Chapter Eleven
Either Gray had been fucking with Jack, or they just hadn’t known where Ava had gone, because there was no sign of her in the room at the end of the hall.
There was a swing suspended from the ceiling, and a bench with empty cuffs, and a spreader bar hanging delicately on a little hook on the wall beside an array of floggers and paddles.
Any other day Jack would take more than a cursory look around. But today he was here on business, and that business was Ava fucking Cavalcante.
He tried the next three doors—two were locked, though people told him not now and coming, darling at both. The third swung open.
A small black purse was sitting on a chair abandoned. A very familiar purse.
Jack lifted it. It was heavier than he had expected because . . . was that his damn gun? And Ava had just left it lying around?
For fuck’s sake.
Fear washed over him a moment later. She wouldn’t have left her purse. Would she? She was chaotic enough that she just might have, but it seemed . . . odd to leave the gun, too.
Though he had already been wrong enough times about Ava that he really couldn’t say. She was impulsive one minute and calculated the next, obsessive and chaotic in equal measure.
He carefully wiped off a smear of Dove dark chocolate and holstered the weapon in his own waistband with a sigh.
“Can I help you, honey?”
The woman who had entered moved quietly, despite her heels.
She was wearing a sleek black dress and vibrant red lipstick, and she was carrying a flogger in one hand, smiling at him with an air of complete assurance.
This was the Snapchat dominatrix Ava had saved in her phone as daddy domme. Ms. Rae.
Jack didn’t startle visibly, didn’t show fear, or surprise, because he had long ago schooled his body into a semblance of calm, no matter the situation. “I sure hope so,” he said. “My wife was here.”
“Ava?” The woman’s smile faltered. “She’s quite the popular girl tonight.”
Of course Ava had given her real name. Jack sighed again.
“Is she?”
“You’re not the only man who came looking for her,” she said. “In fact, she just left with a different man who claimed to be her husband.”
Jack swore under his breath. “Did she now?” He shook his head. “Well, she’s a wild one. Though I’m sure you know that.”
“See, I thought Ava was a wild card,” Ms. Rae said. “A spitfire. Everyone notices her, even in a place like this, where plenty of people try to fly under the radar. But she’s never had someone with her before.”
“Are you supposed to be sharing this much about the people you meet here?” Jack asked icily. “And where did she go?”
“Out the back.” Ms. Rae’s eyes bored into him unrelentingly. “And Ava isn’t like most of the people here, is she?”
Jack had no idea what she meant and wasn’t about to stay to find out. He moved past her, but she slid into his way, blocking the door.
“I know what she plans to do.” The woman’s dark eyes flickered with something Jack could not quite name.
“Here? I assume it was get her ass beat,” Jack said, nodding impatiently in the direction of the woman’s flogger.
“If you know her at all,” Ms. Rae said slowly. “Then you know exactly what I’m talking about. I know what she’s doing. I know why she was here. I know what she wants. And I don’t think she can do it without getting killed, do you?”
Jack stepped forward. “Why don’t you move out of the way so I can go find my wife and get her out of whatever trouble she’s gotten herself into?”
“Nobody,” Ms. Rae said, “would move through the world with that little care for her own safety if she had someone at home who gave a shit. So either you’re a shitty husband, or you’re not her husband at all. But whichever it is, she seems like she deserves better.”
And then she moved out of his way.
Ava was going to have to help him untangle what all this meant, but if this domme knew what Ava was up to, then other people could, too—including Cale. And that meant all this was over before it had truly begun.
Jack ran, following the flickering exit signs and thinking again of Jay, squinting against the flashing lights and grinning back at Jack as he did.
When Jack pushed open the back door, which read Emergency Exit Only, the night was darker than before, rain pelting him from above.
He was in the alley behind the club, cars flashing by where the road intersected.
A black SUV was parked but running, the windows tinted so dark Jack couldn’t see anything inside.
He hesitated, hand lingering on the gun hidden beneath his jacket.
Had Ava looped back around and stolen the car again? It was the best-case scenario, honestly. Better than her leaving with someone who was going to hurt her. Or someone too eager to hear what they were planning.
As if on cue, Jack’s phone buzzed.
Much like Ava, he didn’t save friend’s numbers. Just Jay’s, after all this time.
Clients were just clients, and were saved as such (Cale’s was Client–Collective), and each job had a new burner and a new phone number along with it.
Progress update, the text read.
Reconnaissance stage, Jack texted back. Disruption today at place of employment.
Forty-eight hours. Please. The response was immediate. Our needs have changed.
It will take at least three weeks to do this well, Jack responded, and then silenced his phone.
One SUV rolled toward the street, the other falling in behind it.
Jack hesitated—he had Ava’s purse, which contained her phone, so he couldn’t even call her and scold her for this goddamn lunacy.
Now he was behind a sex club, holding a woman’s purse, two handguns strapped to him, feeling like a fool who had been played by Ava from start to finish today.
As the SUV reached the street, a taillight at the back shattered.
Jack dove for the cover of the dumpster, waiting for his mind to catch up, to find the shooter he’d missed, when he saw a hand reach out through the place where the taillight had broken, waving frantically at him.
Jesus.
“Ava!” Jack called.