31

Despite Jeremy's orders, I had no intention of sitting on my hands and doing nothing. After all, he hadn't specifically forbidden me to do anything. So I started to plan.

Step one: find an ally. This was easy. Well, there wasn't a lot of selection, but even if there had been, Nick would be the obvious choice. Not only was he Clay's best friend, but he'd been shut out of the rescue plan as well, and was as unhappy about it as I. Jeremy claimed he needed Nick to guard me, but even Nick was smart enough to know that Jeremy wasn't telling him anything for fear he'd take it back to me. I persuaded Nick by saying I only wanted to gather information, so we could prove our value to Jeremy. Not that this was a lie. I had every intention of sharing any information I uncovered with Jeremy. And if he still refused to let me help? I didn't worry about that. I could always renegotiate my arrangement with Nick later.