Master of Lies

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be sold, copied, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or digital, including photocopying and recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of both the publisher, Oliver Heber Books and the author, Shannon McKenna, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright 2023 © Shannon McKenna Cover Design by Wicked Smart Designs Published by Oliver-Heber Books 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Meet Shannon McKenna Also by Shannon McKenna CHAPTER 1 Jed Well, would you look at that. So Sandee was a real, live girl, after all. I shuffled forward in my shackles, eyeing my penpal through the glass barrier with wary fascination. She hadn’t noticed me yet from her place in the line by the door, but I knew her from the photos she’d sent. At least the ones that got through the prison censors. They were grubby and dog-eared by the time they made it to my cell. Letters, too. Long, gushy letters, packed with too much information, including but not limited to her hard-luck past, her loneliness, her intense longings, her sexual fantasies. The girl was a hot mess, and desperately in need of therapy, but I’d read all of the letters multiple times. I’d pored over them, in fact. So I had no business judging anybody else’s twisted coping mechanisms. I had plenty of empty hours in prison to study Sandee’s letters and pictures. Up until right now, I’d been convinced they were a fantasy front. Just too damn pretty. Not realistic. Somebody photoshopped the living fuck out those photos. I was sure of it. My guess had been that Sandee was some lonesome, tragically plain girl, or maybe someone housebound or disabled, looking for a virtual boyfriend. Or else maybe a guy who wanted to be a girl but was afraid to make the leap, so had chosen this way to live out his/her/their fantasy. Something along those lines. But no. What the hell was a woman like that doing here? I couldn’t see what the payoff could possibly be, the way she looked. That body, those tits, those eyes. The pleated red plaid skirt fell a few inches above the knee, showing off bare, shapely legs. High-heeled red ankle boots. A tattoo on her ankle that I couldn’t make out from here. She had hot pink streaks in her jagged blonde bob. She was rocking a rumpled, sexy anime schoolgirl look. The sweater was red, skin-tight. She’d followed the visitation modesty rules, but still managed to look like a walking wet dream. How she’d gotten through the visitor intake process like that was anybody’s guess. Worked for me, though. Oh, man. Worked great. The glaring white light illuminated her white-blonde mop. Her full, sexy red lips gleamed hotly, all glossed up and sticky looking. If I were inclined to criticize, which I wasn’t, I’d say she wore too much makeup. But she could be painted gold, for all I cared. I would lick her clean. Slowly. Her look was so exaggerated, it had to be some kind of mask. Then again, I was probably overthinking this. I’d been undercover for too long, and prison shook a guy’s grip on reality. Her letters and pictures seemed so real. So intensely vulnerable, they made me uncomfortable. And aroused. And seriously fucking confused. According to the letters, Sandee lived in a rented trailer in a nowhere town with a shuttered factory, rampant unemployment, fentanyl, meth. She bartended at a skeevy roadhouse. Slimebag boss. No family support. And a thing for bad boys. She’d heard about me from a friend whose husband was inside for mail fraud, and hunted down my mugshot, which was posted online on a booking photos website. That had been unwelcome news. Like I needed any more attention. She’d fixated on me, deciding to save some worthless fuck-up from himself by the power of her love alone. She might as well dive into a shark tank. But everybody had a right to his or her own brand of self-destruction, myself included. Still. Something about her surprised me. I couldn’t put my finger on it. That posture. Despite the sexpot outfit, she seemed elegant. Ladylike, almost. That dignified quality stuck out like a sore thumb in a maximum-security hellhole like this one. That gorgeous face, what I could see of it behind the shaggy, choppy blonde bangs. Sharp eyes, looking everywhere but at me. Like she didn’t even know I was there. The CO prodded me to enter the room. My shackles dragged and clanked as I shuffled toward the seat. The fuck she didn’t know I was there. She had positioned herself carefully, and then struck a hot, sexy pose for me. To give me a good, long gawk. That was calculated. Sandee could be a honeypot, sent by Boer. If Boer had fingered me in here, then I was in imminent danger. Mickey, too. My team outside. They could all be in danger. I needed to contact the Unredeemables right now and put them on their guard. I hesitated, gripped by panic, and the CO who held my arm stumbled into me with a curse. Goddamn. This was