Page 8 of Bared

She picked up on their freshly copied scent, making her newly aware of the huge risk she had already asked of her friend. After Ev had refused to let her read the incriminating dossier, “protecting” her in his own ridiculous way, her friend sneaked into her brother’s private office—yes, the room right next door to where they met with Santelle and Carris—and copied every single sheet for her.

Now, he was going to help her do more than read them.

So much more.

But she had to make sure he still knew that. Or if he wasn’t, to give him permission to get out of here while he could. While he could still hope that her brothers would let him keep one of his testicles. After this point, if they ever learned about his part in her plans, the poor guy would probably be singing soprano during his lifetime of palais latrine duty.

She lifted her head and bored her gaze right into Jagger’s caramel browns. “Are you very sure you want to do this, Lieutenant Fox?”

“Are you, Your Highness?”

Though he ended with his typical sarcastic lilt, his tone was mostly serious. She was grateful for both. More than that, she was glad that Jagger knew how much she needed both. “To be honest, I have no idea,” she confessed. “But there are no more easy choices here. If Evrest does not cave to Trystan’s ultimatum, the Pura will release all of this, no doubt adding a few sordid embellishments.”

“But marrying the kimfuk is also out of the question.”

“Regrettably, so is killing him,” she lobbed back, perversely comforted by Jag’s commiserating nod.

“And so we return to the hard part,” he concluded.

“Says the one who does not have to read this whole thing.” Jayd winced while simply thumbing through the pages in her grip.

“Says the one who skimmed enough of it while copying it for you,” Jag countered. “And a good thing, at that. I believe I saw what we are looking for around the two-thirds mark of the stack.”

She dug in a thumb to the approximate spot he suggested, while her friend circled around and sat himself at her desk. He lifted his shirt from the bottom, exposing chiseled abdominals for the three seconds it took to retrieve another item from a hidden pocket in the shirt’s lining. The smart pad bloomed to life as he tapped knowing fingers across the small touch pad.

“Make sure you are looking in the written transcription of the taped conversation between your maimanne and her friend.” His deliberate sneer on the last word was yet another secret solace for Jayd. Clearly, some people were more loose about their interpretation of the word friend. Jagger was not one of them, demonstrated by the risks he had taken just to get up here tonight.

She would say exactly that to him right now if she were not so stressed about getting him out of here before palais security started their late-afternoon sweeps. Which, if she knew Evrest, would be especially vigilant in this part of the complex. For her own safety, of course.

Her safety.

By the Creator. The expression was a joke at this point.

Would she ever feel safe, here or anywhere, ever again?

To get that answer, she would have to take the most frightening chance of her life. Break out of every boundary that, until this night, were her life.

And there was Jagger Fox, grinning like he was simply helping her with an update patch for one of her Alien video games.

“Ermmm…Highness Jayd?” he finally prompted in a matching drawl.

“Uhhh…yes?” she blurted. “What?”

“You going to stand there in a trance about my abs all night long, or are we going to get this show on the road?”

He got a snicker out of Emme for his trouble with that one.

Jayd still struggled between giggling and scowling. Fortunately—or maybe not, depending on how a girl was supposed to perceive things when beholding the name of the man who was likely her father—she was neutral to both, allowing her to plunge down Jag’s proverbial road. “Here comes the show. And its name is Louis LaBarre.”

“On it,” Jagger confirmed, his fingers flying across the keypad.

Requiemme was no longer laughing. “Louis La who?”

“LaBarre.” Jayd was just as stoic about the repetition. She could not afford to be any other way. Not outwardly. Doing so would fan the flames on her inner chaos, and it was too damn soon for anything more than stinging nerves and a roiling stomach. Letting in the rest of the firestorm depended on what Jagger found. If he found anything.

By the Creator, she hoped he found something.

Otherwise, this mission of discovery would swiftly become, as Emme had labeled it already, a wild stab at insanity.