The techs were a new group, young, bright and squeaky clean, not cliched. They didn't eat Cheetos and when they went home at night I didn't think it was to their mother's basement. They'd chosen one of them to lead them, like a jury chooses a foreman.
This girl looked like she was about fifteen. Impossible. I didn't hire anyone under twenty-one.
"We've located her phone," she said now. "That's never been the problem. The problem is she's not picking up and the GPS is screwed."
There were more problems than that but they didn't have to know why it was so urgent I reach her.
The problem there was, she'd want to know. Well before I came close to speaking to her. I had to let her know Kie was a viable threat again.
The girl might have changed. Maybe she didn't cause the accident. Maybe she didn't kill Norcross in the rubble. Maybe, even if she did those things, she was never going to darken our door again.
Maybe.
Not very likely.
When I found Annie again, I was going to put her over my knee for a very long session with a canvas strap paddle and when she was properly red and aching, I'd tie her up and use the cane on her until I knew for certain she'd never again ignore my calls.
Only who said she was coming back? Ever? She was enrolling in college. I didn't even know which one. She was gone and while I had expected she'd come back, maybe she wouldn't.
Annie Knox was an undercover officer. If she wanted to vanish she would. Maybe that would be enough to keep her safe from Kie. Maybe Kie was no longer a threat. Maybe because I'd tried to get her in with a Master who would fuck her all the ways she needed she'd let me and my sub be.
But I didn't believe it. Annie could vanish because she was undercover. She was magic when it came to disappearing into other worlds.
Kie, though – if she was still going after Annie - had her own way of finding people.
I tried Annie's phone again.
Nothing.
When she left, two weeks earlier, it felt like the best thing. It had never been meant to be permanent. She was a police officer, used to working narcotics undercover. She'd gotten trapped in a cycle, took some of the drugs, got addicted. It happens. She'd seen some bad shit go down, the leader of the gang she'd infiltrated was killed.
That wasn't a bad thing. He might not have been the worst man in the world but he’d dislocated Annie's jaw at one point, and his soldiers sold fet to children.
But Annie had learned to care for him. When he was killed she went off the deep end and a dirty cop on her team sold her to me. Meaning he knew she was in over her head and he told her I could help her. I could. I had. The rainforest naturals my pharma company was working with were the answer to opioid addiction but they hadn't had trials yet. It's harder to get those when you're pretty much a hermit. Or a hermit with sexual proclivities the world doesn't approve of even if you are a billionaire and do have a new drug that could help thousands of people.
So the dirty cop got Annie to me and she figured out after she was with me that it was a one-way ticket. She was mine for the duration. Mine to hurt. Mine to fuck.
When she left, I thought it would keep her safe from my rage. I fed a lot of money into her bank account so she wouldn't have to work. The idea was she'd get a BA in criminal justice. With her experience, she could fast track and be out by twenty-six, still looking probably no more than eighteen.
The DEA would have to be insane to turn her down. Especially since despite her addiction and her "rehab" for the last year plus, she had gotten glowing recommendations from her superiors.
It's nice to be rich.
Annie hadn't touched the money I gave her except to move it into a high yield account she could access as she needed to for school. There was another amount in there too which I figured was part of what she'd taken from the Brotherhood on the day her father was put into CICU and she walked away from the gang and never went back. At least not to that gang and not before Jesse – her man – was shot and killed.
That was our story, "How We Met," cue hearts and butterflies. She hated me most of the time because I stripped her naked and whipped her, because I fucked her and sold her at an auction with my friends, a group of billionaires with similar interests. We'd buy each other's women and use the proceeds to fight human trafficking. The women we had with us might be with us under duress, but there were things we took moral stances on.
Only now Annie was out there with however much money she'd gotten from PD, starting a new life in some state I couldn't even identify. And Kie was out there and I had no way of knowing if she was gunning for Annie or trying to start a new life even without Norcross.
I felt powerless and I hated it.
That made the rage start to grow.
I went looking for a fuck toy and a pain slut and fear of what I might do gnawed at me.
Fear of what I might do. And what Kie might do.
3
Annie
Las Vegas is in the Mojave Desert. Seattle is in the Pacific Northwest, on the coast. Even the first time Cole St. Martin had taken me away from the location I knew I was in (Las Vegas) and blindfolded me and drove me for hours to a new and "secret" location (Las Vegas) I'd known pretty much where I was. The air is dry and smells of clean dirt, whatever that is, and of sage.
There wasn't much to do when I got back to the city. Find an apartment but even if I didn't touch the money St. Martin had poured into my account, between cashing out everything I had coming to me from PD and putting in the bank a little at a time all the money I'd walked out of The Brotherhood with, I was doing okay.
If I wanted to, I could probably pick up security work for a casino, though that would pretty much ruin my chances of working PD anywhere in the state. Because if I went back to a PD, I'd want to be undercover again.
It was midsummer and classes were starting in a matter of weeks. The university expected that everyone had already stressed over advisement and registration and gotten themselves sorted out months ago. Theoretically they would only take me on a conditional basis since I was signing up so late.
Truth is universities need the money and one way or another that comes from students. They weren't going to say no to me.
Finding a place to stay was easy. It was weird having the amount of money I now had. I'd never properly understood how easy it makes everything. Not, We'll run a credit check and let you know and do you have first and last and cleaning? But Yes, of course, let me look.
There was a lot of activity for a couple days. Leaving Seattle behind. Establishing new accounts at new branches for savings and checking. Finding the place I wanted, hoping for furnishing, settling for having the stuff sent. Then dealing with the university which, as I'd expected, was more than happy to have me as an addition to their growing and exciting program of criminal justice.
Whatever. I was keeping all my options open but really the reason I wanted to graduate was for DEA. And whether or not UNLV had the greatest criminal justice program of all time or not I was going there because I was determined to live here.
I was trying really hard not to read anything into that. Why Vegas? Oh, because I'd stayed there and learned I liked it!
It had nothing to do with Cole St. Martin.