Page 34 of Bought

“Uhm, just before I get in…”

Jack sighs, reaches into the glovebox, and pulls out a fucking gun. Suddenly I realize how stupid I am. I am alone. On a dark road. There are no security people here. And now Jack Ford has a gun on me.

“Get in.”

There’s something about the barrel of a gun that hypnotizes and sedates. I find my brain moving so much slower than it should. The options for escape, which I know must be there, don’t present themselves to me.

“Get. In,” he repeats. The order doesn’t seem to be coming from him. It seems to be coming from the gun itself—and there’s no arguing with a gun. I get into the car, knowing I have probably made the very last mistake in a long line of mistakes.

Jack accelerates away from the house, and as Ethan’s mansion recedes into darkness, so does any and all hope.

“Where are you going to take me?”

“Away,” Jack says. “Somewhere you won’t be a problem.”

“Like, Russia?”

He snorts. “Don’t have to go that far.”

I’m not the best with directions, but it’s obvious we’re not heading into the city. We’re heading away from it, further into the hills. My stomach twists.

“Jack…”

“Hm?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

Jack’s silver gaze slices over to me. “Someone always dies in the end.”

Jesus. Christ. I have never felt fear like this. Jack frightens me to my core. He’s not like Ethan. He’s far worse. Ethan twists the world to his will. Jack carves through anything that doesn’t suit him, and I know I don’t suit him. He hasn’t liked me from the moment he met me.

We are getting deeper and deeper into wooded territory. I am nauseous with fear. I wish I was back in bed with Ethan. Hell, I wish I was back tied up in his house, being punished with the cane. I would rather be anywhere on Earth with anyone else than where I am now with Jack Ford.

“That phone…”

“Yes, I made sure you got it,” Jack smirks. “Ethan likes to pay people off, but he forgets that someone who is willing to be paid by one man is willing to be paid even more by another man. Notice an absence of guards tonight?”

“Yeah…”

“Mhm. Though it took you long enough to take that phone. I had that guard leave it a bunch of places before you finally took the bait. And then you called the fucking FBI,” Jack snorts with dour laughter. “Best and most stupid thing you could have done.”

“Not the most stupid,” I murmur under my breath. The most stupid thing I ever did was walking into Vipyr and thinking I could make a difference.

“You have the kind of stupidity smart people always have,” he says. “You think in logic. But logic is hyper-fallible if you don’t have all the data, and you don’t have nearly enough information on what you’re wrapped up in. Vipyr isn’t a software company at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“You’re going to do that anyway.”

Jack muses on that as he sends the car flying around a bend on the mountain road. I hear the tires scrambling at the gravel, losing traction and then finding it again. He’s going to kill both of us before he kills me at this rate.

“You’re probably right,” he says as we straighten out again. “Vipyr offers software downloads, but we’ve been meshed into the DOD and several federal agencies for years now. We make most of our money via government contracts nowadays. And the data we collect, it’s used to ensure the safety of the populace. So we’re the good guys.”

He looks over at me and flashes a wide, manic grin that terrifies me more than the fact we’re speeding up the side of a mountain in the middle of the night, more than the fact that I am going to die soon. Jack Ford is utterly unhinged.

“It’s boring, being the good guy,” he complains as the car fishtails around another bend. “Ethan likes it. Has a fascination with discipline, doing the right thing. He would never tell you the classified secrets behind what you found, because he knew that would make you even more of a liability. So he tried to turn you into his perfect little fuck doll instead. But you didn’t want that either. Could have had it all, Casey. Could have had his babies. But you wanted to out him. Because you think he’s the bad guy.”

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