The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

“He likes conversation fine, but that’s not what he wants a woman for.”

“That’s hardly an enlightened view.”

“This is Abundance, new girl. Not utopia. Women have a natural role to play here. I’m doing you the favor of speaking plainly.” Now she caught the flavor of Beth’s emotion, a weary frayed kind of anger. “By all means, burn your light out thinking you’ve got a choice. I have known that man for twenty-five years. He likes pretty women in his bed and pretty children to his name and he gets what he wants, every time.”

“Do you have kids?”

Beth broke eye contact for the first time. “My insides were too slippery. Couldn’t get them to stick.” She grunted. “Try not to lose a baby. He won’t like it. You won’t get a second chance with him. He lost his tolerance for pain like that.”

Rory was betting he’d lost his tolerance for Beth. No wonder she spoke her mind when others were more guarded. Still, the fact she had the red polish indicated she was close to the sources of power here.

“I’m sorry for the trouble you had.”

“I don’t need your sympathy. Can’t tell if it’s real or you being a suck-up. Way I see it, isn’t nothing I didn’t bring on myself one way or another by expecting too much from a man and not listening enough to my own heart. You got brains behind that beauty, new girl, you won’t ever do that.”

She’d already done it. Expecting too much from Cal, shutting out her doubts about their relationship when they’d come knocking. This was a reminder not to make any mistakes with Zeke and wreck the friendship they had.

“I see.” Beth tipped her chin up with a grin. “Not a greenhorn then.”

Rory nodded her assent. “Can I ask you one more question?”

“I am not telling you what he likes to do in the sack.”

Rory mirrored Beth, tipping her chin up and grinning. That was the confirmation of her theory about Beth having once been Orrin’s lover. “How do I say no to him?”

Beth pushed away from the table and stood. “With a great deal of consideration as to how you want your life to turn out. Much as I could kick that man in a place that would make his brain fritz out, he is the only reason we will survive what’s coming, and it doesn’t hurt none to give a few fucks about that.”

The challenge was finding a way to do that—without literally doing it.

She had plenty of time to contemplate how. A whole new week to stand in her corner of the kitchen watching the shifts change and the meals come together and fidgeting foot to foot, craving the fleetest eye contact.

Her days were big on boredom, but her nights were full of action. By midweek she’d explored the school, the clinic, the meeting hall, the kids’ dorm and the nursery and come up empty. Cadence slept through her nocturnal exploits and apart from one very confused little boy who thought she was the tooth fairy, her break and enter activities were uneventful. They were also completely unfruitful. No signal jammer to be found.

It confirmed her suspicions. It had to be in Orrin’s top-floor apartment where he could keep an eye on it and where no one would venture uninvited. She couldn’t break in there and risk getting caught. Orrin wasn’t likely to believe in fairies, tooth or otherwise. But they still had time before they had to check in with Tresna or risk her busting in to pull them out before they were ready.

And this weekend there was a games night and plenty of opportunity for hide and seek, so long as it was signal jammers, not Zeke she was seeking.

Chapter Eleven

Zeke caught his foot in his hand and stretched his quad. They’d been running for an hour, and he was a mess of sweat. Rory looked nothing worse than shiny. And she’d just announced that tonight was games night as if it were a rare invitation to go crazy at Burning Man.

“I’d rather dance on a bar top and go out for pizza at 3.00 a.m., and sugar up my already sweetened caramel Frappuccino,” he said. After another week on the work site, he’d had enough of socializing. He wanted a bag of corn chips, guac, salsa and a movie at a minimum.

In response she put one hand on her hip, flung the other over her head in a side stretch that lifted her rib cage and turned her body into a C-curve, showing off the belt of her abs as she stabilized. Watching her did nothing for his own sense of stability, her body was insanely perfect.

He must’ve scowled at her because she hit him with, “Oh, so grouchy,” before she switched to the other side and then rotated forward, tucking her palms under her toes, face against her knees. Made of goddamn rubber and twice as bouncy.

He changed legs, stretched the other quad. “I miss my bed.” He was close to forgetting what memory foam and a silk topper felt like. Another week of sleeping on the ground had him dreaming up ways to have Tres airlift him a Grand Master. It would be a goddamn humanitarian effort. It was a good thing their tech had never been returned and they still had no way to phone home, because there was zero end to the way he could rationalize the need for a good night’s sleep.

“Poor baby.”

He didn’t need to see Rory’s face to hear the put-down in her voice. It wasn’t just lack of sleep and missing regular sugar hits. He was pissed off and not sure why, but irritation bubbled under his skin and he didn’t have time for that. He had to stay focused. Had to find a way to get nearly five-thousand people clear of Orrin Epcot’s influence and keep Rory safe without earning a swift kick to a soft private part for presuming she couldn’t handle herself. She could; the protective instinct was all about him and he couldn’t turn it off and she didn’t deserve his doubt. Another th

ing that gave him the shits.

“They have Clue and Battleship,” she said, hands clasped and raised above her head, saluting the sun with her glistening goddess body.

“I’m more a Chutes and Ladders man.”