Chapter 16
NIKOLAI
The cold hits my naked chest before consciousness fully returns. My arm reaches across the bed, seeking warmth, finding nothing but twisted sheets and empty space.
“Jenna?”
The name escapes before I’m fully awake, my voice rough with sleep and an edge close to panic. I bolt upright, scanning the bedroom.
Empty. The bathroom door stands open—no movement, no sound of running water. My tactical gear lies scattered across the bathroom floor where I’d torn it off hours ago, but something’s wrong with the picture. Missing pieces.
My shirt. My pants. My boots.
“Fuck.”
I’m off the bed and pulling on spare clothes before the thought completes. Jeans, T-shirt, different boots—muscle memory taking over while my brain struggles to process what I’m seeing. She’s gone. Actually fucking gone.
The elevator takes too long. I slam my fist against the button repeatedly, as if that will make it move faster. When the doors finally open to the common level, the sound that comes from my chest is barely human.
“EVERYONE UP!”
My voice echoes through the space like a gunshot. Lights flick on in rapid succession as eight figures emerge from various rooms and corridors, all in different states of undress and confusion.
Damon appears first, pulling on a shirt. “What’s the—”
“She’s gone.” The words tear from my throat. “Jenna’s fucking gone.”
Ezra stumbles out of his room with his laptop already in hand, hair sticking up at odd angles. “Define gone. Bathroom? Kitchen? Different room?”
“Gone gone.” I run my hands through my hair, trying to think past the rage building in my chest. “My clothes are missing. She walked out.”
Theon appears from the lab level. “Impossible. Security protocols are—”
“Check the fucking feeds!” The command comes out as a roar.
Ezra’s fingers fly across his keyboard, pulling up camera angles on his screen. We cluster around him—all nine of us, watching digital windows flicker past.
“There.” Lucien points at timestamp 04:17. “Elevator B3 to ground level.”
The grainy footage shows a figure in oversized clothing—my clothing—stepping into the elevator. Dark hair, slight frame, moving with purpose rather than panic.
“Four seventeen,” Ezra mutters, calculating. “She’s been gone for three hours and forty-one minutes.”
Nearly four hours. She could be anywhere by now. The rage in my chest explodes outward, and I grab the nearest object—a coffee mug—and hurl it against the wall. It shatters into pieces that rain down on the concrete floor.
“How?” Darius emerges from his quarters, in tactical pants but no shirt. “How did she get past security?”
“Because our fearless leader was too busy thinking with his dick to follow protocol,” Marcus says dryly, appearing from the direction of the gym. Even at this hour, he’s sweating—probably couldn’t sleep.
“Shut the fuck up.” The words come out as a snarl.
“No, he’s right,” Damon says, crossing his arms. “You went out with no job, no target, and came back with a woman you wanted for yourself. The only way she could have escaped is if you kept her in your quarters instead of a cell. This is what happens when you go soft.”
The accusation hits like a gunshot to my chest. Soft. The word feels like acid on my tongue.
“I am not—”
“You told her your real name,” Raphael cuts in, adjusting his mask. “Let her see your face. Fucked her in your bed.” His voice carries that accusatory tone that I hate—clinical, detached, cutting. “If that’s not going soft, what is?”
“Jesus Christ, Nik.” Dominic materializes beside me—I didn’t hear him approach, which means I’m more rattled than I thought. “She played you.”
The words slice through me. Played. Like I’m some amateur who got distracted by a pretty face and a tight pussy. Like so many years of training just evaporated because a woman moaned my name.
“She didn’t play me.” But even as I say it, the doubt creeps in. The way she’d begged for my cock. The desperate sounds she’d made when I finally gave it to her. How perfectly she’d responded to every touch, every command.
Had any of it been real?
“Really?” Darius raises an eyebrow. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like she seduced you, waited for you to fall asleep, and walked out with your clothes. Textbook manipulation.”
“She wanted it.” My answer sounds defensive even to me. “The way she responded—”
“The way she responded to get what she needed,” Theon interrupts. “Which was apparently freedom and a head start.”
I want to argue, but the evidence is right there on Ezra’s screen. Her walking calmly to the elevator like someone executing a plan.
“Find her.” The command comes out flat. “Now.”
“Where exactly would you like us to look?” Marcus asks, not unkindly. “She’s had almost four hours in a city of three million people.”
“I don’t care.” I grab my jacket from the back of a chair. “Street cameras, facial recognition, anything. She’s out there.”
“In your clothes,” Lucien adds. “Which will make her easier to spot, assuming she hasn’t ditched them for something that fits.”
The thought of her in someone else’s clothes, someone else helping her, makes violence twist in my chest.
“She doesn’t have money,” I continue, grasping for any advantage. “No ID, no contacts. She’ll need help.”
“Or she’ll disappear into the underground,” Darius counters. “Plenty of places in this city to hide if you know where to look.”
“She doesn’t know—” I stop. Because actually, she might.
“Ezra.” I turn to him. “Pull up her background for me. See if I missed something initially..”
His fingers dance across the keyboard, data scrolling past. “Jenna Reeves, born in Los Angeles, parents deceased, lived with her step-father until age seventeen—” He freezes, jaw clenching.
“There are police reports.” Ezra’s voice takes on that detached quality he uses when reading data that would bother normal people. “Domestic violence, stepfather, multiple emergency room visits. She ran away at seventeen, was missing for eight months before aging out of the system anyway.”
Eight months. Enough time to learn the underground, to make contacts, to understand how people disappear when they need to.
“Fuck.” The word comes out hollow.
“So she’s not some innocent little pharmacy worker,” Raphael observes. “She’s a survivor who knows how to disappear.”
“And you handed her the perfect opportunity,” Damon adds. “Let her get close enough to study you, learn your routines, figure out your weaknesses.”
My hands clench into fists. Weaknesses. The way I’d responded when she said my name. How I’d lost control when she begged for my cock. The absolute desperation I’d felt to be inside her, to claim her, to—
“This is insane.” The words burst from me. “You’re talking about her like she’s some criminal mastermind. She’s a fucking pharmacy tech.”
“You felt what she wanted you to feel,” Darius interrupts. “Jesus, Nik, for someone who’s supposed to be the expert at hunting people, you got played hard.”
“She came on my cock,” I snarl, beyond caring how ridiculous it sounds. “Multiple times. You can’t fake that.”
“Can’t you?” Marcus raises an eyebrow. “Women have been faking orgasms since the dawn of time.”
“Not like that.” But doubt creeps in anyway. The way she’d shattered around my fingers, her pussy clenching so tight I could barely move. The wetness that had soaked my hand, the desperate sounds she’d made. “She squirted. You can’t fake that.”
“Actually,” Theon begins in that clinical tone, “with the right combination of muscle control and—”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Just fucking don’t.”
But the seed is planted now. Every moment replays in my head with new context. Her initial defiance melted into submission. The perfect way she’d responded to pain and pleasure. How she’d begged for exactly what I wanted to give her.
How she’d asked to see my face.
“She wanted the mask off,” I say suddenly. “From the beginning, she kept asking to see my face.”
“To humanize you,” Dominic says quietly. “Make it harder for you to keep her at arm’s length.”
“To make you trust her,” Ezra adds.
“It worked,” Lucien observes.
The rage building in my chest threatens to take over entirely. She’d played me. Thoroughly. Perfectly. Used my own desire against me, turned my need to possess her into the key to her freedom.
And I’d fallen for every second of it.
“We’re wasting time.” The words come out controlled and professional. Hunt mode is engaging despite the chaos in my head. “She’s human. She leaves traces. We find those traces, we find her.”
“And then?” Darius asks.
“Then I bring her back and I make sure she never tries to leave again.”
“How romantic,” Marcus mutters.
I ignore him, turning to Ezra. “I want everything. Traffic cameras, security feeds, facial recognition. Start with a six-block radius from here and expand outward.”
“Already running.” His fingers never pause on the keyboard. “But if she’s smart—”
“She is smart.” That much is obvious now. “So think like someone smart who needs to disappear. Where would she go?”
“Depends.” Theon adjusts his mask. “Is she trying to leave the city entirely, or just find somewhere to lay low?”
“Unknown.” I pace the length of the common area, my mind spinning. “She has no money, no ID, no contacts that we know of. But she’s survived on the streets before.”
“The underground district,” Darius suggests. “Three miles southeast. Cash economy, no questions asked. Perfect place to disappear if you know the right people.”
“Or the docks,” Lucien adds. “Cargo containers, transient population. Easy to blend in if you’re not picky about accommodations.”
“Transit hubs,” Marcus chimes in. “Bus station, train station. If she’s trying to leave the city, that’s where she’d go.”
I stop pacing. “Split up. Darius and Damon take the underground. Marcus and Lucien check transit. Dominic, you’re with me—we’ll work the docks.”
“What about me?” Raphael asks.
“Stay here with Ezra and Theon. Monitor communications, run digital surveillance. If she surfaces anywhere electronic, I want to know immediately.”
Everyone moves as one, grabbing gear, checking weapons. But Ezra stays seated, still typing. “There’s something else,” he says without looking up. “She didn’t escape from the holding cell. She escaped from your bed.”
“I know where she escaped from,” I growl.
“Then you know what that means.” His pale eyes meet mine over the laptop screen. “She got out because you let her get close enough. That’s not a security failure. That’s you.”
My blood runs cold, but not for the reason Ezra thinks.
Because he’s right. I went to bed beside her. I slept like I hadn’t slept in years. I didn’t hear her get up, didn’t hear the door open. Two weeks of conditioning her to my schedule, my body, my proximity, and the first night I dropped my guard, she was gone before I woke.
“What do you need from me?” Ezra asks.
“Find her.” The command cuts through the room. “Whatever it takes. Whoever you have to lean on. Whatever resources we have to burn. I want her back here before the week is out.”
I head for the door, Dominic falling into step beside me like a shadow. Behind us, I hear the others mobilizing, following orders, beginning the hunt. But all I can think about is the empty space in my bed, the scent of her still clinging to my sheets.
She’d felt so perfect in my arms. So right. Like she belonged there.
Like she was mine.
The sick thing is, part of me is impressed. She’d read me perfectly, exploited every weakness, turned the one impulse I’ve never had for anyone else into the exact thing that let her walk out the door.
But the impression she made won’t save her when I find her.
And I will find her.
I always do.