Page 151 of Hide And Seek

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I staredat Zach’s unconscious body sprawled across the floor, my heart hammering so hard it hurt. “If you expect me to kill him to gain your trust, there’s no fucking way—”

“I’m not asking you to kill Zach,” Rhys cut in.

My brows shot up. “So you’re letting him live?”

“Fuck no.” Rhys crouched beside him and began binding his ankles together with another length of rope. “I just need him alive for now.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain in a minute.” He rose to his feet again, hauling Zach upright beneath his arms like dead weight. “First I’m putting him in the bathroom. I don’t want him overhearing this conversation when he wakes up.”

He dragged Zach across the floor and disappeared into the bathroom with him. A second later, I heard another rope being tightened, followed by the soft click of the door shutting. Then Rhys returned and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“So what’s this grand plan of yours?” I asked warily.

“Well, obviously, I want to get away with all of this, and you want to go free,” he replied. “I think there’s a way for both of us to get exactly what we want.”

I folded my arms. “What is it?”

“All you have to do is help me paint Zach as the perfect fall guy. Even more than I already have.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, more than you already have?”

A faint smirk tugged at his mouth. “Zach was always going to be my fall guy, so I’ve been laying the groundwork for months,” he said. “I left all kinds of incriminating stuff in his apartment.”

“Like what?” I asked, brows knitting.

“Like trap schematics and explosive recipes. Hidden well enough that he’d never stumble across any of it himself, but not well enough to survive a proper police search.”

“Right.”

“Also, anything I needed to research online was done through his Wi-Fi, so it all traces back to his IP address,” he went on. “And everything I needed, like the weapons and materials, were bought with one of his credit cards. I made sure to avoid the store cameras, obviously.”

“He didn’t notice the transactions?”

Rhys shook his head. “He’s rich, remember? Guys like him don’t monitor every transaction on their accounts. Anything under a certain amount just blends into everything else.”

Realization slowly sank in. “So you kept every purchase small enough not to trigger attention.”

“Exactly. I also put the signal jamming software on his phone instead of my own. So when investigators eventually look into how the networks went down out here, that’ll lead straight back to him too.”

I blinked. “How the hell did you manage that?”

“The last time we went drinking together, he passed out at the bar.” Rhys leaned back slightly. “I unlocked his phone with Face ID, installed the app, then registered my own face as a secondary appearance so I could get back into it whenever I needed.”

My eyes widened. “You can actually do that?”

“Yeah, iPhones let you set up an alternate appearance.” His lips curved faintly. “And the signal jamming app looks like some boring calculator tool, so he never noticed or questioned it.”

“Right.”

“When I needed to jam all the networks that day, I told him I wasn’t getting any signal and needed to borrow his phone for a second. Two minutes later, there reallywasno signal anywhere.”

I cast my mind back to that day. It was only a week ago, but it felt like an eternity had passed.

“Anyway,” Rhys said, rubbing at his jaw. “My original plan doesn’t work anymore. Too many variables have changed.” His eyes flicked toward me meaningfully. “That’s where you come in.”