy away from a fight,” he said, nodding at Logan.

  I raised an eyebrow at Dax, but it was Kane who asked his brother the question. “Who’s this?” We didn’t normally get suits in there in the clubhouse, and I could tell that Kane was nervous, maybe thinking that this guy was investigating us or something.

  But I knew better. I recognized that man when I saw him. And even though he was a politician, I was still sure that he wasn’t after the club.

  The suited man held out a hand to Kane. “Representative McCree,” he said, giving Kane’s hand a firm shake. He looked around at the three of us. “You guys are going to have to work hard if you want to get the people who are after me. But I think they can be stopped if you can take out their leader.”

  Dax nodded slowly. “Do you know who’s after you?” I couldn’t resist asking. Based on the information I had seen in his files, as well as the little that Brittany had been able to tell me, I had a pretty good idea, but I was curious how much of the plot McCree knew.

  “Of course I know who’s after me,” McCree said. He nodded at Logan. “And as for their leader, trust me when I say I’ve seen more blood on him than I’m seeing on you right now. He’s not the kind of guy you want to mess with.”

  I remembered Brittany saying something similar. All of a sudden, I felt my blood run cold. What if Brittany wasn’t just at work? What if she hadn’t answered my call because something had happened to her? The guys who were after McCree might have already realized she had taken down the firewall, and if they knew that, then there was no telling what they might do to her.

  I had left her alone and unprotected, even after promising I would do everything in my power to make sure she was safe. I knew that she could look out for herself, but there were some threats she was no match for.

  I felt guilt well up inside of me at the thought I might have failed her again. Without saying a word to excuse myself, I took a step outside, yanking my phone out of my pocket and rapidly dialing her number. But there was still no answer, and I felt dread settle over me.

  If the men who were after McCree had done anything to her, I would never be able to forgive myself.

  Chapter 20

  Brittany

  As soon as I finished my work on Monday, I was out of the bagel shop, barely even pausing to take off my apron. John had hung around for the whole afternoon, keeping an eye on me, but he didn’t criticize my performance. In fact, if anything, it seemed like he was concerned for me, like he was doing his best to look out for me in case Harry came back again.

  I wanted to tell him that he was wasting his time. If Harry wanted to kill me, or Lacey, then we were as good as dead. There was nothing John could do about it.

  But it was such an unexpectedly nice gesture from him when he and I had never really gotten along, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell him that it was hopeless, that he wasn’t much help.

  I thought again and again about calling the police. I thought about answering the phone when I saw Victor’s name flash on the screen. But the more I thought about it, the surer I was that I needed to do this on my own for Lacey’s safety. Who knew what Harry would do to her if he found out I was blabbing about all of this to anyone else?

  I quickly put the firewalls back up as Harry had requested and then took a deep breath, knowing that I needed to call Harry but panicking about the very thought of what he might tell me. It had been hours. Who knew what he could have done to Lacey by now? I didn’t even want to think about it.

  But I couldn’t leave her hanging. I had to call him and figure out where the bastard was hiding with Lacey. And hopefully, once he knew that the firewalls were back up, that would be the end of it and he would just let her go.

  Was I naïve to think that he might? Probably. But I could only hope.

  Harry answered the phone and told me where to meet him. I tried to pretend like this was just any other business transaction. Like I wasn’t scared half out of my mind about what I would find when I got there. More than ever, I wished I could call Victor and have him help me out. But I knew I couldn’t risk Harry having tapped my phone or something. I knew he had powerful friends, and I didn’t know what he was capable of.

  I didn’t want to test him; I knew that much. So I looked up the address, snorting at the cliché when I saw that it was some warehouse on the south end of town. Hopefully, we could get this over with quickly. I headed down to the warehouse.

  When I got inside, the place was musty. I walked down to the far end, kicking at the dust as I went. Lacey was tied to a chair there, Harry lurking behind her.

  “I told you, the firewalls are back up,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “If you don’t believe me, you can check them yourself. Now let Lacey go.”

  I didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as I was trying to project, but I knew Harry wouldn’t respond to anything less than that. He folded his arms across his chest as well, narrowing his eyes at me. “I hope they stay up this time,” he snapped. “What the hell were you playing at anyway?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Look, I don’t know what happened, but they’re back up, and they’ll stay up this time. I promise you.”

  “Bullshit,” Harry said, disgust dripping from the word. “I want to know who was looking into McCree.”

  “I can’t tell you that,” I said, looking worriedly at Lacey’s face. She had her head ducked down, her hair covering her expression, but it didn’t take a genius to know that she must be terrified. All the same, though, this wasn’t part of the deal that Harry and I had.

  “You said that if I put the firewalls back up, you would let her go,” I reminded Harry. “Firewalls are up. Now let her go.”

  Harry pulled out a gun, holding it up to Lacey’s head.

  I couldn’t tell if the safety was on, but it didn’t matter, not to Lacey and not to me. I felt like I might faint, and not for the first time, I started to regret not having at least told Victor what was going on or where I was heading, even though I knew that I couldn’t let him get any more involved in this. I was already risking Lacey’s life; I couldn’t risk his as well.

  God, I never should have gotten involved in any of this in the first place. I had spent so long trying to play it safe; I didn’t even know what had possessed me to take on a client like this.

  Except I did know. And it wasn’t the money, although that had been a decent sum. No, it was that Harry hadn’t given me a choice. Right from the start, he’d made it very clear that if I didn’t go along with what he wanted, if I didn’t help him out, there would be consequences—consequences that I wouldn’t be able to bear.

  Like seeing Lacey tied up to a chair with a gun pointed at her head. I never should have crossed Harry; I had known that from the start.

  I had just believed Victor when he told me that he would be there to protect me. I hadn’t given him a chance this time, though.

  I swallowed hard, thinking fast. Turning in the MC was the only thing I could do. I had to hope that they could look out for themselves. Anyway, they knew that there was some real threat to McCree. I hadn’t told them exactly what they were up against, but I had told them that Harry was dangerous and that he wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of what he was trying to do.

  I had warned them. I just hoped that they had listened. But I couldn’t sit here watching Harry point that gun at Lacey anymore. She, out of everyone, was innocent in this thing. She didn’t even know about my side job as a hacker; she couldn’t have any idea what was going on right now.

  I swallowed hard. “It was the MC,” I told Harry. “The local motorcycle boys. The Outlaws, or the Outcasts or something. I forget what they’re called. But they were the ones who made me take down the firewalls. What did you want me to do, fight them?”

  Harry stared at me for a long moment, unmoving, and I could tell he was deciding whether or not to believe me. But finally, he nodded, putting the gun away. I felt like I could finally breathe again, even though I knew we weren’t out of the woods just yet.

  Harry stalked over to me, getting well within my personal space and leaning in toward me. “You never saw me,” he hissed. “I swear to you, if you breathe a word about any of this to anyone else, I won’t hesitate to put a hole through your friend’s skull.”

  I nodded at him, fully believing him when he said that. He pushed past me, walking with brisk steps out of the warehouse. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, trying to hold it together.

  “Britt?” Lacey asked, her voice barely a whisper. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

  I forced my eyes to open again, looking at my best friend’s frightened face. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, belatedly moving to her side so that I could untie her from the chair. “But I didn’t have any choice.”

  And I hadn’t, not from the very start. Harry’s friend had recommended me to him, and the only thing I could possibly have done differently in the situation was to pretend that I wasn’t as good a hacker as his friend had made me out to be. Pretend that I couldn’t build a great firewall for him, for this politician, to hide everything that they were up to.

  But if I had lied about that, I knew that Harry would somehow have found out about it. He would have suspected the lie, and he wouldn’t have been happy. Either way, he would have killed me.

  I was still surprised that he was allowing me to live with everything I knew about his plot. Not that I was going to argue with him.

  It made me wonder what kind of man he really was, if he was afraid to get his hands dirty, or if he just didn’t believe that I would do anything about him. Then again, what could I do? He knew as well as I did that I couldn’t go to the police. To do so would be to admit that I had tampered with a politician’s private files, that I had hacked the system, that I was a risk to national security.

  Especially in light of the fact that I had already been questioned once about similar things.

  I hadn’t had a choice. And I still didn’t. I wanted to call Victor and warn him, but I was still afraid that Harry would find some way to turn something like that to his advantage. And he already had too much of an advantage to begin with.

  I helped Lacey to her feet, feeling helpless tears at the corners of my eyes as I watched her massage feeling back into her fingers. She was the one with the brave look on her face as she lifted her head. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  I was only too ready to agree.

  Chapter 21

  Victor

  On Tuesday morning, I woke up to my phone ringing. I came awake immediately, groping for it on my bedside table. It was either someone from the club or Brittany, I knew, and I really hoped that it was the latter. I hadn’t heard from her the previous day, and the only thing that had stopped me from going by the bagel shop was a terse text from her: Talk soon.

  That was it. And it tore me to pieces.

  I knew that she must regret having slept with me. That she was realizing all the reasons we couldn’t be together. That she didn’t trust me, not after what I had put her through before. Or that she wasn’t interested in me anymore, not in the way I was interested in her.

  I never should have told her I had feelings for her. I had always known that would complicate everything. I wanted her friendship, first and foremost. I might have wanted more than that, but not at the risk of losing everything.

  It was just that I had been so sure that we were on the same page now, her and I. I had been so sure that we wanted the same things. And sure, she might be scared, and I might be nervous, and there might be things we both needed to work through. But I had thought, somewhere in my mind, that we could somehow figure things out.

  From the sound of that text message, though, she didn’t want anything to do with me right now. She was all right; she was safe, she would talk to me soon. But she didn’t really have anything to say to me.

  But the phone was ringing, and I hoped beyond hope that it was Brittany who was calling. I pushed myself up so that I was leaning back against the headboards as I answered the call. “Hello?” I asked, trying to sound normal and nonchalant and not like I was going to either be overly relieved at Brittany’s voice or overly disappointed at anyone else’s voice.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” Brittany scolded. I frowned and looked at my phone. Sure enough, I had four missed calls, all since three in the morning. They were all from different numbers, though, none from her actual number. But of course, depending on what she wanted to say to me, it would be safer for her to not use her own number for the call.

  “You pull an all-nighter?” I asked in surprise, wondering just what it was that she was working on.

  “Yeah,” she said tersely. “I had to make sure we had a secure connection so that I could call you. This is through my computer right now and hopefully hidden behind three layers of encryption.”

  “Whoa,” I said in surprise, still feeling like I was trying to catch up with her. I knew that it wasn’t just because I was still tired, though; Brittany had always had a way of being three steps ahead of me, steamrolling ahead. I was a lot more cautious in my work; it was part of why we worked well when we were working together.

  “Harry kidnapped my friend Lacey,” Brittany said.

  I swore and leaped out of bed, already looking for pants.

  “Oh, calm down,” Brittany continued, and I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I got her back—she’s fine. She slept over at my place last night because neither of us wanted to be alone, but she’s fine.”

  “Was it the guy who asked you to build that firewall? Your client?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it was Harry,” Brittany said grimly. “He made me put the firewalls back up. But that’s not the worst of it.” She took a deep breath, like she was preparing to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. I felt my heart start thumping in my chest. She sounded like she was okay on the other end of the line, but what if she wasn’t? What if he had hurt her and she was just trying to sound nonchalant about it?

  I was going to kill the bastard. For the first time, I felt like I understood a fraction of what Logan or Dax or the other guys felt when they were faced with one of those tough situations and had to rough up the other guy—or worse. Because right now, this guy Harry? If the universe had dropped him into my path, I could have killed him in six different ways without batting a lash.

  Even if he hadn’t hurt Brittany, he had frightened her, and that was almost as bad.

 

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