Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games #2)(31)

Heart pounding, I snatch it up. When I read its contents, I groan.

Jarhead,

In order to avoid what is sure to be an even more awkward drive together to LA, I left first. You’re welcome. And thank you. Even writing this is ridiculously awkward, which convinces me I’ve done the right thing by going. My cell phone number is below. You probably already have it, having done your “research” on me, but just in case. It won’t be turned on until I arrive in LA. Text me the address of the job.

As you said, we’re both professionals, so I know I can trust you not to mention this again.

For the record, I won’t either.

T.





It could only be worse if she’d signed it “Friendly regards.”

I curse again, passing a hand over my face, and then crumple the note and throw it on the floor. Fuming, I stare at it for several seconds, but then expel a hard breath and pick it up. Smoothing out the creases, I carefully fold it and tuck it into my wallet.

I pack up the rest of my things in my duffel bag and head out.



I arrive in Los Angeles eleven hours later, overcaffeinated and jumpy as hell. True to her word, Tabby has had her phone turned off all day. I’ve dialed her number no less than ten times, my frustration growing each time I hear the toneless electronic voice on the recording directing me to leave a message. I never do.

Finally, on the eleventh try, she picks up. Her voice is mild, businesslike, impossibly impersonal.

“You were supposed to text me an address.”

I don’t bother to ask how she knew it was me. “Are you all right?”

That might have come out more brusquely than I intended, judging by the surprised pause on the other end of the line.

“Of course. Are you?”

No. Standing in my dark hotel room overlooking the bright lights of Century City, I bite back the word and rake a hand through my hair. “How did you get to LA?”

“I rented a car. Did you think I sprouted wings and flew?” She’s amused.

“Where are you now?”

Another pause. “Venice.”

I release a breath. From my investigation of her background, I know she grew up in Venice Beach, blocks from the ocean. Her parents were well-educated, a political science teacher and an artist, bohemian and antiestablishment, basically hippies.

And then they were dead.

“Visiting the old neighborhood?”

The pauses in this conversation are growing longer and longer.

“Connor.” Her voice is soft around my name, a caress. I close my eyes and listen to it, let it steady my jagged nerves. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking. And I’m ready to go to work. Whatever I need to know, text me—”

“I’ll email—”

“No email.”

Something cold snakes through my gut. “I use the highest encryption protocols commercially available, Tabby, and tweak them to my needs. You know I take precautions. It’s my business.”

“I’m sure Miranda took precautions too. You know as well as I do that email can never be one hundred percent secure.”

“The encryption I use is the closest thing to bulletproof. It’s based on what they use at the National Security Administration, customized for me.”

Her tone goes flat. “I see. And I suppose you think a universal encryption key is a myth.”

The cold unfurls, spreading to my chest. “Of course it is. Not even the NSA or Homeland Security has that kind of technology.”

“No,” she says after a moment. “They don’t.”

“Are you telling me—”

“By the way, if you’ve ever used this phone to contact Miranda, assume all your voice communications are compromised as well. My advice is to get a few burners for this job, use a new one every day. It won’t matter in the long run, but it might slow him down a little.”

Him. S?ren. Like a bad rash, he’s suddenly back.

I say slowly, “If someone is intercepting my calls, watching my electronic activity, that means you’ve been exposed too.”

That charming sound on the other end of the phone is Tabby softly laughing. “Just text me the information about where we’re setting up shop, Connor. Leave the heavy lifting to me.”

She disconnects the call.

I stand there in the dark, staring at the phone in my hand, wondering why it never before occurred to me to ask her the reason she took the job in the first place, and understanding with sudden, awful clarity that it was the most important question of them all.

I’m in, she’d said. I hope you’re prepared for war.

With new foreboding about what that might mean, I take the elevator to the lobby of the hotel, in search of a payphone.





Thirteen





Tabby




The first thing that happens when I meet the venerated Miranda Lawson, CEO of Outlier Pictures and a long-time girl crush of mine, is that I hate her.

With a capital H.

Glaring at me, she snaps, “You’re late.”

Her words crack like a bullwhip across the space between us, spookily echoing off cement floors and columns before fading into silence. We’re at her movie studio, in one of those creepy, subterranean parking lots featured in slasher films, where the female victim is hurrying to her car, looking over her shoulder in fear of the boogeyman she senses is waiting for her with a chainsaw somewhere in the dark.