Page 8 of Wasted Lust

She picks up her orange juice, takes a sip, and then rifles through her purse until she comes up with some earbuds. She plugs them into her phone and switches me off.

Madrid gives me a knowing smile behind some trashy magazine she’s reading and I have to wonder if she knows more about what’s going on than I do. She certainly doesn’t like me much. But she seems willing to befriend Sasha. For what purpose? Has she been sent here to acquire Miss Aston? Disrupt my plans, possibly? Or is she just trying to play good cop to my bad?

I’m not sure about Madrid. I’ve only known her ten days. The exact number of days I’ve been on this assignment. She came from DC, like me. And she’s well-connected. She has to be in order to work on anything that involves the Company. But beyond her sparkling service record—most certainly scrubbed for my eyes—I know nothing about her.

It unsettles me.

And then there’s the little issue of where Sasha was headed today. Nick? Or not Nick? Is he here already? The border is so porous these days, he could walk over on his own. Or is he biding his time because our infiltrator has been discovered?

There are a lot of unknowns here. A lot of possibilities, too. And the short plane trip to the local airport near her school isn’t enough time to get anything more out of Miss Aston.

When we land in Kansas, she follows me to a car. She doesn’t bother telling me her address, which I already know. She lives off-campus, but very close to the Museum of Natural History. Only a few blocks down. And when we stop in front of her three-story historic craftsman-style-home on Ohio Street and 14th, Madrid pops the trunk and gets out, giving us about thirty seconds of privacy.

Sasha already has her fingertips on her door handle, ready to escape me. But I put a hand on her shoulder like I did back at the airport. “Look, I get it. You have secrets. And I’m not interested in most of them. You can keep those to yourself. But I have things you need to know. And I’ll warn you now, you will have twenty-four-hour surveillance until you decide to work with us.”

“Until?” she asks, stressing the word. “You’re pretty presumptuous, Agent Jax. I’m a grad student. I work fifteen-hour days on research that is the epitome of boring to ninety-eight percent of the population of this whole planet. So you will be far more inconvenienced than I will, if that threat of twenty-four-seven surveillance is true.” And then she hikes her purse up on her shoulder and exits the car.

I get out as well, but Sasha is already dragging her luggage up to her house before I can think of anything else to say.

My house is a couple blocks off campus, less than a five-minute walk to the Museum of Natural History where I have an office on the top floor, and big enough to house a family of six. I get a small stipend from the program, but I’ve had my own money since I was thirteen years old.

We stole that. It’s enough to last… well, hell. Longer than I have in this life, I’m sure.

So when I announced that I was gonna take this offer here at KU, my whole family came out here to find me a suitable place. I went to undergrad at The School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. It’s a great school if you’re a nerd—and I am. Plus I wanted to stay close to home.

Just in case.

I shove my key in the locked box that sits eye-level to the right of the front door and then open the flap that hides the security keypad so I can punch in the code. A high-pitched alarm sounds. Someone yells, “Sasha!” from a few porches down and I look over and wave at Mr. Banjengi. “You’re home!”

“I’m home,” I yell back, nodding at him since my hands are full right now.

All the overprotective men in my life thought this house was perfect. There are more lifetime residents on this street than on any other street near school. They are all older, nosy, and not afraid to shake a fist at someone.

I smile as I pull open the screen door and hold it with my hip as I key in another code to gain access to the real door. Another alarm sounds and then I pull all my luggage in and close it behind me so I can make the fifteen-second delay on the real alarm. I key in the final code you must have to enter my home and not have phones ringing all across the world. And believe me, you do not want their attention. James is on a yacht in the middle of the ocean, Merc is at home in the Mojave Desert, and Ford is in New Zealand—but if those phones ring, the shit hits the fan.

It freaks me out, but this is what it takes to keep me safe, I guess. I’ve learned to live with it.

After all that stress is over, I look around my house.

I’ve been gone for months and it smells dusty and stale. But other than that, it looks unchanged. I press another code on the keypad and the metal security shutters begin to lift up from the windows, finally letting in the sunshine. They are mounted on the interior of the house instead of the outside, and my adopted uncle, Spencer, painted the outside-facing panels to look like they are white plantation shutters. You really cannot tell they are sheets of metal. He even painted fake cracks with a view inside, in case anyone got close enough to try to peek in the window.

I press another button and each window in the house slides open six inches. That’s the default setting, just in case I lose power and can’t get them down without attending to each one manually.

I’m used to this by now. They’ve been freakishly overprotective since I was thirteen. Add in a successful kidnapping two years ago, just before I bought this place, and yeah. It just got worse. I’m locked up tight in here, that’s for sure.

My bedroom is on the first floor, even though I have two more floors above me where I keep all my stuff. It’s easier to escape the house from the first floor. But there’s a planned escape route from every room in the house. I have a basement too, a really old, creepy one that no one in their right mind would use. But it’s fitted with access to a storm door that leads outside.

It’s overkill. I know that. And I resented all the security insisted on all through my teen years, but that last incident really shook me up.

It still does.

I drag my suitcase to the laundry room and stuff all the clothes into the hamper, and then put the suitcase away on a top shelf. The rest of my baggage is all little things. Trinkets I collected from the village near the dig site while I was in Peru. Little souvenirs I kept.

Twenty minutes after I arrive home, I’m done. And after an entire summer of meticulous, backbreaking work, I’ve got nothing to do… except think about what just happened.

Nick.

My promise who left me behind. To give me a chance at a regular life, he said back then when I was thirteen. But I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now. In fact, this visit today from that Jax guy is my long-awaited proof.