It happened that fast.

  Quinn had been jostled from the crowd, too, but it happened so smoothly that she never reacted.

  Shit. Holy crap.

  It was done. Already.

  I gulped, looking around to see if anyone else caught it.

  No.

  No.

  No!

  We were in the clear.

  All cameras were on us. Well, they were on Matt, then to me, and back to Matt.

  I gulped again. It couldn’t be that easy. Could it?

  I kept looking, even to the people lining up on the sides of the hallway. All eyes were on us. I looked up, seeing security cameras up there, but no way. No way could they have gotten Tony on there. I looked, checking the group of people surrounding us, and we were encased. Quinn, too.

  Crappity crap crap. Looks like the plan worked.

  “—ley!”

  “What?” I yelled, out of reflex, jerking at Matt’s sudden shout in my ear.

  But he wasn’t in my ear. He was standing a normal distance away and he had been trying to get my attention.

  I flushed. I was always flushing. “What? Sorry.”

  He was fighting a grin, but one of his eyebrows was arched up. He nodded to Quinn. “Now’s your time. Say your piece to her, to the woman who tried to have you killed.”

  At his words, a new buzz went through the hallway. The press got excited. That sound bite was going to be played on repeat over the next few weeks.

  I stifled my groan but looked at Quinn. I made eye contact with her, and the hatred that I expected to feel …

  It wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t there!

  Why wasn’t it there?

  A burning was in my chest instead, and it was spreading. Growing. It was filling up my throat, tunneling down into my stomach.

  No. I didn’t feel hate for her anymore.

  I smiled at her instead, and a few people in the crowd gasped, as if a smile was worse.

  Quinn frowned, but she was waiting.

  Everyone was waiting.

  “I know the government cares what you tried to do to me, but right now, I don’t care about me. I care about Seraphina and Curtis. They’re the real victims here.”

  Quinn blanched. A sheen came over her eyes, making them glisten. I wanted to believe those were unshed tears, but knowing her, dust might’ve been thrown in her eyes.

  “Stop hurting them. Do what’s right, for them.”

  Then, turning, grabbing Matt’s arm, I pushed him out of the building. He resisted, but I dug in. We were done. Show was over. And after a slight pushing match, he yielded. He led the rest of the way. Fitz was ahead of us, Drake right behind us, and the car pulled up.

  Once we stepped outside, a guy was coming at us fast. Really fast.

  It was Tony.

  He bypassed us, and I knew that was the instant he handed the phone off to Matt. But it was so fast, so smooth, so good that I never saw it. I wouldn’t see it until we were back at the house and Matt came to my room. He knocked, came inside, and brandished the phone.

  There was a wicked grin on his face, and he tossed the phone on the bed. “Do your thing.”

  Right.

  Now it was my turn.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bailey

  Quinn’s phone was a joke. It was like she didn’t realize who she had been married to, who she tried to have kidnapped, and whose son came out of her birth canal. Seriously. Not a clue. I hacked into her phone within thirty seconds. She used the most generic password ever. 0000. She needed to update to the one that uses her thumbprint instead. That would’ve been more of a challenge, but okay then.

  I was in. And I was snooping. Well, first I turned off the locater so it couldn’t be tracked. When we came up with this plan, the intention was to get in the phone, clone it, upload some spyware, and hand it back. That all got usurped because I pushed Matt out the doors. So yeah, that was my bad, but we could still do this.

  I think.

  Maybe not.

  Probably not.

  Crap.

  She was going to get a new phone, and we’d have to do it all over again.

  So maybe I didn’t need to worry about spyware, but for some reason I was still uploading it. I was in the middle of it, when suddenly the phone lit up. It was an unknown number, and then it suddenly stopped.

  The phone froze in place.

  Then lit up.

  Then not. The screen went black.

  Lit up again.

  And—what was happening?

  It was being downloaded.

  Holy crap. Holy crap!

  She was getting it cloned remotely.

  My spyware was half downloaded.

  I lunged off the bed, grabbed a cord, and plugged it into my computer. From there, I tried to get into the basic coding for the phone itself. The phone was ancient and Quinn was a moron for not updating it in years, but I could work with that code.

  Whoever or whatever program was uploading the data, it was doing it fast. Quinn must’ve gone right to a phone store, and they were good. I had disconnected it from Wi-Fi, too, so they were using a different connection. I wanted to know what they were using, but I could analyze everything later. First, I pulled up my spyware and finished the code.

  Once it was done, I looked over.

  The phone was still being cloned.

  Then, another flash on the screen.

  The screen went black, and I waited, holding my breath.

  It came back up, and I whooshed a whole breath of relief. Quinn’s new phone had my program on there, so I turned to my computer and disconnected from her old phone. I pulled up a new screen, searched, clicked on my program, and sat back.

  I had a live feed into her phone, and she was going through it, or someone else was—fast, too. They were searching to see what was changed.

  They could find my program if they looked hard enough, but I was hoping that when they saw nothing added or deleted or changed, they would think nothing happened.

  One app was opened. Two. Three. They went through fifteen of her apps before the screen stopped.

  The text messages were pulled up.

  She was texting someone.

  Who was she texting?

  A number came up. She typed:

  Quinn: I got my new phone. You can send the virus to the old one.

  Quinn: Good try, Bailey. Better luck next time. *middle finger emoji*

  Oh. Yeah. Hadn’t thought that through, but made sense she’d figure it out.

  Her old phone’s screen lit up again, and there it was. I saw the virus being uploaded. Whoever was on the other end hit the final button and the phone went dead. RIP Quinn’s old phone, because that sucker was dunzo.

  I already had everything backed up on an external drive.

  Matt and I would have to have a ceremony later to send off Quinn’s phone, but until then, I opened another window and pulled up my program again. This time, I clicked on the ghost program and let it go. Anything new she did on her phone would be downloaded here, and that would be sent to the same external hard drive that I had set up with her old phone’s data. Minimizing that window, I pulled up her old data and started going through it.

  A hard knock came first, before the door was shoved open. “Yo!” Matt strolled in, a bag of chips in hand, and he popped a bunch in his mouth. “What’s happening, hot stuff?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t quote pickup lines to your sister.”

  He blinked at me, blankly.

  He didn’t know.

  “That quote is a pickup line from a movie.”

  A slow grin on his face. He laughed, putting more chips in his mouth. “It’s like second nature to me. I don’t even think about them anymore.” He turned to the computer and nudged my shoulder. “What have you learned?”

  “That she got in touch with someone who knows phones, right away. They cloned her old phone remotely and then killed it.”

  His head jerked back up. “Are you saying we got nothing?” His voice went hard.

  “Where’s the trust? Where’s the Team Batt faith?” I nudged his shoulder. “I got the data already downloaded, which is here.” I clicked on the window, showcasing it. “And…” I pulled up the other window and then we were watching in real time as Quinn was setting up a date.

  “Whoa!” Matt leaned in toward the screen. “Who’s that?”

  The number wasn’t saved, so there was no name.

  hotel at 9 again?

  Unknown number responded immediately.

  yes.

  Matt grinned at me. “Wonder who gets the room? Who’s the bitch in this relationship?”

  Three minutes later:

  Quinn: Called. Room 314

  Unknown number: I’ll be there.

  Snorting, Matt shoved up, his bag still in hand. “Guess we’re doing another stakeout.” He put his hand in the bag, then paused. “Wait. What hotel? She didn’t say.”

  I was already on that, too. “Again, where’s the love, brother? The Team Batt fai—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He was back and peering over my shoulder.

  I was pulling up the call history and looking back. Matt had his phone out. He was putting the numbers in and giving me a nod, then he hit Dial and we both waited.

  “Coastal Hotel, this is Amanda. How may I help you?”

  Matt hung up. He pivoted around, facing me square, and his head cocked to the side. “Who owns that hotel?”

  I turned back to the computer and typed it in. A simple Google search and I looked back at him. “According to this company’s name, the real CEO is Edward Nathans. Do you know him?”

  He was frowning, and his hand came up. He began idly itching his cheek, thinking. Then his eyebrows surged even lower and he looked at me. “You’re not going to like it.”

  I sat up, my stomach falling at the same time. “What?”

  “I don’t know the name, but … I think Kash might.”

  I pulled my phone out and dialed.

  “Please tell me you’re not already in trouble.”

  That was his greeting. Talk about—

  I sighed. “Um. Maybe?”

  “What’s happened?”

  Matt’s eyes were bugging out, but I gave Kash the entire rundown, except, you know, about stealing the phone or hacking the phone. We didn’t need to start this call on a bad note. Okay. I vagued-up a lot of it, saying we got an alert Quinn might be at this hotel, meeting someone.

  “Do you know Edward Nathans, and if you do, please tell me this isn’t going to be a problem?”

  “I should ask how you got this alert, but in this instance, I’m not, though I’ll probably regret not asking. As for Nathans, I do know him, but not well enough to call him about one of his customers. What are you guys planning?”

  Matt had been eavesdropping, and he grabbed the phone from me, hitting the Speaker button. “We’ll just do a stakeout. They have a bar there. We’ll have a drink and maybe see who shows up. The guys will be around us. No one will be in danger. Just a stakeout.”

  “You won’t engage?”

  “Uh…”

  “Matt.”

  “Nope. Just a new spot we’ll try out for drinks. We’ll go incognito. Disguises. Maybe? Just hanging out. Nothing else.”

  Kash’s entire voice was tight from his end. “Matt.”

  “Hmm?”

  “If you put yourself, the woman I love, or my guys in unnecessary danger, I will shoot you in the ass.”

  Matt swallowed. “Got it.”

  I snatched the phone back. “We’re good to go then?”

  Kash sighed again. “I’m sure it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bailey

  Dumb.

  It was an adjective that described Matt and me. Our dynamic duo wasn’t so dynamic sometimes. Like now. We’d gone to the hotel, thinking we could grab a drink in the corner.

  That was the problem.

  We could not grab a drink and be incognito.

  Scott was parked near the second entrance to the bar. Fitz was positioned toward the first entrance, but since he was sitting, I was supposing that was his helpful attempt at being incognito. There were two others in the lobby, but thank God they were new guys. Quinn wouldn’t recognize them—or I was hoping she wouldn’t.

  But that reminded me of something. “Isn’t Quinn on house arrest?”

  “No.” Matt said, as he lifted his glass for another slug.

  He had the whole lounging look again, and I was noting that it worked. He looked bored, rich, and cool. I don’t know how they all correlated, but they did. It’s why there were three women eyeing him, because there were only three other women besides me in the bar. Wait. I caught the bartender eyeing him, too. Four women were eyeing him, four out of five.

  “Ankle bracelet?”

  “No.” Another drag from his glass.

  “Why not?”

  “Hmm?” Another drink. He started eyeing the redhead.

  I was going to grab that glass and pour it over him in two seconds. “Hey.”

  I got his attention.

  “Sorry. I was slipping back to old and immature Matt. New Matt. Here. Mature Matt. What’s up?”

  “Her trial is for kidnapping and murder. Why isn’t she on house arrest or wearing an ankle bracelet?”

  “Because she made bail claiming she wasn’t a flight risk because of her children.”

  I started wondering who we’d find coming to meet her. “You think it’s Drew Bonham again?”

  Matt tensed. “No. That dickhead is on house arrest.”

  “Why’d Quinn get out of it and he didn’t?”

  “Because she’s a bigger profile and she’s got money. Peter’s. Better lawyers can do a lot against the law.”

  “Bonham’s got money, too.”

  “Not anymore. He’s fighting a nasty divorce. Quinn didn’t fight her divorce. She settled fast, so it looks good for her defense.” Matt shrugged, but there was a heated look in his eyes, and not a good heated look.

  We had a perfect view of people coming in and out of the hotel. They had to walk past us for the elevators, but we were slouched down in order to not attract their immediate attention. I was hoping we were far enough in the back of the bar so no one would see us even if they took a second look. If they came into the bar, our shtick was up.

  The hotel doors swooshed open.

  A wave of cold air swept through the lobby, and I was ready for it, knowing it’d hit us in a second. The sounds of the city came in. Cars honking. A guy was yelling outside. We saw the front desk attendant nod at someone going through … It was her!

  “What the hell?” Matt was scowling, and he shot up in his seat.

  He leaned forward, peering closer, and then he was out from the table.

  “Wha—Wait!”

  My heart was pounding.

  This wasn’t the plan. Team Batt needed to have rules and guidelines and protocols so that we didn’t ruin the entire reason we were staking this lobby out in the first place. Like seeing our target and storming right up to them.

  And then I got a good look at who was waiting for the elevator.

  I ground to a halt.

  Not Matt. Matt kept right on going, and the doors opened just as she looked over.

  Blood drained from her face, but Matt grabbed her arm and stepped into the elevator with her. “Bailey!”

  I pitched forward as the doors closed.

  I thought it was Quinn. Same face.

  It wasn’t her. It was worse.

  Payton.

  Maybe my first read on her was the correct one? She had been lurking, lurking and waiting, and what? She was here to report back to her sister about us?

  Everything happened so fast that even the guards hadn’t gotten to us.

  Matt had Payton cornered, and he was right in her face. “Is Quinn already in the room?”

  “How did you…” Her eyes went from him to me, and back to him. “What? Yes. She’s up there.”

  “How?”

  “She—uh—” She was blinking, trying to think. “A back entrance, because of the press.”

  “The million-dollar question…” He leaned down into her, getting in her face. She flinched. “Why the fuck are you here?”

  Another eye dart from me to him. Her lips thinned, parting. “It’s not what you guys are thinking.”

  “You don’t know what we’re thinking.” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “That I’m here as her spy or something.”

  Oh.

  I uncrossed my arms.

  Then, maybe.

  She kept on, her voice rising, insistent. “She thinks I’m on her side, but I’m not. Honest to God. I love those children. Seraphina and Cyclone. It’s like they’re mine…” Her voice shook. “I meant what I said at dinner. I condemn my sister. She called earlier, in tears.”

  She was lying.

  “She told me what you said to her in the court building, and she asked me to see her. She thinks I’ll help get her back in her children’s good graces, and Peter’s.”

  She was so lying.

  There’d been no call. I had that data going to my own phone, so I saw that Quinn had placed calls in the last two hours, but none to Payton. The only correspondence had been the text, and once we got back to the house, I wanted to check the texting history between the two.

  I had a feeling those would be enlightening.

  Matt eased back. He wasn’t saying anything.

  She kept looking between the two of us, and she must’ve mistaken our silence as believing her, because she started breathing easier. She spoke calmer, and a laugh hitched in her throat. She pressed a hand there. “You guys scared me. Where did you come from? How did you…” Her voice trailed off.

  She was thinking.

  We were surprised it was her meeting her sister.

  We knew Quinn was here.

  She looked at the elevator panel. Matt had been the one who pushed the floor number.

  If she didn’t say another word, Matt would’ve led her right up to the room.

  She swallowed, and her voice got suddenly quieter. “You bugged her phone.”

  I took note that it wasn’t a question.

  “How long?” Her voice was hoarse now.

  I didn’t say a word, but damn it, this wasn’t good.