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by Ainsley Booth


  They’re all the same, these alt accounts. Morally outraged, full of righteous indignation. Half of them shams to drum up extremist rhetoric and disguise the rapid dismantling of the bureaucratic state. The other half are preaching to the choir. That story has been written. It’s inspiring for the liberal base, and intriguing for journalists—for a hot minute.

  But now what he’s tweeting isn’t nearly as important as where he’s tweeting from—this particular account gave a couple of subtle and accidental clues in early tweets, right after the election, that point to this group of national parks west of Denver—and how he’s doing it without getting caught.

  Also, given the connections I’ve discovered in his background, who has helped him along the way.

  Marcus Dane has some very wealthy friends.

  Are the rules different when you’re besties with billionaires?

  While I wait for him to tweet, or not tweet, because maybe I’ve pissed him off and he’s going to try and throw me off his scent, I pull up the dossier I’ve compiled on him.

  I can’t concentrate on the words, though. There’s no maybe about the pissing him off part. I’ve definitely gotten under his skin. I pushed a little too hard.

  Besides, I don’t need to go over the dossier again. I’ve memorized every single word in it.

  Marcus Dane went to MIT, where he met and befriended Jake Aston and Toby Hunt, when they were ordinary young men with extraordinarily big dreams.

  Reading between the lines, it would be easy to assume that Marcus was a third young men with equally big dreams, but the career that follows belies that hypothesis.

  After graduating, Marcus and Toby headed to California. But where Toby used seed money from Gladiator Inc’s young CEO, Ben Russo, to start his own company, Marcus got a job as a software engineer.

  A regular job.

  Because Marcus Dane, best friend to billionaires, was a regular Joe—hypothesis number two.

  But after a few years of chasing the tech 401k dream, he walked away from the suburban house and workplace-with-a-gym-and-smoothie-bar, for…

  I glance around me.

  Nothing, really.

  Maybe everything.

  Trees. Fresh air.

  Painfully high altitude that sort of makes me faint, although that could also be attributed to the clash of wills with the bearded mountain man.

  Freedom.

  Hypothesis number three, should anyone still care about Marcus Dane after he disappeared up a mountain, is that he’s seen the inside workings of capitalist, tech-worshiping America, and he doesn’t like it. In fact, he hates it, and now that society has broken down to the point of chaos, he’s going to use whatever platform he can find to ensure the things that really matter to him—the environment, protection of the land and animals, water—have a voice.

  No matter what official edict gets handed down from on high, Mr. Alt Park Service won’t be silenced.

  As far as I know, nobody has looked at Marcus Dane but me. I’ve run the story in the loosest of terms past two of my favourite editors. Both were open to hearing more, but I needed to put this trip on my credit card because nobody is paying freelancers to hunt stories like this. Not in the heat of summer. Not when there are courthouses and law offices to stalk.

  If I wanted to pay the rent, I’d join the stringers from MSNBC and CNN outside the Washington DC law firms and wait for the White House staffers to come to me. Most of them are a sympathetic look away from spilling their guts over coffee.

  Except…

  I want to pay my rent, but not by lunging desperately at low-hanging fruit.

  I want to write a good story. Something I had to dig for, that nobody else has any idea about yet.

  I want to expose a real truth, which is getting harder and harder to do these days.

  If I do that, I’ll be able to land a job that pays the rent on a regular basis.

  Teach a man to fish, they say.

  Or in 2017…teach a woman to follow a wild hunch, no matter how high up a mountain it drags her.

  Click here to keep reading, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter at www.smarturl.it/AinsleyMail!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mom by day and filthy romance writer by night, Ainsley is a three-time USA Today bestseller (Hate F*@k, Prime Minister), and super grateful for caffeine and yoga pants. Born and raised near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, she's traveled the world and come back home to write about book boyfriends with maple leaf tattoos.

  www.ainsleybooth.com

  www.friskybeavers.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This story was originally written for the Love in Transit anthology, which was a limited time collection of stories all written to the same blurb. It was a lot of fun, and I’m so pleased to have the paperback on my shelf as a forever memory of the project that Jana Aston spearheaded and Raine Miller, BJ Harvey, Kitty French, and Liv Morris all enthusiastically jumped into.

  Sadie Haller was my first reader for this story, and as usual, her eagle eyes caught so many inconsistencies. So grateful to her for that!

  Thank you to Mignon at Oh So Novel for the cover for this book, and the entire series. Also to Dana Waganer for her final proofreading pass.

  I’m also thankful for all my readers who were eagerly waiting for the next Frisky Beavers and Forbidden Bodyguards books, but also said, okay, sure, a billionaire rom com series, why not? You, my readers, are my favourite people in the entire world.

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM AINSLEY BOOTH

  FORBIDDEN BODYGUARDS

  Hate F*@k

  Booty Call

  Dirty Love

  First Lady, His Lady

  Wicked Sin

  BILLIONAIRE SECRETS

  Personal Delivery

  Personal Escort

  Personal Disaster

  Personal Interest

  FRISKY BEAVERS

  Retrosexual

  Prime Minister

  Dr. Bad Boy

  Full Mountie

  Mr. Hat Trick

  Bull of the Woods

  Cover Design by Oh So Novel

  All rights reserved

  2017, Ainsley Booth

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  About This Book

  Billionaire Secrets

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  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

  Epilogue

  Personal Disaster Excerpt

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Ainsley Booth

  Copyright

 

 

 


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