Versions (The Blacklist Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

painted brick, smacking her eardrums. “Not ever again.” The quiet snarl rasped her throat.
    She pushed from the floor, sprinted to the table, shoved the dining chair toward the gaping closet door, and pounded atop it. A neat black wire lay at the back crease where the wood shelf met the plaster wall. It ran from a hole in the wall across to another hole that led to the high bookshelf facing the kitchen.
    Rin peered through the living room windows and didn’t see Nate or his car. She tugged one end of the wire and a small grey microphone, matching the color of her walls, slipped from the sheetrock. “Bastard,” she breathed. Balling a fist, she knocked, not nearly as forcefully as she’d have liked, on the back of the closet. A hollow thump sounded in return.
    Pulling a pen from the outside pocket of her briefcase, Rin used the instrument to pry at the joint. On the second attempt a false front gave way along with her stomach. An old-school recorder and orderly row of maybe twenty tapes nestled in the void. The ones on the left were labeled with dates and times, while the ones on the right sat in their wrappers.
    Nate had a stack of these in their closet. He’d said the coaches used them to take notes on the games, which she’d never seen. Any time she’d offered, Jen had concocted a girls’ night out and demanded her attendance. Nate had all but pushed her to go, citing her dislike for the sport and his long hours atop the hour it took to get to and from the school.
    “You don’t coach a team. You’re a player in a game though.”
    And Jen? With her foul mouth and vulgar tendencies, a school had always seemed the most unlikely place for her to work.
    “Oh my God.”
    Reality nearly knocked her to the floor again. Jen and Zach were her friends because they’d been Nate’s friends. He “worked” with them. He’d introduced them. So, it stood to reason they worked with him. Adolescents with pocked faces and bad attitudes were the least of their concerns. They dealt in espionage and shit.
    Rin leaped from the chair, thundered through the living room, past the kitchen, down the short hallway, into the bedroom, and through to the closet. She grabbed her gym bag and stuffed clothes and shoes inside, hardly taking the time to match the number of tops and bottoms. She did make sure not to take too much, so Nate wouldn’t be able to tell. Crossing to his side, she grabbed a tape from the large stack. The plastic crinkled as she ripped the cover off and shoved it into her bag.
    Heart chugging, Rin hurried back to the closet. She exchanged the tape in the recorder for the new one and shoved the evidence of her meddling into her trouser pocket. Sweat beaded and sucked the cotton of her button down to her skin. Carefully, she snapped several pictures with her phone before replacing the false wall, cord, and chair with the stealth of a ghost. Thinking of ghosts brought her back to her mother.
    The last time she’d seen Cara Lee her blue skirt had billowed over her shapely legs as Rin watched her plummet from the roof of the Washington Golf and Country Club. Her head shook in denial. No. She couldn’t go there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
    Rin tossed the room as neatly as she could manage. But, if Nate was a professional, he’d likely pay closer attention than the average Joe. She turned up nothing of interest, but really, wasn’t a bug in your own home, the knowledge that the person you thought you knew didn’t exist and one you thought didn’t exist, might… Wasn’t that enough for one day?
    Yep, sure was .
    Anger forced her from the bedroom, but in a flash of cinematic genius she returned to the queen-sized bed and dropped to her knees. She stabbed her arm between the mattress and box springs. In the movies people always stashed stuff there. The stiff fabric scraped her hand and forearm. She felt around from the decorative pillows to the throw at the foot of the bed, and then switched sides. Damn him.