Chapter 8 #2
"How much ground have the teams covered?"
"Three-mile radius so far, working outward in a grid pattern. No visual confirmation. No signs of her. But it's dense forest and she's small enough to stay hidden if she wants to."
"Expand to five miles. And pull traffic camera footage from every road within a ten-mile radius. If she somehow made it to the pavement, if she flagged down a car, I want to know."
"Yes, sir. Already in progress."
He hesitates.
I can feel him wanting to say something.
"What?" I snap.
"Sir, it's going to be dark in approximately three and a half hours. Temperature's already dropped to thirty-nine degrees. If we don't find her before nightfall, if she doesn't have shelter—"
"We'll find her."
"But if we don't, if she's caught out in the open overnight—"
"We. Will. Find. Her."
Because the alternative is unthinkable.
The alternative is Eden alone in the woods in below-freezing temperatures with no shelter, no warmth, no way to survive until morning.
The alternative is finding her too late.
Finding her cold and still and gone.
No.
Absolutely fucking not.
I won't let that happen.
Can't let that happen.
Won't survive if that happens.
"Get me a thermal imaging drone," I say, my voice harder than I intend. "If she's out there, her body heat will show up on infrared even through tree cover."
"Already ordered from our security contractor. Should arrive within forty-five minutes."
"Good. That's good. What else?"
"I've notified the local hospital to be on standby for possible hypothermia treatment. And I've got—"
"Sir?" One of the tech team interrupts from the doorway. "I think you should see this."
I follow him to one of the laptops.
He pulls up an interior camera feed.
"This is from the hallway outside your office. Ten minutes before the delivery."
The footage shows Eden walking down the hallway.
Slowly, like she's exploring.
She pauses outside my office door, looks around, then pushes it open and goes inside.
"How long was she in there?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
"Approximately twelve minutes."
Twelve minutes in my office.
My office where I keep my files.
My research.
My plans.
My office where I left the Consortium invitation on my desk this morning because I was too distracted thinking about tonight to put it away.
Fuck.
"Check the desk," I say to Callum. "See if anything's been disturbed."
He leaves and returns within minutes, his expression grim.
"Door was slightly ajar when I checked. And there's a card on your desk—cream-colored, expensive stock. The Consortium invitation. Looks like it's been moved from where you usually keep things. It was pulled partially out of the envelope."
The Consortium invitation.
She found it.
Read about the spring gathering. The acquisition showcase. The talent demonstrations where purchased women perform their training for an audience of predators.
Understood exactly what I've been doing to her.
What I've been preparing her for.
The rage comes roaring back, hot and vicious.
She had no right.
No right to go through my things, to invade my privacy, to snoop through my personal papers, and make assumptions about my intentions.
But she wasn't wrong, was she?
That's what makes this so much worse.
She wasn't wrong.
I have been training her.
Carefully, methodically preparing her body to respond to me so I can demonstrate my control in front of the Consortium's inner circle in three weeks.
Everything she thinks I've been doing?
I have been doing exactly that.
And she figured it out.
So she ran.
Ran rather than let me turn her into a performing animal for the entertainment of men who see women as property.
Can I even blame her for that?
Yes.
Yes, I fucking can.
Because I've been patient. Been kind. Been giving her choices and pleasure and everything she needed.
The fact that it serves my purposes doesn't negate any of that.
Doesn't mean she had the right to run.
Doesn't mean I'm letting her go.
"Sir?" Callum is watching me carefully, the way he does when he thinks I might do something reckless. "What are your orders?"
"I'm going after her myself. Now."
"Sir, the search teams are trained for this kind of—"
"I don't care. She's my responsibility. My... my acquisition. And I'm going to be the one who finds her and brings her back."
"Let me at least send a team with you for—"
"No. This is between Eden and me. The teams can continue their grid search, but I'm tracking her myself. Get me everything I asked for. And add emergency food, water purification tablets, a fire starter kit—everything she might need when I find her."
When. Not if.
When.
Because failure isn't an option.
Callum doesn't argue further, just nods and disappears.
I pull up the topographical map on my laptop.
Study the terrain northwest of the estate.
Dense forest for the first three miles.
Creek running roughly parallel to her trajectory.
Some game trails but nothing maintained.
Rough, difficult terrain–especially for someone unfamiliar with wilderness navigation.
And about four miles out, marked on the map in faded print that suggests the landmark is old—
An abandoned hunting cottage.
I zoom in.
The structure is marked as "condemned—scheduled for demolition 2018."
But this is state forest land.
Bureaucracy moves slowly.
It's probably still standing.
Old, probably falling apart.
The roof is likely compromised, but it would have four walls and maybe a fireplace.
Shelter.
If Eden made it that far—four miles through rough terrain with no map, no compass, just desperation driving her forward—if she's smart enough to look for shelter instead of just running blindly—
That's where she'll be.
It's a guess.
An educated guess based on probability and psychology and my understanding of how Eden thinks.
But it's all I have.
Callum returns with a tactical pack. "Everything you requested, plus some additions I thought might be useful. Satellite phone, GPS beacon, flares in case you need extraction."
"Good."
"Sir, are you certain—"
"I'm certain. How long until it's fully dark?"
"Three hours and eighteen minutes."
Three hours to hike four miles through rough terrain and find her before the temperature drops to freezing.
A tight timeline, but doable.
I grab the pack and head for the door.
"Sir." Callum's voice stops me. "Be careful. The forest can be disorienting once the sun sets. And if she's desperate enough to run, she might be desperate enough to—"
"She won't hurt herself. That's not who she is."
"I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say she might run again when she sees you coming."
The thought hadn't occurred to me.
But he's right. She might.
Might see me as a bigger threat than hypothermia or getting lost or any of the actual dangers out there.
Might choose freezing to death over coming back with me.
The thought makes my chest tight.
"Then I'll have to be persuasive," I say.
I leave before he can respond.
The forest is quiet except for the sound of my footsteps on fallen leaves and the occasional call of the search dogs in the distance.
I've been hiking for fifty-three minutes.
Following the trail northwest, guided by the dogs' initial tracking and my own reading of the terrain.
Looking for signs—broken branches at shoulder height, disturbed undergrowth, scuff marks on rocks where someone might have lost their footing.
Small signs that someone passed this way.
Someone small and desperate and running for her life.
The temperature has dropped noticeably.
I can see my breath now, white puffs in the dimming light.
My jacket keeps me warm but I can feel the cold seeping in around the edges.
Eden is out here in just a cashmere sweater.
The thought makes me walk faster, pushing through undergrowth that catches at my clothes, over rocks that threaten to turn my ankle.
Four miles.
I can make four miles in under ninety minutes if I push.
At the seventy-minute mark, I reach the creek where the dogs lost her trail.
I study both banks carefully.
The water is moving fast, swollen from recent rain.
Cold enough that crossing it would be miserable.
But there—on the far bank, partially obscured by moss—a partial footprint in the mud.
Small. Narrow. Her size.
She crossed here.
Brave, or desperate.
I wade through without hesitation.
The water is shockingly cold, soaking through my waterproof boots in seconds, my pants up to my knees.
But I barely register it.
All I can think about is finding her.
On the other side, I pick up the trail again more easily now that I know what I'm looking for.
She was moving fast initially.
Branches broken at shoulder height, undergrowth trampled carelessly.
Not trying to hide her trail.
Not thinking about anyone following her.
Just trying to get distance between herself and me.
The sun is touching the horizon now, painting the sky in shades of orange and red.
Maybe an hour of usable light left.
Maybe less under the tree canopy.
I check my GPS.
The hunting cottage is seven-tenths of a mile ahead.
I push into a jog despite the rough terrain, despite the fading light, despite the very real risk of hurting myself if I misstep.
Don't care.
I only care about reaching her before dark.
Before the temperature drops below freezing.
Before she's spent another hour alone, cold and terrified.
And finally, through the trees ahead—
There.
A structure.
Small. Dilapidated.
Roof sagging dangerously on one side.
Windows nothing but empty frames, but still standing.
And smoke—thin, barely visible in the fading light—rising from the chimney.
She's there.
She found shelter. Made a fire somehow. Survived this long.
The relief is so intense it nearly brings me to my knees.
She's alive. She's safe. She's—
Mine.
And she's about to learn exactly what that means.
I approach slowly, carefully.
I don't want to spook her.
I don't want her running again before I can reach her, before I can stop her, before I can make her understand that running is over.