Say It Again (First Wives, #5)(74)

“There’s no way to get in touch with her?” Cooper asked.

She fired off the remainder of her ammunition. “Like I said, no cell phones.”

“No computer access?”

“No . . . not . . . wait.” Claire put the gun down. “Yes. The senior computer room.”

“The what?”

She jumped from the dirt, swept most of it off her clothing. “Why didn’t I think of that before? The senior computer room. Jax and I played an online game. It was our only access to conversation with others off campus. Not that we told anyone who or where we were. We thought it would be the perfect covert way to talk to each other once she was out of high school. I planned on staying through college.” She looked at Cooper with a huge grin. “Of course. Unless Lodovica found the senior computer room, Jax will still have access and hello”—Claire hit Cooper midchest—“inside information.”

Claire reached for the pistol, placed it in the back of her pants, and shouldered the rifles. “Gotta get online. It’s almost midnight at Richter. Which is when Jax would be at the senior computer if she can.”

On a mission, Claire doubled her pace back to the war room. Once inside, she went straight to her station, ignoring the looks from the others in the room. She set the rifles on the ground next to her desk and started searching for her game.

“She thinks she has a way to talk to a friend inside Richter via a video game,” Cooper announced to everyone.

Claire saw Neil approach from the side.

“We set up profiles in a game, secret names, closed group. So when one of us left the school, we could still keep in touch. We played along with two of last year’s seniors, but they bugged out six months ago.” Claire found the game and used her log-in information and waited for her profile to boot.

“Loki?” Cooper asked.

Claire nodded. “Jax is Yoda.” She pointed to a chat room. Read Jax’s last message and laughed. Where the hell did you go?

“What language is that?” Cooper asked.

“Our own.” Claire constructed her reply in her head, had to type it out three times before pressing send. “It’s like pig latin, only using German and Russian. Every other word is a different language and has the last vowel from the previous word. We thought it was clever.”

Cooper nudged Neil. “Told you she was brilliant.”

“Only if we get the spelling correct. Overkill if no one is looking.”

“Magnificent if someone is,” Cooper praised.

“I bet Sasha would crack the code in less than an hour.”

“What did you say to her?”

Claire sat back and waited for a reply. Not that there was any guarantee there would be one right away. Jax didn’t go into the senior computer room every day. None of them did. “I told her that the air on the outside was sweeter and asked if the flowers were in bloom.”

“Code for lilies?” Neil asked.

She laughed. “We have codes for everything.”

Cooper looked at the screen. “Now what?”

“We wait. If she responds without a code word, then we know she’s been found out.”



AJ stretched out on the bed, a towel thrown over his lap. Noise from the bathroom told him Sasha was finished with her shower.

The evening played over in his head. His father’s words, his mother’s emotions or lack thereof.

Sasha.

He was itchy. Where did he fit in? He was way over his head with Sasha and her group of friends. They helped people, AJ stole from them. They were noble . . . he was a fraud.

“I’m proud of you.” His father’s words sounded in his head.

No matter how far AJ dug, he couldn’t find one thing for his father to be proud of.

Amelia had been the one to leave the nest with a decent job, a noble one. Analyst for the UN. Just saying that out loud sounded like something. She traveled the world and, like her father, worked diplomatically to help countries get clean water to the people. So simple, so taken for granted. Amelia had taken on the job as if she knew people who were dying from a lack of clean water.

She’d been passionate about the position and never stopped yakking about it when they got together on the rare holiday that AJ bothered to visit.

What the hell was his father proud of him for? Not getting caught stealing cars? Because he didn’t get taken out while jogging along a riverbank? Because AJ didn’t listen to him and never stepped foot in Richter outside of the day his sister graduated, and again when he insisted on an audience with the grand headmistress and all her bitchiness?

AJ rubbed his face with the palms of both hands.

He dropped them to find Sasha standing in the doorway, one of his shirts thrown over her shoulders and covering only the essentials.

His cock stirred just looking at her. The action pissed him off.

“What crawled up your ass?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that. You clammed up the minute we left the interstate.”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

He sat up. “Nothing. Okay. I’m not a goddamn woman. I don’t want to talk about my feelings.” With his outburst, he tossed the towel to the side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He tugged the jeans on that were lying on the floor, zipped them up.