Page 12 of Hide and Seek

“No reason,” I say, not bothering to point out that he still has his back to me, so he has no idea what my face looks like.

Jace is incredibly intuitive, and not just when it comes to me or our sixth sense about each other. His instincts about people are almost always dead on, and he knows me better than I know myself most days.

He clicks a few keys on his keyboard, then spins around in his desk chair so he’s facing me. “Liar. You went climbing.”

I peel my sweater off and toss it on my bed.

Unlike Myles’s plain and simple room, the dorms at Hamilton House are the definition of extra and over the top. The entire building was designed to look like an old Gothic, Victorian-era mansion, but with all the modern amenities that a bunch of spoiled rich kids would want or need.

Then there’s the Rebel House, the mansion where the frat leadership and high-ranking senior members live. It’s even more opulent and insane than our digs, and that’s saying something, considering we sleep on giant canopy beds with chandeliers over them and have intricately carved vaulted cathedral ceilings and massive, arched stained glass windows.

To be fair, only the people who live on the top floor have vaulted ceilings and fancy stained-glass windows, but the rest of our room is identical to every other one in the building.

Privilege has its perks, but at the end of the day, it’s just a place to keep my stuff and sleep. I’m loyal to the frat because of my family history with it. I’d be a dumbass to not take advantage of the opportunities being a member gives us, but I’m not fanatical like a lot of the guys are.

“Just needed to clear my head.” I sit on the edge of my bed and lean my forearms against my thighs.

“Did it help?”

“Not as much as I hoped.”

“Come on.” He makes a “go on” gesture with his hand. “Tell your older bro what’s going on in that big old brain of yours.”

“We don’t actually know for sure that you’re the older one,” I point out.

One of the running jokes in our family is that our parents hit copy and paste when they had us because we’re completely identical, down to the few birthmarks we have. The only people we’ve never been able to fool when we’ve switched identities to fuck with them are our cousins Killian and Xave. Not even our parents can tell us apart when we don’t want them to.

When we were ten, we asked our mother if she ever mixed us up as babies because, as an identical twin herself, we assumed she had some sort of mom/twin power and would inherently know which one of us was which. She admitted that they mixed us up so many times that it’s possible we’ve been living as each other our whole lives.

Thanks to her revelation, I get to bring that up every time Jace says he’s the older one.

He grins. “Nope, but Jace is the older one, and since I got to be Jace, that makes me older unless proven otherwise. Now, how about you tell me what’s going on, and maybe we can turn that frown upside down.”

I hold up my hand with my middle finger pointed toward the floor. “Turn this upside down.”

“You’re stalling.” Jace shoots me a knowing look. “You only stall when your head is busy.”

I lean back on my hands and roll my shoulders in a shrug.

“Is it the kid?” he asks.

I nod. “He knows I’m tailing him.”

“Either he’s good, or you’re slipping.” Jace pulls one of his older butterfly knives out of his hoodie pocket and spins it around his fingers.

“I’m not slipping.”

He leans back in his chair and stops spinning his knife. “Really? Well, color me intrigued. Seems our hacker friend is full of surprises.”

“He really is,” I agree. “Have you had a chance to do more poking around in his system?”

Jace nods. “Yup, but it’s taking fucking forever because it’s like a damn fortress in there. I have to be careful he doesn’t catch me snooping around in real time. TBH, I’m not confident I could best him in a 1 v 1.”

“He’s that good?”

“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but he’s better than me.” Jace’s expression is serious. “I’d put him close to the same level as Carter.”

“Really?” I can’t hide my surprise.