by Peak, Renna
It was my security blanket. It could be security for both of us—for Jen, too. I just had to figure out a way to tell her about this—something I knew she wouldn’t want to know about. Her little disappearing act told me she might finally be ready—she had been able to keep herself from logging into any of her personal accounts the entire time she had been gone. It had been frustrating as hell, and if it hadn’t been for that small break with the teenager tweeting about seeing her, I might not have ever found her. And I thanked my lucky stars that I had found her.
Until today. Until now—now that she was gone again.
“I did it.”
I blinked my eyes a few times, snapping myself out of the almost trance-like state I had been in. I turned to Melissa. “Did what?”
“Texted Ryan. I said we need to have Jenna back.” She frowned and I could see tears forming in her eyes. “I can’t have you hating me, Brandon. I don’t want to hate her, either, but it’s hard not to. She has everything and she doesn’t even see it. She gets everything—she always has. Talent and looks and money and guys—“
“She doesn’t have everything.” I wasn’t going to discuss this with Melissa—what I knew about Jen. How broken she was inside. How hard she had worked to pull herself together. It was the part of her that no one else knew that I loved about her most of all. That part of her that was strong, so powerful that she wasn’t aware of it herself most of the time. I knew it was the part of her that made her able to leave her life behind—even though it had meant having her leaving me. “And this isn’t a game, Melissa. He isn’t going to just give her back.”
She handed the phone to me, shoving it into my hand. I looked down at it and read the text that Ryan had sent back to her. He knows what he needs to give me if he wants her back this time.
I did know what Ryan wanted, but there was no way he was getting it. Not when it was the key to having a future with Jen. I knew there would be another way to find her—I just didn’t know how. And the fake Rembrandt wasn’t helping at all.
I stood up, turning to look at the main part of the room. There was something here—I knew there was. Something that would give me the answer I was looking for. The sign I needed was here. It had to be.
I walked over to another painting that I was sure was a reproduction—I just wasn’t sure of what. I knew the answer wasn’t going to actually come from the painting itself. I just had a feeling that if I looked at the right thing and if I could make sense of whatever it was I needed to, everything would work out the way it was supposed to and I would have Jen back in my arms. I just wasn’t sure where I was supposed to look. I had no idea where Daniel was, other than the fact that he lived somewhere out here. I hadn’t been able to track him down, and I hadn’t had any need to. Until today—until now. And there was no trace of him. He had gone off the grid, just like Jen had so many months ago.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out. Cade and I hadn’t been on very good terms since Jen had left. I hadn’t known he had been the one to take her away from the cabin in Montana, but it didn’t come as much of a surprise, either. I just knew he was still in good with Daniel for some reason and he also had some sort of fatherly love for Jen. He was the only answer I could think of.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, glancing at the screen. I was finally able to breathe a sigh of something that resembled relief when I read Cade’s response. It was the best thing I had seen all day. It was almost elegant in its simplicity.
Done.
10
I never knew it was possible for my ears to feel as hot as they did at that moment. My heart sped in my tightening chest. My knees pulled together and I wished that a sinkhole would open up in Daniel’s desert home and swallow me whole.
This can’t be real.
I had no reason to trust Daniel. I had no reason to believe a word that he said to me, but the truth was staring me in the face—actually, I was staring at the truth. The naked truth—literally—photos of me that didn’t seem possible. Photos that I had never taken—photos that I would have never allowed.
“We think it’s a type of computer virus. We haven’t been able to find the code that runs it, even though we’ve found hundreds of computers that are infected.”
I blinked a few times, unable to tear my eyes away from the photos that were on the screen. Photos that weren’t more than a few days old—taken from my bedroom in Virginia. From the angle, they had to have been taken by the computer that sat on the desk in that room. They must have come from a computer that I hadn’t touched since the previous fall. They had to have been taken when I had stayed with my parents before Daniel and I were supposed to go to the press conference to announce his “resurrection.”
My head was spinning again—there was no way this could be real. I clicked a few buttons on the screen and saw more than I could stand to witness—photos of me, screen captures of everything about my life. It was like a hacker had taken over everything—my email, my bank accounts. My webcam. Me.
“It’s sophisticated. I don’t think Brandon couldn’t have written it or come up with it by himself—it deployed three years ago or so. He was working with a bunch of different people back then. We think he had different people working on different elements—none of them knew what the others were doing. It’s actually brilliant. No one knows how it works or where it hides—it makes it impossible to remove.”
He took the laptop with the photos of me and pointed at the webcam. “Electrical tape. The light that’s supposed to come on when it turns on never lights up on an infected computer. The only way to not have yourself recorded at all times is to cover the camera.” He pointed at a few spots on the computer. “The microphones, too. They stay on all the time—and even with the tape, they sometimes pick up some conversation. You have to physically remove the battery to turn the computers off. And Brandon’s set up some pretty sophisticated voice recognition software to sort through conversations. We think he must have some people working for him, probably overseas. There’s no way he could go through all those recordings himself.”
He closed the computer, pushing the button to remove the battery. “He has a file on me, too. I have a reverse peephole set up on mine so I know when he’s been watching.” He shrugged. “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been watching me at all for the last six months. Not since I moved out here.” He motioned at the new laptop I was still holding. “It’s clean. You want me to show you how it gets infected? Just login to your email—there’ll be a photo of you on that site I just showed you and a screen cap of whatever you’re reading. It’s ingenious.”
I shook my head, not only because I didn’t want to be recorded, but because I still really couldn’t believe any of this. And I hated that it all made sense—how Brandon always seemed to have access to information that he shouldn’t have.
I pushed the silver laptop toward him, almost throwing it at him in disgust. “Why should I believe you? How do I know you didn’t do this?” It was a fair question, and just thinking about it gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe this wasn’t Brandon’s doing. “For all I know, you’re the one who’s been watching me. The way you’ve acted since I found out you were alive—it would make more sense. You could be the one responsible for this. This could all be your stuff.”
He sighed, taking the silver laptop from me before standing to put the computers back on the shelf. “I only cracked your profile a few months ago. If I’d had access to that stuff a year ago, I would have made your life a living hell.” He smiled. “You should be glad I didn’t. That I didn’t see any of that until after I came to my senses.”
I smoothed down my blouse, staring down at the floor. “None of this makes sense. You coming to your senses doesn’t make sense, either.”
“I know. I know you want me to tell you I found God or something, but that wasn’t it. I just woke up one day and realized that my life sucked. That this…” He motioned to the shelf full of computer equipment. “This wa
sn’t ever what I wanted. And if I’d had access to that kind of information when I was running for Congress, I never would have needed the Agostino’s help. It was getting the help that turned my life to shit.” He sat down in the desk chair again. “I wish I could explain it better than that. I meditate a lot now. I try to make sense of the bad decisions I’ve made and I pray every day that my phone doesn’t ring. I pray that no one calls me, that no one asks anything of me. Because when they do…” He motioned toward the window. “People end up dead.” He fixed his gaze on mine. “You still have time to get out, Jenna. You have time to leave it all behind—I had hoped that you had. Your account was silent the entire time—for nine months—and I knew he didn’t know where you were. And I hoped that he never would find you. That you’d stay quiet—stay off your email and out of your accounts and that he would never find you again.”
Tears welled in my eyes. The fact that Brandon was capable of this didn’t surprise me at all. That he had turned this—whatever this was, his technology or whatever it was—on me was a different thing. It was a betrayal. It was more than a betrayal, it was treachery of the worst kind. There was no reason he would need to collect information on me—not unless he was planning to use it somehow. To blackmail me, maybe. Or just to torture me with the knowledge that he had done it and that there was nothing I could do about it now.
Daniel’s phone beeped and he fished it from his pants pocket. He looked down at the screen, frowning. “It looks like it doesn’t matter now.”
“What doesn’t matter now?” My brain screamed at me not to trust him—that he had already put me through too much. But my gut said something else. My gut said that he was telling me the truth, no matter what my mind was warning me about.
“Remember how I said that my life wasn’t really mine?” He nodded, putting the phone back into his pocket. “Someone higher up than me has made a decision.”
“Ryan.” It didn’t make sense, but I smiled. “He wants you to kill me.” I nodded, still smiling, holding back a laugh. My response made no sense—I somehow knew I was in mortal danger, but I thought it was hysterical. It shouldn’t have been funny that I would finally find out the truth about what it was that Brandon was doing and that it would be the last day of my life. But there was some kind of irony there and it seemed almost fitting. And there was also some comfort in knowing that I was going to die knowing the truth and in knowing that I wouldn’t be standing in the way of Brandon taking care of Melissa and their baby if I were dead.
“Not Ryan. And you aren’t going to die today.” He grinned. “Not by my hand, at least.” He chuckled. “Why are we laughing about this?”
“I have no idea.” I laughed out loud then—I had to hold onto my sides, I laughed so hard. It seemed like the exact wrong response, but there was too much. The only thing I could do that felt right at that moment was to laugh.
Daniel didn’t laugh with me, but he smiled, extending his hand.
I took it that time, and he helped me out of the chair, leading me out of the room and back to the living area.
He frowned then, almost wincing. “I have to take you back. Back to him. To Brandon.”
I knew then—knew with every beat of my heart that there wouldn’t be any more laughing that day. And I knew too many things that I couldn’t un-know now. Too many things that would ever allow us to be together again.
I still wasn’t sure about the pecking order in the organization that I knew both Brandon and Daniel worked for. There was only one thing that was abundantly clear at that moment—Brandon outranked Daniel. And he outranked Ryan, too.
* * *
“You will stay away from her. I don’t care where you go, just let me have some time with her.” I walked back to the lobby of the hotel, right in front of the wall of glass that made up the front of the building. He would drop her off right here, and if it hadn’t been such a public place, I would have been able to finish him for good. I would have been able to reach in the window and snap his neck, killing him before he ever knew what hit him.
But I knew I couldn’t do it in front of Jen. I knew she would never admit it, but she still cared about him. She had loved him at one time in her life, and I knew that better than anyone. I couldn’t hurt him without hurting her.
I gave my head a hard shake, trying to push the idea of caring about Daniel out of it for good. I don’t care about him. I don’t care about anyone.
Except Jen. I had to repeat it to myself—except Jen. I loved her. I wanted to protect her from the men like Daniel, who would do us nothing but harm if we stayed here. Stopping here had been a mistake—I saw that now. I had only wanted to come to Vegas to seal the deal. To finish what I had started and to marry the woman I loved. And that piece of paper meant more than she needed to know. A marriage certificate shouldn’t have meant more than the two of us sharing the rest of our lives together. And it would mean that, too—I would make sure of it. But it meant so much more. It was the key—the final key to unlock the last piece of the puzzle. It helped that I had fallen in love with her. It helped a lot. But, in the long run, it didn’t matter—Jen was always going to be my wife whether I had fallen in love or not. And I was going to marry her. Today.
And then I would have everything.
Taken #6
The MISTAKEN Series - Part Eighteen
1
Under normal circumstances, I would have told the asshole to fuck off. Considering he had the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of my head, I decided to bite my tongue for the moment. And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t just beaten the shit out of me. He’d already hit me twice on the side of the head with the thing, and I could feel my eye beginning to swell where he had struck me the last time.
I heard the gun click again. He was screwing with me—messing with my mind in a way I couldn’t remember ever having been fucked with before. I had to remind myself of that—he’s just fucking with me. The scar on the right side of my belly burned at that moment, reminding me of the last time I had thought someone was just threatening me. Just fucking with me to get information. Maybe this time was really it. Maybe I had finally run out of chances, like a cat that had used his ninth life.
The gun clicked again. I knew he was just cocking the damned thing and then disengaging it. I thought I was holding it together pretty well. I hadn’t flinched once at the sound, but it was a good thing the asshole couldn’t hear the way my heart sped up more than a few beats every time I heard the damned click.
“Just pull the trigger already.” I didn’t want to die. Not really. I had too much left to do, and there was no way they were going to break me with a gun. They had to know that. I had put up with a hell of a lot more than a gun that may or may not have been loaded pressed to my head. In a lot of ways, I’d had a metaphorical gun against my head this whole time.
Twenty-five years. Maybe longer. I shook my head at the thought—had it really been that long? Almost my entire life that I had been stuck in this mess? I only had an idea of when it had started—I couldn’t really remember it. I had only been a little kid, and what I really remembered of my life at that time was murky at best. But I knew I was done. If I ever managed to get away from this dickhole and get out of this room, I was leaving. I wasn’t ever going to put up with this kind of shit again.
It was time to get out for good—no man should have to put up with this much for this long. It was time to get Jen out of this godforsaken country and just leave. There was nothing left for me here. They were done with me—I was fairly certain of that. And if they were done with me, I had no future unless I could get out of here. And I barely remembered who I was anymore—not that I had really ever known who I had been.
It was all a lie. My life was nothing but a huge, tangled web of deceit and I couldn’t remember what was real and what was made up any longer. But Jen—she was real. The aching pang in my chest I felt when I thought about her—that was real. It was the only thing I had left to hang onto now. But I didn’t know
if there was really anything left with her to hang onto. Not after what had happened. I didn’t even know where she was—if she was alive or dead. I imagined it had to be the latter—if these were the guys I thought they were, neither of us was going to make it out alive. And they wouldn’t keep her alive for any reason other than to torture me—they would have made me watch her be tortured if she was still alive. Because if they were smart—and I had no reason to think they were idiots—they would know that she was the only thing that could break me. Jen was the only thing that had ever broken through the wall. She was the only person who ever could. And she was the only reason I had left to live at that point. And if she was gone…
The gun clicked behind my head again. My jaw clenched, my teeth grinding together. If the handcuffs that were biting into my wrists hadn’t bound my hands behind me, I would have pounded something. Anything. Because the quivering I was feeling in my muscles had nothing to do with fear anymore. Not after realizing that the only reason I wouldn’t have seen her yet was because she wasn’t there to see. And at least if I was dead, there was a chance I would see her again. Not that I really believed in an afterlife—I just had to hope that there would be something on the other side that would make it worth going through all of this.
“Just do it.” I gritted my teeth again, waiting for the next click of the gun, which I hoped on some level would be the last.
“Hmph.” It was almost a chuckle—the asshole actually sounded amused by this. He clicked the gun again before he finally spoke. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get you off the hook pretty easy.” He chuckled again—almost making fun of me.