her mother had begun to doubt her. “Darling, if you were so unhappy there,” she’d said through the Plexiglas that separated visitors from prisoners.
“I wasn’t,” Isabel had screamed, so the guards ended the visit.
She’d been too young for a jury trial, so the verdict rested on a certain Judge LaSalle. He convicted her of arson and manslaughter. Sibyl lost her graduation with honors. She lost Yale and Harvard and Oxford. She lost her daddy, who’d been so excited for her, and her mother, who couldn’t bear up under legal bills, scandal and doubts. She gave up her very name, her identity.
Sibyl lost everything except her genius. From the girls’ penitentiary, getting computer access to earn her GED and several undergraduate degrees, Sibyl had thrown every bit of her IQ into hacking the truth. She couldn’t tell for sure who had set the fire. But eventually, she learned who had covered it up.
Conspiracy theorists warned of the Masons. The Trilateral Commission. The Bildebergers. But far better hidden lay a secret society called the Comitatus.
Sibyl learned as much as she could from behind bars and then, after her release at the age of eighteen, she uncovered the rest. Peripheral comments in ancient manuscripts. Lost journals she’d uncovered. The testimony of other, frightened victims. Personal correspondence that people like Judge LaSalle thought inaccessible. Nothing was safe from her quest.
Now twenty-two years old, Sibyl considered herself as much an expert on the powerful, world-wide Comitatus as existed outside their control. Name a powerful family, and they’d likely belonged. Capet and Valois. Aragon and Castille. Plantagenet and Stuart. Just in case she’d foolishly thought heroes still existed, after what she’d been through.
But she needed to know more. Comitatus members were wealthy, blue-blooded and influential. But Sibyl meant to take them down—if she could survive that long. So she took precautions.
Sibyl never, ever answered her disposable, untraceable, prepaid cell phone—if she wanted to talk after hearing the message, she would call back. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. Especially one small, lonesome woman versus a worldwide secret society. The people who had her latest number, she could count on two hands—as if someone with her IQ needed to finger count.
The people she would call back, she could (figuratively) count on one hand.
Trace Beaudry was the first person she’d not only called back, but invited to visit. Her inability to decide why worried her. She knew why she trusted him; that went back to the risking-his-life-to-save-hers business. It factored in data she’d gathered in the few days she’d spent helping him and his friends, after that rescue. His friends had former Comitatus backgrounds. Their claimed rejection of the society explained both their poverty and their foolish goal to somehow salvage said society. But Trace had no such background at all. Trace was a Beaudry. Despite being a frighteningly good hacker, Sibyl could find no reference to a Comitatus member or family line under that name.
And she’d looked. See: paranoid.
But even meeting non-Comitatus men here, alone, fell under the heading of “Things movies teach you not to do.” Unless the movie was a romance. This wasn’t a romance. Sibyl wouldn’t know what to do with a—
Drinks! She spiraled back down the stairs to the large, open kitchen to look into the formerly empty, stainless steel refrigerator. Again.
It held a six-pack of every major soda she could find and nothing else. Sibyl suspected Trace wouldn’t want any of it—he was just coming to ask a few questions about her research. Besides, he’d seemed like a beer drinker. She’d considered getting beer for him, but knew she’d get carded because of her height. Although even her real ID showed her as legal, Sibyl didn’t like using it. She didn’t like people looking too closely at her.
Trace would look at her, if not closely. Now she ran to the mirror beside the front door and stopped bouncing on the balls of her feet long enough to narrow her eyes at her reflection. Thank heavens she’d let Arden Leigh take her on that girls-day-out to the Galleria last month, which had somehow became a makeover. Sibyl had seen it as a way to coax information out of the beauty queen, who’d only recently learned about the secret society but might eventually allow Sibyl to go through her father’s papers. Also, Arden’s father had recently passed, and the socialite seemed to take comfort in playing fairy godmother.
Sibyl knew from losing fathers—not that she admitted that to Arden. But letting someone drape her in a pink silk cape and massage her scalp while shampooing and then trimming her long hair had seemed a minor sacrifice.
Today she used very little of the makeup Arden had given her, but her hair did seem shinier, smoother. That was something. The oversize shirt in a boxy plaid of autumn colors looked casual but stylish—which, to judge by the price Arden paid, it was. The brown leggings felt comfortable enough. Sibyl had had to buy nail polish remover just to clean her fingers after their mani-pedi, but she’d left her toes alone, and the pretty copper color hadn’t chipped.
She blinked at her reflection, then looked down. Toes. That’s why she’d gone upstairs. Boots!
But Trace rapped on the door—it had to be him—and she was out of time.
“Breathe,” Sibyl whispered to herself. She’d faced down gang members, in juvie, if reluctantly. “Oxygen is fuel.” Surely she could face one guy. One good guy, a hero even. Her hero.
With a groan that had nothing to do with physical effort, she pushed aside the loft’s sliding door—and there he stood. Trace hadn’t changed in the months since he’d fled Dallas, maybe fled her. At six-four, he still towered over her. His hair, a much darker brown than hers, looked like he’d never been subjected to pink capes or scalp massages. Considering her belief that wealth corrupted people, that was a plus. So were his swarthy laborer’s tan and his worn jeans and T-shirt, stretched to accommodate his breadth. He didn’t seem to have shaved for days; give him another week, and he’d have a full beard.
Yes—this was her Trace. His constancy somehow soothed her.
Only belatedly did she notice that he was carrying in one hand something the size of a handful of canes, wrapped in a stained tarp.
He seemed oddly distracted as he said, “Hey, Shortstuff. Can I come in?”
Belatedly, Sibyl backed out of his way, then closed the door behind him as he stepped into the high-ceilinged apartment. She turned to see him pivoting, to take it all in.
He whistled through his teeth. “You live here?”
Sibyl managed to say, “I’m house-sitting,” in more than a whisper. Barely. When in doubt, give information. “It used to be a warehouse. From the 1800s. You went away.”
Wait. That last part wasn’t supposed to be out loud.
“Yeah. The others were—” Trace looked at her more closely. Then he ducked and looked at her, and his already deep voice roughened. “You look different.”
New clothes. New hair. Different makeup. Odd emotions. Sibyl flushed with embarrassment that she hadn’t been subtle enough. Now he’d think it was for him. He’d feel sorry for her or, worse, laugh at her….
“The others were what?” she prompted, desperate to distract him.
He didn’t laugh. He kept staring at her, even as he said,
