Steal: A Bad Boy Romance (15 page)

I’ve got to get out of here.

My
entire body ached from the collision, but I had a job to do.

After
releasing my seatbelt and finding the door either locked or jammed shut, I
pulled myself through the shattered window.

“Oh,
my God, are you all right?” A young woman, no older than twenty, stood only a
few feet away. “I’m calling an ambulance and the police!”

It
took a second to realize why the woman was so close—the car had ridden up
onto the sidewalk, and there were people all around.

“You
should do that,” I agreed. Before she could ask anything else, I sprinted away.

“Hey!
Where are you going?”

To save Kat.

CHAPTER 21

~ K
AT
~

“You mean to say you grew up
with Alex Fisher?”

I
huffed. “Yes, that’s what I said. I didn’t know he was James, though. I hadn’t
seen him since we were fifteen!”

The
FBI agent squinted at me, as though he was trying to figure out if I was
handicapped, or just plain stupid. “You were friends with this guy until you
were fifteen, then didn’t see him at all, and now suddenly he’s back under a
new name, you’ve been dating him, but you didn’t know it was him?”

“Okay,
when you put it like that, then it sounds really stupid. He changed so much
though, and it had been so long. I mean, he was in the Marines! I’m just in
shock.”

Shock
was a mild word for it. My mind had been blown apart by the revelation, and it
still hadn’t pieced itself back together again. The questioning by federal
agents didn’t help my composure.

The
agent gave me a look. “Alex Fisher has never been in the Marines.”

My
jaw dropped—I tried to shut it, and I knew it looked ridiculous, but it
didn’t respond to my commands to close. “He wasn’t?”

“It’s
a
favorite
fiction of his when he’s establishing his
character. It gives him external authority to appeal to in order to win
someone’s trust.”

I
had nothing to say to that. Reality seemed so fluid.

How do I even know this man is
an FBI agent?

“Let’s
start at the beginning, then. When did you first meet Alex Fisher as an adult?”

It
still sounded weird, calling James by Alex’s name. They were such distinct
people in my mind, and I couldn’t connect the dots.

Couldn’t? Or don’t want to?

If
James really was Alex, then I’d have to face what that meant. He’d lied this
entire time, used me to get access to ARCANE, and probably would have
disappeared without a trace after pulling off… whatever it was he was doing.

“My
car broke down a few weeks ago, and James—sorry, Alex—helped me
start it again. He asked me out on a date after.”

The
agent wrote a note on his pad of paper. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

I
hadn’t had time to think about it, yet. “You don’t think he set that up, do
you?”

Even
as I spoke, I knew the truth. Reality set in.

“That’s
a possible scenario. It would fit his profile.”

That bastard orchestrated
everything. Every step along the way, I was the ignorant pawn helping him get
what he wanted. Just a tool to use.

The
agent made me walk though every interaction James and I had. Every date, every
phone call. Even more embarrassingly, every text in my phone between us. James
and I had clicked.
Really
clicked.
And we’d
sexted
so much that by the time we’d
finished scrolling through the messages, my face flushed with an intense heat,
and the agent had to adjust his seat a few times.

“Have
you ever let Mr. Fisher into the office?”

I
thought back to the time I worked late, and he’d surprised me. “Yes, but we
were together the whole time. It’s not like he could have done anything that
night.”

“There
wasn’t a moment that you went to the bathroom, or left him alone for a minute?
Any way for him to access the company’s network?”

I
squirmed in my seat as I recalled the way James had tied me down, blindfolded
me, and teased me mercilessly. I’d never left him alone, though.

“No,
he couldn’t have. We… well, we were getting busy in my office, actually.”

I
could still remember how overwhelming it had been to lie there, tied down and
blindfolded, music throbbing in my ears as the bullet vibe had worked its magic
between my legs and I waited desperately for James’ touch. The long minutes
before he finally ran his hands along my body.

Minutes…

“Wait.
That son of a bitch. He couldn’t have…”

The
agent cocked his head.

“He
may have had a chance. I don’t want to say any more—it’s embarrassing.
But yeah, he could have accessed the systems that night.”

I’m such an idiot.

I’d
thought James was finally the guy who wouldn’t turn out to be a manipulative
asshole. To be used so utterly and thoroughly made me feel like a wrinkled rag,
wrung out and filthy. Even the first time we’d had sex was simply a way for him
to further his agenda.

“And
today, it looks as though Alex entered the office using your key card, is that
right?”

I
sighed. “That sounds right. I couldn’t find it when I got to the building
today. If Nick hadn’t shown up, I would’ve had to turn around and go home.”

It would have been nice to get
to miss all this.
Listening to the
neighbor’s
loud music would
have been a much better way to spend the day.

The
agent probed for another half an hour, but when I repeated stories for the
third time, he finally halted the proceedings.

“It
looks like you’ve had the misfortune to being on the wrong side of Alex Fisher.
He’s extremely good at what he does, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about
the way he used you. I don’t see a reason to hold you unless something else
comes up in our sweep, and I’d like to thank you for your time and cooperation,
especially considering the content of our discussions.” His eyes flicked to my
phone momentarily, as though an involuntarily reflex.

“That’s
a relief.” I’d inadvertently helped James so much that they might have taken me
for an accomplice. “Is that everything you need from me?”

I
needed to lie down.

“We
will likely be in contact as we continue our investigations, so we would
appreciate it if you didn’t leave the city until further notice. Other than
that, you are free to go.”

Finally,
the ordeal was over. There was no more reason to stick around—Nick was
still being interviewed in his office, and I didn’t want to face him anyway.
Looking down the barrel of his gun was a sight I would never forget—I’d
never been so afraid in my life.

Numbness
spread across my brain, and my body operated on autopilot to get me to my car
and drive home. Even navigating around an accident scene on the way barely
registered. I didn’t want to think at all, because thinking meant confronting
the lie my life had been over the past few weeks.

It
felt like it should be night time, but the midday sun blazed overhead. The
vestiges of the morning’s hangover still pulsed at my temples, awakened by the
fierce light. Adrenaline from the encounter in the office faded away to leave a
worn out and used up feeling behind, like I’d run a marathon that morning.

The
first order of business upon getting home was to close all the blinds and
curtains in the apartment. Darkness fit my mood, and all I wanted was to fall
into bed and sleep. If I drifted into oblivion, then I could delay the
inevitable internal confrontation with what had happened.

Before
drifting off, I plugged my dead phone into the charger beside my bed.

Sleep
overtook me in hazy waves, dark dreams stealing across my mind and plunging me
into the very encounters I wanted to avoid.

James
appeared—or was it Alex?—an odd mixture of the boy he’d been and
the man he’d grown to become. Now I knew the connection, it was easier to see.
My best friend for the first half of my life stood before me as the lover I
craved.

“Why
did you do this to me? What did I do to deserve this cruel game?”

Dream
me reached out to James, only to have him crumble away, replaced with a dark
shadow holding a gun.

“No!
Don’t shoot me!”

I
sat bolt upright. My heart pounded as I pulled breath into my lungs in great
gasps.

Holy shit. It was just a dream.
You’re in bed. That’s it.

I
grabbed my phone to check the time—late afternoon. I’d only been asleep
for an hour.

There
were a few messages on different apps, including a work email from Nick.

Maybe it’s something about the
FBI investigation.

I
opened it, even though I didn’t want to have to confront what had happened just
yet, and especially not with Nick.

What the hell is this?

The
email wasn’t about the events that morning, or the investigation. It was just
Nick bragging about ARCANE. My eyes widened at the words.

I had the developers code a
backdoor so I could access anything I wanted through the encryption. They
didn’t want to do it, so I had to threaten them and promise to pay them a
massive bonus. Once they finished, I could tell they weren’t happy about it and
might have told someone. I couldn’t trust them to keep the secret about the
backdoor, so I took them on a team building trip hiking and “lost” them. It was
brilliant. You should have seen the look in their eyes when I did it.

Oh, my God.

Nick
was a genuine psychopath. Everyone at ARCANE knew that the original developers
of the ARCANE algorithms had disappeared before the company got off the ground,
but no one had any idea that Nick was responsible.

Why did he send me this?
He couldn’t have possibly wanted
me to have this information.

I
checked the time stamp on the email—ten in the morning.

That’s odd. I got to the office
at nine thirty.

With
my mind still fogged from sleep, it took a while before it made all the
connections.

James! He must have sent me this
email when Nick forced him back to the computer. That’s why it’s sent from
Nick’s address. It’s a warning.

I
stared at the email. Panic rose within me, and I made and discarded a dozen
plans in an instant.

The FBI needs to know this.

As
I jumped out of bed, still in the clothes I never bothered removing before my
nap, a tremendous crash echoed down the hall from the front door. Before I
could stop to think, my body led me to the hallway to see what caused the
noise.

The
front door stood wide open, sunlight streaming in around the silhouette of a
person. The darkness of the apartment from closing all the curtains and blinds
meant it was impossible to make out the features, but there was only one person
it could be.

“You.”
Nick’s cold voice rolled down the hall, the single word accusatory.
“Everything’s going to shit, and it’s all your fault.”

I
took a step backward, toward the kitchen. “Nick, what are you doing here?”

“I’ve
come to take revenge. You fucked up my company and my life. Everything was
going well until you brought that thief into the mix.”

He
stalked down the hallway, forcing me to retreat faster until I was at the far
side of the kitchen—there was nowhere else to run.

“Come
on, Nick. I didn't know who he was. He played me like he played you.”

Nick
was only ten feet away now, and away from the sunlight at the front door I
could make out his face. It was expressionless, the face of someone bored with
the world, but his eyes… his eyes were wild, maniacal.

“You
were supposed to be an easy office lay. Someone to suck my cock every day and
bend over the desk when I needed to take my frustrations out on someone.
Because of you, my life is ruined.”

His
hands flexed as though they wanted to grab and tear at something or someone.
His gun wasn’t visible.

Maybe the FBI confiscated it.
I spared no hope he didn’t
have another one. Then again, the way he looked at me suggested that he might
just throttle me to death with his bare hands.

“Nick,
don’t do anything to make this situation worse. So you were stolen from, so
what? Isn’t that what insurance is for? You’ll make the money back through
ARCANE.”

He
edged even closer. “I know you saw the email. What he sent you. I can’t let you
live with that knowledge.”

I
barely dared take my eyes off Nick, but I glanced around, desperately looking
for anything to use as a weapon. The kitchen knives were on a counter on the
opposite side of the room—the countertop I leaned against was bare.

Nick’s
face finally showed signs of life, but it wasn’t encouraging. A lecherous smirk
grew on his mouth and he looked at my body. “There’s no reason why I can’t
finally sample the goods you’ve been denying me all this time—before I
end things.”