Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I scrubbed my hands through my hair. I needed to get out of my head and follow my damned heart. So what if it was half-baked, delusional, and feverishly beating like the wound-up pulse of a very tiny mammal? It was really quite simple. I wanted her, and if that scared the shit out of me, good. I needed to be scared. I needed to be fucking terrified, because the best rewards in life didn’t come from pussying out.
The strongest love begins from a place of conflict.
I pivoted, my resolve propelling me the short trip to the workbench lined with computers. “Change of plans.”
“A distraction,” she snapped, clomping after me.
“No.” I whirled on her, my voice ricocheting through the rafters. “A change of heart.”
Her green eyes flashed, her face twisted in confusion. “You’re not talking to me, Logan.”
“I do talk to you.” I turned back and dug through the clutter on the workbench, gathering penlights, wire cutters, and…where the fuck was the RFID reader? I shifted to the next bench. “I tell you everything.”
She knew every conversation that transpired between me and Kaci. Except for the intimate stuff. That was none of her business.
“You don’t tell me how you feel.” She caught a bundle of wires knocked away in my aggravated search. “I know you have more than one feeling, you angry man. For the past month, I’ve seen grouchy, dreamy, lazy, slouchy—”
“Those aren’t feelings.” I glanced over her outfit, pausing on the blue-sleeved arms. “They’re smurfs.”
She shrugged. “I have a date with Gargamel tonight. But the connotation applies. You’ve been moping around, staring into your beer bottle. You haven’t raced in two weeks. Which would be hard to do with that huge stick up your ass.” She crossed her blue arms. “I just want to hear you admit it.”
I drew in a deep breath. She didn’t give a damn about the revenge business. Her employment with me ended in two days, regardless of the outcome. And with the salary I’d paid her over the past decade, she could retire on a yacht with a full staff of servants dressed in cosplay.
She was busting my balls because we shared a ten-year friendship. And that friendship was worth ten-thousand retorts.
I turned to face her and spoke through my teeth with all the frustration I’d felt for the past month. “I want to kill the loneliness inside her more than I want anything else.” I gestured to the room of electronics and engine parts. “More than any of this. I want to be the one who makes her happy.”
She chewed on a fingernail and shifted her weight to one foot. “She’s married.”
And lonely.
I pushed my shoulders back and pressed my lips together. “It’s a hail Mary, Benny.”
She cocked her head. “The hell with Mary.” Her grin stretched from ear to ear. “You’ve got me. What do I need to do?”
Determination settled deep inside me. My heart thundered with purpose. I gripped the back of her head, pressed her cheek to my chest, and kissed the top of her wig. “I need you to get me into her condo undetected.”
23
Logan
Sneaking into Kaci’s condo in the middle of the night dressed as Evader wasn’t a levelheaded plan. It was a balls-out declaration. Walking away from my revenge, exposing my underground identity, and standing over her bed where she slept with her husband was a reckless way to fight for her happiness. But reckless was my way of giving her everything I had to give, including the power to decide what to do with it.
And I hoped to God she chose me over him.
As I stepped off the elevator on the eighty-eighth floor, I was pretty sure the veins in my temples were going to pop, probably while the contents of my stomach hit the floor. Slipping past Trump Tower security had been the easy part.
Benny had finalized the program on the RFID reader, which gave me access to the parking garage and Kaci’s floor. She shut down the cameras and the entire security grid in the tower, including the alarm systems in the residential condos. A five-minute glitch, she’d said. Enough time to scatter the guards as I rode one of my spare bikes into the garage, took the elevator, and stepped through Kaci’s condo door.
Pocketing the metal reader, I shut the front door silently behind me and was greeted with the dark hush of the condo’s interior. I swallowed back my simmering nerves and followed the display on the visor. The night vision prevented a clumsy fall in the dark, and the image of the condo’s blueprints guided me to the master suite.
The helmet, however, would probably get me shot. I wasn’t just an intruder. I was an intruder wearing a notorious mask. I would have to talk fast, and with any luck, Collin didn’t sleep with a gun.