Читать книгу Constant Risk - Janie Crouch - Страница 13

“When I was eight years old, I was invited to participate in a computer coding class provided for free by the charity Communication For All. My father died when I was just a baby and my mother worked really hard just to make ends meet. There were no finances for tutoring or extra lessons. Everyone, including my elementary school teachers, knew I needed to be challenged, but no one knew how to do it. By eight years old I had already figured out more than what most of them had learned in their computer science degrees.”

Bree ran a hand over her eyes, then stared at the laptop screen in front of her on the kitchen table at Tanner’s ranch house.

Gregory Lightfoot, one of the federal prosecuting attorneys for Michael Jeter’s case, had been working with her two or three times a week for the past month on her witness statement for the prosecution.

Gregory was located in Dallas, where the federal trial against Jeter would take place. Eventually Bree would have to go there, but for right now they were working via teleconferencing. Her testimony in Jeter’s trial in a couple months would play an important role. The case against the members of the Organization was very complicated and intertwined.

Bree wanted to help ensure the conviction of Michael Jeter, but this part wasn’t the way she wanted to go about it.

She let out a sigh. “I just don’t understand why I have to go back so far into my personal Bethany Ragan history. Why can’t we just focus on me talking about the crimes I can prove Jeter and the Organization committed, and how I brought them down?”

As far as she was concerned, Bethany had ceased to exist once she’d gotten away from the Organization.

Gregory’s face filled her screen. “Because what they did to you and your mother will be the nail in the coffin. Terrorist activities can sometimes be vague in a jury’s mind. But picturing little eleven-year-old Bethany being tortured in order to get her to cooperate? That’s the sort of thing that will guarantee a conviction.”

“Right.”

But did it matter that she didn’t want to relive that? That there were times when she could still hear her own bones snapping in her dreams? That she could still remember what it was like to hold her mother as she vomited up blood from the beatings the Organization inflicted on her?

“Let’s just focus on Michael Jeter,” Gregory said. “Let’s leave the more painful stuff out for today and focus on when you first met him.”

Gregory didn’t understand. It was all tied to Jeter. He’d been the face of her nightmares for nearly a dozen years. There was no separating him from the horror of what happened to her, even if most of it hadn’t actually happened by his hand.

She attempted to focus.

“I moved up the ranks at Communication For All pretty quickly. At the time my mother didn’t realize that the free courses were being utilized by the Organization to discover children who had natural hacking abilities. We just thought they were giving kids in poorer neighborhoods a leg up.”

“And when did you meet Michael Jeter?”

“I’d been inside the Organization for over a year before that happened. He didn’t get involved with the classroom programs in any regard except the highest possible levels. He met maybe one child per year.”

“And you were that child?”

Bree nodded, glancing away from the screen. “Yes. I’d aced every class and test they’d given me. I was already living on the Communication For All compound with my mom, and honestly was a little bored.”

She could still almost perfectly remember the day she met Jeter. His office had been on a high floor in a Chicago skyscraper. She and her mother had grinned at each other all the way in the ride up the elevator.

“What happened at that meeting?” Gregory asked, yanking her out of the memory—one of the last clear good ones she had of her mother.

“I was brought into his office. It had unbelievable views from the window, and I wanted to look out them. But Jeter told me I had to do a test first before I could.”

On the other end of the screen, Gregory jotted something down. “And what was the test?”

“To most people it would’ve looked like a computer coding game. That’s how Michael presented it to me.”

Thinking about it all now, with such hindsight, was difficult. If she hadn’t wanted to show off so much, impress the bigwig in the fancy suit with the grandiose office, how much different her life would’ve turned out.

“I almost missed the true test,” she finally murmured. “I was so used to everything coming so easily to me with computers that I almost missed the Trojan horse Jeter had put inside his little game.”

The defect had been placed deep inside the coding, and couldn’t be fixed with a simple rewrite. Almost the entire program had to be refitted, and had to be done quickly and creatively because of the countdown the system was on.

“He was testing to see how I could adapt. He wanted to know what I would do when a system’s walls started closing in around me. If I could think outside the coding box.”

“And how did you do?”

“I passed.” She said it with a shrug like it was no big deal.

It had been the hugest of deals.

She would never forget the look in Jeter’s eye when she completed his little coding puzzle and turned the laptop back around toward him with time to spare.

Until that moment she’d been nothing to him. Just another kid who, with the right guidance, would probably grow up to do pretty advanced programming, or maybe even start her own business.

But once she’d turned the laptop back around to him and he’d seen what she’d done, she had become something much different to him.

Much more interesting.

From that day forward, until the day her mother had finally broken them out, there wasn’t a single day that Bree could remember that didn’t have Michael Jeter in it.

“Were you aware of his illegal activities at the time?”

She let out a sigh. “I was eleven. And for the first time being challenged to my fullest potential. To me, it was all a game. In the beginning at least.”

“And when did things take a turn for the worse?”

She stared at the screen, almost unable to focus on Gregory’s friendly face. She tried to force words out of her mouth—once, twice—but they wouldn’t come. Panic bubbled inside her.

All she could see was Michael Jeter.

All she could hear was his voice.

All she could feel was when her leg had been broken at his command.

The room began to close in on her, the past threatening to swallow her whole.

“Hey, freckles.”

Tanner. She felt his hands on her shoulders, his strong thumbs moving gently up and down the back of her neck.

The terror faded. He was here and would help hold her demons at bay. She leaned her head back against his abdomen.

Without taking his hands off her, Tanner crouched down so Gregory could see him in the screen.

“Hey, Tanner.”

“Hi, Greg. Looks like we might need to take a break for tonight.”

Frustration floated over the lawyer’s features. “Being able to talk about this on the stand will make a difference in the case. Bree’s already written it all out, so it’s just a matter of being able to say it.”

Tanner’s voice was calm but firm, and his fingers never stopped rubbing her neck. “You read it, so you know what sort of trauma we’re talking about. You’re going to have to be more patient. Bree will get there, but it’s going be on her timetable and nobody else’s. And besides, if she decides she doesn’t want to talk about all this, you’re going to have to find a workaround. You’ve got plenty of other stuff.”

Bree rubbed her eyes. She should be able to do this. “I’m sorry, Gregory...”

He held up a hand. “No, Tanner is right. You shouldn’t push yourself too hard. God knows you’ve done enough to take the Organization, and Jeter, down.”

“Some days it’s easier to process the past than others.”

“Well, like Tanner said, we’ve got plenty to go on even if we don’t include details from your childhood.” Gregory’s voice dropped, and he gave her a sympathetic look. “But what he did to you so very clearly proves he’s a monster. If we can use that to our advantage, I think we should.”

Bree gave a tight smile and a nod, standing up and walking away from the table, as Tanner talked a few more moments with Gregory. She moved over to the front living room window, wrapping her arm around her midsection. She couldn’t see anything in the darkness—dark came early here in the heart of winter—but her mind could perfectly envision the beauty of Tanner’s ranch and the Rocky Mountains behind it. But right now the beloved scenery didn’t help.

She knew Michael Jeter was a monster. She just didn’t know if she could bear to relive it all.

Strong arms wrapped around her waist, and she leaned back into Tanner’s strength once again. He didn’t say anything or ask her to try to voice her feelings. And she loved him more for it.

“Seems like it’s always one of our pasts coming back to haunt us,” she finally said.

Just a few months ago, it had been someone from Tanner’s past trying to hurt them. Now it seemed like it was back to being Bree’s turn.

His arms tightened around her. “You stuck with me through my monsters. You can be damn sure I’ll be doing the same for you with yours.”

“I know it happened so long ago and I shouldn’t let it affect me now.” She’d always thought herself so strong since she’d managed to survive on her own, but maybe that wasn’t correct. “I’m not really a survivor. I’m just a victim on the move. I haven’t really faced any of it.”

“You’re damn well not a victim, so I don’t want to hear any of that talk.” Tanner turned her in his arms so they were facing one another. “Just because you don’t dwell on it doesn’t mean you haven’t faced it. So what if your mind balks at the thought of sharing the most horrendous details of your life with complete strangers. Nothing wrong with that.”

“The thought of having to talk about this while Jeter is sitting right there in front of me? I’m just not sure I can do it.”

He pulled her more firmly against his chest, tucking her head under his chin. His big body seemed to surround her on every side. It was almost impossible not to feel like he could defeat any foe for her when he held her like this.

“I’ll be there with you every second you’re on that stand. You won’t have to look at him, you’ll look at me. I may hate that bastard with a passion for what he did to you, but I’ll always be thankful that, because of him, you ended up in Risk Peak.”

He was right. Michael Jeter didn’t have any control over her now. He was in jail, awaiting trial, and soon would be in prison. Probably forever. She didn’t want to give Jeter any more of her time. Any more of her life.

She twined her arms around Tanner’s neck. This was what was important. This man who meant everything to her. “Make love to me, Captain Hot Lips.”

He grinned at her nickname for him. “My pleasure.”

Immediately she found herself lifted by the hips and pressed into the window she’d just been looking out of.

There was no place for the ghosts of the past when all she could think about or feel was Tanner’s strong body pressed up against hers.

This man had been her only lover, and it was just fine with her if that was the case for the rest of her life. She couldn’t imagine she would ever find the same passion with someone else. And had no interest in trying.

Her head fell to the side, exposing her neck as those talented hot lips made their way down her jaw and onto her throat. She didn’t even try to hide the whimper that escaped her when his hand slid up the outside of her thigh and hooked her leg over his hip. It brought them in direct contact with each other.

There was nowhere else she’d rather be than right here with him. She let out another little moan, pulling him closer.

“If you don’t stop making those sounds, we are very definitely not going to make it to the bed,” he said against her throat.

“Maybe I don’t want to make it to the bed.”

With a moan of his own, he reached down and grabbed her other leg so they were both wrapped around his waist.

They both let out a hiss at the build of the friction, the heat, the passion that was always just a breath away between them.

And no, they didn’t make it to the bed.