Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) (10 page)

 
I look from Kylie to Bridget. From Bridget to Kylie.
 

“Take your time, Daniel,” Kylie purrs.
 

There’s a knock at the Great Room door. It’s a strange sound because it’s a common space through which everyone comes and goes. The doors can be closed; that’s how Bridget and I had our encounter in front of Kat. But knocking? It’s so odd. And, in fact, as our eyes all follow the sound — including Bridget’s, and Kylie’s, surprised for once — something occurs to me. I’m sure the door we’re staring at was open when we entered, and that whoever’s there closed it in order to properly knock.
 

“Come in?” Trevor says in what sounds like a confused question.
 

The door opens to Caspian White. As always, he looks clipped from a
GQ
photo shoot.
 

Kylie’s male equivalent. The ego to her id, or the id to her ego.
 

Shit
. I knew it was an unforgivable idea to let him come, let alone find his other half. If Kylie completes Caspian White, we might end up with a bomb.
 

Without waiting for an invitation, Caspian takes a few steps forward. His eyes flick over the assembly: Tony holding a suddenly stilled, fearful-eyed Bridget, Kylie on the couch with her bloody nose and blackening eye beside Richard, Jessica cowering, Trevor and I in the middle, either impotent or confused. Then he raises his left hand to his waist, bends his elbow, and uses his right fingers to deftly straighten his perfectly starched shirt cuff.
 

Placid, he says, “I forgot to give Kylie her test.”

Then, a beat of silence. There’s little he could have said that would have struck me as more absurd. But now he’s patiently standing there, as if we’ve all been waiting for the games to continue — instead of bringing blood, talking matters of life and death and espionage and betrayal.

Kylie smirks. “I think we all know you’re not going to give me any test.”
 

I imagine this will elicit anger from Caspian, but he gives a small laugh.
 

“Oh, of course
I
won’t test you.” He gestures to the doorway behind him. “I’d like my friends Mikhail and Vyacheslav to do it instead.”
 

I follow Caspian’s gesture and see two men enter the room — one large and the other thin, both with expressionless Slavic faces.

As the two Russians escort Kylie out of the room, through the foyer, and out the front door to a waiting car, no one breathes a word.

Not even Kylie.
 

CHAPTER TWELVE

Only in the aftermath do I finally meet Sammy — the man who’s apparently been slipping envelopes under my door, inviting and instructing me toward this and that. Out of all the peripheral staff — those not hired to have sex with all comers — Sammy is the only name I’ve heard more than once. He’s the only single-serving helper who isn’t single-serving. Maybe the only masochist crazy enough to stay here rather than serve once and run away screaming.
 

Sammy isn’t what I expect. He’s
maybe
eighteen. Overweight. Shy. He seems as out of place and awkward here as a young man named Gerald Daniel Rice once seemed at Lake Wanasee, before he became the god he is today.
 

“Shh,” he tells me as the room shifts, not knowing what to do with itself. I felt Tony release me a while ago, but my hair is still in my face. My eyes are still wet. I recall all that’s happened and remember nothing.

“Shh,” Sammy says. “This will make you feel better.”
 

I don’t think I’m being loud, in need of shushing. And I don’t think I feel bad. But isn’t that what they say happens with car accident victims: that they’ll sometimes walk away feeling fine, and only realize later that they’ve broken ten bones?
 

My fear feels like shock. I don’t care about the wasted money. I care about all the people who will now know exactly where to find Linda Fiori, and the inevitability that the wrong person will discover her whereabouts. Or be told directly, if I know Kylie at all.
 

But there was something about Kylie that changed things. It’s all so confusing.
 

“Please,” Sammy says, raising the tray and its cargo as if I might not have understood.
 

“You’re a good kid, Sammy.”
 

Sammy’s response is rote and without feeling: “Thank you, Miss Miller.”
 

Only he doesn’t say “Miss,” not really. He kind of slurs it toward “Mrs.” because I guess nobody taught him the difference. “Mrs. Miller is my mother,” I say, trying the joke I’ve often heard from middle-aged men, the genders reversed. But it’s a lie. Mrs. Miller was just the one who let me take her name, as if I was part of her family rather than something closer to a pet.

Sammy offers me pills, and I take them, sipping water from a small metal cup.
 

I sleep.
 

Just as the scene before my chemical nap blurs in fear and anger and panic, so does the handful of minutes preceding the nap itself. I don’t remember those minutes when my eyes finally open. For all I know, I fell asleep the moment I swallowed those pills, right there in the Great Room. For all I know, I had to be carried up here to my bedroom.
 

My bedroom.
 

I let the words play a few loops in my mind as I blink awake. The sun is strong through the thin draperies, but the angle is odd, like I’m waking at the wrong time of day. I’m slow to gather my bearings. I don’t like to nap; it throws off my sense of reality. Seeing those strange sunbeams makes me feel weightless.
 

But:
my bedroom.
 

It is. For better or worse, this is my bedroom and has been for months. I’ve paid the thinnest of lip service to letting Brandon and meaningless others know I’m okay, but the sad truth is I’m comfortable here. This horrible place must be where I belong. Just what I deserve.
 

The bed shifts farther down my legs, and I realize that someone has been sitting there all along. It’s taken me a full ten seconds to make sense of what I see, but now I do.

“I’m sorry. I woke you.”
 

Daniel.
 

It takes several tries to come up on my elbows. Apparently, I needed sleep, but my body didn’t agree until it was under. It’s funny: the pills were like Daniel, forcing me into something I wanted but wouldn’t allow myself to desire, or have.
 

“How’s your head?”
 

“My head? Why? What did Sammy give me?”
 

“It’s not the pills.” It takes me a moment to match his voice with emotion, but when I do, I realize it’s on the spectrum of embarrassment. “It’s the wall I accidentally smacked you into.”
 

“When?”
 

“When I carried you up here.”
 

“You hit my head on a wall?”

“It was Logan’s fault. He was grabbing Jessica’s ass, and I got distracted rounding a corner.”

Jessica
. So she came up here with him, Logan in tow.
 

“I can’t believe you ran me into something,” I say.
 

“I was trying to use you as a battering ram to hit Logan.”
 

“Hey, my head hurts here. That’s not funny.”
 

“It’s a little funny,” Daniel says.
 

I yawn. I sigh. I shift then sit up against the headboard. I realize I’m still in my clothes. My head is actually fine, despite what Daniel said he did. But every time I move my right arm, my hand throbs. I hold it up. My fingers seem larger than normal and slightly purple.
 

“It’s not broken,” Daniel says, looking at the hand. “Just bruised.”
 

“Did you ram that into a wall, too?”

“No, you rammed it into Kylie’s face.”
 

Kylie.
Shit, now I remember. The thought startles me upright, and I move to stand, but Daniel puts a pacifying hand on my chest.
 

“Stay put, Bridget. You’re going to be unsteady on your feet for a while.”
 

“But Kylie — ”

“Won’t bother you anymore.”
 

More comes back to me, arriving in dribs and drabs. The Russians. The car. Kylie being driven away like cargo.

“You don’t know her,” I say. Which is absurd because he selected her for this. He’s some sort of a psychology expert. If anyone can know someone like Kylie, it’s Daniel.
 

“I know Caspian White.”
 

“You told him what I said. What Kat said, about Kylie messing with his business in the Ukraine.”

Daniel makes an almost-laughing sound. It’s not much more than a sharp exhale. “I didn’t have to. He just knew.”
 

“What’s he going to do with her?”
 

“I think the question is what the Russian Mafia is going to do.”
 

The words are chilling. I turn away from the thought. I’m pretty sure Kylie would kill me without a thought if it suited her, and her actions might amount to murders in my family — and that’s assuming she only ratted out Linda rather than sending someone to do damage herself. Whatever she gets, it’ll be what she’s spent years sowing. But it’s an odd victory, and one I’d rather forget.

“Don’t worry. The Linda Fiori profile has been erased from LiveLyfe. As have all the posts on your page.”

“But people shared it. They thought it was good news, this friend of mine moving up in her life.”
 

“Expunged,” Daniel says.
 

“It’s on their pages, not mine. Other people’s LiveLyfe profiles.”
 

“Expunged,”
Daniel repeats.
 

“How?”
 

Daniel shrugs, but we both know the answer. There’s no official tie between GameStorming and LiveLyfe’s day-to-day operations, but there’s still one Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
 

“And before you say that people already saw the posts and know what was in them, I should tell you that I’ve spoken to Jenny. She’s a good soldier and wouldn’t reveal any details, seeing as she doesn’t know me — but I could tell she’s been contacted by someone else. A different fixer, maybe. A better one. And when you finally do hear from her and Linda again, I’m sure it won’t be from Plymouth, Michigan.”
 

“You took care of it? You found a way to make her disappear again?”
 

“Caspian did.”
 

My mouth is dry. It’s like Daniel isn’t speaking English.

“Why?”

“He doesn’t seem to like me much,” Daniel says. “But I can tell he’s taken a liking to you.”
 

“You warned me about that.”
 

“Not like that.” He shakes his head. “I thought it would be, and so did Trevor. But we were wrong. If I had to put a word to it and take a guess, I think Caspian was
fascinated
by you. Maybe he even
respected
you.”

“You were worried that he loved me.”
 

“I don’t think Caspian White is capable of love. Only obsession.”
 

“Then why isn’t he obsessed?”
 

“Perhaps it was something you did. Something you said.” But Daniel is looking slightly away, an uncomprehending frown on his face.
 

“What?” I prompt, knowing there’s more.
 

“Just something Trevor said.”
 

“What did Trevor say?”

“He thinks Caspian was never really a threat to you because … ”
 

I wait for him to finish, but I finally have to prompt, “Because … ?”

“Because he’s preoccupied with someone else.”

I let the thought settle. I find myself plucking at the bedsheets, searching for mental loose ends. Daniel speaks before I can, turning to face me as the topic obviously shifts, all that old disorder cleared away, Caspian and Kylie now figments of the past.
 

“Down to two,” he says. “Now it’s just you and Jessica.”

“I guess.”
 

I look down. I pick at the sheets. In theory, Daniel and I have moved on. Whatever he did, I guess I’ve forgiven him. But hearing her name on his lips makes me realize I’m not quite okay with things after all.
 

“So what now?”
 

“Now,” he says, “we cheat until you win.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I look up. At the corners of the room. At the walls. At every small object I’ve always thought might hide either camera or microphone.
 

“It’s okay” Daniel says. “We don’t have to worry about being watched anymore.”
 

“Why not? Did you turn off all of the cameras and mics?”
 

“No. We just found a way to work around them.”
 

Something in that statement pricks at me. Some wrong form of pronoun.
 

“We?”
I repeat.
 

“Jessica and I.”
 

There’s that name again. The distrust must show on my face because Daniel puts it in his hand and turns me so I’m looking into his eyes.
 

“You need to trust me, Bridget.”
 

“Trust,” I say, suddenly agitated. “You’re always asking for
trust
. But it’s just an excuse, isn’t it? Asking for my trust is a way of dressing up the truth that you won’t tell me anything. Why can’t you be honest, Daniel? If the goddamned cameras are off, why don’t you just tell me what I’m not supposed to know?”
 

“It’s — ”
 

“Complicated?”
 

Daniel’s lips press together, his sentence cut in half.
 

“Take pity on poor little stupid Bridget. Just tell me all this complicated big-brain stuff. Maybe I’ll surprise you. Even gorillas can learn sign language.”