Page 119 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
In unison, Downs and I repeat, “Pretend?”
Miranda expels an exasperated sigh. “My God, for two men who pride themselves on being so omniscient, you’re seriously dense!”
Downs is losing his patience. “Spit it out, Miranda.”
“It was a game, all right? He played a game with you! With all of us! A game going back almost a decade! He knew I’d be giving that speech that night, he knew what my weakness was, he knew how desperately I wanted to succeed! So he gave me the tools and set this whole thing in motion!”
Dread makes its way along all my nerve endings, settling into a cold, heavy lump in my stomach. I straighten and cross my arms over my chest. “Explain.”
“When he told me he wanted me to pretend we’d been hacked, of course I said no. For a million different reasons, not the least of which was the high possibility of discovery. I knew the FBI would get involved, knew we’d be under a microscope. It was total madness, and I told him so. I offered him money instead. But Søren replied that if the public and my shareholders discovered that the software I’d used to achieve everything I’d achieved originated from someone of his…history…I’d be ruined anyway. And that’s when I realized he wasn’t just a talented software architect with a pretty face, because he told me all about the things he’d done.”
Her voice wavers. She looks away. “That’s when I realized he was a monster.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” snaps Downs.
Miranda morosely picks at the cuff of her sleeve. “Self-preservation, I suppose. My secret would be out. I’d be ruined.” Her voice drops to a shaky whisper. “But also because he said no one would get hurt unless I refused. But I did what he asked, and people got hurt anyway.”
My gut is telling me in no uncertain terms that something is seriously rotten in Denmark. There are gaps so wide in her story, not even I can connect the dots.
“This is bullshit,” I say coldly, staring at her. “What are you leaving out?”
“Nothing!”
“Oh, really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re asking us to believe that Søren somehow knew, years before you and I even met, that my path would eventually cross with Tabby’s. That I would approach her to assist me with a job for one of my clients, a woman whose company had been hacked by a supergenius hacker no one had ever heard of before, except Tabby. And that somehow, with his godlike powers of precognition, Søren knew she would agree to take the job, come here with me from New York, and become so desperate to take him down that she’d hack into the NSA’s servers, get herself arrested and taken to an undisclosed government location.”
Miranda says, “From what I’ve seen, Søren can predict Tabitha’s actions with perfect accuracy. He understands exactly what makes her tick. But the real problem you’re having working this out, Connor, is that you think I’m the only person he made a deal with.”
Silence takes the room as we all digest that.
“Everyone owes him favors. Politicians. CEOs. Religious leaders. Business leaders. People in positions of power all over the world. He bragged about it to me. Laughed about it. He didn’t know in advance who would be in Tabby’s sphere of influence when he was ready to make his play. He only had to get enough pawns on the board and bide his time.”
The skin on my arms crawls. “Six degrees of separation,” I say slowly.
Downs asks, “The movie?”
“No,” says Miranda. “The theory that any two individuals can be connected through at most five acquaintances. Søren didn’t know in advance what lever he’d have to pull to put Tabby in action, so he acquired himself an army of levers. And when the time was right, he pulled the correct one.” She looks at me.
I’m the lever he pulled to get to Tabitha? Horrified, I take a step back.
One of the quadruplets asks, “If he was so desperate to get her back, why wouldn’t he just kidnap her like a normal bad guy? Why go to all this trouble?”
Miranda drops her gaze to the silver cuffs around her wrists. “It was important to him that it be of her own free will. He kept saying that ‘she has to want to come back.’ And he knew Tabitha would never come back to him unless he did something to compel her to.”
It dawns over me like an atomic mushroom cloud, a hot, toxic blast of pure evil.
The chess analogy Ryan and I had talked about had been spot-on. But now I realize it isn’t simple chess Søren has been playing.
It’s Capture the Queen.
Tabby didn’t set the trap for him, as I’d first thought.
He set it for her.
Downs says, “Hold on. You’re saying—”
I turn and grip Downs’s arm. “Wherever you took Tabby, you’ve gotta get her out of there. Right. Now.”
He shakes me off, turns, and walks away a few feet, turns back with a scowl. “Let’s recap.”
