Page 1 of Master of Lies

CHAPTER1

Jed

Well, would you look at that. So Sandee was a real, live girl, after all.

I shuffled forward in my shackles, eyeing my penpal through the glass barrier with wary fascination. She hadn’t noticed me yet from her place in the line by the door, but I knew her from the photos she’d sent. At least the ones that got through the prison censors. They were grubby and dog-eared by the time they made it to my cell. Letters, too. Long, gushy letters, packed with too much information, including but not limited to her hard-luck past, her loneliness, her intense longings, her sexual fantasies.

The girl was a hot mess, and desperately in need of therapy, but I’d read all of the letters multiple times. I’d pored over them, in fact.

So I had no business judging anybody else’s twisted coping mechanisms.

I had plenty of empty hours in prison to study Sandee’s letters and pictures. Up until right now, I’d been convinced they were a fantasy front. Just too damn pretty. Not realistic. Somebody photoshopped the living fuck out those photos. I was sure of it.

My guess had been that Sandee was some lonesome, tragically plain girl, or maybe someone housebound or disabled, looking for a virtual boyfriend. Or else maybe a guy who wanted to be a girl but was afraid to make the leap, so had chosen this way to live out his/her/their fantasy. Something along those lines.

But no. What the hell was a woman like that doing here? I couldn’t see what the payoff could possibly be, the way she looked. That body, those tits, those eyes.

The pleated red plaid skirt fell a few inches above the knee, showing off bare, shapely legs. High-heeled red ankle boots. A tattoo on her ankle that I couldn’t make out from here. She had hot pink streaks in her jagged blonde bob. She was rocking a rumpled, sexy anime schoolgirl look. The sweater was red, skin-tight. She’d followed the visitation modesty rules, but still managed to look like a walking wet dream. How she’d gotten through the visitor intake process like that was anybody’s guess.

Worked for me, though. Oh, man. Worked great.

The glaring white light illuminated her white-blonde mop. Her full, sexy red lips gleamed hotly, all glossed up and sticky looking. If I were inclined to criticize, which I wasn’t, I’d say she wore too much makeup. But she could be painted gold, for all I cared. I would lick her clean. Slowly.

Her look was so exaggerated, it had to be some kind of mask. Then again, I was probably overthinking this. I’d been undercover for too long, and prison shook a guy’s grip on reality. Her letters and pictures seemed so real. So intensely vulnerable, they made me uncomfortable. And aroused. And seriously fucking confused.

According to the letters, Sandee lived in a rented trailer in a nowhere town with a shuttered factory, rampant unemployment, fentanyl, meth. She bartended at a skeevy roadhouse. Slimebag boss. No family support. And a thing for bad boys.

She’d heard about me from a friend whose husband was inside for mail fraud, and hunted down my mugshot, which was posted online on a booking photos website.

That had been unwelcome news. Like I needed any more attention.

She’d fixated on me, deciding to save some worthless fuck-up from himself by the power of her love alone. She might as well dive into a shark tank. But everybody had a right to his or her own brand of self-destruction, myself included.

Still. Something about her surprised me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. That posture. Despite the sexpot outfit, she seemed elegant. Ladylike, almost. That dignified quality stuck out like a sore thumb in a maximum-security hellhole like this one. That gorgeous face, what I could see of it behind the shaggy, choppy blonde bangs. Sharp eyes, looking everywhere but at me. Like she didn’t even know I was there.

The CO prodded me to enter the room. My shackles dragged and clanked as I shuffled toward the seat.

The fuck she didn’t know I was there. She had positioned herself carefully, and then struck a hot, sexy pose for me. To give me a good, long gawk. That was calculated.

Sandee could be a honeypot, sent by Boer. If Boer had fingered me in here, then I was in imminent danger. Mickey, too. My team outside. They could all be in danger. I needed to contact the Unredeemables right now and put them on their guard.

I hesitated, gripped by panic, and the CO who held my arm stumbled into me with a curse. Goddamn. This was a mistake. I should have kept refusing to see her.

I’d changed my mind because I wanted to do the girl a favor by ending this fantasy of hers—definitively. To scare her to death, make her run before she drew any more unhealthy attention to herself. I wanted her miles away, back in Nowheresville, mired in whatever boring routine she was trying to escape from.Run, Sandee, run.

The strategy had seemed smart at the time. But now I felt danger prickle on my skin. Whether from her, or for her, I did not know. One thing was certain. I should never have touched this live wire. Not even once.

She could fuck me up. And idiot me, I’d agreed to this partly because I was bored, and curious. I had to know if she really looked that good. If anyone could.

She did. Score: one for my dick, zero for my brain.

I was so close to my goal. I’d been in Kalaharee for months, getting close to Mickey Savalletri, ingratiating myself to him by protecting him from predators. At long last, he’d agreed to give me the info I needed to run down my ex-colleague, Wex Boer.

Once I got my hands on Boer, I could torture intel about Shane’s location out of that murdering shithead. I looked forward to that with every fiber of my being.

But Mickey would only provide the intel after I busted him out of the joint. That was his price, and it was time to pay up. A man had to stay focused while planning a prison break. There was no time or space for a frivolous crush on my sexpot penpal.

“… dee McGillis? For the last time! Sandee McGillis!”

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