Page 39 of Midnight’s Captive (Stroke of Midnight #2)

Ash was bone-tired. He’d worked his morning shift and then, as promised, had appeared in Portia’s office for his shift for her. It didn’t matter which project he was working on—protecting the corporation or excavating secrets for Portia—his brain had kept spinning. Hope was free. Hope was free . It was a never-ending chant in his head.

His phone rang and he ignored it. He was tired and cranky and couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept or eaten.

The ringing never stopped. Even long past when it should have transferred to voicemail, it still rang. He finally picked up.

“What?” He spit out the word as he answered. He didn’t care that he was being rude.

When there was no answer from the other end of the line, he growled. “Stupid prank callers.”

“Don’t hang up, Fēnix.” A robotic voice, although it carried a familiar cadence.

His body went cold. No one called him that any more. Fēnix was as good as dead and he should stay that way.

“Who’s this?” Fuck! Why hadn’t he checked before he answered? Not that it would have done any good.

“Oh, Fēnix.” The voice on the other end of the line chuckled.

Shivers ran up and down his spine. Like the voice, the laugh was distorted, sounding closer to a computer than to a human. And eerily familiar.

Ash knew that laugh. He’d never wanted to hear it again in his life. “What do you want?”

“Is that all you’ve got, boy? I’d heard you were a corporate bitch now, but I couldn’t believe it. The old Fēnix would have known who was calling before the line even rang. How the mighty have fallen.” That twisted laugh again.

Fuuck.

Ash knew who it was. His guess had been confirmed the moment he’d heard his hacker handle. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. “What do you want, Caspar?”

Caspar was the ghost in the machine. No one knew how old he was— if you believed the stories, he’d been around forever.

You didn’t see him unless he wanted you to. A hacker had to be exceptionally good to find Caspar.

Ash was one of the people who had. That’s how he’d joined the hacker collective.

“Is that any way to talk to a long-lost friend?” The computerized amusement gave him goosebumps.

Ash gritted his teeth. He’d hoped that Caspar had believed he was dead.

Unless... had Caspar sold them out? Ash didn’t know one way or another, but if he ever crossed paths with the person who was responsible for Hope being in that coma... he’d make them regret it.

“Hang up now and we can both pretend that I’m still lost.”

That crazy mechanical laugh again. “Oh, Fēnix. If you wanted to stay lost, you should never have gone into that bar.”

“A man can’t get a drink?” Ash was nearly completely sure that Taryn hadn’t sold him out. The Jack might be ruthless, but his time with her had shown him that she was fiercely loyal to her friends and they’d gone way past friendly.

“Well, Fēnix,” Casper said, stressing Ash’s handle every time he said it. “If you hadn’t set foot into that bar, no one would have seen you. If they hadn’t seen you, I wouldn’t have heard whispers that Fēnix was alive and still in Seattle. If I hadn’t heard those whispers, I would never have started looking for proof.”

An ominous pause. “You know what my search turned up, Fēnix?”

“What?” The sick feeling in Ash’s stomach anticipated what Caspar was going to say.

“Your fingerprints, all over code from the Tremaine Corporation. Including the code that busted other hackers working on special projects for me.”

Yep, that was what Ash had been afraid of.

He’d tried to keep his code clean, even generic, when he’d first arrived at Tremaine Corporation. That had quickly changed. Clean code didn’t catch the bad guys who were way more advanced. And busting hackers was the only way to ensure Hope’s safety.

His code—the twists and turns that his mind saw while he was coding—was pretty distinctive and he’d hoped that no one would notice it in Tremaine cybersecurity measures.

He hadn’t been that lucky.

“Bad news?” Something in Ash’s manner must have caught Portia’s attention.

Ash briefly considered keeping the call private but that would take too damn much effort and make it look like he had something to hide.

He did, but it wasn’t this call.

“If you’d managed to stay off my radar, Fēnix, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You’d be just a fond memory. A kid who worked for me and disappeared one day. Since you didn’t screw me, I was happy to leave you in the past. But you just had to show back up.”

Caspar was heading into repetitive territory. It was all part of his personality. He spun you in circles and then struck when you were confused. Ash expected it and concentrated on not giving him anything new to target. Hard to do with Portia watching him so closely. Both sides of his past were closing in on him.

Ash dug up his bravado. “Look, Caspar, you want to chat about the old days, just ask me out already and we can get a drink. Otherwise, I’ve got things to do.”

“Oh, Fēnix. You haven’t changed, have you? Still the same brash, blustery fellow who barged into my home demanding to be part of my crew.”

Ash didn’t respond. It was all true.

“You’re missing something, aren’t you? I mean, someone.” The glee in the mechanical voice was doubly unsettling.

His heart froze.

Caspar didn’t fuck around.

Taryn.

“Don’t you hurt a hair on her head!”

Portia looked at him.

“I think we can come to a mutually agreeable trade.”

How the hell had Caspar gotten to Taryn? Her security guys had been all over Ash when he’d touched her in the bar. Had they picked her up outside the bar? When she was rescuing Hope?

He gripped the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white. “Leave Taryn alone.”

“Taryn? Who’s that? No, dear boy, I have your lovely sister. Hope, isn’t it? Of course, she isn’t nearly as feisty as I remember.”

Blood drained from Ash’s face. The phone slipped from his fingers and hit the desk with a clatter.

Portia grabbed his phone and put it on speaker. She had come around to his desk when he hadn’t noticed.

“You have Hope?” Ash barely choked out the words over the panic that filled him. Caspar could be cruel, and Hope was the definition of defenseless.

“Yes, I have your dear, sweet sister. Picked her up from the hospital today. A little bird provided me with a plan. I just moved up the timeline a little bit.”

Taryn had given him the plan?

Bile surged. Ash choked it back. He’d practically declared his love and she did this?

Rage and worry warred within him. He didn’t know what to do. He’d failed—again—at the only task that mattered—protecting his sister.

“Leave Hope alone.”

“Of course, I’ll leave her alone. She’s hardly any fun, is she?” The eerie voice was filled with laughter.

Ash swallowed hard. “What do you want?”

“Oh, Fēnix. I really thought you’d get smarter as you got older. Tsk tsk. It should be obvious what I want. You’re right in the middle of a very large pond. I want in.”

“You want access to Tremaine?” Next to him Portia shook her head violently.

She could end this easily, but her ending probably wouldn’t be a good one.

Ash picked up the phone and toggled off the speaker. “My sister returned unharmed for access to Tremaine?”

Portia tried to snatch the phone from his hand. Ash pushed away from his desk and crossed to the windows. Outside, the city was lit up like the holidays, thousands of lights from hundreds of buildings. It was pretty but he barely noticed.

“Of course. I always keep my promises. You know that.”

Ash laughed bitterly. Caspar was a tricky bastard who kept to the exact terms of a deal. Any agreement had to be explicit and airtight or he’d find a way to wiggle around the terms.

“Why do you need in? I’m already here. I can get whatever you want.”

Portia stalked toward him, a thundercloud on her face. He was trapped, literally and figuratively. There had to be a way out.

“No can do,” Caspar replied. “I won’t know what I need until I’m in there. So many lovely prizes hidden in that network, I’m sure. I bet the organ farming was just the beginning. No, if I’m there myself I’ll be able to feast on all the delicious goodies.”

“When?” Resignation colored Ash’s voice. He was gonna to do it. He didn’t want to. It would end badly for him, either at Caspar’s hand or Portia’s. Most likely Portia’s, given the glare she directed his way.

“Soon. I’ll contact you.” He abruptly ended the call.

Ash stared at the phone in his hand, feeling dead inside. His life was finally almost back under his control and the universe kicked him in the balls.

“What the fuck was that?” Portia was practically yelling—and she never yelled.

“My old boss.”

She raised a brow. “From your hacker days?”

Ash nodded. Portia was no fool.

“He has your sister?” Her blue eyes pierced him.

“That’s what he says.” His stomach churned with the thought. Ash sagged against the window. Was she safe?

“You believe him?”

“Yeah. Caspar doesn’t fuck around like that.” He’d witnessed it firsthand.

“You were telling the truth that you don’t know where she is.”

Now she believed him. Yay.

“Yes.” The word came out low. Dejected.

Ash had been sure that Hope was safe with Taryn. His girls together. Now his world was imploding in ways he’d never imagined.

“What did he want?”

“You heard him. He’ll release Hope if I give him access to the Tremaine system.”

“Do you honestly believe that? He’s lying.”

Ash considered what he knew about Caspar. “He’ll do what he says. Exactly what he says, but he’ll find whatever loopholes he can.”

“And when will this visit take place?” She was pissed. It radiated from every pore, coated every word.

Ash shrugged. “Probably soon. He’ll call when he’s ready to make the exchange.” Caspar would strike while the iron was hot. He wouldn’t want to deal with Hope for longer than he had to. Not in her current state.

Portia stood directly in front of him, arms crossed. “From this moment, you are suspended from your regular shift and will remain under house arrest. If you aren’t working here, under my supervision, you will be in your room.”

Ash stared at her in horror. “He has my sister. She’s in danger.”

“I know. And it’s terrible.”

He interrupted. “What would you do if it was your sister?”

Her lips curled into a snarl. “ My sister?” she asked archly.

Oh right. She’d tried to kill her sister a few weeks ago. Stupid question, Ash. He probably could have chosen a better example.

“Is it because she’s in a coma? Is that why you think I shouldn’t do whatever possible to save her?” Just when he was starting to believe Portia Tremaine wasn’t the monster her father was.

“I didn’t say that.” Something flickered in her gaze, but it was gone before he could identify it.

“You didn’t deny it either.” He was going to be sick.

“I know you want her to wake up, but if it hasn’t happened by now, I really don’t think it’s going to.” Her voice had that tone that was intended to be kind, but in reality said that you were too stupid to understand what was actually going on.

“She still could,” Ash insisted.

Portia’s gaze was filled with pity. “I don’t think so, Ash. I won’t trade her life for the safety of my company. I’m sorry.”

She sounded sincere but Ash was too horrified at the thought of losing Hope to care. “If you care so damn much about your company, maybe you should learn more about it.”

There was a cure for Hope. Or at least the hope of a cure. Ash had read all the clinical notes and the lab trials and it sounded like there was real promise. Or that there would be if it was just funded further.

Of course, Portia would never believe that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out.” He was done. He had to get out of here before she sicced the guards on him again.