Page 54 of Master of Lies

I clapped my hands over my eyes. “Oh God. What dickheads.”

“Not at all. They were very careful, and their encryption was excellent. Just not good enough to keep me out. Not if I have weeks to crack it. That’s a very high bar. The highest bar possible, really. Not to brag or anything.”

“So why aren’t you working for the NSA, or something like that?”

Freya snorted. “Hah. I know how that would go. I’d start off golden, and things would be great, and then I’d say something rude, make somebody powerful mad at me, and in no time, it would all go to shit. Might as well not even go down that road at all. I’m better off running my own outfit, by my own rules. I get into less trouble that way.”

I remembered all the times Shane had complained about his little sister always getting into trouble. Rules and boundaries and barriers were so easy for her to break through. She never had to consider that a rule might be there for a damn good reason.

She’d certainly blown right through all my rules, barriers, and boundaries.

“I wouldn’t have fucked you if I knew who you were,” I told her.

“Why? Because of what my brothers would think? I’m twenty-six years old, Jed. I sleep with whoever I want. They don’t have any say in that. They never did.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like being lied to. Or jerked around.”

“You enjoyed yourself just fine, from what I could tell,” she said.

“Yes, but that’s over,” I said. “No reason to whore yourself again.”

Her eyes flashed, and she slapped her hand down onto the desk, making the keyboard rattle. “I did not whore myself.” Her voice rang with conviction.

I looked up at her. “No? How do you figure that?”

“Having sex with you was never part of the plan,” she said. “I didn’t know about the prison break. I just wanted to establish a connection with you. I was thinking, long and winding conversations on the phone, with phone sex, at most. Then shit happened, and we were alone together. And then I realized that I…I wanted it. For real.”

“Oh,” I said. “So, you just lack impulse control, then. Right. Got it.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, snorting helplessly. “Don’t make me laugh, or I will cry again. And you will be so sorry.”

She wasn’t wrong about that. I held up my hands in a warding gesture. “Don’t do that to me,” I begged. “It’s been a shitty day so far, and I’m so done.”

“I am sorry I lied to you and complicated your life,” she said. “I’m especially sorry I fell off that stupid cliff and kept you from chasing Boer. He’s an asshole, and I wish you’d been able to catch him, and question him, and seriously fuck him up. And I’m incredibly sorry about Mickey.”

“Understood,” I said.

“This flash drive that Mickey said was on the outside,” she said. “You, ah…you don’t have any idea where it is? Who has it?”

I shook my head silently.

She bit her lip, looking distressed. “Shit. That’s…unfortunate.”

“Yeah,” I said, forcefully. “That puts me back to zero.”

“What would it take to make you forgive me?”

Oh, come on. No hot girl could ask a normal, functioning, straight man a question like that without the obvious crass answer flashing through his mind like neon.

Which, of course, immediately transmitted to her brain. I saw it in her eyes.

“I actually wasn’t suggesting sex,” she said, her voice chilly. “I was thinking in terms of joining forces, helping each other. Working as a team.”

“Then you weren’t thinking at all,” I said mercilessly. “You were dreaming. I’m unloading you the first second I can do it in a way that I judge to be safe. Which is tricky right now, but when I do pull it off, I suggest you hole up and wait this thing out. These guys play rough, and you don’t have the training to take them on. You should know that after what happened today.”

“I can’t stand down,” she said. “It’s killing me.”

“Oh, so you want to die quicker, then?”

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