Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) (21 page)

She looks ready for battle.

Ryan says, “The queen.”

“
A
re you ready
, Miss West?”

In answer to O’Doul’s question, Tabby nods. “But I’d like to request that the room be cleared when we do this. It could get a little…personal.”

I wonder what the word is for when you feel jealousy, anger, hurt, betrayal, outrage, and the urge to scream,
Fuck!
at the top of your lungs, all at once.

“Fine.” says O’Doul. “We’ll need Special Agent Chan on this, though. He’ll be recording the call.”

“Okay.”

O’Doul looks at his men and points at the door. “Everybody out.” He glances at Ryan and me. “Sorry, boys.”

“Connor can stay,” says Tabby quietly. She doesn’t look at me, instead walks over to the whiteboard, turns her back on the room, and folds her arms across her chest.

No one contradicts O’Doul’s order. Even Rodriguez keeps his mouth shut as he rises from his desk and exits the room. They all seem to know how important this is, how much it would mean if they can locate Killgaard, and seem willing to set their egos aside if it means they get a little closer to their goal.

I, on the other hand, have just gotten a giant ego boost in the form of Tabby wanting me to stay. I feel like a cat that’s just been stroked down its back. I’m so happy, I could purr.

Ryan leans a little closer. “Our client doesn’t look too excited about the turn of events.”

That’s an understatement. In fact, Miranda looks as if she might curl her hands around Tabby’s throat.

“Well, obviously,
I’m
not going anywhere,” Miranda says, her fake smile replaced with a very real scowl.

O’Doul glances at Tabby. She’s got her back to me so I can’t see her expression, but whatever he sees on her face makes him shake his head.

“Sorry, Ms. Lawson. We really need to—”

“This is
my
studio. This person Killgaard threatened
me
, stole from
me
, is attempting extortion from
me
. I have a very personal investment in the outcome of this investigation. I’ve assisted in any way I can—”

“It’s not about you,” interrupts Tabby, still staring at the whiteboard. She turns her head and looks at Miranda. In profile, her face is lovely. But her expression…let’s just say I’m really glad I’m not on the receiving end of
that
.

“It most certainly is!” protests Miranda, her voice shrill.

In contrast to Miranda’s flustered heat, Tabby is cool as ice. In fact, it seems to me that the longer this investigation continues, the more Miranda’s famous control unravels and the more Tabby’s fire burns arctic cold.

With chilling calmness, Tabby says, “It’s never been about you, Miranda. But if you don’t get out of my face in two seconds, it will be.”

Ryan chuckles. “Girl fight. Cool.”

O’Doul intercedes before any punches can get thrown. “This might be your studio, Ms. Lawson, but this is my investigation.” He jerks his thumb in the direction of the door.

Face flaming, Miranda looks to me for help. “Connor.”

I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. “Sorry, Miranda. You heard the man. He’s in charge.”

Her exhalation sounds like a cobra hiss. Nostrils flaring, she turns on her heel and storms from the room.

Ryan says, “Maybe she needs a neck massage.” He winks at me and then, with a swagger, follows her out.

O’Doul sighs heavily and scrubs a hand over his face. “Chan.”

“Yes, sir, we’re all ready. Miss West, all we need from you is the number we’ll be calling, and then we can begin.”

Tabby looks at him. “Walk me through it. Tell me about the software, the tracking, how you record it, everything.”

Chan shakes his head. “I can’t. Sorry.” When her look sours, he hurries to add, “But trust me, the technology is state-of-the-art. Untraceable.”

She looks dubious, most likely because he uttered the dreaded word “trust.”

“Let’s do a trial run. Why don’t you call me on my cell first to see if I can detect anything unusual?”

O’Doul says flatly, “No. And don’t bother asking again.”

When I walk closer, it distracts her from the argument I can see coming. As if we’re magnets repelling each other, she moves to the other side of Chan’s desk. “Suit yourself.”

I take up position directly across from her, the desk a buffer between us. O’Doul comes to stand beside me as Chan logs into his computer, navigates through a maze of prompts and pop-up windows, and then comes to a box with the words “Enter destination” beside it.

“Before we begin,” says O’Doul, “a few words of warning.”

Tabby cuts him a look.

“Obviously, you know that everything said will be recorded.”

He doesn’t have to explain the subtext:
Don’t try anything funny, because we’ll have it all on tape.
Also:
Prison.

Tabby says drily, “Obviously.”

“The object is simply to keep him on the line for sixty seconds. Keep him engaged, keep him talking. But if at any time I feel that the conversation is veering toward something that will compromise the investigation, I’ll have Chan disconnect the call. Which will mean our agreement is null and void.”

Again unsaid:
Prison.

With her icy calm still intact, Tabby replies, “You don’t have to paint the pictures on the walls for me, O’Doul. I get it.”

“Good. One final thing.” O’Doul turns his gaze to me. “No noise whatsoever from the peanut gallery. I want total silence in this room while they’re speaking. If I get anything less than total silence, if you even clear your fucking throat, I’ll consider it sabotage.”

More prison.

I feel vaguely insulted and want to tell him so, but decide to bite my tongue so I don’t get thrown out before we even start. I’d chew off my own arm to be in the room during this phone call. So I swallow my pride and nod.

He turns his attention back to Tabby. “The origin of the signal will be digitally cloaked, so if he asks why—”

“He won’t ask why.”

When O’Doul raises his brows, she explains. “I’ve been cloaking all my digital signals since forever. In fact, he’s the one who taught me how. He’ll expect not to be able to trace my location.” Her voice darker, she adds, “Which is why he’ll try to, so you better hope your shit is
tight
, or this whole thing will blow up in our faces.”

Unthinking, Chan starts to give her an explanation of just how good the FBI software is, but O’Doul barks at him to shut up before he can get half a dozen words in. Chan turns red and mutters an apology.

O’Doul drags a chair next to Chan’s desk and points to it. “Sit,” he instructs Tabby. Uncharacteristically obedient, she sinks into it without a word.

She’s pale. Her hands fidget on her thighs. She swallows, breathing shallowly. Beneath her veneer of calm, she’s nervous.

Adrenaline snakes a jittery path through my veins.

Chan’s hands hover over the keyboard. “Sir?”

“Proceed. Tabby, give him the number.”

Tabby recites it robotically off the top of her head. I know she has a photographic memory, but it still irks me that she can recall so easily a number she claims never to have dialed in almost a decade.

Chan enters it, his fingers expertly flying over the keys. Then we wait.

A hiss, a faint click, and then the lonely electronic sound of a phone ringing somewhere out in the vast emptiness of cyberspace.

Three rings. Four. Five. The tension in the room ratchets higher.

When the line is finally picked up, the voice that barks through the speakers is so unexpectedly loud and jarring, I wince.

“
Bună ziua, cine este
?”

It’s a male, his age indeterminate, the language—for the moment—unknown.

Without hesitating, Tabby answers in the same harsh tongue. “
Spune-master care iad are peste congelate.
”

I exchange sharp glances with O’Doul. His eyes tell me in no uncertain terms to keep my trap shut or get personally acquainted with a five-by-seven-foot cell. I look at Tabby, but she isn’t looking back at me. She’s staring straight ahead, unblinking. Her fidgeting hands have fallen still on her legs.

A pause follows. In the background, I hear street noise: traffic, a car horn, the squawk of a pigeon, people chattering nearby. I listen intently, trying to pick up any clues about who might be on the other end of that line, his location or even general whereabouts, when finally, in heavily accented English, the voice says, “He’ll be pleased.”

What the ever-loving fuck?

“How can the master contact you?” continues the voice.

My eyes bulge.
Master?

Tabby looks to O’Doul for direction. He whips a yellow pad off Chan’s desk, dashes off a number, and holds it out. Tabby reads it aloud.

The voice makes a noise of assent. “You will wait.” Then abruptly, the call is cut off.

Bewildered, Chan says, “He hung up.”

“He’ll call back,” Tabby says quietly. “It won’t be long.”

O’Doul is irritated. “Chan, did you get anything?”

Chan quickly navigates around the software interface and then shakes his head. “No. We need more time to dial down to the country and city.”

“What’s the country code at the beginning of the number?”

Chan types into his interface and then shakes his head. “No matches.”

O’Doul curses and then turns to Tabby. “What language were you speaking?”

“Romanian.”

Suspicion is etched into his blunt features. “So we just called Romania?”

“Maybe. Probably not. The man who answered the phone could know several languages. Today he could’ve been instructed to answer in Romanian…maybe last week his instructions were to answer in Italian. I don’t know. We can’t assume anything, except that that phone won’t be anywhere near Søren’s actual location. From the sounds of it, we called a pay phone on a busy street. He’d have picked a spot with bad cell phone reception, poor infrastructure, or an area where a sizeable part of the population doesn’t own mobile phones. That pay phone probably gets used by dozens or even hundreds of people a day.”

I hate to admit it, but that’s a smart move. If that pay phone were located and put under surveillance, you’d have dozens of suspects to follow…and dozens more the day after that. And on and on. It would be a logistical nightmare.

O’Doul slowly lets out a breath. “So someone has been paid to answer that phone when it rings, and then relay any messages to Søren.”

Tabby nods. “And there are probably several more someones in between who know nothing of the links in the chain beyond the one past themselves. And before the call even got to that pay phone, it was bounced through different telecommunications satellites in different countries and the encryption changed an infinite number of times before finally reaching its destination. I told you there would be layer after layer of obfuscation. His paranoia is almost as big as his ego.”

“What did you say when he picked up the phone?” My voice is rough.

When Tabby turns her head and our eyes meet, I’m startled by how wide her pupils are dilated. It almost looks as if she’s recently ingested drugs.

“I said to tell the master that hell has frozen over.”

We stare at each other. The moment stretches out. I feel like I’m on the verge of understanding something important, something I’ve been missing that’s the key to this entire mystery, when a distinct electronic ring comes through Chan’s computer speakers.

Because we’re looking right at each other, I see clearly how all the blood promptly drains from Tabby’s face, turning it white as stone.

“It’s him,” she whispers.

She’s terrified.

Operating on pure instinct, I stride over to her, kneel beside her chair, take her hand, and squeeze it.

She squeezes back, hard.

“Answer it,” says O’Doul.

Chan taps a single key on the keyboard, and the ringing stops. There’s dead silence.

No, not dead
, I think, listening. This silence has a weight and a temperature, an actual presence, like it’s alive. It takes a lot to rattle me—I’ve seen men trying to hold their bloody intestines in their mangled stomachs after being savaged by a grenade—but the texture of this silence makes my skin crawl.

Faintly, Tabby says hello.

The awful silence breaks with the sound of a low exhalation, and then a single word, murmured like a prayer.

“Tabitha.”

Tabby’s arms break out in gooseflesh. Her eyes close. She stops breathing.

I watch all that with impotent rage, not understanding what the hell is happening, only that I want it to stop.
Now
. I squeeze her hand again, but hers has turned limp and clammy in mine.

Perfectly still, Tabby sits. The air crackles with electricity.

“You’ve made me wait,” says Søren, “a very long time.”

His voice has the quality of a lullaby, soft and stroking, meant to soothe. It carries a faint and indefinable accent. Not British, but something equally refined. Aristocratic. Somehow it reminds me of winter snowfall, when the air is sharp and cold and everything is blanketed in powdery white.

Snow. Beautiful, frozen, and deadly if you stay out in it too long.

“But how do I know it’s really you?” he muses. Soft tapping, like fingers drumming on a hard surface. “What could convince me?”

A change comes over Tabby’s face. A flash of emotion disfigures it momentarily, as if a terrible memory has reared its head.

“I have a little black box inside my head. Inside the box are monsters.”

She says, “I still have the dagger, if you’d like me to take a picture and send it to you. I’ll focus up close on all the dried blood.”

Her tone is flat and hard, edged with fury. Abruptly I understand that I was wrong before. Tabby wasn’t terrified. It wasn’t fear that made her face go white, her body stiffen.

It was hate.

She hates him
. She hates him so much, she’s shaking with it, breathless from it, frozen in place from the sheer enormity of the feeling.

And now we’ve got a bloody dagger to add to all the other weirdness. How fucking Shakespearean.

Whatever the meaning of the dagger, the mention of it makes Søren laugh. It’s a ridiculously self-satisfied sound, low and infinitely pleased, and also pleas
ing
. This dickhead has a voice as pretty as his face.