Page 87 of Master of Lies

“Nope. He hadn’t seen me in years. And I was dressed, ah…differently.”

“Differently how?” Ethan’s voice changed.

“What does it matter?” I snapped. “He didn’t know it was me. End of story.”

“That’s batshit, in addition to stupid,” he said. “So let me get this straight. He starts a prison riot after getting this poor guy chopped up in the bathroom, cuts through an electric fence, and comes to your hotel to defend you from Boer’s goons. And then he drags you off to a secluded cabin, to what purpose? And he’s still thinking you’re an airhead piece of easy ass who gets off on felons who are doing hard time. Right?”

I was too flustered to think of a good comeback. “Ahhh…”

“What happened in the cabin, Frey? Did he fuck you?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. “I, ah…”

“Goddamn him,” he hissed. “That piece of shit. I’ll kill him. No. First, I’ll hurt him. Then I’ll kill him.”

“No,” I said sharply. “You will do no such thing. It’s not like that.”

“Yeah? How is it, then?”

“I came on to him,” I told him. “I made the moves. Not him.”

“Oh, I bet he put up a big fucking fight,” Ethan fumed. “What he did can’t be defended. But you? Damn, I know you’re stubborn and independent and wired up kind of strangely. But I really never took you for a brainless slut.”

That stung, but I pushed it away. No time to get my little feelings hurt. “It’s not like that,” I repeated, through clenched teeth. “We’re together.”

“Define together,” he said harshly. “You mean, still fucking?”

“Together forever,” I blurted out. “For real. In love.”

Ethan was silent for several horrified seconds. “Oh God,” he muttered. “This is worse than I thought. He’s brainwashed you. You’ve lost touch with reality.”

“And you’re not paying attention,” I said impatiently. “Who I’m fucking or not fucking is irrelevant. Jed and I are trying to pin down Boer, and I’m trying to loop you in. Do you want to participate? Or do you want to keep rolling on the rug and throwing your tantrum? I can just hang up right now. The only reason I haven’t is Shane.”

Ethan was silent for a minute, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer.

“Hey,” he said. “Frey. I know how much you miss him. How badly you want to find him. And I didn’t want to tell you this, because I don’t have any hard proof yet, and I don’t want it to be true. But there’s no reason to think Shane isn’t dead. And there are a fuck-ton of reasons to think that he probably is.”

That was a slam to the gut. I flopped down hard on the bed, hoping I wouldn’t have to race into the bathroom to vomit.

I finally managed to get the words out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how to say it.” His voice was bleak. “I tried, but something always stopped me. I just didn’t know what to say. Not to you, or to Holly. I was waiting for more solid proof, but I guess it was just an excuse not to face up to it.”

Tears streamed out of my eyes, so I pressed my sleeve to my face. I didn’t want to burble soggily when I spoke to him. “So, how did you come to that conclusion?”

“The dummy code. Our security protocol. There’s an eight step process to find SmokeScreen on the dark web. And an alternate dummy code, just in case.”

I gave up and went looking for tissue to soak up the tears. “How does it work?”

“We hypothesized a situation in which the user is being coerced into handing over control of the algorithm,” Ethan said. “Say, someone’s torturing a loved one right in front of you, etc., etc. So I wrote two different modalities. There’s the straightforward one, where you freely use SmokeScreen’s capabilities, and the other one, which has a different but equally complex access code. It appears to open up the algorithm, and it appears to function normally, but it also gives the prime user, in this case me, full access to the computer of whoever’s running the program.”

“I see,” I said. “So, if Shane had been compelled to open the algorithm, you would’ve known instantly where he was, and been able to hack his computer.”

“Yes,” Ethan said. “I would’ve been crawling down those motherfuckers’ throats instantly.”

“But…he hasn’t.”

“No. I’ve been waiting, and hoping, and so far, nothing. He hasn’t opened up that security hole for me to jump through and save him, and the two of us designed it together. I can’t think of any reason on earth he wouldn’t reach out to contact me with the dummy code. Except for the one, awful reason. The one I don’t want to accept.”

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