Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Cameras aren’t actually everywhere yet?”
“I think she put a mask on,” he says. “And a hat. The loose cell network would have picked her up if not.”
One of the tools certain agencies and people have at their disposal is the ability to tap into cameras on cell phones and have them as a kind of remote surveillance. You get a lot of insides of pockets and bags that way, but in a day and age when people are taking pictures and videos all over the place, or at the very least looking at their phones, it’s quite easy to get interesting little bits of data here and there.
“How does she know about that?”
“She worked for BP for a long time. I’d put money on her knowing a lot of things. It may not be easy to find her.”
“What has gotten into her?” Luke asks. “Why did she run?”
“You’d have to find her and ask her, but I imagine, based on what she said before she left, that she thought she would feel better once we punished her thoroughly, but as it turns out, even the hottest sex isn’t a substitute for therapy,” Aiden drawls.
The three of us are standing in his office. Luke looks crestfallen, Aiden has his usual impenetrable mask on. I am feeling a mixture of things. Irritation that she thought something as pedestrian and avoidant as running away would possibly work, and fear of what might happen to her, or what she might do.
“We have to get her back,” Captain Obvious, I mean Luke, says.
“And we will,” Aiden replies. He is quite determined.
“I’m gonna spank her ass,” Luke growls. “We’ve been through all of this, and she runs away? Like a teenager?”
“Running away from home is an ageless act,” I deadpan. “And it’s in right now.”
“Oh, yes,” Aiden agrees, playing along in one of his rare demonstrations that he has a functional sense of humor. “Abandoning one’s loved ones is so hot right now.”
I smile.
“What’s funny?” Luke demands.
“It’s a bit like a treasure hunt, isn’t it?” I say. “One of us will be the first to find her.”
“If it’s a treasure hunt, what’s the prize?” he asks. It’s a damn good question.
I pause for a moment. And then it comes to me.
“Whichever one of us finds her first, and when I say find her, I mean physically reaches her first—gets her hand in marriage.”
Aiden and Luke look at me with what they probably want to be horror, but which we all know is interest.
“One of us has to marry her to make her legitimate in the household,” I say.
“I assumed it would be me,” Aiden says.
“Of course you did. But why should it be? There’s not one of us that has any claim to her more than another. She’s intimate with all of us. She’s attached to all of us…”
“Or not, given she ran the fuck away,” Luke says. He doesn’t get it. With someone like Ella, running away doesn’t mean anything. She ran for dozens of reasons, none of which had anything to do with how she felt about us. Running is the one thing I understand more than anything, because prey always runs.
I feel better, actually, knowing she chose that path. It means at her core she’s not a predator. I had my concerns, here and there, that we might still be getting played. There’s just something about the way I saw her after she gave me my own dose that has stuck with me. In the moment she left, she was more than triumphant. She felt so completely at home doing what she’d done. She was smooth, she was competent and, yes, she smirked and enjoyed the moment, but who wouldn’t. I have been unsettled since.
This is the first thing she has done since that moment that makes me comfortable.
“If you think about this in the right way, it could be framed as a test. Which of us knows her the best and can find her the quickest?”
Aiden and Luke look at each other, and back at me.
“You’re suggesting turning this incident into some kind of competition,” Aiden says. “Instead of treating it like a security concern.”
“Is it a security concern?”
“She could be anywhere. With anything happening to her.”
“All the more reason to find her quickly and stop complaining,” I say.
I am excited by the prospect. I enjoy the hunt. I know Aiden will be in favor. It is just sweet, sensitive, occasionally addled Luke who might decide to play moral compass for the entire family.
“I think you’re all sick, but that’s not exactly news, is it,” Luke says.
“The two of you are going to look very nice as groomsmen,” Aiden says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and retrieve my wife.”
“Hang on,” Luke says “We need to set up some parameters. It has to be fair. We can’t use the private jet, for example, because only one of us could do that. We have to have a set budget, too, and we have to put rules around contacts.”