Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) (9 page)

“I’m the queen of restraint, haven’t you heard?”
 

He looks puzzled. He’s wearing jeans, boots, and a long-sleeve, untucked Friday casual dress shirt that’s been taken in a bit at the waist. It looks like a slightly preppy clubbing outfit.
 

“No. What happened?”
 

“Never mind.”
 

“So, hey, look. Who’s Linda Fiori?”
 

I almost hit an approaching corner. Then I stop, dumbstruck.
 

“What did you say?”
 

“Linda Fiori. Do you know her?”

Okay, this hallway’s lost its oxygen. I’m sure I’m about to asphyxiate and Logan will defile my corpse.

I control the panic threatening to infiltrate my voice.
 

“Why do you ask?”
 

“She’s all over your LiveLyfe profile. Tony’s been monitoring all the contestants’ profiles, to make sure nobody goes unanswered if they tag one of you and are like, ‘Hey, where are you? Should I call the police?’ But now this lady is tagging you constantly. Is she a stalker or something?”

Why aren’t there chairs in the hallway? Aren’t there ever old people here who get tired on a long walk from one end to another?
 

This has to be a coincidence. A cruel, fate-puts-its-finger-up-your-ass coincidence.

“It might just be some asshole screwing with you,” Logan continues, far more casual about this crisis than I feel. “Because it’s a brand-new account. Like, she joined just yesterday.”
 

“What’s she saying?”
 

“Everything. ‘Hi, Bridget, how’s it going?’ or ‘I’m here with Jenny, and we miss you!’”
 

“
Jenny
?”
 

“And a lot about her move. She’s moving, I guess. ‘I sure wish you and Brandon were here to help me move the antique armoire!’”
 

Linda has an antique armoire. Jenny told me about it.
 

“Or, ‘I can’t wait to be out of Miami. It’s too hot here.’ And a lot about how excited she is to get to Plymouth, Michigan. Like she’s doing a research report, sharing photos of the ‘great lakes’ nearby, hiking trails near her new house that she’s eager to walk on, whatever. Why anyone would be excited to move from Florida to Michigan, I can’t imagine.”

I look at Logan. He’s totally oblivious, but I feel like my eyes must be big as saucers.
 

“Plymouth, Michigan?”

“I know, right?”
 

I can’t exactly text Onyx to ask where he’s relocating Linda and Jenny. But I’m suddenly 100 percent sure the chatter on my LiveLyfe page is accurate.
 

“So do you know?” He looks suddenly shamefaced, as if this man who will walk up to a girl bent over to pick up paper and smack her with his dick has suddenly become embarrassed, sure he’s stepped over propriety’s bounds by sniffing my social media profiles. “I mean, it’s your business. I just wondered if you wanted Tony to send something back. You know, to let her know you’re doing okay and will talk to her when you’re done with your … vacation, I guess.”

“Linda. Linda Fiori,” I repeat.
 

“Yeah. Except that she says she hates when you call her that and wishes you’d call her by her new name like she’s told you a thousand times.”
 

Logan smiles as if he’s in on the joke, but I feel all the blood drain from my body.
 

Kylie.
 

She’s moved from threat to reality.
 

She’s telling the world about my mother and sister’s relocation and new identities, one visitor to my LiveLyfe profile at a time.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I hear the shouting before I reach the Great Room. Trevor falls into step beside me, and we exchange an awkward glance. Realistically, I know Trevor and Bridget did nothing untoward before I burst into the tent, but my gut hasn’t totally got the message. I still react to him with a momentary tightening, as if he’s an enemy. But deep down I know he has a secret, too. One he shouldn’t be holding. It makes him innocent in the matter of Bridget, just as it makes him my comrade. We’re each hiding something, one from the other. And both of us know it.
 

There’s another shout from ahead. It’s female, but that’s all I can tell for sure. We quicken our pace. This time, the fight wasn’t nurtured. This time, whatever is happening has occurred on its own. Simple as chaos theory: The board thinks Halo can predict and we can control it all. But proof that this experiment has already failed is all around them, if they’d raise their heads enough to accept it.
 

“Did she believe you?” Trevor asks, without bothering to explain what he means.
 

I nod. “We made up.”
 

There’s a moment where we exchange new awkward glances. I’m thinking how Trevor shouldn’t know I’m with Bridget because, on paper, she’s here for him. And Trevor, he’s probably thinking about how he should report me for breaking the rules … but everyone already knows.
 

“How long did you stay outside the tent?” I ask.
 

“Caspian closed it down almost as soon as you went inside.”
 

“So he could watch the camera feed.”
 

“There’s no camera feed. Not unless Caspian brought in something of his own and hid it well. You know how Halo is.”
 

“If anyone can hack Halo, it’s Caspian White,” I say, knowing it’s bullshit. Everyone knows that Halo’s unhackable. Even the person who finally hacked it says so, and means it.
 

“So … ?” I say — a question without a subject.
 

“I have no idea.”
 

“What about Kylie?”
 

“What about her?”
 

“Did he test her somewhere else?”
 

“I don’t think he tested Kylie at all.”
 

A strange emotion stirs. Caspian’s motivations are almost impossible to guess — not because he’s so wily but because he’s so unusual. You can’t apply normal logic because he does things for reasons that are alien to normal humans, and it’s one question inside another as to whether he proceeds that way because it suits him — or because he’s trying to fuck with anyone observing his actions.
 

I guess it’s not surprising. All tests here are centered on one person, with the others involved only to act as controls. Sometimes, the outcome is expected, as with Ivy. Sometimes, it’s a surprise, like in Roxy’s test. But there’s always one key subject who matters most, and with Caspian as guest judge, that subject was me.
 

Maybe because I’m curating the experiment and he wanted to test my mettle.
 

Or maybe because sex is behind most human behavior in one way or another, and how I responded to Bridget told him things about how I’m conducting this all in the first place.
 

Or, most troubling, maybe he knows who I really am. Maybe he knows what I truly want out of this.
 

It’s bad news for Bridget. All along, the idea was to throw Kylie into the mouth of this test, stuffing her with a secret and offering her to Caspian like a sacrifice. Whether there were four contestants and Kylie’s departure made three, or whether the move was from three to two, Kylie was always meant to go next. She was custom-made to fall before Caspian’s judgment, given what Kat knew — what we all know but can’t remotely prove. And now, if she wasn’t even tested, that means she’s wiggled free again.

I don’t know if I passed or failed Caspian’s test. But considering that one of the women needs to go, my loss won’t matter either way. It’ll have to be Bridget or Jessica — and despite what I told Bridget, I still need them both.
 

We enter the Great Room to see an eerily familiar scene: two women with red faces, each being held back by one of the men. Logan has Bridget, and—
 

Well, I guess it’s not like the Ivy situation at all. Because although Kylie seems to be the target of Bridget’s wrath, she isn’t being held back. Richard’s beside her, but his hands are to himself. He looks uneasy, as if Kylie might retaliate at any moment. But Kylie seems so at ease, it’s chilling.
 

“You go, girl,” Kylie says to Bridget. “Get it all out.”
 

Bridget is screaming.
Screaming
. I don’t know if she’s angry or panicked. It’s taking everything Logan has to hold her back as she kicks and thrashes and yells. He looks up when we finally enter, and Bridget breaks free. Logan catches friendly fire in the form of a kick to the knee and buckles. Tony — who might be big enough to hold her in check, if anyone is — reaches, but he’s not fast enough. Bridget connects with a fist. It’s not a slap. It’s a punch, like the kind I saw from the tough teen back at Lake Wanasee.
 

You don’t fuck with Bridget Miller unless you want to bleed. True then, and true now.

Kylie’s nostril leaks beneath her silver stud.
 

Tony grabs Bridget’s arms. Her hair is in her face. She’s shouting and sobbing.
 

Kylie rubs at the blood, looks at her finger, then calmly wipes a red streak across one of the couches. I’m suddenly, shockingly certain that it’s not the first time Kylie’s been punched. It didn’t faze her at all.
 

“What the hell is going on here?” I demand.
 

“Nothing, Daniel,” Kylie says in a kittenish purr, now sitting and crossing her legs. She has a huge smear across her already-puffing upper lip, and I’ll bet her eye will soon start to purple. Still manages a vamp’s smile. “Would you like me to suck your cock?”
 

It’s not a dig at Bridget. Bridget’s already too worked up about something else and unable to hear; I can barely hear myself over her shouts of
BITCH
and
FUCKING KILL YOU
.
 

No, that was a dig at me.
 

The smile widens. She looks right at Trevor and says, “I’d offer you one, Trevor. But a girl needs to play the odds. Especially with men who break the rules.”
 

That’s when I know.
 

It’s when I know she knows.
 

About me. About Jessica. About what I’m trying to do that even the board doesn’t — and can’t — know.

I pretend to not hear her, deciding to deal with it later. Kylie clearly takes my silence as a victory. I know a man should never hit a woman, but Kylie’s superior little smile as I pass her makes it almost impossible to resist. And I’m sure that feeling will only grow when I get to the bottom of this — when I find out what horrible thing she’s done to the woman I love.
 

With Richard halfheartedly guarding Kylie and Tony holding Bridget in what’s practically a full Nelson, Logan is the only person unpaired. I notice as I approach him that Jessica is here, too, but she’s made herself small, shrinking back from the action.
 

“What’s going on, Logan?”
 

“I’m not sure, boss. I was with Bridget, just telling her about some weird shit on her LiveLyfe profile, and all of a sudden she started running. Kylie was here with Richard and Tony — ” he looks over, thinking this requires explanation — “you know, just standing around, not … like … doing anything, and Bridget ran right at her, but she grabbed that on the way.” He points, and I see a black fireplace poker on the carpet — one with a sharp hook jutting out like a talon. “Lucky Tony was between them, or shit, I don’t know; it could have been bad.”
 

I think but don’t say,
No luck about it.
Kylie knew she was coming. She knew Bridget’s location as well as her own. Of course she had Tony with her. And of course she just so happened to be on his far side when Bridget came at her.
 

“Bridget,” I say.
 

But she can’t hear me. She won’t hear me. I hear confusing babble about her mother and her sister. About a half-million dollars. About how we’re all blind, that Kylie isn’t really a person, that she’s a
thing
that must be destroyed.

I turn to Tony and Logan.
 

“What’s up with her LiveLyfe account?”
 

They tell me, and it all slots into place bit by bit. I knew about the fixer Bridget and her sister hired from the tablet’s memory before I secure-erased it, but of course Kylie already knew that particular bit of trivia from somewhere else. I didn’t know Linda’s full name, her old home’s location, or especially the new one. But Kylie knows it all, down to assassin and traitor.

I look at Kylie. Her face is puffing a bit, but erase the puff and the blood on her lip, and she could still grace the cover of
Cosmo
. The pages of a porn site. She’s completely at ease, everything here going exactly to plan. Her poise ices my blood. She’s looking me right in the eyes, seeming to fuck my brain with the utmost assurance, a chilling absence of fear or concern.
 

She’s not a person. She’s a thing that must be destroyed.
 

And I know, now, that we made a mistake by bringing her here. It’s not that Kylie isn’t what we we were looking for, as the ultimate manipulator, the ultimate strategic outlier. The problem is that she’s
exactly
what we wanted. She’s
too much
of
what we wanted. And it’s clear that at this point in the game, she doesn’t just have her sights set on Bridget. Now she wants it all.
 

Me.
 

Trevor.
 

Every last bit of it.
 

Roxy wasn’t our sociopath. Kylie is fifty times worse, a hundred times as dangerous. I look at the poker on the carpet and for a half-second’s fantasy, consider picking it up and beating her to death. But of course I can’t. I’d never do that. Kylie knows it, and will use our weakness against us — until the moment she can hold the metaphorical poker, and do the same without flinching.