Chapter 5 Gone #2
A rare alarm rang from my phone, the specific notification making my muscles stiffen and my heart rate spike. Pulling my phone from my jacket pocket, I pressed the notification, my jaw clenching painfully as I confirmed the truth.
“What is it?” Sloane asked.
I looked down at the digital map on my phone, the usual blinking red dot suddenly no longer visible.
“Jaden’s tracking signal is gone,” I answered dryly. My eyes shot back to hers, my calm very close to snapping in half. “You said she was finishing her breakfast. Where?”
Sloane instantly stood from her seat. “Dining room.”
“Find her,” I ordered, exiting the map and dialing Scott.
“Yes, sir,” Sloane replied, rushing toward the door.
“Yeah?” Scott answered on the third ring.
“Jaden’s signal is gone. Search through the security cameras and find her. I want the entire estate on red alert until she’s found.”
“Got it,” he said and hung up.
Within seconds, the entire estate had completely come alive. Every guard, soldier, and staff member scattered throughout the property in search of my missing wife.
Something must have disrupted the satellite signal, and the question was what. I doubted Jaden would have had any success in tampering with her collar since the microchip was protected behind the diamonds.
Hurried footsteps and shouts echoed in the halls, the sounds of doors opening and closing as I stalked through my house.
The longer it took to find her, the deeper my rage went.
I checked every door down the halls, looked in every little nook and cranny she might be able to hide behind and came up with nothing.
Until I finally came across a door to a guest bedroom that was locked.
Stepping back, I lifted my knee and kicked the door in, the jambs giving way as the wood splintered apart.
I shoved through the rest of the door, nearly knocking it off its hinges when I found the last fucking thing I was looking for.
Daniel had another one of my housemaids bent over the side of the bed, her face red with tears as he suddenly paused mid-fuck and looked up at me.
“What the hell, Darren?” he griped as he pressed his hand into her back, keeping her still.
Marching inside, I gave my brother a glare that could have incinerated him.
“I thought I told you to knock this shit off,” I growled as I walked around the corner of the room to check the guest bathroom to make sure every space in my house was accounted for.
“What the hell is going on out there?” he asked, his voice breathy from obvious exertion.
“Jaden’s signal is gone and the house is on lockdown until she’s found,” I answered, then nodded to the maid trying to quiet her crying. “Now let her up and help me find my wife.”
Daniel groaned as he rolled his eyes, reluctantly withdrawing his dick and tucking it back into his pants.
The second she was free, she sprang up from the bed and ran out of the room without another look back, her hurried footsteps echoing down the hallway.
I wanted to pulverize my brother into the floor, but right now, I had bigger priorities to focus on.
Once Daniel had righted his belt, he followed me out into the hallway. “How the hell did you lose her signal?”
“I don’t fucking know and don’t fucking care. Right now, all I care about is finding her. I’ll worry about the how after.”
And she had better still be in this fucking house.
Daniel wisely shut his mouth as he followed me throughout the house, looking in every possible place imaginable. After ten of the most frustrating minutes of failure, my phone finally rang with Scott on the other line.
“Check the west parlor,” he said upon answering. “I think I’m seeing her legs, but her face is out of frame.”
Hanging up, I stormed my way down the hall and around the corner to the parlor, catching a glimpse of pale skin through the glass of the double French doors.
Nearly ripping them off the hinges, I watched Jaden’s body flinch from the floor, her head leaning back against Camaro’s body and pulling the headphones from her ears.
Relief burst from my lungs at the sight of her, but was then quickly replaced with an instantaneous uncontainable rage that rushed through my veins when her eyes connected with mine.
“Where the fuck have you been?!” I roared at her, charging in.
Shock and confusion enveloped her face as she placed the large book she had been reading down against her chest.
“I’ve been right here,” she said, her voice small with worry.
“For how long?” I snarled, my blood hot with agitation.
She shrugged her shoulders as she sat up from the floor. “Maybe fifteen minutes? Why? What happened?”
“Did you find her?” I could hear Daniel shout from down the hallway before pushing through the doorway.
Just then, Scott, Sloane, and several other guards barged in behind me, their sighs of relief collective as they all relaxed. Ignoring them all, I stormed my way across the room, reached down, and pulled Jaden up by her arm.
“What the hell!” she protested as she righted herself to stand.
“Turn around,” I told her, spinning her around and pulling her hair to the side.
Running my thumb along the edges of her collar, I made sure nothing was out of place or disturbed, no gouges or missing diamonds.
When it was clear Jaden’s collar hadn’t been physically tampered with, I pulled out my phone and checked the signal again, only to find it had reappeared.
The little red dot pulsed on my screen like it had never left, absolutely mocking me.
Looking back at me with wide eyes, Jaden sucked in a breath. “You lost my signal,” she suddenly stated. Releasing her shoulder, she turned to face me, a knowing smirk on her face. “How interesting.”
My gaze pierced hers, my jaw clenching as I stepped closer, forcing her to take several steps back.
“This isn’t something you should find amusing, Jaden,” I growled, stepping in close until her back was against the wall.
“If this signal is disrupted and I can’t find you, then the whole fucking world will burn down until I do.
It doesn’t matter how many people I have to kill or how many lives I have to destroy.
None of it stops until you are found. Do you want to be responsible for that much death and destruction? ”
Jaden’s face remained perfectly passive, her jaw set and her body tense, but her frightened eyes gave her away.
“No,” she replied, her arms folding across her chest. It was a gesture I noticed she’d make when she was trying to regain her failing composure around me.
“Good,” I snapped, pocketing my phone. “From now on, keep the volume down on your headphones. You should have easily been able to hear the fucking uproar of this house when everyone was looking for you. Had we been under attack, you would have been completely unprepared. Don’t let it happen again.”
I watched her throat work as she swallowed. “Okay,” she murmured.
After giving her one last warning look, I turned away and left her there with Sloane, my rage nowhere near as diminished as it should have been. Now that Jaden had been found and the signal returned, the next point of business was to figure out what the fuck had disrupted it in the first place.
As my guards filtered out of the parlor and back to their stations, I suddenly stopped in my tracks halfway down the hall, pausing as realization suddenly hit me.
Kayla had the device that could block the signal.
My eyes shot to Scott’s who was still standing just outside the door. “Arrange for an immediate search within a five-mile radius of my entire property. Search the water, the sky, all of the nearby cities. Not one stone goes unturned. Do it now.”
Scott cocked a brow as he pulled out his phone to initiate the search. “For what?” he asked.
“For all of them,” I answered. “Any one of them could have that cloaking device. I doubt they would bring Kayla this close, but it could lead us to the rest of them.”
Scott nodded as he turned away to make the calls and arrange the search. They had to be within one square mile of the signal in order to disrupt it. They were so dangerously close to finally losing this little game they’d foolishly decided to play with me.
“You think Jason has the cloaking device for Jaden’s collar?” Daniel asked.
I glared at my brother who was speaking entirely too loudly in this hallway.
“If he found Kayla, then yes,” I answered firmly.
Daniel’s eyes narrowed for a moment and then snapped back toward the parlor we had just left Jaden in. “And how the hell do you know Jaden wasn’t in on this little experiment?!” he nearly shouted as he pointed down the hallway. “She could have—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Daniel,” I growled as I stepped closer to him, ready to haul him into the next world. “Before I shut it for you.”
He turned to snarl at me. “Why are you being so willfully blind to this! If what you told me is true about Matt and Jason working together, then we could end this right now by—”
Slapping my hand over his mouth, I slammed him into the wall, absolutely ready to obliterate him.
Daniel had never been so rash before, so careless in his thought process, not to mention increasingly defiant.
Clearly, this TBI of his really had altered his brain chemistry. And that was becoming a problem.
“If you say one more fucking word,” I threatened, but then I heard a pair of light footsteps enter the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Jaden asked from down the hall, Sloane right behind her.
I sighed in frustration as I continued to hold my brother in place, his body beginning to fight against me.
“Sloane, take Jaden upstairs. Now,” I ordered.
Just as she began to physically escort Jaden away, naturally, she started to protest and pulled her arm from Sloane’s grasp.
“No, wait! What’s going on?” she continued as Sloane took her arm again and began to drag her down the hallway. “Darren, tell me what’s going on! What happened?”
Her pleas were ignored as Sloane hauled her toward the stairs and up to our bedroom, Camaro whining behind them as she followed. Daniel’s eyes followed them the entire time as he tried to free himself from my hold, but I was still much bigger and stronger than him.
When I knew Jaden was out of earshot, I released him and took a single step back, giving me the space I needed to slam my fist into his jaw, knocking him onto the floor.
Standing over him, I pointed down at him in righteous fury.
“If you ever go against my orders again, so help me, Daniel, you will not come back from it.” The scowl he gave me from the floor was full of outrage and nothing short of murderous, which meant absolutely nothing to me.
“Brother or not, I will end you before I let you compromise one more goddamn thing in my life. Now either you can get with the program and help me track these assholes down or you can get the fuck out.”
With that, I turned away and left him there to stew in his own stubborn stupidity to join Scott in the search, which was far more valuable than fighting with a rebellious man-child.
Family immunity did not exist in my world for a reason.
I would not allow Daniel to undermine me in my own fucking home while I ruled the empire he lived under.
Hell would freeze over before I let that happen.