Page 41 of Jacking Jill

Jill needed to choose for herself.

And sometimes doing nothing and waiting was a choice too.

It gave fate the chance to step in.

“What the hell?” muttered Jack, frowning as he held up his vibrating Darkwater phone, turning the screen so Jill could see. “Your phone is calling me.”

Jill’s eyes widened. “Kay Steffen. I told you she stole my bag with my phone.”

Jack clenched his jaw, shot a glance in Benson’s direction. It took about three milliseconds for Benson to put it together and bark out his orders.

“Tell Paige your number,” Benson said to Jill before nodding at Paige. “Can you locate Jill’s phone on the grid-map, tap into the signal?”

Jill rattled off her number to Paige, whose fingers were moving blurry-fast on the laptop keyboard. Within seconds Paige looked up and nodded. "Jill's phone is calling from the Carmine Mansion. Parking lot."

Benson tapped the cleft in his chin, letting the phone ring a few times. “These Darkwater phones can’t be traced by anyone except you, right, Paige?”

Paige hesitated, then shook her head. “Our GPS signal is encrypted using military-grade NSA-level technology. Someday Artificial Intelligence will be able to crack it, but we aren’t there yet. We’re good to go. Nobody can track the signal to our current location.”

“All right, answer the phone, Jack.” Benson sat down at the big table again, resting his cane against the edge, then gesturing for Jack to bring his vibrating phone over. “Put it on speaker.”

Jack nodded, placing the phone flat on the table between Benson and Nancy as he leaned between them, tapped on the screen, and answered the call with a nonchalant sigh. “How much prison-time do you get for stealing a phone and then using it to make long-distance calls, Counselor?”

Benson stifled a chuckle. Nancy did not seem amused.

“John Benson,” said a woman—presumably Kay Steffen—from the other end of the line. “That’s your boss, right? Put him on. I don’t have time for your wisecracks.”

Jack seemed about to respond with another cocky comment when Benson raised his hand to stop him. Jack growled out a breath, but held his tongue and stepped back from the table.

“You calling to make a deal, Miss Steffen?” Benson said with a cheerful smile that came through in his tone. “Though looking at your record with the U.S. Attorney’s office, cutting deals wasn’t your specialty. You took every case to trial, pushed hard for the maximum penalties under the law, showed up at every parole hearing to make sure none of the thugs you put away got out early.” He paused, took a breath. “But sometimes you have to cut your losses and make a deal, right? And you’re smart enough to know that cutting a deal is the only way you survive this. Mind you, there’s no guarantee you walk away from this alive. You’ve chosen to join forces with men like Diego Vargas and Romeo Carmine, and there are consequences to all our choices, Miss Steffen.” He paused a beat. “You know that better than most, Kay. May I call you Kay? I’m going to call you Kay.”

There was silence at the other end of the line. Benson let the tension build. He leaned back in his chair, stroking his stubbly chin as he thought back to the conversation he’d had with CIA Director Martin Kaiser earlier that night. Benson had asked Kaiser to see if there were any files on Kay Steffen that had been sealed by the Department of Justice—sealed so tight even Paige wouldn’t find a trace of their existence.

Turned out there was indeed a file on Kay Steffen which had been sealed by the DOJ.

And Benson had been shaken by what was in it.

At first he’d assumed Kay Steffen was dirty and the Department of Justice wanted to cover it up so the U.S. Attorney’s Office wouldn’t look bad. It would fit in with Kay’s puzzling association with a gangster like Romeo Carmine after she quit being a prosecutor for the U.S. government.

But the sealed records didn’t contain evidence of corruption or bribery.

They contained something darker.

Something that Benson had kept to himself the past few hours, letting it settle in his mind, take its place as one of the puzzle-pieces that needed to come together before Benson could get a clear picture of Kay Steffen.

But that picture was nowhere close to complete yet. Kay was still a mystery, and now Benson wished he’d brought Paige and Nancy in on the details of what happened to Kay seven years ago.

Seven years ago . . .

Around the same time Darkwater was getting started.

Coincidence?

Or was this fate reaching its tentacles across space and time, pulling all the past and future Darkwater men and women into its perilous path, that dark road paved with sex and violence?

Benson chuckled inwardly as that familiar thrill moved through his body, making his titanium leg tingle beneath the table like a tuning fork seeking a sympathetic vibration with the cosmos.

“Since when does an ex-CIA guy get to lecture anyone on morality, justice, and keeping bad company? Didn’t you guys actually create the Zetas twenty years ago and then disavow them, leaving them at the mercy of the Cartels without backup or funding?” Kay’s response was smooth and emotionless. If she’d gotten the message that Benson knew about her past, she didn’t show it.

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