Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) (11 page)

“It’s not about intelligence. It’s about biasing your behavior.”
 

“See? What the fuck does that mean, Daniel?
Biasing my behavior
. I know what a bias is. I know what behavior is. But you’re being deliberately vague, like a puppeteer who doesn’t want to show his puppets the strings. You use jargon to silence me, as if I’ll just accept how amazingly complex everything is, agree that I’d only drown if you told me more, and let it be.
Daniel was right, this is complicated.
And then you win, right?”
 

“It’s not like that.”
 

“Then tell me what you mean.”
 

“I can’t.”
 

I stand for real. Daniel’s right: I’m wobbly. But I grab the end table, the wall, the closet door frame. I rummage for flat shoes that will clash like a bitch with my rumpled formalwear but will carry me where I need to go.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
 

“I’m leaving.”
 

“Lie down, Bridget. Stop being ridiculous.”
 

I throw a shoe at him. He’s lucky for my terrible aim; it had a hell of a heel.
 

“Lie down.
You’re going to hurt yourself.”
 

“You can’t tell me what to do,” I mutter.

He rises and takes me by the arm. I hit him in the side.
 

“Bridget.”
 

“Fuck off. I’m tired of this. I can’t stand all the games.”
 

“Bridget, come on. Be reasonable.”
 

“Fuck off!
Fuck off with your
reasonable bullshit!”
 

But Daniel has stopped grabbing at me. Now he’s standing there, looking at me and smiling like an asshole.
 

“What the fuck are you smiling at?”
 

“You really haven’t changed, have you?”
 

“Excuse me?”
 

“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be with that tough bitch, Bridget Miller. I thought I’d ended up with the adult Bridget Miller. But it looks like I got what I always wanted. The tough bitch lives on.”
 

I don’t know how to respond. I’m half-angry, half-disarmed. The idea that I haven’t changed since Lake Wanasee is somehow deeply depressing.
 

“Get back in bed,” Daniel says, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Go. Get in there.”
 

Jessica looks up at me, then at the door to the secret cinderblock room.

“Just do it, Jess.”
 

She opens the door. Once we’re inside and alone, she still looks like I’m going to hit her with something. It’s hard to blame her. I’ve been acting like a wild teenage boy around here lately, solving conflicts with physical blows.
 

“I know, okay?”
 

“It’s not what you think,” she says. “I tried to tell you. Daniel and I never — ”
 

“I know. I believe you.”
 

She still looks hesitant. I’m probably not doing a perfect job of acting here, just as Daniel was worried I wouldn’t. But whereas he was concerned I’d act poorly for the cameras and watchers, along with the algorithm behind them, I’m only acting poorly for Jessica. My mind wants to trust her, but my heart has its reservations. Not about Daniel this time, though. About someone else.
 

“Daniel said that all the times you were off together, it was to work on Halo.”
 

Apparently I’ve said the magic word because her features relax. I’m not supposed to know about Halo. Neither is she. And yet here we are, the two remaining contestants, in a hidden room, conspiring to confuse the very machine that got us this far.

“He told me not to tell you about it. I wanted to, honest. But when Kylie played things like she did that day, Daniel said it was better to let you believe that he and I were … you know … than to tell you the truth. He said if you knew about Halo and what we were doing, you’d botch the whole thing.”
 

She says the last bit apologetically, as if knowing how insulting it sounds to my intelligence. But in reality, it’s probably true. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets, especially from an algorithm programmed specifically to interpret my every facial expression, my every movement, my every word and reaction. If Jessica or Daniel had told me they were sneaking around to protect instead of betray me, it would have been clear to Halo — and to this mysterious
board
— that I was still around due to cheating. And then it wouldn’t just have been
my
game blown.
 

Chances are good that I’ll ruin it now that I do know, of course. But we’re in the final stretch, with the finish line in sight. For my game, sure. But for Daniel’s even more.
 

I look at Jessica and even though I don’t want to feel superior, I wonder if I am. Does she truly know it all, or did Daniel hold back? Does she know who Trevor really is? Who
Daniel
really is?

“It’s okay, Jess.” I exhale, steeling myself. “But I need to hear one thing from you before this goes any further. I told Daniel yes, that I’m on board with all of it. But I’m not just yet. Not until this one final thing is handled.”

I take both of her hands in mine and meet those deep blue-green eyes, so like my own.
 

“I know what I want to hear. If you lie to me, I doubt I’ll be able to tell the difference. I’m not a genius like you or — ”

“It’s not genius,” she says, her tone eager to renounce the pedestal I’m setting her upon.

“Or an expert like Daniel. I’m just the black sheep who was sucked into this on a grudge and kept here like a mistake.
Because
I’m a mistake,” I emphasize. “So if you tell me a lie, you’ll get away with it. For a while. Maybe for a long while. But eventually it’ll come out. And when it does … ”
 

Jess respectfully waits for me to finish. When I don’t, she says, “When it does, what?”

“Then we won’t be friends anymore.”
 

Her eyes say,
That’s it?
But I can also tell she knows what I’m saying and what it means. If she really is the person that Daniel insists she is — and if she’s internalized all he’s said she has — then she’ll truly know who both of us are. I don’t have female friends, not really. Never have. Neither has Jessica, for totally different reasons. But we have a connection, renewed now that the rough patch is mostly over.
We won’t be friends anymore
sounds like something a seven-year-old would say on the playground, but I’m dead serious. And I’ve seen the way Jessica’s been, while Daniel kept her lying. The way she’s slinked around like a mouse. They way her natural exuberance and joy disappeared as the knife twisted in both of our guts, as she kept secrets from me and I hated her because I could feel them.
 

“Okay,” she says.

“I need to know if you ratted on Kat. If you told anyone what she admitted in confidence, just so you could take first place.”

Her eyes widen. “No! No, of course not! Kylie found out, and I saw it in the footage, and I ran to Daniel to let him know she knew, that she was planning to leak it to the board! No, of course not, Bridget, I’d never — !”

I squeeze Jessica’s hands and stop her.

I told Jess I wouldn’t recognize a lie if I heard one.
 

But, it turns out, I can also recognize the truth.
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

With Daniel’s strong arm draped over me, my fingers trailing up and down the black lines of his huge tattoo, it’s almost possible to forget that the floor is concrete and that the air in here, no matter how much we heat it up, always turns cold. But this time, Daniel has sneaked blankets and pillows in for us. We’ve made a regular little love nest in this place.
 

I want to appreciate it, and his gesture, but the idea that we’ve become so comfortable still digs at me deep down. Like my thought that the mansion bedroom has become
my bedroom
, the thought that we’ve set up house in a hidden room feels too nice to last. I can’t help but feel that we’re trying to set a foundation atop quicksand instead of the other way around.
 

“What are you thinking?” Daniel asks.
 

I turn out of the spoon to face him. His arm brushes across my bare breasts, and I wonder if we have time, before we’re missed, to go again.
 

Then I laugh in his face.
 

“What?”
 

“You asshole.”
 

“What?”
 

I roll my eyes. “You’re so transparent. Before we had sex, I said that men never ask women what they’re thinking. So I’m just supposed to forget and think this is genuine and not toadying?”
 

“Why would I toady now? I already got what I wanted.”
 

I shift under the blanket, wrinkling the comforter between us and the concrete. I feel wetness below — evidence that Daniel
got
, all right, same as me. Like three times.
 

“Come on. I’m being serious. What are you thinking?”

“What makes you think I’m thinking anything?”
 

“Women are always thinking something.”
 

“Oh, really? Is that what the lab rat research tells you? Did you learn that from some sort of prairie hamster study?”
 

“Prairie
voles,”
he corrects.
 

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”
 

“Don’t mock it. Voles are super-important in social neuroscience research, especially when it comes to male/female interactions and relationships. They’re not like rats or other studied species at all.”
 

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
 

“They’re naturally monogamous.”
 

I don’t know why, but Daniel’s simple answer puts a soft hand atop my heart. I feel a little swoon, and no desire to learn more.
 

So I decide to answer his question, without sarcasm. “I was thinking about something you and Jessica both said. About how you didn’t want to tell me the truth because it would ruin things.”
 

“We wanted to tell you, Bridget.” His voice is as defensive as his eyes are sad.
 

“No, no, I get it. But … well … ” I exhale and reset. “Why am I here, Daniel?”
 

“I told you why you’re here. But things have changed since then. For me, at least.”
 

I’m doing this all wrong. Stupidly, I feel guilty. You’d think I was the one who brought him here to hate fuck him into oblivion, then let him think I was cheating after we fell for each other.
 

“No, I mean … I keep advancing.”
 

“Because we’ve been manipulating Halo.”

“But you didn’t want me acting strange. That’s why you didn’t tell me the truth about how you weren’t with Jessica. But if you can manipulate Halo, then why does it matter if I act strange? I mean, aren’t you rigging it so I advance anyway?”

Daniel takes a while to respond. I’d almost think he was refusing to answer if I didn’t see his face working, trying to decide just how to word what’s clearly a complex thought.
It’s complicated,
I imagine him answering, and stifle a nervous laugh.
 

“You have something,” he finally says. “That’s the only way I can think to put it. There’s something about you, Bridget.”
 

“And?”
 

“You remember the competition with Roxy.”
 

I nod against his bare chest.
 

“I told you what had to happen, since we were supposedly testing sexual proclivity. But you refused me. We didn’t do much with Halo on that one because we knew what it would be looking for. I was sure you’d failed. But then it axed Roxy and kept you. I don’t have access to the scores and didn’t dare ask the board to tell me, but I’m somehow sure you scored the highest on that particular test. By doing the exact opposite of what I told you to do.”
 

“Maybe that’s because my superpower is virginal restraint.” I smile as I say it, but Daniel’s thoughtful, serious expression doesn’t break.
 

“That’s why I made up that superpower, yes. But it was just bullshit. I’m making this up as I go, and those results were shocking. I’ve been fighting the board over you the entire time, Bridget. Fighting Trevor, too, until he finally saw the writing on the wall as clearly as I did. But you saw what happened next. With Caspian in the mix, yelling ‘ice queen’ was like yelling ‘dinner’ in a room of starving refugees. It drew him in. And when I tried to take it back, nobody listened. Because why would I have made it up in the first place? I couldn’t admit the truth to them any more than I could with you, because they’d suspect something was wrong, and that I was tampering with the results. And remember, it took Jessica and me a long time to figure out what we found. You understand Halo can’t be hacked? It’s not possible.”
 

I nod. I don’t totally get it, but I get it enough.
 

“And that means that through the first rounds, you survived on your own. I tried to guide you, and I shoved whatever conflicting data I could into the front end — made things up, erroneously reported the scores of your biggest competitors. Maybe it helped. I
hope
it helped. But … ” He sighs then repeats what he’s already said: “There’s something about you, Bridget.”
 

He props himself up on one elbow.
 

“I need you to believe me when I say I wanted to tell you the truth all along. It killed me to let you think what you thought. And when you let me back in, still thinking I might be with Jessica … ”
 

“Trevor told me about Jessica. When we were alone in the tent, he said he’s in love with her.”