The Misters Series (Mister #1-7)

by J. A. Huss

  “Good,” Five says, pulling me back down on to the couch. “Now I want to hear the whole story from start to finish. Begin.”

  “Begin?” I laugh. “God, Five. Don’t start with your weird mannerisms. I was just getting used to the grown-up version of you.”

  “Explain.”

  “That,” I say, pointing a finger at him. “Those curt, one-word sentences you were always barking at people when we were kids.”

  “Rory,” he says, his voice now some man-version of the kid he used to be. “I want to know where you met him and exactly what the fuck he’s doing here in Bellvue, Colorado.”

  “I just told you. Why are you being so weird about this? It was just a fling. Not even a fling,” I say, preempting his next question, which will be something academic like, Explain the term ‘fling.’ “His sister Tera is my best friend.”

  Five goes quiet for a moment. Like he’s thinking really hard about this situation. “Look,” I say. “It was nothing. Just a time-passer. I was never going to sleep with him. Why the hell would I wait six years for you and then blow it?”

  He’s still silent.

  “I wouldn’t,” I say, starting to worry he’s really mad at me. “Five? Why the hell—”

  “What’s your friend’s last name?” he asks.

  “What? Why?”

  “Is it Middleton?” he asks.

  “How’d you know?”

  He wipes a hand down his face, mumbling, “Oh, fuck.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I ask, but as the words spill out of my mouth, I regret them. I don’t want to know what’s going on. How he knows the Middletons. What that means for us, our future, and everything that seems to be happening right now. Just when we’re finally getting back together and our parents are all out of town.

  “I know him, Rory. He’s one of us.”

  Well, that explains everything. “I need to get my phone so I can call him back and cut him loose. I don’t want him prowling around Fort Collins looking for me. Obviously, Tera gave him my address. God only knows where he’ll go next. Jesus,” I say. “What time is it?” I almost have a panic attack as I imagine him showing up at Shrike Bikes asking for me. My dad’s mechanics will have him on the phone so fast—

  And that’s when the pool house phone rings.

  Five and I look at each other. And then we dive for it at the same time, but I snatch it away from him at the last second and breathe, “Hello?” into the handset.

  “Rory?”

  I pantomime swiping sweat off my brow as Five watches, then say, “Yes, Kate?”

  “Just what the fuck is going on? You’ve got a guy running all over town looking for you. And why the hell aren’t you picking up your phone?”

  “Shit,” I say, more to Five than Kate. “Did he go over to Shrike?”

  “You bet your ass he did. And your father already called over here asking why the hell some boy is looking for you.”

  “What’d you tell him?” I ask, biting my lip.

  “I said I had no clue. Because I don’t. But you need to tell me just what the hell is happening. Because that guy introduced himself as your boyfriend to pretty much everyone who knows you in this town.”

  Five grabs the phone from me. “Did he say he was staying in town, Kate?”

  “Five,” Kate says. “Do you know that guy? He was asking about you too.”

  “Did he say he was staying?” Five says, ignoring her question.

  “He didn’t say,” she says, talking loud enough for me to hear her, even though Five is now pacing back and forth across the pool house living room.

  Naked.

  Which totally makes me smirk.

  He says a few more things that I don’t catch because I’m too busy looking at how the light from outside casts shadows across his perfectly toned body.

  And then he hangs up. Looks at me. Frowns.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “OK? I should’ve told him earlier not to come here. And that it was over. I just… figured… I don’t know. I was still looking for you back then and, well. Can you blame me for forgetting about him, Five?” I bat my eyelashes at him. Which is totally stupid because it’s too dark for him to see my teasing flirt.

  “We need to go,” he says, grabbing my hand and dragging me over to the door.

  “Wait,” I say. “Why are you so wound up? I’m not interested in him, Five. I swear.”

  “That’s not it, Ror. That fucking meeting in Denver I was telling you about?”

  “Yeah,” I say, my stomach clenching as I wait for what comes next.

  “He’s involved in that too.”

  “Involved in what?” I ask. And then it all fits together. The weirdness unveils itself and I get a better glimpse of what’s hiding underneath.

  “They’ve been after him for years too. He’s always told them no, but I don’t think we’ve been saying no for the same reasons. I think his rejection was just because… he’s simply not interested.”

  “How the hell do you know Cliff Middleton, anyway?” I ask.

  “We met at summer camp,” he says. “When we were kids.”

  “Cliff,” I say, shaking my head, unable to see it, “is a robot geek?”

  “No, Rory. Cliff comes from old money. Just like me. Never mind that for now, OK? Just trust me. This is not good. All that shit I was telling you about bizarre invitations and stupid clubs? Well, he’s on the list for recruitment too. And the fact that he’s here, when he so clearly should not be here, and that he’s your brand-new boyfriend… well, I mean, look, Rory. None of this is a coincidence.”

  “And it has something to do with our parents?” I ask. “I’m so confused.”

  “I don’t know about them yet. I can’t even begin to think about what they’re up to. This is something else and we need to go over to Sparrow’s and talk to everyone in person before we call my dad.”

  “Oh, shit,” I say. Just imagining that phone call has me nauseous.

  “‘Oh, shit’ is right,” Five says, opening the sliders and leading me outside. We walk around the pool to our clothes. I go searching for my phone, but…

  “Five,” I say. “He took my phone with him.”

  Five turns. Stares at me. There’s some moonlight out there, so I get a pretty good look at the expression on his face and wish I hadn’t. Because he’s worried. Very. Fucking. Worried. “Did you have it pass-word protected?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Why the fuck not?” He’s mad now.

  “I just got it a few days ago. It’s new. And I skipped that part.”

  Five closes his eyes for a long moment of silent introspection. He’s probably thinking I’m the same ditzy blonde he knew all growing up. And right now, I don’t blame him. Because everyone knows to put in a password when you get a new phone. Your phone has your whole life on it. It has everything on it.

  “OK,” Five says. “We gotta go find him. Right now. Get dressed.”

  “Um,” I say, pulling up my shorts and grabbing my bra from the side of the pool. It’s damp from lying in a puddle of water all afternoon. “There’s more…”

  Five is just pulling his t-shirt on when I say this. But he doesn’t even wait until his head pops out of the collar before he says, “What is it?”

  “Cliff bought me that phone as an end-of-year present.”

  “End-of-year… just what the fuck, Rory? You know better than to accept gifts like that from strangers. I know your dad told you that. I’ve heard him say that to you almost as many times as I heard my own father tell Kate.”

  “In my defense,” I say, wiggling my t-shirt over my head, “he’s not a stranger. I probably know him better than you at this point.”

  The glare I get from Five Aston would be amusing if he wasn’t so serious.

  “Don’t look at me that way. You’ve been gone for six years. I’ve been BFF’s with Tera all through college. And I’ve known Cliff just as long. He’s a friend.”

  “He’s
not a friend. Didn’t I just tell you—”

  “You didn’t tell me shit except you two are in some secret rich kids’ club. It sounds kinda ridiculous, Five.”

  “Well,” he huffs. “When your father finds out—”

  “If you tell my father about any of this,” I say, pointing a finger at his face, “I’ll never speak to you again.”

  He stops talking, drops it and says, “Let’s go.” Then he’s got his phone out, pressing things on the screen.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, jogging a little to catch up to him.

  “Calling Middleton, what do you think? I’m gonna threaten to upend his whole life if he doesn’t bring me that phone right the fuck now. Then we’re gonna push all your data to the cloud and—”

  I snatch the phone for his hand and stop walking. “You’re not going to do any such thing. I’m gonna take care of this myself, Five. And you’re going to keep your big brain out of it. I don’t know what’s really going on, but I do know there’s no way I’m giving up my best friend over some suspicious feeling you have about her and her brother. I know them, OK? And you’re not gonna upend anyone’s life. Certainly not mine. Not after what you did six years ago.”

  He stops. His face goes white. And maybe I’m imagining it—because it’s pretty dark out here—but I don’t think so. “What do you know about what happened six years ago?”

  “What?” I say, shaking my head. “Are you serious? You fucking walked out on me and never looked back, you asshole!”

  “Oh.” He laughs. “That.”

  My eyebrows shoot all the way up my forehead. I’m actually speechless for a few moments. But when the words finally come out of my mouth, they are low. And they are angry. “‘Oh. That?’ Are you fucking kidding me right now, Five Aston? ‘Oh. That?’ You are some kind of jerk if you think breaking my heart isn’t even worth your time.”

  And I do not care that I stomp my foot. Put it firmly in place right on top of the line in the sand that is my limit tonight. I do not care.

  I throw his phone at him, grab the keys from his hand, and get into his car.

  “What are you doing?” he asks as I start it up.

  “Leaving you here,” I say, slamming the door closed so hard, he has to get his fingers out of the way before I crush them. He just stands there staring at me, not even trying to go around to the passenger side to get in before he gets stranded.

  But I push the button on the door locks anyway. And it feels good when I back up, spinning the tires of his rental car in the loose gravel of the driveway, and leave him behind.

  Fucker.

  He’s got another thing coming if he thinks I will just forget and forgive how he left me behind like that.

  Oh. That.

  Asshole.

  I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt earlier. I was in some kind of sex-deprivation rush over seeing him again.

  But not now.

  Because Five Aston left me behind and that little laugh back there was proof that I am definitely not why he came back to Colorado. We’re not back together. Not at all. I’m just here out of some weird coincidence cooked up by my little brother.

  Well, fuck him.

  Chapter Fourteen - Five

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” I call out. But I’m talking to orange-red tail lights through a hazy cloud of dust as she steals my rental car and leaves me out at her family farm. Abandoned.

  I trudge down the driveway in the dark. Princess Shrike was a lot easier to manage when she was six, that’s for sure. There’s a little bit of moon out tonight, so at least I’m not gonna trip over something random and break my neck.

  Still. I sigh. This trip wasn’t supposed to be this way. None of this shit was supposed to happen. Just a quick pop into Denver, then back on the plane to London so I could get back to business.

  When I get to the edge of the driveway, I stop at the gate. The Shrikes almost never close this old thing. It’s tall, and metal, and has electricity hooked up via solar. Spencer Shrike is a pragmatist. Anyone with a truck can blow through his gate. So they stopped using it a long time ago. It only acts as an alert system now. Motion sensors set off the security system when you go through it. I disabled that this morning using the app.

  But what he didn’t do… is unhook the solar. And the solar power controls the app that operates the motion sensors. And where there’s an app… I allow a devious grin build on my face… there’s a way inside.

  If your name is Five Aston, that is.

  My father is a freak of a genius, much more so than me. But my father learned most of his skills before the apps got really sophisticated. I’ve been building them practically since I was born. I know my way around everything you can think of. Dating sites, restaurant guides, email, video conferencing, music players, corporate log-ins. You name it, I’ve corrupted it to my advantage. I have back doors in more than ten thousand seemingly harmless applications.

  But I also have my finger on the pulse of banks. Governments. Media. Hospitals.

  Yeah. That makes me a little scary to some people. People like those men down in Denver last night. They know what I’m really capable of. No one but me knows that. Not even my father knows that. Not even my grandfather knows that. But these people can take a good guess. They want me and if they can’t have me… well, I’m sure they’re thinking the world is better off without a Five Aston if they can’t control him.

  I’m thinking they’re a little crazy.

  I feel my way through a hydrangea bush until I find the mounting apparatus for the gate electronics system. Then I pick up a rock, smash it against the little plastic clips that hold the top panel on it, pull out my phone and the little white charger cord from my pocket, and hook myself up.

  My fingers fly across my screen, typing in commands until a bright blue screen appears with the words ‘Shrike Family.’

  Take that, Spencer.

  I maneuver my way through, clicking off the cameras I want disabled, then close everything back up and make my way back to the house.

  If I’m stuck out here, well… I might as well make the most of it. I have the front door camera on a timer to black out when it senses my approach, then turn back on nine seconds later. So I gotta hustle. Spencer’s trigger is ten seconds of downtime. Sometimes this place gets severe power fluctuations during storms, so he’s learned to let that ten seconds slide and avoid a string of needless alarms.

  No one but him knows that. Well, except me.

  I grin again.

  But I’m not supposed to know.

  He doesn’t know me at all if he thinks I didn’t hack every single system he’s got running out here. Back when I was ten.

  My grin turns into a guffaw as I make my way towards the house. The camera mounted on the roof blinks, then shuts off. And I start running. I hit the door four seconds later, punch in the entry code, and make my way in with one second to spare. Inside, this whole scenario repeats. It feels a little bit like playing Mission: Impossible, except there’s no cool red laser lights for added visual.

  Twenty seconds later I’m on the stairs.

  There are no cameras in the bedrooms. Outside every window, trained on every low-hanging tree limb, on the top of the porch where I once met the princess to stargaze when we were kids… yes. All those places. Just in case anyone was gonna get any funny ideas about sneaking in for some middle-of-the-night fun.

  Spencer Shrike is looking at you, Five Aston.

  Her bedroom door is open. It’s got a pink crown painted on it that says ‘Princess Rory’ in sparkly glitter. I shine my phone on it to get that sparkle effect before I enter.

  I made that for her when I was eleven. She put it on her door and never took it down.

  Even when you abandoned her.

  I didn’t abandon her, for fuck’s sake. It was the best choice at the time.

  At least that’s what I told myself. But this trip home is making me second-guess all those choices now.


  I walk in the room and take it in. My princess has a room fit for a princess. Ronnie painted up her room in a whimsical fairy-tale theme, long time ago. She did this for all her girls. Even Sparrow and Starling got painted murals, only their rooms were all birds and cherry trees. Even Kate and my little sister got painted rooms.

  Rory’s bed is a modern take on a traditional white canopy, complete with white netting over the top and the fluffiest pink down comforter you can imagine.

  I flop down on the bed and look up at the little foil stars I made her when I was eight.

  And smile.

  She never took them down either. They are all swaying from my flop. Stray bits of light leaking in from outside make them sparkle. They used to have glitter. And back when we were kids, they’d sparkle like a motherfucker. But I think most of that glitter has fallen off by now.

  Still, they’re like stage props. Up close they look their age. They look like they’ve been used a thousand times before. Like they are a thousand years old. But from far away, they are whimsical and perfect.

  I’ve been up here plenty of times, even though Spencer did his best to keep me away. He’s not a dumb guy. Not at all. He’s kind of a genius in his own right.

  But come on. I’m Five Aston.

  Once I get a thing in my head, there’s just no stopping me. He should know that by now.

  My first unauthorized visit to her bedroom, I was seven. My family was here for the annual Fourth of July party. Everyone was here. Even my oldest sister, Sasha, came. And that crazy motherfucker Merc. And insane Uncle James.

  How did Rory grow up so innocent and sweet when all the family assassins dropped by for the holidays on a regular basis? I mean, I figured that shit out pretty early.

  Of course, I hacked into my dad’s first secret office in the house by the time I was six. And she… well, the first word that comes to mind when I think of my little princess is… sweet. Then comes trusting. And, if I’m being honest right now, a little bit naive.

  Anyway, that first visit I came in through the window. Hence the need for tree limb and rooftop cameras.

  But Jesus Christ, it was a great night.