Jaya decided to keep reading anyway. She wanted to find out for herself what happened to Cathy. She suspected Ivan wasn’t telling her the whole truth about the unfortunate heroine’s demise. So after a fitful sleep she woke to find Ivan already gone, rolled over and picked up the book. Apparently, he’d pushed it back through the bars while she slept. Perhaps encouraging her to continue her newfound literary pursuit.

Though it vexed her to give him anything, she was actually enjoying the book. With Haty ripping around the bedroom, running energetic circles and killing imaginary bugs, Jaya read comfortably, enjoying the morning sunlight filtering through the open balcony doors. She had just reached the part when Heathcliff returned to Wuthering Heights only to find Cathy married to another man when a servant entered the bedroom, followed by Keane.

“Psst, Haty,” Jaya hissed urgently. She didn’t trust the giant redhead and the man knew it. She could tell by the vague smirk playing around his thin lips. But he kept his eyes averted, his beefy arms crossed over his broad chest, tattoos popping and rippling all up his arms while Haty ran to Jaya. She scooped the kitty up and held her against her chest while sitting cross-legged on the mattress. She watched him warily, but he didn’t move as he stood by the door and ignored both her and the servant while the servant approached the cage with Jaya’s breakfast.

She was so used to the routine she accepted the food without thought and ate, setting aside what she couldn’t finish. As usual, she had a brief thought that she shouldn’t be settling into the routine of captivity, but it took too much energy. Especially when she was immediately hustled through the door, toward the washroom for her daily shower.

As Jaya took her shower, scrubbing her body, she thought about her feelings toward her captivity. She was bored, that was for damn sure. She was used to having the world at her fingertips, her agile brain constantly on alert for a new project. She was worried about Ivan’s next mind-fuck. But… she wasn’t stressed. She was eating and sleeping better than ever, her meals were well-balanced and she wasn’t constantly terrified of the bogeyman breaking down her door and murdering her in her sleep. Because he’d already broken down her door and stolen her away.

She ran her hands over her body, feeling some of the new curves that were already starting to develop from the regular meals Ivan’s people forced on her. She’d been enjoying a healthy selection of fruits and vegetables, meats and breads rather than her usual fare of whatever she remembered to grab in between jobs and whatever her pantry might happen to support at any given moment. Computer geeks weren’t exactly known for healthy eating habits and Jaya was definitely of the breed. She regularly forgot to eat and when she remembered, she usually discovered an empty fridge.

Jaya slapped the shower handle off with a vicious swipe and stepped out of the state-of-the-art floor to ceiling marble shower stall. She was definitely growing complacent if she was having thoughts like these. After all, Ivan nearly raped her the night before. They were in a constant tug-of-war and she never knew which way she was going. If she became too satisfied under Ivan’s care, she’d wind up dead.

She dried herself off, brushed out her thick hair and pulled on a pair of black leggings and a red sleeveless shirt she’d chosen from her wardrobe. There was a soft, warm breeze flowing from the open windows that she could enjoy from her cage.

“There you go again,” Jaya growled at her reflection, taking a swipe at herself. “Enjoying your damn captivity. Maybe you should pick out your grave stone while you’re at it, stupid.”

She stomped back into the bedroom and into her cage, throwing herself down on her bed. She refused to look at either the servant or Keane again. Usually, once her needs were cared for, they would leave at this point in her morning anyway. She curled her arms beneath her chin and glared moodily toward the open balcony doors, wishing she could go outside.

“Do you require anything else?” the servant asked.

Jaya raised an eyebrow and twisted her head around. The servants didn’t speak to her. She thought it was pretty clearly not allowed. She opened her mouth to reply, but Keane snapped at the woman to get out. She looked terrified for a moment, her gaze jumping from Jaya to him and then back. She bobbed her head at Jaya and then scurried off.

Jaya turned and shot the man a glare. “You’re an asshole.”

He gave her a nasty grin. “Might be an asshole, but I ain’t caged up like a little canary.”

“Fuck you,” she snapped.

“You wish.” He winked and flexed a bicep at her.

Jaya blinked and then started laughing. “What are you, like thirty-five? Is that the most mature reply you can come up with?”

He chortled in response showing a ton of shark-like teeth. “It’s all I can give the boss’s lady.”

“Oh my god,” she giggled and rolled her eyes.

He nodded and left, closing the door behind him. It took about two minutes after that for Jaya to realize that she never actually heard the click of her cage door when the servant had locked her back in. She gasped and flew to the opening, reaching for it automatically. Her hands shook as she took hold of the bars and pushed, swinging the door open. It wasn’t locked. It wasn’t even latched. The servant had forgotten to close her inside.

“Oh my god.” Jaya’s voice was hushed now as her brain flew. She had to force her scattering thoughts to organize. She was a highly intelligent woman, used to working rapidly through problems, but she’d been locked in two rooms for days on end, her brain slowing in the process. “Okay, I can do this.” She snapped her fingers and glanced around for her cat. “Psst, Haty.”

The kitten looked up from her dish, where she’d been eating her crunchies, and immediately abandoned the food to scamper over. Jaya bent over to scoop her up. She stood part way between freedom and caged captivity and worked the problem. The urge to simply run was so great she had to sit down on Ivan’s bed and take several slow, steady breaths, so her brain could function properly.

“Okay,” she whispered out loud. “They won’t be back for hours, that gives us lots of time to plan.” She glanced around the room and began mentally stockpiling and discarding each item her eyes fell on, based on its usefulness. She nodded sharply, stood up and headed for the closet, intent on finding a bag of some sort. “We’re out of here, Haty. No more cages for us.”

“What the fuck?” Keane grumbled, his thick red brows pulled together in a frown. He stood next to a monitor with his hands braced on his hips, watching the hacker scale the outside of the building with a makeshift backpack slung over her shoulders. “She didn’t even try the door. Look at her, that woman is not built for climbing.”

Ivan stood frozen, watching the same set of monitors as his men. To anyone else, his icy exterior would appear normal, as though he were dispassionately watching the evolution of their experiment with the hacker unfold. But the sight of Jaya clinging to the outside of a sheer stone wall overlooking a cliff ending in crashing surf far below as she forced herself to steadily climb toward the roof with some kind of sack tied to her back, had his guts clenched and burning in both terror and fury. Two emotions he hadn’t felt this strongly since childhood. Had he pushed her to this point of desperation? That she would choose escape via the roof was smart. That she would risk her life in such a way was reckless. He was going to spank her ass like there was no tomorrow and shrink her cage to the size of a pair of handcuffs. He didn’t know or give a shit why he cared, but this woman would never again be allowed to put herself in danger.

“She knows there are cameras in the hallway. Probably saw them when she was escorted to my room. She’s taking the risk that there won’t be surveillance on the roof,” he muttered, his eyes glued to the drama unfolding on the screen. She was inching her way toward the top, a good ten feet over her head. Keane was correct, Jaya was not built for climbing. She didn’t have the upper body strength and her generous hips and breasts were getting in the way. He wanted to call the whole thing off, haul her to safety and lock her back up, but it was too late. If they tried to approach her, they could startle her off the wall. Besides, she was doing surprisingly well, taking her time, ensuring her foot and handholds were solid as she pushed her way steadily upward.

“She’s wrong. But she’s a smart little cookie, ain’t she?” Keane said in a voice that had far too much admiration for Ivan’s liking. He also didn’t like the way his second watched the monitor with such sharp interest. “Is that sack of hers moving? Did she take the fucking cat with her?”

Ivan narrowed his eyes. The bag on her back was indeed squirming around, causing Jaya to shift dangerously. She braced herself against the wall and said something over her shoulder, which seemed to calm the movement. Sweat broke out on his forehead. Not only was she risking her life, but she was doing it with a three-month-old cat that could cause them both to plunge to their deaths at any moment. Her punishment was growing more and more severe with every move she took away from her gilded cage.

He held his breath when she reached high over her head and grabbed the roof ledge. She was shaking so bad now he could see it through the cameras installed on the opposing cliffs. Somehow she managed to pull herself over the top, crawl away from the plunging precipice and collapse on the rooftop tiles. He released a long, slow breath and eased the tension in his muscles. He felt as though he’d made the climb along with her, and he knew exactly what it felt like, having scaled the cliffs beneath her with his men in training exercises. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, refocused his mind back on the task. The point was to see what his hacker captive could do. And though she’d taken a terrible risk, she was smart. She knew her best bet at escaping his island was leaving via the outside of the building.

“She’s back on her feet,” Keane noted, the admiration in his voice growing. “Heading for the first obstacle.”

“I can see that,” Ivan said icily, his gaze never leaving her. She looked tiny against the backdrop of his castle-like mansion, built with the highest tech security available and constantly updated.

They had created a series of scenarios when they’d decided to set Ivan’s bird free. He wanted to see what she could do, how far she could get. Though logically he knew he would eventually need to utilize her considerable skills, emotionally he wanted to tear the room apart, murder all of his men, go find the woman and punish her for every perceived infraction she was currently committing. She was his slave, his captive, his caged canary, as Keane liked to call her. Allowing her free reign aroused every dormant instinct within him. Threatened to release the beast he kept carefully hidden so he could make ruthless, cold-blooded decisions without remorse or regret. The woman was changing everything.

“She can’t get off the island,” Keane said quietly from beside him as if reading his thoughts.

Ivan calculated how long it would take him to reach his sidearm and take the man down. Would Keane resist? He was intensely loyal, but he was a psychotic and unpredictable bastard. It was what made him such an excellent second-in-command.

“Perhaps not,” Ivan snarled from between gritted teeth. “But she can cause some damage while searching for a way out. Both to herself and my property.” He tapped the screen where she was currently sitting cross-legged on the ground next to something he didn’t recognize. “Does someone want to tell me exactly what that is she’s messing with and what she’s doing with it?”

There was a flurry of action in the room while five grown men tried to figure out what the thing on the west wing of the roof was and what it could possibly do. Ivan was starting to get really angry at the level of incompetence he was seeing when one of his tech guys mumbled, “Oh oh.”

“Just tell me she can’t hurt herself,” he snarled, reaching for his gun and resting a hand on the sidearm for reassurance. It wasn’t going to help the situation, but someone was going to die if Jaya got hurt during their idiotic experiment. They had assured him that every scenario had been thoroughly checked and that it was extremely unlikely she would go to the roof. His people had been wrong. She had outsmarted them. Now he was sorely tempted to kill them all and start over with a new, more intelligent team.

“I think she’s messing around in an electrical panel,” the same guy said, clearly sweating. “I don’t think she can hurt herself…”

“Stop thinking and start telling me exactly what’s happening,” Ivan said, ice dripping from every word.

“I think…”

Ivan pulled his Glock and shot the man. He pushed the body away from the monitoring station and turned to the room. “Anyone else ‘think’ or does someone want to tell me exactly what she’s doing.” A few of the men took steps toward the door.

“Don’t even think about it,” Keane growled. “No way off the island.” He glanced dispassionately down at the body and nudged it with his toe. “Guy was warned. Now it’s your turn to give the boss some answers.”

One of the technicians stepped forward and said, “She’s attempting to disable the camera systems and possibly the general electrical systems.”

Keane chuckled. “Smart girl.”

“Keep your thoughts to yourself, Irish,” Ivan snapped. He turned his cold gaze back to the tech guy. “I get the cameras, but what would the electrical systems do? And how could she possibly shut them all down using one panel? I was assured by the extremely expensive security and building specialists I hired that my systems would be separated in the eventuality of a hostile takeover or similar scenario.”

The guy nodded. “I believe…”

Ivan twitched, the gun hand that was relaxed next to his leg tensing in readiness.

The man cleared his throat. “I mean, there’s a high likelihood that she’s isolating and disabling a specific system.”

“Which one?” Ivan growled, asking the next obvious question. He was definitely going to have to get rid of these idiots and find smarter tech people. They couldn’t anticipate their way out of a cardboard box.

Rather than answering, the guy dropped into the chair that had been occupied by the now dead man and began typing. He brought up a series of blueprints, first for the building, then for the electrical systems. Ivan leaned in and read them along with his man. He nodded and had the answer at the same time the tech guy said, “Alarms and lights.”

“Would she know what they’re for or is she just causing havoc in an attempt to draw our attention elsewhere while making a run for it?” Ivan asked.

The tech guy shook his head. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

Just as the words left his mouth, Jaya glanced over her shoulder, her eyes touching a camera she couldn’t possibly see since it was nestled on a cliffside several metres from her position. Seconds later the video feed shut down cutting her from view.

“Amazing.” The techie now sounded as admiring as Keane. “So incredibly fast.”

“Get it back,” Ivan snapped. The guy knew better than to argue. He set to work attempting to either fix or bypass whatever Jaya had done to the security feed. “There must be backups,” Ivan pointed out. “I insisted on them when the whole system was installed.”

“There are, but they’ll take a few minutes to get up and running.”

Ivan looked at Keane and tried to keep the worry from his voice when he spoke. “I want eyes on her. I know we told the men to keep their distance, but the situation has changed. I don’t want her up there alone, she could slip and fall.” Keane nodded and radioed to his men, telling them to get to the roof. Ivan turned back to the monitoring station about to ask where they were at with the video feeds when the lights in the room went down. The room was windowless so they were left in the dark for about thirty seconds before the back up lights kicked on.

“Brilliant,” the techie muttered and started pounding the keyboard so hard the desk creaked. It was clear he was trying to beat Jaya to something.

“Talk,” Ivan demanded. “Tell me what she’s doing.”

“She’s blinding us, sir.”

“For what purpose,” Ivan growled, pacing like a caged animal. It occurred to him that she was doing to him exactly what he’d been doing to her. Cutting off his senses one at a time and taking away his power. “Tell me what she’s up to.”

Keane stepped between Ivan and the technician. “Let the man work, boss,” he growled, holding up his hands when Ivan looked as though he’d get physical. “Might I suggest that he will update you as soon as he knows something.”

Ivan breathed heavily through his nose and jerked his head in a nod, turning to stride across the room, pacing the length. The room, which was more than large enough to contain six grown men before, now five and a body, seemed the size of a shoebox. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to leave, stalk his home until he found her and lock her up tighter than before. Ensure she never escaped him again. Never put herself in harm’s way again. He couldn’t abide the idea of Jaya running free, attempting to leave him. No matter that he’d been the one to sanction the experiment. He wanted her locked back up immediately and all her toys taken away.

“Fuck me.”

Ivan whipped around to look at the man who’d spoken. Camera feeds were flickering to life, but they were completely screwed up. Some feeds didn’t register, some were completely blacked out and some were crossed with ones they shouldn’t be.

“She found her way into a separate security feed,” one of the other techs said.

“Does that tell us where she is?” Ivan asked, trying to sound like he wasn’t about to murder another of them.

“Possibly, there are only so many access panels on the roof.”

Before the guy could explain, Keane’s radio interrupted. “She’s not on the roof anymore.”

Ivan took a deep breath and reminded himself that this was a good thing. At least she wasn’t at risk for falling. “Exactly how many electrical panels does she have access to now that we don’t have eyes on her and she’s no longer on the roof?”

The first guy checked the original blueprint, cleared his throat and said, “Uh, around two dozen, give or take.”

Ivan gritted his teeth and snarled, “Send men out to those panels. They are to detain her without touching. Any man that lays a hand on her dies.”

“Yes, sir,” Keane said and then relayed the order to his men. He turned back to Ivan. “Andrew says there’re power cuts all over the building and they’ve been locked out of certain sections. Somehow she’s gained access to our security system.”

Ivan was equal parts angry and deeply impressed with Jaya. She was turning out to be a formidable opponent. He might be able to dominate her on the chess board, but she was quick on her feet. He would bet half his empire she’d been waiting for this moment. Maybe even guessed he would test her eventually. She probably sifted through dozens of potential scenarios in her brain until she settled on the one that would seem most unlikely to him and be difficult for her to manage, but not impossible. And she had nothing but weeks of time to lay around, first in a dungeon room and then a cage, and think about how best to escape when he presented her with the opportunity.

Ivan’s cock twitched in appreciation of the woman who finally decided to show him her hand. He suddenly realized that she probably could have maneuvered an opportunity for escape far sooner. He frowned. Why wouldn’t she have taken the chance to run when he wasn’t expecting it?

Because she wouldn’t have gotten far. Not with his men at their checkpoints. He’d cleared them from their individual stations for this exact exercise. She’d been biding her time, waiting for him to hand her this opportunity on a silver platter. She probably figured out he would clear a path for her. Hide his men, essentially giving her the opportunity to go invisible once she left the room and cut the cameras. And it wouldn’t take more than an educated guess to place Ivan, his head of security and four of his technicians in a room together.

“Keane,” Ivan said calmly. “Check the door.”

Keane frowned, then strode to the door and tried to open it. Exactly as Ivan feared it was locked from the outside. Ivan dropped his head and for the first time since the entire fiasco had begun, for the first time in years, he grinned. He had vastly underestimated his prisoner. It was actually laughable how much he had underestimated her. In fact, as emotion poured through him, he realized he was proud and extremely turned on by her; as though he sensed a worthy foe and was finally giving himself permission to take her as a mate.

He was also extremely relieved. If she had planned this well, it was highly unlikely she would hurt herself. She was showing far too much forethought and skill. When he’d been worried about her, he thought she was simply frantically trying to escape.

Ivan looked toward Keane who was trying to force the door with one arm, muscles bulging as he strained and shouted instructions to his men over the radio. “The doors are electronically controlled. All the offices and security are in this wing. She probably has the entire area on lockdown.” He nodded toward the guys sitting at the consoles. “Let them work on getting us out. There’s no point in you trying to break it down, it’s meant to withstand a bomb.” Keane stepped away from the door, clearly seething now that he was on the receiving end of Jaya’s tricks. “Not so cute now, is she?”

“When I get my hands on our canary, I’m going to fuckin’…” Keane snarled.

“No one touches her,” Ivan repeated his earlier order. “That includes you.”

Keane fell silent for a moment and then nodded respectfully. The men had worked together for years. Ivan wouldn’t call him a friend; Ivan wouldn’t call anyone a friend. But he did trust in Keane’s loyalty. He’d bought the Irishman’s mercenary contract from a group that had chipped him with a deadly explosive that would kill him if he either turned on them or went off the grid. Expecting similar treatment from Ivan, Keane had been shocked when his new employer had immediately had the chip removed and offered him an extremely generous compensation package if he agreed to work for him.

Keane had thanked Ivan by punching him in the face, beating up some of his best men and then drinking himself stupid in the nearest town. He then attempted to impregnate half the single female population of the same town before returning to Ivan and accepting his offer. After Keane had signed on the dotted line, Ivan had returned the Irishman’s right hook to the jaw, knocking him flat. Then he’d stood over his new hungover second and very succinctly explained the chain of command.

“Where do you think she’ll go?” Ivan asked quietly so only Keane could hear. They’d run through the scenarios already, but he was no longer confident that he’d chosen the most likely outcome.

Keane looked a lot less confident too. “Still think she’ll hide and try to wait us out until she finds a way off the island.”

Ivan shook his head. “No, she’s fast and she thinks on her feet. She’ll look for a way off right now, while she has the advantage. We need to stop underestimating her and start believing that she can actually pull this off.”

“Fuck!” Keane snarled, clearly thinking ahead. He started to speak into his radio and then stopped, making eye contact with Ivan. “What’s it gonna be, boss? We’re starting to spread the men too thin. Do they cover electrical panels, come find a way to get us out, or cover the boat dock, airstrip and helicopter pad?”

Ivan closed his eyes and shook his head. This is what she wanted. Him locked in a room and his men scattered and scrambling. “What a fucking beautiful mind,” he murmured. “Genius.”

“I’ll say,” one of the guys from the monitors said, his voice stunned. “Look, she just hacked her way through the security gate to the helicopter pad. She couldn’t possibly know how to…”

Ivan walked toward the monitor, his gut clenching in fear. He was trapped in a room watching a shitty security feed that cut out intermittently and his captive bird had just found her wings. He watched as she reached up on her toes for the door of the helicopter and wrenched it open, then hauled herself up inside. She had to reach way out in order to grasp the handle and get the door to close again.

A hush fell over the men in the security room and no one dared to even breathe as they waited to find out if Jaya could actually fly the thing. Seconds later the blades whirled to life. Minutes after that, just as Ivan’s security team crashed onto the helicopter pad to stop her, she lifted off and headed for the mainland.

“Well I’ll be goddamned,” Keane said from beside him. “I guess she found a way off the island after all. Did anyone actually lay odds on the hacker?”

One of the technicians cleared his throat. “Uh, Jimmy did.”

They looked down at the floor.