Page 41 of Sail Away
“I still love him,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to. I’ve tried not to.”
“I know how impossible that is to do,” Jag said.
“He’s different.”
“So are you.”
“I’m worried about whatever is going on with him and Preston. You have to tell me.”
“I can’t, and I won’t. Not yet anyway.”
“If you won’t, I’ll go to the source.” She didn’t give her brother a chance to argue or even say goodbye. She tapped the red button on the screen and tucked her cell into her pocket, leaving the milk and cookies behind.
On her tiptoes, she made her way to the guest cabins and found the one on the starboard side. She raised her hand to knock, but the door opened.
Reid stretched out his arm and yanked her into the room. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She fell back onto the bed and blinked. “You told me to come for a visit.” She bent her knees up and rested her head in the palm of her hand, smiling seductively.
“Jag just called me. You did not come here for a booty call.”
“Maybe my brother shouldn’t tell me that one of you might be doing something illegal.”
“Fuck.” He held up the phone and tapped the screen. “Your brother is on speaker. What the hell did you tell her?”
“Enough to get her into your room because this is bullshit,” Jag said. “The only way this works is if she knows because we can’t bring Jim in on it.”
“Why not?” Reid sat down on the edge of the bed. “An hour ago, you agreed Jim would be the best bet.”
“Nope. He’s a fucking big risk, that’s what he is,” Jag said.
“Wait a second.” Darcie ran her hand through her hair, finding a decent strand and twisting it between her fingers. She shifted, tucking a foot under her butt. “You two have been conspiring and not talking to me?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Reid said. “But Preston and I had words after dinner, so I needed to get into the system.”
“We have your ghost or whatever internet connection all set up.”
“That’s only part of the problem and all that really does is allow me to work without Preston, or anyone on this ship, knowing that I’m doing it because no one can see that connection but me. However, I’ve been so out of touch with the company. I don’t know who I can trust. And if I were to start looking at emails, even ones that are left on the server that I have access to, Preston would be notified. And then I figured he would know that I was onto him.”
“That’s when I remembered that our cousin Sally just got a job working—”
Darcie interrupted her brother. “Sally’s a hacker.”
“She’s an ethical hacker,” Jag said.
“And I hired her to do a sweep of the system by seeing how easy it would be to hack into it and get rid of the warnings,” Reid said.
“That’s sneaky,” Darcie said, totally impressed, which she shouldn’t be. “What did you find out?”
“Sally is getting all that information to Reid. I will only get involved if necessary,” Jag said. “And I didn’t want you involved. I shouldn’t even be this close at this point. While there isn’t anything illegal about what Reid has done so far, I’m about to do something that is crossing a line.”
“Don’t do it if you’re not comfortable.” Reid took her hand, pressing his lips to her skin. “You’ve done more than enough.”
“Well, there was one thing that came up when Sally first got into the system that got her attention and got her flagging me. It was an email address for one of the anonymous tips about you jumping off Deception Pass.”
