Ash practically exploded. “Just admit you had something to do with her disappearance!”
Part of her wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. The other part wanted to punch him in the throat for speaking to her this way.
She kept her voice low and calm, like she did when she spoke to one of the girls fresh from the street. The ones so wounded that they couldn’t quite believe they were free. “No. I’m not involved. The pieces are in place for this week.”
“Why didn’t you get her out sooner?”
She sighed. Taryn felt for him, she did, but goddamn, pick an accusation and stick with it.
Crossing her arms, she leaned back in her chair. “Your sister is in a coma.” She chose her words carefully. Otherwise, she was likely to jump his shit the way he was doing to her. “I can’t just whisk her from her hospital room and hide her in a hotel. You know how much care she requires.” The list her sources had provided had been both extensive and expensive.
Apparently, being in a coma wasn’t cheap.
“You said ‘he.’ Do you know who has her?”
“Caspar has her.”
Taryn whistled. She’d heard of Caspar. He was like the hell lord of the hacker underground. You didn’t cross him without consequences. What the hell had Ash done? “How do you know Caspar has her?”
Ash whipped his gaze up to meet hers. His emotional turmoil turned his gray eyes into a storm. “He told me.”
“He told you,” she repeated, as she struggled to process that piece of information. She’d known working with him against the Tremaine Corporation would be a problem, but this... This was next level. She’d never realized the depths Ash ran in. “Why would Caspar take your sister?”
“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was sharp. “Why did you give her to him?”
“I didn’t do that. Iwouldn’tdo that. To you or to Hope.” Taryn was getting damn tired of defending herself.
“Then why did he say he’d gotten his plan from you?”
The accusation took her breath away, but she refused to let him know. “How did Caspar get her out?” It wasn’t idle curiosity. If Taryn knew how Caspar had done it, she could compare it to her own plan.
“I spoke with one of the nurses on my way here,” he admitted. “The hospital had already informed Portia that Hope was missing. The nurse told me what she knew. I might be able to access the videos later.”
As Ash repeated what the nurse had told him, Taryn felt sick to her stomach. It was almost exactly the same plan she and Dani had created.
Her ire drained away and her shoulders slumped. “That’s...” she paused. “That’smyplan.”
Ash didn’t explode as she’d expected. He stared at her, the hurt in his eyes ripping her to shreds. “Why? Why would you give her to him?”
“It wasn’t me.” How did she make him believe her? “It’s my plan, but Caspar didn’t get it from me.” The words hung in the air between them. The implications...
The situation pointed in a direction that she didn’t want to believe. One that made her sick just considering it.
“If you didn’t do it...”
Taryn was glad his anger had cleared enough to get his brain working again.
Her stomach churned. “I have a mole.”
“Fuck!” His fists clenched and his jaw tightened. His anger was as visceral as hers. “Did you know?”
“That I had a mole? Of course not!” How the fuck could he ask her that? She rubbed her temples. It might explain a few things. Dammit. “Did you ever get the system here set up to detect Giselle’s pimp?”
“What the fuck does that have to do with getting my sister back?”
Taryn took a deep breath, intentionally not reacting to his tone. Anyone else and they’d be done. “Yes or no?”
“No,” he growled. “I needed you to set some parameters and we got distracted.” His wild gesture at the room informed her about the distraction.
