The man on his back laughs. “Of course we do, Jasper. Who do you think sent us?”
“What?” Jasper twists his head around, only to have it shoved back to the floor.
“You’ve been poking around places you shouldn’t,” someone says before I’m pulled to my feet. My hands have been bound behind my back, and something tight like a zip tie digs into my wrists.
Another man, taller than the others, is standing by the door. He chuckles once. “Mr. Wolfe would like a word with you and your friend here.”
Then a hood is pulled over my head, and I don’t see anything else for a while.
CHAPTER 14
Iexpect to be thrown into the back of a van where we can roll helplessly, our bound hands doing nothing to protect us, but instead we’re loaded into a vehicle with oddly plush leather seats. It’s so well-insulated that I can barely hear the engine noise as we roll through the streets.
“This is nice,” I say, twisting my body so I can pat the seats even though my hands are tied. “What is it? A Buick?” Honestly, with no more information than what I have, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a Range Rover like mine, but I refuse to think I have anything in common with henchmen. Well, with real henchmen, which these guys clearly are. Not morally conflicted and altruistic ones like Jasper. He and I were finally starting to find delicious common ground. How rude of these assholes to interrupt us.
My jibe about the Buick makes someone in the front seat chuckle softly. Beside me, Jasper hisses something that sounds distinctly like “Morgan, shut up.”
I don’t listen. If my true superpower is picking fights I can’t win, I better go all in.
“I imagine hench money doesn’t go very far, but you don’t have to buy American if you don’t want to. I know a guy. If yousave up all your hench pennies, I could probably help you get a good deal.”
The henchman laughs a little more, and I curse that we were so careless. We let fatigue and attraction distract us, and Walter Wolfe’s thugs got the jump. If anyone at SPAM ever hears about this, I won’t need a bus or a tainted pickle. The embarrassment will be enough to kill me on its own.
When the vehicle stops, we’re led into a building. Then there’s a ride in an elevator that seems to go on forever. Longer than the ride to Walter Wolfe’s office. Longer than the ride to my office at Ziro Labs.
The floor as we exit is carpeted and I stumble, but firm hands on my arms keep me from falling. Just as I’m starting to feel steady, the hands give me a shove and I drop, collapsing onto what feels like a leather sofa. Jasper groans as he lands next to me.
“This is no way to treat a colleague, you guys.” Obviously he’s figured out what’s going on too.
The hood is pulled from my head, and I squint on reflex, but the room isn’t as brightly lit as I expected.
Also, the muzzle of a gun is about a foot from my face.
I jerk my head back, but the hands on my shoulders tighten, and even if I wasn’t tied up, I don’t think I could escape their grip.
The gun stays where it is, but since I’m still alive, I take a moment to examine my surroundings. Somehow, I thought we’d be in a warehouse. Maybe a cage at the zoo while a lion paces anxiously in the background. But we’re in an apartment. A nice one. Penthouse, if the view of the city is anything to go by. The only light is a sparkling chandelier over a massive dining room table on the other side of the space.
I glance at Jasper, and his hair is mussed up—worse from the hood than his hat ever did—and he’s glaring at everyonearound us like they’ve interrupted him during the best sex of his life, which frankly, we should have been so lucky. What was about to happen was desperation sex at best and an ugly feelings sandwich at worst. Also, I was about to spill the beans on my mother, the one thing I swore I would never ever do. The zip ties are excessive, but the hench thugs saved us from ourselves.
“What the hell is this?” Jasper asks. “Dex? Carter? What the hell is going on?”
The blank-faced henchmen remain speechless. The guns, the one in front of me and the other held in front of Jasper, stay where they are.
“I think you know what’s going on,” a slippery voice says, before its owner appears.
Walter Wolfe. Billionaire. His tech and pharmaceutical companies employ a third of the city, either directly or indirectly. He’s perpetually having his picture taken with the mayor or handing off a giant check to a homeless shelter or an after-school program. Always in a perfectly tailored suit with an equally well-pressed smile.
Today’s smile is not so gracious. If we weren’t already stuck on the couch, Wolfe’s smile would freeze me in my tracks.
“Mr. Wolfe,” Jasper says. “What’s going on? I was at home, I was—” His words cut off sharply as the closest henchman swings his gun down to collide with the side of Jasper’s head.
“Jasper.” Wolfe is staring down at his phone. For all the interest he gives us, he might as well be ordering takeout while waiting for a conference call to start. “Don’t play coy with me. We’ve already done that, and it ended up with you working here. I told you our agreement would only work if you stayed in line.”
“And I have, Mr. Wolfe.”
Wolfe shakes his head, tsking. “Don’t lie, Jasper. I always know when people lie to me.” He comes forward, pushing the man with the gun back. The henchman takes a position bythe door. Wolfe turns his phone around, and on the screen is a black-and-white security video of Jasper and me in Wolfe’s office. The resolution is shockingly clear, which means the sight of Jasper plugging in his phone into the computer tower is undeniable.
“Now,” Wolfe says. “Leo and Bobby could only say that you tried to sneak your friend here into my office for shits and giggles.” The way Wolfe is speaking, he may have the video of us in the office, but he doesn’t have any sound. All he’s got is Jasper plugging in his phone and me crawling into Jasper’s lap. I could try and argue Jasper was only trying to charge his phone, but the gleam in Wolfe’s eye says he won’t buy that. And there were too many seconds of Jasper doing his tippy-tappy hacker thing on the keyboard for him to just be looking for a quick boost on a battery. Even if they can’t say for sure what Jasper was looking for on Wolfe’s computer, there must be ways to find out. Jasper said what happens next would be slow and painful. How long would they draw it out while someone tried to track Jasper’s mouse clicks and keystrokes until they discover what our target was?
