Page 47 of Remington’s Mate

Sutcliffe reached for her, and Jaeda punched him in the face, putting her entire weight behind it. She heard his nose crunch.

While he was momentarily stunned from the unexpected pain, she grabbed his wrist and rotated her body, knocking him off balance and slamming him face-first into the storage shelves, his arm twisted painfully behind his back. With the other hand she drew the knife from her handy garter sheath and pressed the razor-sharp blade against his throat.

Thanks, Mom.

Sutcliffe snarled, “You won’t cut me. You wouldn’t dare.”

Jaeda leaned her weight into him, feeling the strain on his shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “But if you move, this arm is coming right out of the socket.”

He went rigid. Not moving, but not giving up, either.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, her mind working furiously to come up with a story that had even a chance of not blowing this whole mission. “I was perfectly willing to be loyal to you, up to but not including anything to do with your hairy dick. Colt told me about your scam, and I was going to prove to you how useful I could be—for a modest cut of the profits, of course.”

Sutcliffe was still too pissed to accept her as an ally. “You have to let me go sometime, and when you do, I’ll make you regret this.”

It seemed she had to sweeten the deal. “No, you won’t,” she said. “McCall is a loose cannon, but you need him. This construction project is already behind, and threatening to go over budget—which will eat into your personal profits. You don’t have time to find someone to replace him. He talks to me, when we’re in bed. And he listens to me. I can keep him in line until this deal goes through and we can get rid of him. But in return, I want his cut.”

She could still feel Sutcliffe fighting her, and knew it was time to up the ante.

“If you don’t agree, then here’s what will happen. I will call security and tell them my boss, Ethan Sutcliffe, tried to assault me in the storage closet.” She gave another yank to his shoulder. “And I pushed him away, at which point he fell on the open drawer of the filing cabinet and cut his neck on the corner of it. And that’s where they’ll find you. All bled out on the floor, with a ragged gash on your neck that will totally cover up the knife slash.”

Sutcliffe said, “You don’t have the guts to pull that off. Or the acting skills.”

Jaeda made her voice very low and quiet, almost caressing. “Really? Because if I made you think I wouldn’t do that—and enjoy it—then I’d say my acting skills are Oscar-worthy.”

That freaked him out. Hah. How to threaten someone with death and sound like you really mean it? Thanks, Uncle Kane.

“Fine,” Sutcliffe said. “We have a deal.”

She could tell from the relaxation of tension in his body that she’d won—for now.

She gave one more yank to his shoulder and then backed toward the door, knife still out.

Sutcliffe turned around as she kicked the doorstop out from under the door. He stood staring at her, blood running down his shirt from his broken nose, eyes blazing with humiliation and anger.

“You’re a crazy bitch,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.

She smiled at him. “Yeah.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Where did you even come from? Were you raised in a damn biker gang?”

Aaaannnd, how to make a dramatic exit with a smartass comment. Thanks, Uncle Rafe.

Jaeda opened the closet door, and bared her teeth at him in a feral smile. “Wolves, Mr. Sutcliffe. I was raised by wolves.”

Chapter 19

Jumpy with adrenalin, Jaeda went back to her copying, hoping Sutcliffe would just go ahead and leave. Instead, he went into their private bathroom to clean himself up.

Being an executive bathroom, it had a shower. After a minute, Jaeda heard it running.

This was her chance. She took one set of binders into his office, as an excuse for being there. She also took her knife, hidden in her pocket.

Jaeda plugged the thumb drive with the keylogger software into the USB port on Sutcliffe’s laptop. It started uploading.

Now all she could do was wait.

It seemed like the software ran for an eternity. The water turned off in the bathroom.