MERCILESS

by Christy Reece

  “How so?”

  “He’s so authentically humble, almost as if he’s embarrassed by his brilliance. I can no more see him betraying his country than I can see myself doing so.”

  “And the hacking charge?”

  “He changed only one person’s grades, a girl he had a crush on. He did it to impress her.”

  “Ah, young love. So do you have a new suspect?”

  Her sigh held frustration. “No. While not all of them have the most pleasant of personalities, none of them strike me as being capable of doing something like this.”

  “Then let’s find the culprit.”

  * * *

  Not even bothering to hide her astonishment, Jules watched as Asher Drake set to work. A flurry of texts were followed by various phone calls in which he would mutter one or two words and then listen. She counted three different languages and at least a half-dozen dialects. She had known about his talents, his skills, and that he had a tremendous warren of connections throughout the world. But this was even more than she’d anticipated. He used his abilities with amazing efficiency and his contacts with forceful arrogance. She doubted people said no to him very often.

  Two hours and fourteen minutes later, he looked up with an odd gleam in his eyes. “Got her.”

  “Her?”

  “Libby Billings.”

  “But she’s the one who hired me. Why would she ask me to find the traitor when she’s the one?”

  “To throw everyone off.” He glanced down at his phone. “She knew there was going to be an inquiry. Their contract is up for renewal, and some questions were being asked. She agreed to hire an outside investigator.”

  “I don’t know if I should be insulted that she thought I wouldn’t be good enough to find the truth, or impressed that she had the gall to try to pull this off.”

  “I’d say this, like many things, was a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable.”

  At those words, Jules’s antenna went on high alert. She studied the man beside her with care. Had that been a veiled reference to her own deception, or was she being more paranoid than usual? Seeing nothing concerning in his expression, she dismissed her fears. Everything was going exactly as planned.

  His next words, lethal in their quietness, jarred her out of her self-congratulatory haze.

  “So, Jules, are you ready to tell me what this is really all about, or do you want to continue to play games?”

  Chapter Eight

  Watching her reaction closely, Ash took in her shock but saw no real guilt. A light flush of pink rose on her face, and her pupils dilated slightly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You disappoint me, Ms. Stone. I thought you would come up with a better response than that.”

  She blew out a shaky sigh, and he realized she was more upset than she let on. That knowledge both surprised and concerned him. He was usually better at reading people, but just in the brief few hours he had known her, she had fooled him several times.

  She gave a nervous, self-conscious little laugh. “What gave me away?”

  “The case, for one. My people found your traitor faster than yours simply because of the network we’ve created. You would have found her within a week.”

  She grimaced. “It took ten days. Most of the people I use are freelancers themselves. I had to get in line.”

  “So I just spent an afternoon discovering a criminal you’ve already identified?”

  “It was the only way I knew to get your attention. I knew you’d see past the ruse eventually…I didn’t expect you to catch on so soon, though.”

  “Then let’s stop playing games. Tell me the real reason I’m here.”

  “Very well. I want to work for OZ.”

  “And you thought lying to me was a good way to get a job? Tell me you’re not that naïve.”

  “Not naïve at all. I also wanted to see if you were as good as Kate described.”

  “So this was a test, a job interview of sorts?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Really? What gave me away?”

  “You’re too calm.”

  He couldn’t deny the anger, but it had less to do with being used and more to do with who had used him. He had thought they had a connection, and now he wondered if he’d seen what he wanted to see.

  He stood, gave an abrupt nod. “It’s been a while since I’ve been duped, so I’ll give you credit for that. I don’t play games and don’t associate with people who do. Goodbye, Ms. Stone.”

  “Mr. Drake…Ash…wait, please.”

  He was halfway to the door, but he stopped and turned. “One chance to change my mind. Use it wisely.”

  * * *

  Jules waited a second to gather her thoughts. Asher Drake wasn’t the kind of man who gave second chances. He definitely wouldn’t give her a third. She had made a complete mess of things. If she had told him the full truth, she wasn’t sure she could have screwed things up more than this. Believing she could play it her way without getting burned had been foolish.

  “I don’t trust easily.” She said the words haltingly, but no truer words had ever come from her mouth. “I wanted to…I needed to…” When had lying been so difficult? For the past ten years, that’s all she’d known. But this? This was different, so very different.

  “You needed to know if I’m as good as you were told.”

  He said it without an ounce of ego. He knew his worth—what he had and could accomplish. And miraculously, he had given her an out. She grabbed on to it gratefully. “Yes.”

  He headed back to her, his intent unclear until he stopped in front of her. Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her to her feet and brought her face within an inch of his. “Lie to me again, and you won’t like the consequences. Understand?”

  She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry she made only a strange sound in her throat that could have been a moan.

  He shook her lightly. “I’m waiting for an answer, Jules.”

  “Yes…okay. Again, I’m sorry. I won’t…”

  He let her go and stepped back. “I have some things I need to do. I’ll be back tonight at seven. We’ll have dinner, and you’ll answer all my questions. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  He walked out the door before she could come up with anything else to say. On one level, his high-handedness and arrogance were both insulting and off-putting. But she had reason to know that his arrogance was well earned, and she found she couldn’t hold on to an ounce of resentment about that. She had deceived him and deserved his wrath.

  She had created the ruse for two reasons. One, she wanted to see if what she’d been told was true. Was Asher Drake really that good? If not, she might have considered backing away and going about this a different way. What she had discovered in those hours of watching him work was that the intel she’d received was somewhat inaccurate. Asher Drake wasn’t just good at digging out secrets, he was a master.

  The second reason for the ruse was much more self-serving. She had wanted to watch him work. See him on a different level. Over the years, she had built him up in her mind. Would the reality live up to her imaginings? He had. So much more than she’d ever expected.

  Why hadn’t she been able to fool him as she could so many others? Was it because a part of her wanted him to know the truth? To go ahead and face the pain…get it out of the way? She’d never considered herself a masochist, but she was no stranger to self-flagellation. Was that the reason, or was there something more?

  If he found out the truth, everything could be ruined. She had worked too hard for this opportunity to screw things up now. Too much was riding on achieving her goals. She owed him this. She owed him much more, but this would have to do.

  * * *

  Ash stopped on the other side of the door and cursed softly. What was it about Jules Stone? With anyone else, he would’ve issued a carefully worded threat and been out the door without looking back. Instead, he’d given her another chance.

 
And she was still lying. Even as he’d told her he’d give her one more chance, he already knew that she wouldn’t tell him the full truth. She didn’t trust him. He understood that to a point. After what happened in Colombia, he’d trusted only a few. After Meg’s death, that number had shrunk to barely a handful.

  Whoever had hurt Jules had damaged her. He could identify with that, but that didn’t mean he’d give her a free pass.

  He should’ve called her out on her continued lies immediately, but the terror he’d glimpsed in her eyes had pierced something inside of him, so he’d relented. He detected no evil in her intent, only an extreme caution. And something else…dammit, what was she hiding?

  Ash headed to the elevator. He’d wait till he got to a secure phone before he called Kate and demanded to know more about the woman she’d sent to him. However, he had his own avenue he would pursue. And it was the best there was.

  He pounded out a brief, tersely worded text to the op center at OZ headquarters: Juliet Stone. Get me everything.

  Chapter Nine

  Ten minutes after Ash left her hotel room, a cellphone chimed. Every part of Jules’s body went stiff with tension. She’d placed the burner phone in the bottom drawer of the dresser, under a pile of clothing. Yes, to keep it hidden, but mostly because she didn’t want to hear from the only person who had the number.

  The call had come quicker than she had anticipated, and the timing sucked. Having Ash call her out on her lies had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. She desperately needed to regroup before her meeting tonight, settle her thoughts and repurpose her mission. She didn’t have time to play politics.

  Snatching the phone from its hiding place, Jules snapped out, “Diamond,” hoping the caller would get the message that this was not a good time to talk.

  “Hello, my dear. I understand you’ve made contact already. Good going.” The woman might have meant it as a compliment, but she made it sound like Jules had arranged a sleazy hookup.

  “How do you know I made contact?”

  “I have eyes and ears everywhere.”

  That was no surprise. Even though this woman had hired her, Jules knew she trusted few people, which was likely how she maintained her position.

  “Yes, we’ve met.”

  “And?”

  “And what? We’ve met. That’s it.”

  “He was in your hotel room for over two hours.”

  Jules closed her eyes. She had known she would be under surveillance, at least until Turner decided she could be trusted. But this? Even if she were legitimately working for the woman, this kind of scrutiny went way beyond acceptable.

  “Listen, you hired me to do a job. If I have to have a tail, and you continue to keep checking up on me, then I’m not the right person for this job. You need to find someone else.”

  Turner gave a huff of exasperation. “No one is impeding your job, Ms. Diamond. However, I have a lot on the line, and I—”

  “And you need to either trust me to do the job or find someone else. What’s it going to be?”

  Yes, she was sounding like a hard-ass, but that’s exactly the kind of person this woman respected. Jules had carefully cultivated her undercover persona. Hard-as-nails Jessie Diamond took no prisoners. Allowing the senator to bully and push her around without protest would be out of character.

  “Very well,” Turner conceded. “I’ll have my people return home. But you need to give me something. You were with him for several hours. You must have learned something.”

  Oh, she had learned a lot, but nothing Turner could know.

  “We’re just getting to know each other. He’s not going to share anything of value until he knows he can trust me.”

  “How are you going to get him to trust you? He trusts almost no one.”

  With good reason.

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “All right, but I’m paying you a lot of money to get what I need. Don’t disappoint me, Ms. Diamond. I’m not a person you want to cross.”

  “My reputation speaks for itself.”

  “Of course. So what’s next?”

  If the woman expected a daily briefing, she was going to be sorely disappointed. However, Jules gave her the next step, hoping to appease her.

  “I’m having dinner with him tonight.”

  “Then I won’t keep you. You’ll want to look your best for what comes next.”

  Even though the words had never actually been said, Jules knew her employer had no issues if she chose to sleep with Asher Drake to get the intel she needed. This woman’s opinion meant less than nothing to her, but she couldn’t let on that her agenda was in direct opposition to the reason she’d been hired. Her only option was to keep up the pretense until it was no longer necessary.

  “I’ll get back with you as soon as I have something to report.”

  She ended the call before the woman could respond. There was nothing more to say.

  Returning the phone to the drawer, Jules grabbed her running clothes. Her muscles were tense, almost bunched. She had known this would be a difficult assignment but hadn’t counted on how much it would cost her physically. The hotel had a decent gym, and she’d spent an hour there this morning. Bashing the boxing bag had helped release a lot of pent-up energy, but there was nothing like a run to work out her worries.

  She dressed quickly in thin sweats and her favorite running shoes and was out the door within five minutes. As she headed down the stairway, she gathered her hair into a thick ponytail. By the time she was outside, she was limber enough to start out at a quick pace.

  Turning left out of the hotel, she went toward the running path she’d discovered yesterday. Though there were several, she would have to take the shortest route today. Preparing for her dinner with Asher Drake would take more than her usual five-minute beauty regimen.

  Two minutes after leaving the hotel, she spotted her tail. Drake’s or her employer’s? Didn’t really matter at this point. She needed this run and refused to let anyone destroy her enjoyment. Stretching her long legs, Jules put on the speed.

  Running alongside the beautiful Danube was something she’d always wanted to do, and with each step, her worries lessened. It didn’t matter that her first meeting with Asher Drake hadn’t gone as planned. She had achieved what she’d wanted even earlier than expected. The fact that there was an attraction between them was an anomaly. It would pass.

  Asking him for a job had been in the back of her mind all along. She wasn’t impulsive, but she hadn’t known for sure she would ask until the words had come from her mouth. It just made sense. Working for OZ would give her the access to Drake that she needed, impressing Turner in the process. And the work would be fascinating.

  Once she’d accomplished her goals, she’d return home, to the life she’d built for herself. This was just a slight detour but would be so very worthwhile.

  Even though her mind zoomed with various issues and plans, she never lost her situational awareness. Those days were gone for good. She’d worked her ass off to become someone else. In both body and mind, she was a completely different person. Even the nightmares had retreated to only occasionally, when she was tired or emotionally overwrought. Just like everything else she didn’t want in her life, Jules battled them ruthlessly until they were almost nonexistent.

  Because of one horrific event, all her hopes and dreams had changed focus. While she could deeply regret the cause for that change, she could not regret the direction her life had taken. The choices she’d made weren’t the only ones she could have made. She could have gone in a thousand different directions, but her life and work suited who she was now.

  Did Asher Drake feel the same way? His work wasn’t completely different than before his life was torn apart, but how he went about it had definitely changed.

  Jules made her way back to the hotel, noting that her tail had given up on her. That told her that it had been Turner’s man and not one of OZ’s people.

  If the woman h
ad lied and still planned to have her watched, she would have to get even more blunt than she’d been earlier. Asher Drake would spot a tail even quicker than Jules. The last thing she needed was for the OZ leader to wonder why his potential new employee was being followed. If he caught the man, he’d extract information from him—of that she had no doubt. Drake was known to be a master of inquisition.

  Finding out Jules was working for one of Asher Drake’s biggest enemies would be a disaster of epic proportions.

  Chapter Ten

  Ash stood at the entrance to the restaurant, spotting Jules instantly. A half hour before their meeting time, he had texted her, asking that she meet him at the restaurant. Going up to her hotel room again was out. Until he knew her better, what she wanted from him, their meetings needed to be in public places. He still didn’t have a good grasp on Juliet Stone. He anticipated more lies at their dinner meeting.

  What he had learned in the last few hours intrigued him immensely. In fact, he could not remember ever being this fascinated. The question that simmered in his head the most, though, was why did she continue to lie? Her résumé was not only easily proven, it was quite impressive. So why the deceit?

  The instant she saw him, she gave him a quick, simple smile and stood to greet him.

  “I’m glad you suggested this restaurant,” she said. “The concierge at my hotel recommended it when I first arrived.”

  He waited until she’d settled back into her chair before sitting across from her. “I never miss the opportunity to come here when I’m in Budapest. They have the best goulash in the city.”

  “Do you come to Budapest often?”

  “On occasion. How about you?”

  “This is my first visit. I already know I want to return so I can explore.”

  “It’s a great city with an incredible history. Let me tell you about it.”

  Throughout their meal, Ash concentrated on entertaining his dining companion with interesting tidbits about the city. To anyone looking on, they appeared to be having a delightful and friendly dinner. Only he and Jules were aware of the undercurrents that were as taut as a piano wire.