Free Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) by Aubrey Parker Page B

nothing untoward before I burst into the tent, but my gut hasn’t totally got the message. I still react to him with a momentary tightening, as if he’s an enemy. But deep down I know he has a secret, too. One he shouldn’t be holding. It makes him innocent in the matter of Bridget, just as it makes him my comrade. We’re each hiding something, one from the other. And both of us know it.  
    There’s another shout from ahead. It’s female, but that’s all I can tell for sure. We quicken our pace. This time, the fight wasn’t nurtured. This time, whatever is happening has occurred on its own. Simple as chaos theory: The board thinks Halo can predict and we can control it all. But proof that this experiment has already failed is all around them, if they’d raise their heads enough to accept it.  
    “Did she believe you?” Trevor asks, without bothering to explain what he means.  
    I nod. “We made up.”  
    There’s a moment where we exchange new awkward glances. I’m thinking how Trevor shouldn’t know I’m with Bridget because, on paper, she’s here for him. And Trevor, he’s probably thinking about how he should report me for breaking the rules … but everyone already knows.  
    “How long did you stay outside the tent?” I ask.  
    “Caspian closed it down almost as soon as you went inside.”  
    “So he could watch the camera feed.”  
    “There’s no camera feed. Not unless Caspian brought in something of his own and hid it well. You know how Halo is.”  
    “If anyone can hack Halo, it’s Caspian White,” I say, knowing it’s bullshit. Everyone knows that Halo’s unhackable. Even the person who finally hacked it says so, and means it.  
    “So … ?” I say — a question without a subject.  
    “I have no idea.”  
    “What about Kylie?”  
    “What about her?”  
    “Did he test her somewhere else?”  
    “I don’t think he tested Kylie at all.”  
    A strange emotion stirs. Caspian’s motivations are almost impossible to guess — not because he’s so wily but because he’s so unusual. You can’t apply normal logic because he does things for reasons that are alien to normal humans, and it’s one question inside another as to whether he proceeds that way because it suits him — or because he’s trying to fuck with anyone observing his actions.  
    I guess it’s not surprising. All tests here are centered on one person, with the others involved only to act as controls. Sometimes, the outcome is expected, as with Ivy. Sometimes, it’s a surprise, like in Roxy’s test. But there’s always one key subject who matters most, and with Caspian as guest judge, that subject was me.  
    Maybe because I’m curating the experiment and he wanted to test my mettle.  
    Or maybe because sex is behind most human behavior in one way or another, and how I responded to Bridget told him things about how I’m conducting this all in the first place.  
    Or, most troubling, maybe he knows who I really am. Maybe he knows what I truly want out of this.  
    It’s bad news for Bridget. All along, the idea was to throw Kylie into the mouth of this test, stuffing her with a secret and offering her to Caspian like a sacrifice. Whether there were four contestants and Kylie’s departure made three, or whether the move was from three to two, Kylie was always meant to go next. She was custom-made to fall before Caspian’s judgment, given what Kat knew — what we all know but can’t remotely prove. And now, if she wasn’t even tested, that means she’s wiggled free again.
    I don’t know if I passed or failed Caspian’s test. But considering that one of the women needs to go, my loss won’t matter either way. It’ll have to be Bridget or Jessica — and despite what I told Bridget, I still need them both.  
    We enter the Great Room to see an eerily familiar scene: two women with red faces, each being held back by one of the men. Logan has Bridget, and—  
    Well, I guess it’s not