Primal Bargains

by Raleigh Davis

  My phone vibrates in my hand, a notification I’ve never seen before popping up. “Custom security mode activated,” it tells me.

  “What the hell?” I demand. “This was all a trick—

  He cuts me off with a curt chop of his hand. “Access to the camera and voice recorder has been disabled. Along with internet access. You can still call and make calls. But that’s it.”

  For a moment I’m tempted to turn the screen fully on him, bathing him in the light. It would be the fastest, most satisfying way to push him off his guard. Instead, I scroll through my app screen. Every square is grayed out except for the phone icon. I punch at a few, but nothing happens.

  When I call up the phone app, it responds though. I immediately call Victoria again since it’s the last call in the list.

  “What happened?” she asks. “I can come get you.”

  I never look away from the shadow watching me. “It’s okay. I accidentally dialed you. I might not have email access while I’m here—call if you need anything.”

  “Okay.” There’s a too-long pause. “Tess, seriously—”

  “Bye. Talk to you soon.” I hang up before Victoria can start again.

  The shadow with me remains silent. He proved his power and skill, so why would he need to speak? In less than ten minutes, he’s gotten me entirely under his thumb.

  “If you can do all this,” I say slowly, “you don’t need me.”

  “But I do.” His voice is so quiet it ghosts over my skin. He gestures to something, and then Rustem is opening the door. I have no idea how he knew to come in. And not enough light is coming through the door to see Wolfe’s face, damn it. “One last thing.”

  “What, you want my firstborn now?” I might have agreed to the job, but I’m not going to cower when he speaks.

  “No.” There’s a smile in his voice, but then it’s gone. “The second floor is off-limits.”

  Okay, now that’s completely unreasonable. “I can’t install security if I can’t go into that part of the house. It’s impossible.”

  “Figure it out.” He’s so arrogant and unconcerned I want to scream. “Seriously, I catch you upstairs and…”

  The emptiness he puts into that silence scares me more than anything else that’s happened today.

  Chapter 3

  “Her staying here wasn’t part of the plan.”

  I don’t look up at Rustem’s words, keeping my focus on the laptop open on my desk. “I had to change the plan.”

  Rustem doesn’t know it, but the plan is more of a… set of guidelines. Fluid. Evolving.

  “You don’t have a plan,” he says.

  Okay, maybe Rustem suspects more than I thought. I spread my hands. “I don’t know if you noticed, but shit’s been fucked up around here.”

  He gives a pointed stare to the smashed security panel. “Everything looks normal to me.”

  His argument isn’t lost on me. Okay, so I have a temper. I’ve never taken it out on anyone, but sometimes when I’m alone and things… malfunction, I start yelling. And sometimes punching things. But never people.

  Mostly I growl. I’ll admit to being a growler, which is perfectly acceptable to do to people who are fucking up. I didn’t get to where I am by letting fuckups slide. Which gave me a reputation as a beastly boss.

  When I realized that my top-of-the-line, insanely expensive security system wasn’t worth shit—when I saw what I almost lost—I let my temper run wild. All the panels got caught up in it, but they were worthless anyway.

  Having two broken fingers and I don’t know how many broken ribs isn’t helping my mood either.

  “Where is she now?” I ask.

  Gulizar answers before Rustem can. “I don’t know. The panels in all rooms except this office and your bedroom are offline.”

  I sigh and pinch my nose. “I swear to God, I’m going to deactivate you.” When I programmed the home control system, I’d thought to give it just a touch of personality. Something to make it sound human. And then the AI took off on its own and gave me Gulizar, who never misses an opportunity to remind me that I smashed her precious panels. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, and I don’t know why I didn’t deactivate her everywhere. It’s not like hearing her voice from the ceiling is a comfort or anything.

  “She’s in the cottage,” Rustem says. “Making a list of everything I have to pick up for her.”

  Great, now Rustem is joining in. “She’ll get everything back to normal,” I say. “Or better than normal.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  I am. It’s a small company, but she knows her shit. She came highly recommended, and when I looked over her plans, I couldn’t find any flaws.

  I couldn’t find any flaws in her either. She was wearing a polo shirt and work pants, her hair up in a simple ponytail. Nothing about her should have been compelling, but goddamn if she wasn’t. Those clothes did nothing to hide her curves and the way she looked at me—open, honest, like she wasn’t a bit afraid. But her eyes were too wide, her mouth too soft to be anywhere near tough.

  I can’t get her out of my head. Which, yeah, might be part of why I forced her to stay here.

  I also need her security system. I could have gone to Gage, had him put something in since he’s the expert, but I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I couldn’t trust anyone. Even my oldest and closest friends. After what happened… It could’ve been any of them. And whoever it was is going to try again.

  If the intruder was looking for what I think they were, one of my best friends has to be behind it. No one else knows the thing exists. My chest throbs with the ache that hasn’t left me since the break-in. I’d suspect my sternum got cracked or bruised too, but the twinge only happens when I ponder who must have betrayed me.

  “She has to stay here because I don’t trust her,” I say. “I need a new system put in, and someone has to do it. Once she’s done, she’s out.”

  “Are you going to kill her and entomb her with you just to be certain?”

  I stare at Rustem. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when he’s making a joke. The man could teach deadpan to a cast-iron skillet. “No. She’ll get her money, sign an airtight NDA, and we’ll keep watching her.”

  Rustem raises his eyebrows at my tone. “Until when?”

  “Until this is over.”

  “Which it might never be. You’re assuming whoever broke in is going to reveal themselves.”

  “No, I know it.” If it was one of the guys, they’re for sure coming again. We don’t give up until we get what we want. That attitude didn’t serve us well when we were all a bunch of teenage punks, but once we channeled that force into making money, we were unstoppable. We directed it together, helping each other even though we had our own companies and interests. It was all for one and one for all. And we never breathed a word about what really bound us together, deep down.

  Rustem doesn’t know I suspect them though. He thinks I’m just paranoid. He doesn’t know what the intruder was really after.

  “She isn’t happy.” Rustem crosses his arms. He’s not pleased about the change in plans. He’s also secretly softhearted under that dark suit and wrestler’s build. He feeds kittens and rescues puppies. Not that he’d ever let anyone know about it.

  I don’t feed or rescue anything. Kitties and puppies and kids run away from me.

  “She doesn’t have to be happy.” I shift in my chair, groan when my ribs catch. The intruder got in a couple of good punches when I grabbed them, but what really fucked me up was falling down the stairs. I couldn’t go to the doctor—no one could know how serious the break-in had been—so I had to grit my way through the police visit, wave off the ambulance, and then have Rustem splint my fingers and wrap my ribs.

  Everything in me fucking throbs, even a week later. Seeing Tess Robards made other places throb too, in a good way. Or at least it would have been good if everything wasn’t a shit storm.

  She was way too attractive. I wasn’t expecting that. Sh
e was dressed in awful clothes—work clothes—but put her in something decent, something that would hug those curves harder than a Formula One car in a turn, and she’d be a killer. And that mouth, the way it wrapped around all that defiance she spit at me…

  She wasn’t scared of the dark either. When I told her she had to stay, then she panicked. But she recovered quickly. So quickly it made me want to test her in other ways. Sexier ways.

  “You can make it easier for her,” Rustem says. “Maybe be just a touch nicer?”

  “She seems very nice,” Gulizar puts in.

  I ignore Gulizar, because what would a computer know about nice? She only knows what I’ve programmed into her, and I’m definitely not nice.

  I look back at the laptop. “I won’t though.” If she leaves here hating me, I don’t care. The more she hates me, the farther away she’ll keep herself. That suits me just fine. I don’t need some curvaceous beauty entangling herself in my shit show. Even if I did force her to stay very, very close to me.

  My phone rings then, loud and annoying. Rustem and I both stare at it.

  “Cassian is calling,” Gulizar announces since she’s connected to the operating system on my phone. I swear she says it gleefully, which is impossible.

  I groan. I can’t ignore Cassian even if I want to. I’ve been hiding away from the world for almost a month now, but I can’t hide away from the guys forever. Especially if one of them is behind all this.

  My turning into a hermit hasn’t lured the intruder back. So maybe it’s time to pretend that everything is fine and I have no clue one of them is behind this.

  Like I said, the plan is fluid.

  I hit the Answer button and turn on the speakerphone.

  “You asshole,” I say. “I told you I’m on a deadline.”

  That isn’t entirely a lie. In three weeks I have to attend the opening of a surgical department my company sponsored. Our equipment is going inside state-of-the-art medical machinery guided by the most highly developed AI to help surgeons slice into brains. It’s pretty much everything I’ve been working for since I dropped out of med school. The department looks like the crowning achievement of my impressive rise to fame and wealth, but only I know what it really is: a massive fuck-you to my parents.

  “I love you too.” Cassian makes kissy noises. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  I look out the window at the sweep of lawn leading down to the meditation pavilion. The landscaper thought it would be cute. I didn’t give a shit, so I let her do whatever she wanted, which is why there’re also several statues and a labyrinth.

  I chased the intruder all the way to that pavilion. Then they disappeared into the darkness. I never found another hint of them out there. And then the cops and the whole circus came out and that was that.

  “You know where I am.” In my house, where I can guard the safe twenty-four seven. Where I’ll stay until this intruder shows themselves and I can deal with them.

  “Are you ready to talk about what happened?” Cassian asks. I can’t tell if he’s concerned or if there’s something deeper. I fucking hate that I have to search his tone at all.

  When I launched Wolfe Medical Industries, Cassian was the one who did all the branding. I didn’t know shit about it, and it turned out that simply walking up to doctors at medical conferences and telling them how great my tech was didn’t actually sell anything. They wanted slickness. They wanted to be sold to.

  Cassian helped me with that. And when he needed help dealing with a rival who was determined to crush him before he could even get started, I reverse engineered the rival’s ad software.

  My chest throbs, hard.

  “No.” I force my voice to soften into something more casual. “Because nothing really happened. Some wacko tried to get into the house. I chased them off; nothing was taken. End of story.”

  “Which is why you haven’t left the house since then. And why nobody’s seen you in public.”

  “You’ve seen me. I promise I don’t look that different.”

  “We don’t count,” Cassian says softly. “I don’t give a fuck what you look like.”

  “That’s very comforting,” I say dryly.

  Cassian doesn’t laugh, which isn’t usual for him. Not that he’s lighthearted, except he usually runs more toward black humor. Like “look at how fucked up this world is, isn’t it funny?”

  He doesn’t give a fuck about anything, and he comes at everything from a deep, deep well of cynicism. Which is why he founded a marketing company, one of the biggest in Silicon Valley. They say he could sell ice in the Arctic, and moreover, he’d also try just for fun. Only someone who believed deeply everyone else is as self-interested and misanthropic as he is would do that.

  I used to think he cared about us though. Me, Gage, Archer, and Bishop. The messed-up kids who came up together and somehow achieved all their wildest dreams—and shared the same awful, secret nightmare.

  After this break-in, I’m not so sure. Maybe Cassian’s decided he actually doesn’t give a shit about us. Maybe he’s decided to just fucking blow it all up and snatch what he can.

  “Something’s changed,” Cassian says. “You keep saying nothing happened, but you’re shook.”

  I’m so glad he can’t see my face. Cassian might also be a once-in-a-lifetime marketer because he reads people so well.

  “I don’t get shook,” I say between my teeth.

  There’s a significant pause on his end. “You sure they weren’t after anything in particular?”

  He’s getting at something. I go very still, very alert, but keep my voice expressionless. “I wouldn’t know. They ran off before I could question them.”

  “Huh.” I hear his teeth click. “They didn’t try to go for the notebook, did they?”

  Shit. He’s just coming right out with it. If it was him, this is pretty fucking ballsy. He must be trying to feel me out.

  Or maybe it wasn’t him and he’s genuinely curious. The full-frontal attack isn’t really Cassian’s style, but he could be pulling a misdirection here.

  I rub my temples. Fuck, now even my head aches.

  “The notebook is perfectly safe.” I tell him to drop it with my cold tone. Let’s see if he actually does.

  He doesn’t. “Did you ever think about opening it? Not yours, obviously, but the other one.”

  I’m horrified at the very suggestion. “It’s Tynan’s. Not mine.”

  “But he’s dead.” Cassian says it right out because he never does give a fuck. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  I feel like someone’s walking over my grave. “They never found a body.”

  “Come on, man, the car went off a cliff into the ocean. Anything could’ve happened to his body. Sharks. Currents.”

  “They found Ira.”

  We both go quiet with the heaviness that comes whenever his name is invoked. Our shared guilt, I suppose. We all still talk about him but always with that heaviness.

  We almost never talk about Tynan.

  “Yeah, well,” Cassian finally says. “You should come to Archer’s next Saturday. You can’t hang out with just Rustem forever. You’ll turn as surly as he is.”

  The joke is, I’m actually surlier. Rustem is the sunshine in our pair.

  “I’ll think about it.” If he’s trying to lure me out of the house, it won’t work. But I can’t keep avoiding them forever, not if I want to keep up the pretense that I don’t suspect them.

  Tess needs to get this security system in. And it needs to be everything she promised. I’m playing a dangerous game here, and everything is riding on her.

  So no, I’m not letting her out of my reach any more than I’m letting that notebook out. The stakes are too high for me to release my grasp on either of them.

  Chapter 4

  The in-law unit is more than an in-law—it’s an entire house, bigger than the one I grew up in. Definitely bigger than the house my parents live in now.

  Big or not, it’s still a priso
n, and whatever luxurious amenities are here—like the four-way showerhead, the deck with an entire outdoor kitchen, and even a mini movie theater—can’t fully hide the fact. There’s a TV and some books but nothing that looks too interesting. I’ll have to see if Victoria can slip me my knitting needles and yarns through Rustem. Maybe we can pass them off as essential tools. Certainly knitting fuzzy scarves and shrugs and mittens keeps me sane.

  I’ll deal with that when I call Victoria. The fridge is fully stocked, so I grab a soda and sit on the sofa to call my parents.

  “Hi, baby,” Mom says when she answers. Her tone is gray, washed out, like it has been for months now.

  “Mom.” Even though I’m trapped here, I can’t help but be excited. “I have the best news.”

  “Oh yeah?” She sounds tired. So damn tired.

  “I’ve got this new contract. And Mom… It’s enough to pay off the mortgage. And the legal fees. And my student loans.”

  She doesn’t shout with excitement or gasp or do… anything. It’s just quiet.

  “Oh honey,” she says finally. Just as gray as ever.

  I don’t understand. “This is really good, Mom. Seriously. It’s everything we ever hoped for.”

  “You should keep the money, sweetie. Not give it to us.”

  There’s something she’s not telling me. I can hear it lurking in the fog of her tone. “What happened? And please don’t tell me nothing.”

  Mom sighs. “We didn’t want to have to tell you. You already worry so much.”

  My heart crashes into my stomach and gets tangled with it. “Oh no. Oh no.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Mom rushes to say. She always does this, always tries to make it sound okay—but it’s not. And if I don’t help, who will?

  “It sounds pretty bad.”

  “Well…” She draws that out. “Nick took Elena back to court.”

  Nick is Elena’s former business partner and her ex-husband. Both the marriage and the business split apart spectacularly, and whenever Nick gets a bug up his ass and wants to strike out at Elena, he files a bullshit lawsuit about custody arrangements or what’s left of the business assets. And he usually gets a bug up his ass if he’s heard Elena is dating again or just generally enjoying life.