Pimpernel

by Sheralyn Pratt

  Jack’s gut sense said she was right, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it—especially the part where he had to confess to Claire that their entire relationship was based in false pretenses.

  Jack gestured to the private elevator that led to the subterranean hallways only Margot’s inner circle had access to. “I’ll take you to the room.”

  Kali nodded, shouldering a laptop bag that had been out of sight during the conversation before the two of them walked to the elevator together.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, once the elevator doors shut behind them.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Jack,” she replied. “It’s been a while. Last time I saw you…”

  “The world was on fire,” he finished for her.

  She nodded. “Basically.”

  Jack gestured back the way they’d came. “By the way, sorry about Margot. She’s just—”

  “In love with Ren with no idea what to do about it,” Kali finished for him. “I know.”

  Well, that was a relief.

  “She really is great to work with.”

  “I’m sure,” Kali agreed. “But I’ll worry about playing nice with her some other time. There’s no point in getting into any of that today. Today we need to show Claire that she has an out and see if she takes it.”

  Jack couldn’t have stated things better himself.

  Chapter 20

  The world was still dark and drowsy when Claire noticed the smell of fresh paint. Not wet paint, but new paint. It smelled clean. When Claire worked up the willpower to open her eyes, all she saw was white at first. White ceiling. White walls. Even white sheets. The mattress she laid on was new and cradled her while still remaining firm.

  The unfamiliar space should have alarmed her, but when Claire sat up to take a look around, she felt oddly calm. Maybe the valium hadn’t worn off yet.

  A look around the room showed she was in a space that was probably about 700 square feet. No pictures. The furniture consisted of the bed she lay on, a full bathroom, a dining room table with chairs, and a couch. An olive-skinned woman who looked like she might be a model sat on the couch reading spiral-bound pages.

  Was she dreaming? Was this a hallucination? Was she in a mental hospital?

  Claire’s movements attracted the attention of the woman on the couch, who held up a copy of what Claire could now see was her Master’s thesis. The woman gave it a wiggle, but all Claire could focus on were the woman’s frosty blue eyes as she said, “Fascinating reading, this.”

  Claire froze in panic, her mind settling on the likelihood that she was in a mental hospital, and this absurdly beautiful woman wearing motorcycle boots was her therapist. No. That couldn’t be right. If the stunning, youthful looks weren’t enough evidence that she wasn’t talking to a doctor, the motorcycle boots were.

  So who was this woman?

  “Where am I?” Claire blurted, hating that panic had bled into her voice.

  Ms. Ice Eyes shook her head. “How about I’ll tell you where you are if you tell me why you’re here.”

  Claire’s stomach sunk as she realized she might be somewhere worse than a mental hospital. Mr. SUV might have taken her. Best to play dumb.

  “I…had a panic attack,” Claire said breathlessly. “I think I passed out.”

  “Claire?” Her name came from the other woman’s lips so calmly and with such a chill that Claire felt like her body temperature dropped a degree just hearing it.

  “Yes?”

  “You have no skill at lying.” The model didn’t elaborate. She just watched Claire with eyes that looked like a wolf on the hunt.

  “Where am I?” Claire repeated. “Who are you?”

  “Why are you here?”

  If Claire had any doubts before as to why she was in the room, they were all gone now. She also knew there was no point in playing stupid. “I’m here because you brought me here. But I have no idea why—especially since Ryan was supposed to be released today, which he wasn’t. What was that all about? I can’t keep doing this!”

  Her head tilted thoughtfully. “But you do it so well.”

  Claire wanted to choke the woman. “Is that why you didn’t let Professor Eastman out today? So you can keep hanging him over my head?”

  The woman’s face stayed maddeningly neutral, giving Claire no clue to what she was thinking.

  “You’re in Vegas,” the woman said at length. “Downtown.”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “Well, that isn’t helpful!”

  “Actually, it is,” she replied. “We could have drugged you and brought you to the Netherlands. You’d have no idea.”

  True. Claire hadn’t considered that, but it was totally true…and not all that comforting.

  “So take comfort in the fact that you are within ten miles of home,” the woman said.

  “Why take me at all?” Claire blurted. “I’ve toed your line. I’ve done everything you asked to the letter. Why the sudden need to kidnap me?”

  “Because things are about to change,” the woman said, her face again refusing to give Claire clues to the meaning behind her words.

  Claire’s thoughts immediately went to Ryan and the downcast look of his eyes in the courthouse. He’d known he wasn’t going to be released, but had he known something even worse? “What’s changing?”

  No answer.

  “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

  Silence.

  Claire pounded her hand on the bed, which didn’t turn out to be as dramatic a move as she’d intended. “Is Ryan still alive? Answer me!”

  The woman studied her like a bug for a moment, then nodded. “Ryan is alive.”

  For two seconds Claire felt relieved. “Is he going to stay that way?”

  A slight pause. “That is the question that’s going to determine what you do next, isn’t it, Claire? It’s the answer to the question as to why you’re in this room. Trying to save Ryan Eastman’s life has landed you here.”

  Claire hated crying, but a sudden wave of helplessness had her wanting to do exactly that. Not the best negotiating technique, especially when face-to-face with another woman. She blinked back the tears, hating that the other woman noticed.

  “So now what?” Claire snapped.

  Again, that cool, unblinking gaze studied her. “You tell me, Claire. What now?”

  “You’re the one who abducted me!”

  “You’re the one who had a mental breakdown in the courthouse today,” she replied. “Want to talk about that?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “If this—” The woman picked up Claire’s thesis again. “—has any relationship with this—” She pulled a palm-sized notebook out of her pocket, and Claire froze as she recognized it. “Then we have a lot to talk about.”

  Claire fought the urge to lunge for the notebook. It was all the way across the room. There was no way Ms. Ice Eyes wouldn’t see her coming. “Where did you get that?”

  “You know where I got it.”

  “I mean, how? How did you get it?”

  The woman shrugged. “Irrelevant. I have it. And I know what it is.”

  Everything went cold in an instant as Claire searched the woman’s face to see if she was telling the truth, infuriated when it was impossible to tell. She’d studied hundreds of people while putting her thesis together—even sociopaths—and none of them had ever come close to this level of expression neutrality as Ms. Ice Eyes.

  “It’s time for you to start asking important questions, Claire.”

  “Like what?” Claire snapped. “What questions do you think I should be asking right now?”

  A perfectly shaped eyebrow arched in what appeared to be honest amusement. “Do you need me to read your own playbook to you?”

  In no hurry at all, the woman crossed the room and laid Claire’s thesis down on the bed between them and turned to page 17. Then she turned the pages to face Claire. The single header on the page read Step 1: Establish Motives
.

  The woman watched Claire, patiently waiting for her to catch on.

  “Pretend you’re in the position of power here, Claire, and ask me the most important question.”

  The most important question had been the first question the other woman had asked in the beginning. Claire had been so flustered that she had answered it without realizing how much power she was giving up.

  Claire looked up from her thesis and into those chilling eyes. “Why are you here?”

  For the first time since they’d met, the other woman smiled. “I’m here to see if your loyalties can be flipped.”

  Part of Claire had been ready for a lie or a half-truth. In truth, she still couldn’t tell if the woman was lying, but the answer felt true. And it made sense. After Claire’s humiliating mental breakdown at the preliminary hearing, Mr. SUV had decided to bring her in and have her checked out.

  “What I’m gathering,” the woman continued. “Is that your loyalty is completely dependent on the safety of your incarcerated professor. Would you say that’s accurate?”

  “That shouldn’t be new information for you,” Claire snapped. “I’ve made it clear from the beginning that I want nothing to do with any of this.”

  “But if you don’t play along, Eastman dies,” the woman said calmly.

  “Thanks for the reminder,” Claire said. “Can I go now?”

  The woman shook her head. “Do you love him?”

  “Who? Ryan?”

  “Of course, Ryan,” she said with a little impatience. “That’s who we’re talking about. Do you love him?”

  “Admire? Yes,” Claire said, internally shying away from the L-word.

  The other woman reached into a satchel leaning against the side of her chair and pulled out a small stack of clipped-together papers. “You were accepted into the Master’s programs of 18 different universities, all arguably more prestigious than UNLV. Is Professor Eastman the reason you came here for your Master’s, then stayed on for your PhD?”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  The woman reached across the table and tapped her finger on the header again. Step 1: Establish Motive.

  “Yes,” Claire blurted. “He’s the reason, okay? I’m at UNLV because of Professor Eastman.”

  “And does he know you have a crush on him?”

  Claire’s face turned beet red. She didn’t need a mirror to see it. She felt it. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just checking how honest you’re willing to be,” she said. “But luckily, as I said before, you have no skill at lying. Part of you is always telling the truth and that’s going to make all this much easier.”

  “All what?”

  There was that frosty, unreadable stare again. “Flipping you.”

  Wait. What? Realization dawned on Claire like a slow frost. “You don’t work for Mr. SUV.”

  The other woman shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

  In an instant, it felt like warring jackrabbits had been transported into her chest and were trying to kick their way out. Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room, making Claire desperate to get out. People knew about her? People who were rivals to Mr. SUV knew who she was and they had her? How was that possible? She’d been so careful.

  “With $326 million in the pot, do you really think ‘Mr. SUV’ is the only one with skin in this game?” the woman asked calmly.

  No. Claire had never thought that, but she’d never imagined that any of the other parties would find her. Mr. SUV knew her because Ryan had told him about her. Had Ryan told someone else in prison? Had he sold her out? Was that why he refused to look at her earlier?

  Even if the woman sitting across from her could answer the questions, Claire knew she wouldn’t. So she stuck to a question she knew she’d get an answer to.

  She looked into those ice-cold eyes head on. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to do exactly what you’ve been planning to do this entire time.” She very purposefully held up the small notebook. “I want you to give everyone their money back and get out of the game before someone, or lots of someones, get killed.”

  Again, the woman threw Claire off center and put her on the defensive. “There’s no way you can know what that is.”

  “Without this?” she replied, tapping a finger on the thesis. “You’re right. But with it?” She turned to the index in the back, where Claire had mapped out the angles of features in universal expressions. Seeing that, Claire lost hope that the woman didn’t know what she was talking about.

  She did. Miss Ice Eyes knew what the notebook was—all of the account numbers mapped out in angles that ultimately created geometric shapes that looked like nonsense unless you knew what you were looking for.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, half scared and half fascinated that she might have met someone like her.

  “They call me Kali,” she replied. “Short for kaleidoscope, I’m told.”

  “But is that your name?”

  “It is now.”

  Interesting. It was the closest thing to a lie the woman had said since the conversation had started. “Who do you work for, Kali?”

  Kali leaned forward. “I like it when you ask good questions. The answer to that one is that I don’t work for anyone. I’m here of my own free will.”

  “No one’s paying you?”

  “No one’s paying me.”

  “Do you know any of the investors from the scheme?” Claire pressed.

  “Possibly,” she replied. “I haven’t seen your full list, but if one of them had sent someone like me, I can tell you what would be happening right now. You’d be cuffed to a chair and tortured until you transferred all the money from your accounts into my boss’s account. Once that was done, they would kill you and I would walk away with a 10% finder’s fee. That’s the world you’re playing in right now, Claire. Does that sound like a place you want to be?”

  Claire’s voice was little more than a squeak when she said, “No.”

  “Well, Professor Eastman thought he could swim with these sharks, and when he needed leverage to stay in the game, he put you out there as a patsy. He exploited you to help himself out, and you’re throwing away your life to try to save him. This puts me in an awkward position when it comes to flipping you. Do I promise to protect Eastman, even though that is next to impossible based on his own actions and decisions? Or do I try to convince you that it’s not your job to be his human shield, even if that means he dies?”

  Claire shook her head. “I can’t be the reason he dies.”

  “And you believe he will die if you stop closing investors?”

  A wave of shame washed over Claire as she nodded.

  Kali’s icy eyes watched her, not judging per se, but definitely calculating.

  “So explain to me this,” she said at length, pulling a bottle of pills out of her satchel. Claire immediately recognized her OCD prescription. “Why did you stop taking your medication 18 days ago?”

  The specificity of the question left Claire stunned for a moment. “How did you know?” No one knew.

  “Was it paranoia?” Kali pressed. “Were you afraid that someone would find your book and you wouldn’t be able right all the wrongs you’d done if you didn’t know the numbers by heart?”

  Claire’s mouth fell open in shock.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Kali said, pushing them medication across the table along with the notebook that had been stolen from her closet safe. “It’s time to start taking your pills again, Claire. If your mind fails you when it comes time to reverse-engineering everything, you’ll have all the backup you need to make sure you have the numbers when you need them.”

  Rather than comforted, Claire felt defensive. “Yeah? And does that backup just happen to be your people?”

  Kali shook her head. “I’m a free agent who is happy to walk away after this conversation. But before I do, let me tell you my read on this situation.”<
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  Against her will, Claire felt herself lean forward in interest.

  “I think you’re a woman who’s been different from other people for as long as you can remember,” Kali said. “I think rejection from your father and exploitation by your mother didn’t help matters improve, at all. Connecting is hard for you, so when it happens, you treasure the connection. This is why flipping sides is going to be so scary for you. Ryan Eastman made you feel an intellectual connection you haven’t felt in years, if ever, and you don’t want to lose that.” Kali tilted her head slightly while studying Claire. “How am I doing so far?”

  Claire couldn’t breathe, feeling exposed and alive at the same time. Claire had never met this woman before, and yet Kali seemed to understand her better than anyone she’d ever met. “Seriously…who are you?”

  Kali smiled, somehow looking resigned. “Like I said, they call me kaleidoscope.”

  Okay, the name was starting to make sense in a weird way.

  “I’m going to invite someone in here to join you now,” Kali said gently. “You’re going to recognize him as someone you already know, and realize that he introduced himself to you under false pretenses. He’s here to shut down your investment scam and return money to investors. To be clear, this is the man who got Professor Eastman arrested to begin with. He did it to try to flush out Eastman’s partners, but that didn’t work so well. They stayed hidden and brought you out as their new sitting duck. Since then, things have pretty much been at a standstill with regards to shutting down the scam, but that stops today. Today is draft day for you, Claire. It’s the day where you have to decide what team you really want to play on.”

  Claire’s mind raced as she thought through all the men she’d met recently. Professor Smith recent friendliness had come out of the blue. Nick had come out of nowhere and been pretty insistent on getting to know her—

  “I need you to know that the reason I am sitting here talking to you right now is because this man saved my life last year. I was in an impossible situation—much worse than yours—and he handed me an eject button.” She leaned forward, eyes intense as ever. “If he offers you an eject button out the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, I highly suggest you take it. He’s a man of his word, but if you break your word to him or insist on being his enemy, he will cut the cord and let you swim alone. Do you hear me, Claire?”