Kennedy climbed in after her and went to work pulling her new clothes and a blanket out of the backpack where he had stashed them.
He did not try to hug her again.
“We’ll dump the clothes out here,” he said.
John opened the tailgate in time to hear. “Can’t do that,” he said in a disapproving voice. “This is Washington. We don’t litter in our mountains.” He flung in the tent and shut the tailgate.
Kennedy waited until John got in. “According to the rules of the game, we only had until dark to find her or she would die. Therefore Summer is afraid there is an incendiary device in her clothes, set to go off when the sun sets.”
“Wait. You mean you think this guy who is playing this game with you put a bomb in her knickers?” John started the Hummer.
In unison, Kennedy and Summer said, “Yes.”
John looked at the clock—it was three thirty. Sunset was coming on fast. “As soon as you can, hand that stuff up, and I’ll toss it out. When we get the first good spell of weather in the spring, I’ll come back and see if I can find the clothes. I wouldn’t bet on it. But I’ll try.”
“I’ll pay you,” Kennedy said.
“Fair enough,” John agreed.
Kennedy held the blanket to block her from John’s view as she stripped down to nothing, then he tossed the clothes into the front seat.
John slowed, opened his door, and threw them into a snowdrift.
Summer shivered in the frigid breeze, grabbed the panties from Kennedy’s outstretched hand, and shimmied into them.
A quick glance up showed Kennedy’s gaze fixed on her breasts.
In exasperation, she asked, “Really? Would you have even bothered to rescue me without a shot at my boobs?”
His gaze jerked up to her face. “I didn’t know I was going to get a shot at your boobs.”
From the front seat, John said, “I helped rescue you. I could handle a shot of your boobs.”
She bobbed her head up over the edge of the blanket. “Not this time, John.”
When she seated herself again, she glanced at the frowning Kennedy. She wanted to tell him to get a sense of humor, but he touched her chin with one finger and turned her head away from him. “What?” She touched her hair, her ear, her neck, her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
He let her go, and when she looked again, he looked positively grim. “Later.”
John gradually accelerated to about twenty miles an hour. The Hummer held the road without slipping. The guy really could drive.
But within a few minutes, he slowed, stopped, got out, and slammed the door.
She grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around herself, slid down on the hump in the middle of the floor and huddled in front of the heat vent. “What are we doing?” she asked.
Kennedy pulled off his ski pants and parka, leaving him clad in a long-sleeved plaid wool shirt and jeans. He looked good in them. Natural. Like the guy on the Brawny paper towel package. “Because we didn’t know where you would descend the mountain, we brought multiple tents and GPS trackers, and placed them every mile along the road. They have to be picked up.”
Summer hadn’t even considered the machinations they’d gone through. “How did you even know where to start?”
“We’re playing the game.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“All right, I will.” Kennedy was serious. “I first made the assumption that we would play the game here, in Washington. I also made the assumption that James wouldn’t want the game to end too quickly, and would place you somewhere I could retrieve you. In the game, the highest peak plays a part as one of the first challenges. In Washington, the tallest mountain in the Olympic Mountains is Mount Olympus. But in the game, that wasn’t the name of the challenge peak. So I researched other peaks. I found that the west peak of Mount Anderson is the hydrographic apex of the Olympic Mountains.”
“Of course. I knew that. I was saying that only yesterday.” She watched him digest that, decide she was kidding, and smile mechanically. She thought he had a sense of humor, yet he also had that intense focus on the subject at hand. Right now, she should be glad of that focus. It had saved her bacon.
He continued, “From West Peak, rivers flow outward to the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Hood Canal. That mountain also has the wrong name, but it has the right characteristics. So I chose West Peak. I was right.”
“You gambled,” she said.
“I chose wisely,” he answered.
John opened the tailgate and shuffled stuff around.
“How many setups are there?” she asked.
Kennedy fished his tablet out of his jacket and consulted it. “We left this morning before dawn, and we’ve placed fourteen.”
Summer’s vision of a quick rescue faded. “How long until we get back to town?”
John climbed back in the front. “In this weather, with the number of setups we have to grab on the way back, we’re going to be driving all night.”
Kennedy said, “But we’re not going to Virtue Falls. We’re going to the Hartmans’—you and I have things we must discuss.”
“We can discuss everything right here,” she said.
Kennedy flicked a glance at the back of John’s head.
John looked as if he was leaning back for a better eavesdrop.
She asked, “John, you got headphones in this thing?”
“Sure do.” He reached forward, grabbed them, and held them up. “You want me to put them on?”
“That would give us some much-needed privacy,” she said.
He put them on and said loudly, “I’ll crank it up!”
She nodded at Kennedy. “There. I’m not waiting all night to hear why I’m sitting naked in a Hummer after being drugged and kidnapped and almost killed. So explain this to me. And this!” She waved at herself, then out at the snowy mountainside. “What am I doing out here? How did I get stuck in the middle between you and Michael? Jimmy? Whatever his name is. Who is he?”
CHAPTER SIXTY
“He is James Brachler, an underclassman I knew at MIT. At the time, a friend.” Kennedy handed Summer a bra.
She let the blanket drop, slid her hands through the straps and pulled the elastic around. “How did you figure that out?”
“As soon as I realized we were playing the game, I knew.” Kennedy reached around her and fastened the hook.
“I can dress myself.”
“I need to touch you.”
She did not care what he needed. She snatched a long-sleeve navy blue T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “I gathered it was a game.”
“No. The game. Empire of Fire.” Kennedy held her long underwear in front of his heat vent to warm them. “As soon as I looked him up on the Internet, I had a positive ID, for Jimmy Brachler did not exist. He was a man I knew personally, and all record of him had vanished from the face of the earth. So I called my sister and had her find his yearbook photo, and when I received the scan, I ran it through the software. The match was positive.”
“Out of all the Jimmys you knew, how did you miss this guy?” She took the underwear and pulled the tight material over her legs. As the heated black silk slid over her chilled thighs and butt, she hummed with delight.
“As far as I was concerned, when James Brachler went into prison, he was dead to me. But more than that, I was told by one of my senior executives, a man who knew us both, that Jimmy had died in prison. I trusted Brandon. I believed him.”
“Those are your excuses?” She stretched out her legs. Ah, yes. Long underwear, guaranteed to kill a man’s desire.
Except Kennedy didn’t seem repulsed. Those blue eyes were alive with appreciation—and apology.
Goddamn right, he should apologize. Yet she would bet he was apologetic for all the wrong reasons.
He was sorry to have involved her in Jimmy’s vendetta. But etched on her memory was that moment at the party when she had reached out to him, and he turned away.
He told her, “When you said I had a selective memory—you were right.”
“I was right, you say?” She pretended astonishment. “Here’s a moment I will hug to my bosom and put in the treasury of my memory.”
“You’re being sarcastic.”
“Damned straight I am.” She got the jeans off the seat and worked her way into them.
The car slowed. “Got another tent and another GPS,” John said loudly. He removed the earphones and jumped out.
“What are you going to do with your senior executive?” she asked Kennedy.
“Right now he’s been neutralized. Brandon tried to kidnap my sister and my nephew. She stabbed him.” Kennedy smiled unpleasantly. “Don’t screw with my sister. She’s a lot like you. She’s not afraid to defend herself.”
Summer relaxed a little. “So Tabitha and Miles are safe?”
“They are. Brandon’s in the hospital under arrest. I have already started backtracking his activities. I expect to find other betrayals.” Kennedy took a breath. “I promise he will spend a lot of years in prison. Loyalty is my number-one requirement in an employee. But if you wish to be sarcastic about my unwarranted trust in this man, you would be right there, too.”
“We all trust people who don’t deserve it,” she said meaningfully.
He winced.
“Yeah,” she said. “Anyway, how would you recognize the signs of betrayal? You have fewer people skills than most.”
From the open tailgate, John said, “Lady, you’re rough on him, considering what he did to find you.”
She pulled the blanket back around her and shivered. “I’m grateful to you, John. But Kennedy’s the reason I was kidnapped in the first place. At the first sign that I didn’t meet his standards, he decided I was weak and treacherous.” Her voice rose. “Like his mother. He doubted me immediately. So he owed me a rescue.”
“Yes, ma’am.” John flung the tent in and slapped the tailgate shut.
When John hoisted himself into the front seat, Summer locked eyes with Kennedy and said, “Besides, John, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him and this damned … game.”
“Yes, ma’am,” John said again.
In an overly reasonable voice, Kennedy said, “While I can’t argue with that, I would also like to point out that you wouldn’t be involved at all if, rather than rescue my nephew, you had remained hidden in the woods. And you did tell me you took responsibility for your actions.”
Okay. He got to win this one. “Tell me about the game,” she said.
“When I was in college, I had goals—primarily, before I was thirty, I wanted to be wealthy. To do that, I intended to own a successful business.” His already firm jaw firmed even more. “I had plans, ways to achieve those goals. I knew with the world proceeding as it was, the need would be for a business that could interpret and investigate the changes in business and government. I also knew I needed a team who would be sufficient to the challenge. So I developed a role-playing game.”
“Empire of Fire.” She took the faded red sweatshirt out of Kennedy’s hands and warmed it with the vent. “I read about it in your bio. You and your friends played it while you were in college, and when you graduated, you sold it and used the proceeds to finance your business.”
“That’s right—as far as it goes. I attended MIT, probably the most prestigious technical institution in the world. My friends were all highly intelligent and focused. But not all of them had the skills I required for my business, and of those who did, I wanted the best.”
“I never doubted it.” Of course. That explained so much.
He continued, “So we all played EoF. I was able to see firsthand who comprehended the EoF world and its ever-changing challenges, and who was the best and fastest strategist.”
She was appalled. “You used the game to interview them.”
“Yes.”
“My God. You’re a ruthless bastard.”
Kennedy looked surprised. No doubt he was surprised. “Why do you say that? It was a logical, intelligent plan on my part, one that has reaped great rewards.”
“But you didn’t tell them, did you?” She pulled the sweatshirt over her head. “That you were interviewing them?”
“That would have defeated the purpose.”
“I’ll bet you also used them to refine the game.” The T-shirt sleeves had bunched at her elbow. Of course.
“Yes.”
He didn’t even get it. The immorality of using a game to test his comrades, his friends, to judge them worthy or not, to discard those who were undeserving and gather the ones who excelled. What he said was a lesson, one she intended to remember. “Tell me more about the game, the parts we’re playing. You’re a warrior, of course, in opposition to all the other warriors.”
“Yes.” Without a single sign of impatience, he helped her wrestle the sleeves down to her wrists, and when he was done, his touch lingered.
She removed his hands. “And what is my role in this game?”
“You are the Prize.”
What bullshit. “The pawn.”
“At times,” he agreed. “But the Prize was not—is not—a thing. It is a person. The game chose the Prize randomly from among the players, and as the person played that position, that gave me the clearest view of the value of a player.”
“Because?”
“The Prize is the game-changer. By any means at its disposal, the Prize can take control of the game. The Prize can make alliances, break them, trick the warriors into fighting among themselves, defeat all opponents and ultimately win. Because the Prize is up against the warriors, it is the most difficult role.”
“So as the Prize, I’m playing in opposition to you and Jimmy.”
“Yes.”
She contemplated that. “Interesting.” Then she regained her senses. “But also not the point. How did the game become real?”
“That is Jimmy’s doing. Apparently—and I am interpolating the facts I learned last night from a prison guard—in prison, he was beaten and cut, his face destroyed.”
“Which is why you didn’t recognize him.” She hated to abandon the heat vent, but her butt hurt. So she eased herself up on the seat, fastened her seat belt, and set to work putting on her socks and shoes. “Why was he in prison?”
“He was convicted of running the drug and prostitution trade at the university and the surrounding area.”
“Ohhh.” Now she understood. “You discovered his crimes and reported them.”
“I did not discover them. The university asked me to determine who was behind the massively increased on-campus drug and prostitution problems.” Kennedy stared out the window, where the snow swirled and danced its way into the oncoming night. “I had no suspicion at all. I admired Jimmy. He was brilliant. He was my only competitor.”
“In the game.”
“In … everything! I hoped I could hire him. I imagined he had intentions of starting his own business.” He turned back to her. “I did not realize he already had.”
She looked at Kennedy.
After a moment, he said, “Yes, I reported him.”
“Then you washed your hands of him, and forgot about him.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever see him after turning him in?”
“Once. He wanted to know why I had betrayed him. Why I had betrayed him. He didn’t seem to understand that what he had done was illegal and immoral. I had badly miscalculated—he was, and is, a psychopath.”
“You spit on him.”
“I did not.”
“Metaphorically.”
No hesitation this time. “Yes.”
Sometime during one of the stops, John had failed to put on his headphones, and now she met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
They both shook their heads.
She waved her hand at Kennedy. “Okay, back to the story of how you talked to a guard from the prison where Jimmy was incarcerated.”
“Jimmy had disappeared off the p
ublic records, so what I needed was someone who remembered him. It was not as easy as one might have hoped. He’s eliminated or intimidated everyone who knew him.”
An image flashed through Summer’s mind, of Jimmy peeling off his face.
She screamed, hid her face in her hands and sobbed with fear. Monsters were real, and this one was going to toss her out of the helicopter.
He laughed. He took her wrist and said, “Look at me.”
In trepidation, she did.
He looked like Jimmy again, sexy and alluring. He had revealed his true features. He leaned toward her, kissed her …
But they weren’t his true features. He was a chimera, a creature of many faces, and the soul behind those faces was rotten with corruption.
Yet his kisses had not tasted like corruption. They had been sweet, chaste, then as she warmed to him, skilled and elegant.
She felt ill.
“Are you all right?” Kennedy asked. “You’re flushed.”
She busied herself arranging the blanket over her legs. “The drug … I’m still fighting off the effects.”
“No barfing in my Hummer!” John said in alarm.
Kennedy found her a bottle of water and handed it to her.
“Thank you.” She took a sip. The water helped subdue the nausea, gave her an excuse to avoid Kennedy’s gaze, helped steer her away from unwanted memories. Such a powerful little bottle of water. “The prison guard told you Jimmy had killed people for talking about him?”
“Yes.”
Yes. Of course. She had kissed a cold-blooded murderer. She knew that. She had seen him kill a man, his friend. She had seen Jimmy blow Dash’s brains across the wine cellar … No! Don’t think about that. Firmly she put her mind to work on the conversation at hand. “Then why did the guard talk to you?”
“He is dying. Cancer. It’s expensive. I paid off his medical bills and agreed to give his wife a stipend every month.”
“He had nothing to lose.” Summer knew that feeling. Yet here she was fighting for her life. Again. And this time … her sanity? “You must have been up all night.”
“Yes.” Yet except for a heaviness around his eyes, he didn’t look tired.