Deadlock

by Cherrie Lynn

  “And you just happened to show up here at the same time as me? Checking up on her?” What if Lena had texted him, too? Her mind was so crammed full of suspicion and possibilities that she couldn’t see a clear path. She shook her head as he opened his mouth to speak. “I don’t know what to think. But I’m family, and you’re not, and this whole thing is making me uncomfortable. You should leave.”

  “Just don’t go to the police yet. All right?”

  He turned to go, leaving her with five million questions zinging through her brain, but she couldn’t settle on one to ask, and she wanted him gone anyway. He creeped her out. No police? When there was obvious trouble? He had to be shady. When someone says don’t call the police, that’s when you should.

  The question that chilled her to the bone was this: How shady was Lena?

  “Jesus,” Lindsey muttered to herself after the elevator doors closed on Griffin’s brooding expression.

  Lindsey didn’t want to think her twin was capable of getting caught up in any criminal activities, but she wasn’t sure. What secrets would an investigation uncover?

  She didn’t know what to do. She hated the fact that protecting Lena and making excuses for her had become second nature. She hated thinking her sister might be a victim…but she almost hated thinking she might be corrupt even more.

  “Okay,” she muttered to herself, letting herself back into the apartment and trying not to let the horror of finding it this way engulf her again.

  If Lindsey had seen that text and written back, Sure, sis, whatever you need, I am your willing servant, and not gone straight to Lena’s apartment, she would never have known about this.

  The safest bet right now was to leave everything untouched. In case… Well, she didn’t want to think about possible outcomes that might involve the place becoming a real crime scene if Lena wasn’t found. Everything could be cleaned up later. After she came back. Safe.

  I’ll even help you. Like always. Jesus, Lena.

  Lindsey surveyed the wreckage and sighed. All her sister’s pretty things. Her pictures. Lindsey plucked her cell phone from her pocket and went to Lena’s last message, the one asking for a favor. Go to this address and ask him for help. An address here in Denver. Well, at least she wasn’t asking her to gallivant across the country.

  Ask him for help? Who? And what help? Thanks a lot, sis. She shot a message back asking for specifics, but minutes ticked past and no response came. She hadn’t really expected one. Something told her Lena withheld that information for a reason. That was never good.

  Sighing, Lindsey let the back of her head meet the door behind her with a thud. She stood that way for a while, exhaustion seeping into her bones.

  It was when she lifted her head that she noticed something odd. Across the room, Lena’s PC sat intact. Burning at the top of the screen was the tiny light that signaled the webcam was on.

  Icy fingertips slid down the back of her neck. Someone could be listening, the stranger had said.

  And watching.

  Lindsey hauled ass out of Lena’s apartment without another glance.

  Chapter Three

  Jace Adams realized the barest strip of sunlight peeked around his blackout curtains. Turning off 3TEETH’s mind-scouring “Antiflux,” he stared at the last remnants of code on his laptop and leaned back in his chair, then pushed his fingertips into his burning eyes. He’d been at it seven hours, countering every network security measure they’d thrown his way, and his brain felt like a fucking wad of cookie dough. These Libra fuckers were pretty good, he had to give them that. Pretty good, but not great. He’d been foiling them for years now.

  But he might be losing his touch if he was already wiped out. As he stood and stretched, his muscles pulled taut and protested the movements, joints creaking and popping. Yeah, losing his touch, and if he kept neglecting his gym time, he was gonna get out of shape, and that wouldn’t do. His body needed to be as well-oiled a machine as his mind.

  Bare chested, he strolled over to the window and lifted the edge of the curtain, wincing as the sunrise hit him dead in the face. Denver was waking up, dark buildings silhouetted against a sky blazing red and orange. And he was winding down, but maybe he still had the stamina for a run and a shower before he crashed. Clear his foggy head.

  He quickly threw on sweats and sneaks and rode the elevator down the twenty-four floors from his penthouse. Hannah, who worked at SmarTech, got on at floor ten, and he greeted Jen, who worked at Encorp, as he exited on the first. Both of them had been trying to hook up with him since they’d moved in. But he and the rest of the guys in the Nest who owned the building hadn’t rented to them to get into their pants. They’d rented to them—and many others in the building who worked in the tech industry—because they needed to piggyback on their IPs.

  But they didn’t need to know that. So he beat a hasty exit into the cool Colorado morning.

  The brisk air and the pumping blood quickly restored his clarity, and soon he was in an easy, familiar rhythm. So many times in life, running had been his only outlet—well, running and computers, though sometimes only one had been available to him. One had helped him escape; the other had helped him connect. Neither had been easy. Not in the foster homes. Maybe even less so in the Air Force.

  But it was too beautiful a morning to dwell on it. The birds were frolicking, the traffic was cheerfully homicidal, and he had a long stretch of sleep ahead that would surely recharge all his batteries. Jace focused on the rap blaring through his earbuds, on his breathing, on the beat of his Nikes on the sidewalk. Despite the crispness outside, he was soon shining with sweat. He was about to turn a corner to head back around the block when a face in the crowd outside a coffee shop stopped him dead in his tracks, and he panted lightly as he squinted.

  As soon as he’d glimpsed her, though, she was gone, swallowed up by the steady stream of pedestrians. Surely that had been a trick of the light…but even if it hadn’t been, even if it was her, what the fuck did it matter? He damn sure didn’t need his day ruined by being reminded of her.

  Too late. He hadn’t seen her in years, but he could re-create that face out of the mists of his memory as if he had talked to her yesterday.

  He could say that woman had ruined his life; it damn sure felt like it at the time. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, that wasn’t necessarily true. She’d only set him on a different path. A vastly different path, sometimes a shitty one—during the darker, scarier moments he definitely cursed her name for denying him the cushy lifestyle he’d always envisioned for himself. But he wouldn’t be who he was today without her and what she’d done. He supposed in some twisted fucking way, he should thank her.

  Nah. She’d fucked him over, plain and simple, regardless of the outcome. The memory of the betrayal scratched at a sore spot in his heart, and his run back to the high-rise was at a faster clip, the blood pounding in his ears more forcefully than it had before. Somewhere, Christmas music was playing.

  Good luck going to sleep now, with visions of Lena Morris dancing in his fucking head.

  …

  The knock on the door was timid, but it roused him nonetheless. Due to circumstances stretching back as far as he could remember, he was a light sleeper. A pin drop outside the door might have him on his feet even before his eyes opened.

  This time, he grumbled a curse as he hauled his dead ass out of bed and trudged to the door, banging his toe on a table leg in the process. So he almost snatched the door open without checking his video feed, prepared to unleash a tirade on the unsuspecting person, but it wasn’t just anyone standing outside. The delicate features were unmistakable and seared into the most hellish depths of his memory, along with all the other laughing demons from his past.

  It was her.

  “Fuck me sideways,” he growled at no one in particular, rubbing furiously at his messy hair. “Are you fucking kidding me?”<
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  What did he even do with this? Suddenly, he knew. He snatched the door open, schooling his expression into the most impenetrable sheet of ice he could.

  Lena’s eyes flew open wide, and her jaw worked soundlessly for a few seconds, as if she had expected a friend to open the door and was instead being greeting by a hockey-masked killer wielding a machete. She even flew back a step, a hand fluttering to her throat. And she looked…different. Softer. Her hair was loose and lustrous, honey-blond, and her green eyes shone with an innocence he did not remember at all. Then again, it had been what, seven years? Eight? Maybe bitterness had twisted her image into something sinister in his head. Didn’t matter. She was probably still a deceitful bitch.

  “You— You’re— Jace?” Her gaze swept down the length of his body, stuttering a little over his bare chest.

  “At least do me the courtesy of remembering my fucking name,” he snarled at her, and her eyes snapped back up so fast she might have sprained her eyeballs.

  “I re-remember. I said it, didn’t I?”

  He scoffed. And waited. Whatever reason she had for showing up after all this time, it had to be good. He almost looked forward to it. Almost.

  “Um, I don’t really know where to start,” she began haltingly, “but could you maybe…put a shirt on?”

  “What for? This is my place. You’re lucky I’m wearing pants.”

  “Whatever, I just need you to hear me out. I think you’re mistaking me for—”

  “I don’t need to hear shit. What I really don’t need to hear is that you’ve found Jesus or some shit like that and you’re coming to ask my forgiveness for past sins. Because you can shove sorry straight up your ass.”

  She took another step back, her features stricken. “But I didn’t—”

  “Hang on.” He slammed the door in her face and stood there for a moment, a thin haze of red covering his vision. The balls on this woman. There was a discarded T-shirt by his bed; he stalked to his room and shoved his arms into it, pulling it over his head and hardly believing this was reality.

  MIT. Gone. Because of her. Years of dreaming. Years of work. Years of suffering. Flushed away, and he honestly didn’t even know why. Maybe today he would learn. Maybe she would tell him why she’d done it. No matter how pissed off he was, he deserved the explanation, didn’t he? But he didn’t have to make it easy on her.

  He carried a little blame in the situation, after all. One simple no from him all those years ago, and maybe he’d be living in a mansion somewhere right now, king of a software dynasty.

  Yeah. Maybe.

  But despite any wrongdoing he may have done for her, there was nothing filthier than a rat. And Lena Morris was the filthiest rat of all.

  …

  Lindsey knew those words had been meant for her sister, but nothing could stop the tears that pricked at the backs of her eyes. She gritted her teeth and willed them to go back to where they belonged.

  She didn’t even know why she was here, why in the hell Lena wanted her to find Jace, of all people. Back in college, Lena had ruined the guy’s life right before Lindsey’s eyes, and now she’d sent her to bear the repercussions? Was this all just a big joke?

  Almost more astonishing was that Jace had…changed. Drastically. When he’d jerked the door open, she honestly hadn’t known for a split second that it was him, and the recognition had hit her like a kick to the stomach. The funny, outrageous guy she remembered from college was gone, and in his place was this big, hard man with a drill sergeant’s voice and a body that looked as if it had been chiseled from stone.

  Her throat was still dry from that stuttering exchange. She had to do better if he came back. She still hadn’t heard from Lena, and she might be putting Jace in some kind of trouble just by showing up at his door. She had to warn him about that, had to. And give him even more reason to yell at her, probably, but it didn’t matter.

  Minutes ticked by, and she feared he wasn’t coming back despite his admonition for her to wait. A door opened across the hall; she glanced back to see a guy with tattoos on the side of his shaved head exit an apartment. He looked at her curiously before moving on down the hallway toward the elevator. The guy didn’t fit with the opulence of the penthouse floor of a high-rise. But then, thirty seconds in Jace’s company, and she thought the same of him. What had he done with his life after Lena had gotten him kicked out of MIT?

  She started as the door flew open, and the few minutes he’d left her waiting had done nothing to compose him. He still glowered at her, eyes like chips of dark ice, jaw a stony line. The only soft-looking things about him were his hair and his lips. He’d dressed and tamed the thick black hair that had been mouth-wateringly sleep-tousled earlier. When he jerked his head toward the interior of his apartment in invitation, though, she stood her ground. “I’m not coming in if you’re going to be hostile. We can do this right here.”

  “If I’m hostile, I have damn good reason to be.”

  “Okay, then. All the more reason for me to stay out here.”

  “Listen, Lena, if you’re—”

  “I’m not Lena. Lena might be in trouble, and I need your help.” The words burst out of her.

  He looked her up and down, a dark, burning gaze that made heat rise in her face. At least it had shut him up. For about five seconds. Before she could gather her thoughts to launch into the whole weird story, he took two steps toward her.

  “What kind of shit are you trying to run on me now?”

  “I’m not running anything—” She stepped back to make up for the space he had gained.

  “Sure you are. You’re good at games.” She backed up even more until finally he was crowding her against the wall opposite his door. So close she could smell the mint on his breath, feel the coolness of it. A shiver worked down her spine. It stole all the words from her throat. “I was the ignorant jackass who fell for them, though, wasn’t I? Threw my fucking life away for you. Put it all in your pretty hands. And what did you do? You fucked me.”

  Damn you, Lena. Lindsey stared in a torturous mix of awe, fear, and arousal as Jace Adams, the guy she’d had a raging crush on years ago, pressed the hard planes of his body against the soft curves of hers, then claimed her mouth in a blistering rush of mint and heat.

  Fierce, dominating, draining, until the wall behind her was all that was holding her up, his tongue seeking and tasting and owning. Her knees collapsed. Her world tilted dizzily. His fingers bit into the flesh of her biceps to keep her in place, to hold her steady, while he laid her senses bare and assaulted them one by one. He kissed every thought out of her head. Weakly, she slid her arms up around his neck, ready to let him take her into his apartment, ready to be Lena for him and let him exact his revenge on her in whatever sordid ways he desired—

  But he stepped back and left her half leaning against the wall, shaken and aching, her knees knocking into each other. Something hot and dangerous surged in his eyes, but just as soon as she’d seen it, it was gone. His face smoothed out, and then those eyes went cold, impassive, empty. Not even his rage was there anymore. A cruel scoff escaped him.

  “All this time I wondered if it would’ve been worth it,” he said. “I kinda held on to the fantasy that it would have been—it made me feel better when I was lying awake in my bunk at night.” He shook his head and turned away. “What a dick punch to learn I threw it all away for that.”

  Lindsey somehow snapped out of her funk, surged through the hurt, and chased after him several steps. “But I’m not—”

  She barely avoided his door slamming in her face. Putting a hand against it, she leaned her forehead against the dark, shining wood panels. What was she supposed to do? She’d found him.

  That’s all Lena had asked, right?

  He was a real asshole.

  She kind of hoped whoever had Lena—if someone had her—got him, too. But not really. Lena ha
d screwed this guy over big time. Hell, she’d turned him into a monster. Or something had, but she had the sneaking suspicion her sister had set him on that particular path.

  It was no wonder he didn’t remember Lindsey. She’d had a class with him at MIT before he’d gotten kicked out. But she’d been going through a bit of twin rebellion, chopping her hair off in a pixie cut and dyeing it black, while Lena had kept the long, natural blond they both sported now. She’d never spoken to Jace, only admired his looks and his skill and his wizardry from afar. He hadn’t even known she existed. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t in class one day, and the gossipmongers’ gleeful whispers had flown.

  She had never been so ashamed or embarrassed in her life to learn what had happened. Lena had happened. She’d gone to Jace and asked him to hack into the system and change her grade. He’d done it, and in fact, his intrusion had been so flawless, or so Lindsey had heard, that he never would have gotten caught. Until Lena rolled on him.

  Lindsey had no idea why. She hadn’t wanted to know—she’d been so fucking done with her sister that she hadn’t spoken to her for almost a year afterward. She figured it was because she knew Lindsey liked him, and she wasn’t above setting her sights on Lindsey’s boyfriends to fuck, literally or metaphorically. Even preemptively. And someone capable of such an act, something so cruel and heartless, so senseless, wasn’t someone Lindsey wanted in her life.

  But their parents had begged and needled and schemed until the two of them gradually started speaking again and finally fell back into a semblance of sisterhood.

  Now this.

  Why? Bile rose in her throat.

  She wanted to go home and leave her sister to her fate—maybe she even deserved it. She was a literal life-ruiner.

  But she wouldn’t. Something told her that whatever Jace Adams had become, he might be the only person who could help her. She had to make him understand. Frustration ate into her stomach. She wasn’t the most articulate person on the best of days, but this man turned her into a quivering pile of mush. Maybe the only way she would be able to get her point across was to write it down.