Page 41 of Play the Game

“Tam, please get in the fucking car with the fucking stranger. She’s an Uber driver, and she’ll take you to the lake house.”

“Where the hell are you, and why the hell aren’t you here?”

“I’ve run into a problem.”

“At the warehouse? Jesus, I can’t believe you did this. You have your phone, so they didn’t snatch you. Are you trapped inside the building? Are the thugs surrounding you?” My mind spun through extraction scenarios. The Uber driver could drive me to the warehouse in five minutes, four or less if we ignored the speed limit.

“Yes and no,” Jason answered.

The Uber driver rolled down the passenger side window. “You coming or what?”

I held up one finger to her. “What does that mean?” I asked Jason.

“Yes, I’m inside, and no, no one else is here.”

“What happened to our four friends?”

“I might have scared them away,” he said. “And then they set an alarm system on their way out the door. I’ll need time to hack into it and disarm it since I don’t have the appropriate software on this computer.”

“So, I’m supposed to leave you there?”

He sighed. “Tam, please, take the Uber to the lake house. Tell them the car broke down, and I’m dealing with it but sent you back with the ice cream so it doesn’t melt.”

The mention of the ice cream made me realize how thoroughly I’d been played. In case anything went wrong, sending me back alone would make sense. Couldn’t have our dessert bar melting all over our cloth grocery bags.

I motioned for the Uber driver to leave without me. “I’m calling Alder to get you out of there remotely,” I told Jensen.

He sighed. “All right, but ask her not to tell TJ.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I’m not doing to Alder what you did to me. I’m not going to make her complicit. That’s not the kind of colleague or friend I want to be.”

“Tam, I—”

“Save it for TJ,” I told him. “I don’t want to hear it.”

CHAPTER 16

Jason

In the threeyears we’d been friends and the one year we’d been BFFs, Tam and I had never had an argument until this operation. A few minor misunderstandings. A couple of cranky words exchanged here or there. She’d even threatened to block my texts once, but that was because I’d had opinions about the guy she was dating, which I thought was completely fair because no adult man should ever say “babe” as much as he did when talking to her. But we’d never needed time apart.

Now, we were on our second round of silence in less than two weeks, which I learned immediately when I picked her up in front of the store after Alder sprang me from the warehouse. The difference between now and the previous three years was our new work relationship. Without Penn as a buffer, we were rubbing up against each other in the worst ways. Coincidentally, at the same time, we’d begun rubbing against each other in the best ways, as well, but surely, something so good and right and amazing couldn’t be our problem.

I parked the car in front of the lake house, and we trudged over to the barn. Tam took off fast and stayed several steps ahead of me. When we stepped inside the barn, Bond was seated at the conference table, and TJ was leaning against one of the computer desks. Alder, who was in the IT area, which was still open to the larger room, closed down her workstation.

“I’ll continue monitoring from my laptop in the house,” she said.

“Monitoring?” I repeated back to her.

“Leave it, Jensen,” TJ said. He nodded at Alder. “Thanks. And good job tonight.”

Tam held out the grocery bag to her. “Can you take these with you? You can set up the sundae bar or...”

Alder took the bag. “No one’s up for that now, but I’ll put these away.”

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