Say It Again (First Wives)

by Catherine Bybee

  “Who is Jax?”

  “My roommate.”

  “You mean you had a friend? Did they allow that?”

  Claire glanced up at Cooper. “Ha, ha, very funny.” She leaned back over the gun, squeezed. Barbwire flapped in the sun. “Of course I have friends. Jax at the top of the list.”

  “Did she know you were going AWOL?”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t tell her. If she’d known and the headmistress found out, she’d be the one in trouble.”

  “There’s no way to get in touch with her?” Cooper asked.

  She fired off the remainder of her ammunition. “Like I said, no cell phones.”

  “No computer access?”

  “No . . . not . . . wait.” Claire put the gun down. “Yes. The senior computer room.”

  “The what?”

  She jumped from the dirt, swept most of it off her clothing. “Why didn’t I think of that before? The senior computer room. Jax and I played an online game. It was our only access to conversation with others off campus. Not that we told anyone who or where we were. We thought it would be the perfect covert way to talk to each other once she was out of high school. I planned on staying through college.” She looked at Cooper with a huge grin. “Of course. Unless Lodovica found the senior computer room, Jax will still have access and hello”—Claire hit Cooper midchest—“inside information.”

  Claire reached for the pistol, placed it in the back of her pants, and shouldered the rifles. “Gotta get online. It’s almost midnight at Richter. Which is when Jax would be at the senior computer if she can.”

  On a mission, Claire doubled her pace back to the war room. Once inside, she went straight to her station, ignoring the looks from the others in the room. She set the rifles on the ground next to her desk and started searching for her game.

  “She thinks she has a way to talk to a friend inside Richter via a video game,” Cooper announced to everyone.

  Claire saw Neil approach from the side.

  “We set up profiles in a game, secret names, closed group. So when one of us left the school, we could still keep in touch. We played along with two of last year’s seniors, but they bugged out six months ago.” Claire found the game and used her log-in information and waited for her profile to boot.

  “Loki?” Cooper asked.

  Claire nodded. “Jax is Yoda.” She pointed to a chat room. Read Jax’s last message and laughed. Where the hell did you go?

  “What language is that?” Cooper asked.

  “Our own.” Claire constructed her reply in her head, had to type it out three times before pressing send. “It’s like pig latin, only using German and Russian. Every other word is a different language and has the last vowel from the previous word. We thought it was clever.”

  Cooper nudged Neil. “Told you she was brilliant.”

  “Only if we get the spelling correct. Overkill if no one is looking.”

  “Magnificent if someone is,” Cooper praised.

  “I bet Sasha would crack the code in less than an hour.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  Claire sat back and waited for a reply. Not that there was any guarantee there would be one right away. Jax didn’t go into the senior computer room every day. None of them did. “I told her that the air on the outside was sweeter and asked if the flowers were in bloom.”

  “Code for lilies?” Neil asked.

  She laughed. “We have codes for everything.”

  Cooper looked at the screen. “Now what?”

  “We wait. If she responds without a code word, then we know she’s been found out.”

  AJ stretched out on the bed, a towel thrown over his lap. Noise from the bathroom told him Sasha was finished with her shower.

  The evening played over in his head. His father’s words, his mother’s emotions or lack thereof.

  Sasha.

  He was itchy. Where did he fit in? He was way over his head with Sasha and her group of friends. They helped people, AJ stole from them. They were noble . . . he was a fraud.

  “I’m proud of you.” His father’s words sounded in his head.

  No matter how far AJ dug, he couldn’t find one thing for his father to be proud of.

  Amelia had been the one to leave the nest with a decent job, a noble one. Analyst for the UN. Just saying that out loud sounded like something. She traveled the world and, like her father, worked diplomatically to help countries get clean water to the people. So simple, so taken for granted. Amelia had taken on the job as if she knew people who were dying from a lack of clean water.

  She’d been passionate about the position and never stopped yakking about it when they got together on the rare holiday that AJ bothered to visit.

  What the hell was his father proud of him for? Not getting caught stealing cars? Because he didn’t get taken out while jogging along a riverbank? Because AJ didn’t listen to him and never stepped foot in Richter outside of the day his sister graduated, and again when he insisted on an audience with the grand headmistress and all her bitchiness?

  AJ rubbed his face with the palms of both hands.

  He dropped them to find Sasha standing in the doorway, one of his shirts thrown over her shoulders and covering only the essentials.

  His cock stirred just looking at her. The action pissed him off.

  “What crawled up your ass?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that. You clammed up the minute we left the interstate.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Like what?”

  He sat up. “Nothing. Okay. I’m not a goddamn woman. I don’t want to talk about my feelings.” With his outburst, he tossed the towel to the side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He tugged the jeans on that were lying on the floor, zipped them up.

  He stared toward the door, needing to move.

  Sasha jumped in front of him.

  “Get out of my way, Sasha.”

  “Make me.”

  His breath came in short pants. “Move!”

  “Fuck you.”

  He grasped her shoulders, lifted her to the side, and opened the door.

  He made it three steps and she was there.

  “Where’re you going? Walking around Virginia without a shirt on in November is bound to capture attention.”

  “Do I look like I care?” he challenged.

  “No, you don’t.” She moved right up next to him. Chest to chest. “You look like you’re running from demons.” She pushed him. “This is why I work alone.” Another push. “This.”

  AJ stumbled back, held his ground.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on inside your head.”

  “Something you don’t know. I didn’t think that was possible.” He was picking a fight with the wrong person, knew it as the words were coming out of his mouth but couldn’t stop them.

  Her nose flared. He swore if he looked hard enough, he could see steam blowing out the top of her head.

  “You want to piss on me?” Her words were harsh, right in his face. “Pull it out and let it go, but you don’t have the luxury of running off half-dressed in the middle of the night because you’re having some kind of crisis. If you wanted to do that, it needed to happen before you followed me down a deserted road in the middle of Germany. We’re in this together, whether you like this or not.”

  His chest heaved.

  Her breath came in pants.

  Tempers cooled and Sasha drew her arms over herself.

  He realized then that she wore a T-shirt. Ass hanging out, bare legs.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  He reached for her.

  She flinched, backed up a step.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said, his voice soothing.

  She walked in front of him, looked over her shoulder.

  Back inside the fifty-dollar-a-night motel room, he closed the door behind him and locked it. He moved to the thermostat and turned it u
p.

  She stood between the bedroom and the bathroom, rested her hands on the door frame.

  “Sasha . . .”

  She held up a hand. “Save it.”

  An hour later, after they’d both crawled under the covers with a good foot of distance between them, AJ stared at the ceiling, completely aware that Sasha had yet to fall asleep. He found the words to say what he needed to. “The only redeemable thing I’ve ever done with my life is find you and chase down the truth behind my sister’s death.”

  She rolled onto her back, joined him in studying the stains above them.

  “I’m a politician’s son with a trust fund. I don’t have a respectable career or even a direction to follow to find one.”

  “You make it sound like you drive around in a Ferrari and treat people like crap.”

  “Not that extreme.”

  He heard Sasha exhale. “My biological father was a murderer, kidnapper, smuggler, I even found arms deals. He did drive around in the flashy car and eliminated anyone that got in his way, including my half brother. I, too, have a trust fund . . . of sorts. I don’t have a career either.”

  He twisted his head to look at her. “You work with Neil.”

  “No. I help Reed out. Reed works with Neil.”

  “You say tomato . . .”

  “We’re not all that different, AJ. I just have a slightly different skill set than you.”

  He hissed out a laugh. “Yeah, right. Half a dozen languages, mad computer skills, master of disguises. I haven’t seen you fight, but I heard you rival Catwoman.”

  That put a smile on her lips.

  “I’m not sorry I have the training I do. Not that it’s completely useful in the outside world unless I worked with someone like Pohl.”

  “Or Neil.”

  She sighed.

  “But you don’t like to stay in one place for long. Keep moving, avoid routine.”

  “Kept me alive so far.”

  “Keeps you alone,” he said. “What happens when no one is after you, Sasha?”

  She looked at him in the dark. “Apparently I return to my old school and run into trouble.”

  AJ rolled to his side, reached for her arm, and tucked her palm under his cheek. “I can’t be sorry about that. You’re the best thing that has happened to me in . . .” Forever.

  “See, this is why I work alone, why I don’t sleep with my lovers.”

  He kissed her fingers, tucked them away again. “What?”

  “Pillow talk. That’s what this is, right?”

  “Yes, that is indeed what this is.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, removed her hand from his, and rolled over on her side, offering her back. “We need an early start tomorrow.”

  He waited a good minute before rolling on his side, reaching around her waist, and pulling her up next to him.

  She froze but didn’t move away.

  It took a half an hour for her to thaw and sleep to settle in. AJ finally closed his eyes and allowed himself to join her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sasha walked out of the drugstore and dropped a package into the blue mailbox on the corner.

  AJ sat on the hood of the rental car, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

  She sat beside him and took the cup of coffee he offered. “Now what?” he asked.

  Sasha looked at her watch. “We find out whatever intel the team managed overnight.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ve overlooked something. Can’t help but think I need to get back into Richter.”

  “Impossible to break out of the place, how do you expect to break in?”

  She sipped her coffee, liked the rich flavor. “Underestimating me is never a safe bet, AJ.”

  “Wouldn’t that play right into their hands?”

  “Friends close and enemies closer.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  She was already working out how to get back into Germany without the Neil roadblock.

  Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. Texas.

  “Good morning.”

  “Ohh, someone is in a much better mood today. Did you get some last night?”

  Sasha rolled her eyes at Cooper’s question. “One of these days I’m going to kick your ass,” she warned him.

  “Sounds like a promise.”

  That made her smile. She motioned for AJ to get back in the car. “What do you have for us?”

  “Several things. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  She waited until they were inside the car with the doors closed and did the same with her phone so AJ could hear.

  “Okay, so it’s me, Neil, Claire . . . and Reed is dialed in.”

  “You a father yet?” Sasha asked once she heard Reed say hello.

  “I think you’re more anxious about it than I am,” he told her.

  “I doubt that,” she said.

  “AJ, you there?” Neil asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “Okay, first off, who is MJ Hofmann?”

  AJ stared at the phone. “My mother, why?”

  “Your mother was on the board of directors at Richter while your sister attended. The picture of your father and Pohl was taken at a directors’ gala and used as recruitment propaganda for other political figures to send their children to the school.”

  “How come I didn’t know this?”

  “Most of the names of the board members are initials and not easily traced. Several parents of attending students did come up in our research,” Reed told them.

  Sasha let the information sink in. “Did you find Alice Petrov’s name?”

  “We did, Sasha. But she used her maiden name.”

  “I’m not sure this is information that will help in any way, except to suggest that the Hofmanns knew some of the inner workings of Richter.”

  “Especially my mother,” AJ said.

  “Okay, Claire, you’re up,” Neil said.

  Claire’s voice was full of teenage cheer. “Hey, guys, you behaving out there?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Sasha teased her back.

  “Awesome. Okay, so remember the senior computer room?”

  “Of course.”

  “My friend Jax and I devised a way to talk inside a video game chat room so that when she left at the end of the year, I’d be able to keep in touch with her.”

  Sasha seemed to remember a few students during her time doing the same thing. “So you talked to Jax?”

  “Yup. She left a message, all code you know . . . in case Lodovica caught wind. Anyway, long story short, Richter isn’t just placing lilies in vases, they’re planting those things. Everyone was kept out of the dining hall for the entire day, said something about a contamination. A crew came in, wrapped it up like they were going to fumigate. When it came down and the trucks left, the stairwell to the lower levels was sealed off, walls up. It’s like it isn’t even there.”

  The magnitude of what Claire was telling her took the wind out of her lungs. “Something big went down.”

  “I know, right? I have a few questions out to Jax and need to wait for her to sneak away to answer. They’re on early curfew.”

  Sasha saw an even better reason to return to Germany.

  “You still there?” Cooper asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Someone went into Amelia’s condo last night. There was an obvious break in the feed the second the motion detector blipped on,” Cooper told them.

  “I take it you didn’t see a face.”

  “Not even a shadow. Whoever went in knew the camera was there, but they didn’t destroy it.”

  Sasha looked at AJ. “Guess that means we’re going back to DC.”

  “Smells like someone is flushing you out, Sasha,” Reed said.

  “I smell that, too. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Hey, AJ,” Reed said.

  “Yeah?”

  “We need you to visit Amelia’s coworkers while Sasha is at the condo.”

&
nbsp; “Why?”

  Sasha already knew the answer to that.

  “You’re not going to like it, but we need you to cooperate.”

  “The suspense is riveting. Spit it out.”

  Sasha looked him in the eye. “To keep you safe. If you’re inside a government building while I’m at the condo, then I don’t have to worry about anyone’s ass other than my own. If someone is watching and waiting to snag you to get to me . . .”

  The look on his face told her he didn’t like it.

  “You could always go to the local police station and ask to talk with the detective on the case, that’s an option, too,” Cooper suggested with a laugh.

  He hesitated.

  “You being there can get you both killed,” Neil said. “Your sister’s office or the police station. Those are your options.”

  “Amelia was hiding something, AJ. I think talking with her coworkers with that in mind might offer some kind of explanation.” Sasha wanted to give him a task.

  AJ wrenched the car door open. “Fine. But I don’t like it.”

  He stormed off and Sasha took the call off the speakerphone. “I have what I need. Neil, I need to talk to you privately.”

  Sasha stepped out of the car, waited for Neil to indicate he was the only one on the line.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I sent you a package. I need DNA testing.”

  “Do I need to ask who?”

  Sasha looked over her shoulder, saw AJ walking toward her. “I just need to know if they match.”

  “You got it.”

  She hung up the phone, tucked it away. “Ready?”

  AJ opened the passenger door, waved his hand for her to get in. “I’m driving.”

  Walking into a police station was not an option. Not that AJ had any indication that his activities in Florida would follow him to DC, but there was no way of knowing.

  A quick trip to a department store, and one thrown together suit later, AJ was exiting a taxi outside of the building where Amelia used to work. He’d called her boss, said he was only going to be in town for the day and really needed to talk.

  He was a little surprised he wasn’t met with some kind of excuse.

  While Sasha ditched the blonde wig and slid into Catwoman, AJ channeled his father’s diplomacy and walked into the office building and approached the security desk. After security made a phone call and handed him a temporary security badge to pin to his shirt, someone was walking him to the elevators and up to the floor where his sister spent her time when she wasn’t abroad.