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“Oh, I’m going to enjoy the shit out of this,” I whispered to him and swiped another piece of bacon from the plate that he had beside the stove.
“I made you bacon,” he whispered, like I was in the middle of betraying a lifelong friend just by realizing he had a crush.
“Yeah, and then made fun of my —,” I stopped myself. My boyfriend? The love of my life? What the fuck was he? “Jersey,” I finally added.
“Your…Jersey,” he repeated and laughed. “Awe. You’re barely even a grownup, huh?”
“Oh, shut up. You don’t look like you’re any older than me.”
“Twenty-six.”
“Shit.”
He laughed. “I’m going to start keeping score if you’re going to make it this easy to win.”
“Utah?” Memphis asked and froze the man mid-movement. I started to giggle and smacked my hand right over my mouth when he glared at me another time.
“Go ahead and keep score,” I whispered and ran away from him to sit on the other side of the island beside Memphis. He did finally work up the nerve to turn to face us again, and I think my face would’ve been in physical pain if I’d smiled any wider. He didn’t say anything, but he focused all his energy on Memphis.
“How good are you?” She asked.
“Good,” he said, without even letting a full second go by.
“At what? What are we talking about?” I interrupted.
“What’d you have in mind?” He asked her, ignoring me completely.
“It’s going to start moving at an unpleasant pace now that they know we’re seeing what’s happening to Jersey. They’ll do awful things to him. Probably worse with every day that passes to try to force us to do something.”
Imagining the kinds of things Bryson would do to him made my stomach twist. Not even bacon sounded good anymore.
“Our best bet will be finding a way to use Trista as bait. They need to believe we’re giving her to them. They’ll want it all done in Philadelphia. Try to make us go to them. I have no doubt that’s where they’re keeping Jersey, but I’m under the impression that they’re filming these torture sessions in one place and taking the footage somewhere else to be uploaded. Tracing it back to an original location probably just isn’t possible from my end. And they don’t plan on trading with us. We have no leverage that would make them tell us where he is.”
“You want to send them in one direction after her, while I go the other after him?” He asked.
“Are you that kind of good?” She asked.
He smirked at her challenge. “Indy told me a little about what you found on our organization, Memphis. Distracting them in one place with the possibility of retrieving Trista doesn’t mean they’ll leave New Jersey unguarded somewhere. Our President isn’t an idiot. He might be an asshole. But he’s not a stupid one. He’ll have an endless number of people at his disposal to cover both directions.”
“So, you’re not that kind of good,” she concluded, with a tone that I’d never heard come out of her. Like she’d decided that it was that way and spoken it into reality with her words alone. I watched his already broad shoulders expand even further while he breathed in deeply.
“I’m going to tell Indy to come here,” he said after an uncomfortable few moments of tense silence. “He can help you. And once they figure out that we’re helping you, he’ll be in trouble too. I’d rather have all of you in one place if I’m going to have to keep all of you safe.”
Had he just backed down from her challenge simply by changing the subject?
“Kyle probably won’t like us adding more people,” Memphis said and glanced at me. It was my turn to nearly choke on nothing that time just at hearing his name again. I’d never fucking get over it now.
“Seriously, what is it with his name?” Memphis asked. “Just tell me.”
“Kyle?” Utah asked.
I nearly spit my coffee out.
“Trista,” Memphis demanded.
“He’s the groundskeeper here,” I said to Utah. “I spent a lot of time trying to guess Jersey’s real name. Picked a bunch of douchebag names to piss him off. Started moaning Kyle to make it worse. I obviously had no idea that he had an actual friend named Kyle. He, uh, didn’t take it very well.”
“And he what? Stuffed you back in the trunk?” Utah asked. “Like a real gentleman.”
