Chapter 47
COLE
Kate took my fucking car.
This is why I have rules—precisely so something like this can’t happen.
My car keys belong in my desk drawer, behind a combination lock that no one else can open.
The cars have always been a weak link in security for this house.
They carry sensors that activate that gate, because anything else would be madness.
This is all Barry Lynch’s fault—his calling after hours again, his needing immediate support again, his attracting rogue hackers again. If I hadn’t been forced online to deal with Lynch’s disaster, I could have gone upstairs with Kate. Or, better yet, downstairs. To the dungeon.
I know she enjoyed herself with Mr. and Mrs. A. I’d never seen her relax like that. Really smile. Actually laugh.
But something made her shut down on the ride home. Something made her take out her fucking scalpel. Something made her cut.
I’ve seen people bleed before. Nutmeg, when she was four and I was nine, covered head-to-toe in bright red blood after falling on the playground and getting a tiny cut on her temple.
Ombra, in juvie, shanked in the cafeteria by a rival gang member.
Mr. A, at Thanksgiving eight years back, losing his grip on his carving knife.
But seeing Kate bleed was different. Her blood set off sparks inside my skull. Her blood made me angry. Made me scared—scared enough to forget all my rules, all my reasons.
As her Dom, as her husband, my job is to protect her.
I leashed her.
Now, sitting at my desk, hands on my keyboard as I methodically trace every single connection Kate and I have, I can’t explain—even to myself—why that seemed like a good idea.
I wanted to keep her from hurting herself, but I could have done that by taking away her scalpels.
I wanted to make her realize how serious this was, but I could have used my words. I wanted to keep her from fleeing…
And that’s exactly what she’s done.
It’s easy enough to activate the tracker on my car, locating it on the third floor of Parking Garage C at Reagan National.
The airport’s crawling with security cameras I can hack into.
Within an hour, I know Kate has two thousand dollars in cash.
I can see the ticket she bought for Dublin, traveling through New York.
Her phone’s somewhere over the Midwest, on a flight bound for San Francisco.
So I’m certain she isn’t going to Ireland or California. She didn’t rent a car, because even a cash transaction requires a credit card to secure the arrangement. She could have hired a cab, but that would eat into her two grand.
I start a search through Metro’s surveillance cameras. The subway stations are filled with observation points. I pull up a tried-and-true program I wrote five years ago, feed it Kate’s driver’s license photo and tell it to track her through the system.
That will take time.
Time for me to regret shattering my cold reserve.
Time for me to regret treating my sub like an animal.
Time for me to regret hurting my wife so badly she felt she had no option but to run.
Time.