I plop my butt down on the porch outside his little log building and pull out my phone. I wonder what Mr. Alt Park Service is tweeting about right now?
They’re all the same, these alt accounts. Morally outraged, full of righteous indignation. Half of them shams to drum up extremist rhetoric and disguise the rapid dismantling of the bureaucratic state. The other half are preaching to the choir. That story has been written. It’s inspiring for the liberal base, and intriguing for journalists—for a hot minute.
But now what he’s tweeting isn’t nearly as important as where he’s tweeting from—this particular account gave a couple of subtle and accidental clues in early tweets, right after the election, that point to this group of national parks west of Denver—and how he’s doing it without getting caught.
Also, given the connections I’ve discovered in his background, who has helped him along the way.
Marcus Dane has some very wealthy friends.
Are the rules different when you’re besties with billionaires?
While I wait for him to tweet, or not tweet, because maybe I’ve pissed him off and he’s going to try and throw me off his scent, I pull up the dossier I’ve compiled on him.
I can’t concentrate on the words, though. There’s no maybe about the pissing him off part. I’ve definitely gotten under his skin. I pushed a little too hard.
Besides, I don’t need to go over the dossier again. I’ve memorized every single word in it.
Marcus Dane went to MIT, where he met and befriended Jake Aston and Toby Hunt, when they were ordinary young men with extraordinarily big dreams.
Reading between the lines, it would be easy to assume that Marcus was a third young men with equally big dreams, but the career that follows belies that hypothesis.
After graduating, Marcus and Toby headed to California. But where Toby used seed money from Gladiator Inc’s young CEO, Ben Russo, to start his own company, Marcus got a job as a software engineer.
A regular job.
Because Marcus Dane, best friend to billionaires, was a regular Joe—hypothesis number two.
But after a few years of chasing the tech 401k dream, he walked away from the suburban house and workplace-with-a-gym-and-smoothie-bar, for…
I glance around me.
Nothing, really.
Maybe everything.
Trees. Fresh air.
Painfully high altitude that sort of makes me faint, although that could also be attributed to the clash of wills with the bearded mountain man.
Freedom.
Hypothesis number three, should anyone still care about Marcus Dane after he disappeared up a mountain, is that he’s seen the inside workings of capitalist, tech-worshiping America, and he doesn’t like it. In fact, he hates it, and now that society has broken down to the point of chaos, he’s going to use whatever platform he can find to ensure the things that really matter to him—the environment, protection of the land and animals, water—have a voice.
No matter what official edict gets handed down from on high, Mr. Alt Park Service won’t be silenced.
As far as I know, nobody has looked at Marcus Dane but me. I’ve run the story in the loosest of terms past two of my favourite editors. Both were open to hearing more, but I needed to put this trip on my credit card because nobody is paying freelancers to hunt stories like this. Not in the heat of summer. Not when there are courthouses and law offices to stalk.
If I wanted to pay the rent, I’d join the stringers from MSNBC and CNN outside the Washington DC law firms and wait for the White House staffers to come to me. Most of them are a sympathetic look away from spilling their guts over coffee.
Except…
I want to pay my rent, but not by lunging desperately at low-hanging fruit.
I want to write a good story. Something I had to dig for, that nobody else has any idea about yet.
I want to expose a real truth, which is getting harder and harder to do these days.
If I do that, I’ll be able to land a job that pays the rent on a regular basis.
Teach a man to fish, they say.
Or in 2017…teach a woman to follow a wild hunch, no matter how high up a mountain it drags her.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mom by day and filthy romance writer by night, Ainsley is a three-time USA Today bestseller (Hate F*@k, Prime Minister), and super grateful for caffeine and yoga pants. Born and raised near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, she's traveled the world and come back home to write about book boyfriends with maple leaf tattoos.
www.ainsleybooth.com
www.friskybeavers.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This story was originally written for the Love in Transit anthology, which was a limited time collection of stories all written to the same blurb. It was a lot of fun, and I’m so pleased to have the paperback on my shelf as a forever memory of the project that Jana Aston spearheaded and Raine Miller, BJ Harvey, Kitty French, and Liv Morris all enthusiastically jumped into.
Sadie Haller was my first reader for this story, and as usual, her eagle eyes caught so many inconsistencies. So grateful to her for that!
Thank you to Mignon at Oh So Novel for the cover for this book, and the entire series. Also to Dana Waganer for her final proofreading pass.
I’m also thankful for all my readers who were eagerly waiting for the next Frisky Beavers and Forbidden Bodyguards books, but also said, okay, sure, a billionaire rom com series, why not? You, my readers, are my favourite people in the entire world.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM AINSLEY BOOTH
FORBIDDEN BODYGUARDS
Hate F*@k
Booty Call
Dirty Love
First Lady, His Lady
Wicked Sin
BILLIONAIRE SECRETS
Personal Delivery
Personal Escort
Personal Disaster
Personal Interest
FRISKY BEAVERS
Retrosexual
Prime Minister
Dr. Bad Boy
Full Mountie
Mr. Hat Trick
Bull of the Woods
Cover Design by Oh So Novel
All rights reserved
2017, Ainsley Booth
Table of Contents
Dedication
About This Book
Billionaire Secrets
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Personal Disaster Excerpt
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Ainsley Booth
Copyright
Personal Escort (Billionaire Secrets Book 2) Page 12