“Youneedto make things right with your husband. On your knees, if that’s what it takes. Be a Lynch.”
She ends the call before I can scream my frustration. Tossing my mobile onto the passenger seat, I realize I’ve wasted too much time here at the waterfront park. I need to escape before Wolf tracks me down.
Forcing my way through a million spinning thoughts and the worst of DC traffic, I build the barest framework of a plan. I head to National Airport and stash the car in a garage. Finding an ATM inside the terminal, I withdraw as much cash as the machine will allow, using the credit card Wolf gave me before our wedding. I pull up an airline app on my mobile and buy a ticket for New York, then a ticket to Dublin, charging the same card.
Each tap of the screen adds another block of ice to the wall inside my brain. Each decision focuses me a little more.
I get a text from the credit card company, identifying theairfare as a suspicious charge. I suspect Wolf gets the same warning. Before he can shut me down, I say I recognize the transaction, and I authorize the sale.
Once the tickets arrive in my email, I duck into a bathroom. It takes three rounds of washing my hands, but a woman finally leaves her tote bag on the counter, open enough for me to drop in my mobile while she’s distracted with a balky soap dispenser. I hope she’s traveling to some distant destination.
I’ll pick up a burner when I can, a phone Wolf can’t trace. My need isn’t urgent. I won’t be able to ring anyone I know—not Granny, not Breagha, certainly not my feckin’ parents. Wolf will be tracking any calls they receive.
Using some of my cash, I buy an overpriced baseball cap in a souvenir shop—dark blue with the letters FBI in white. I pull the bill low over my face and follow the signs for the subway station on airport grounds. I catch the first train that comes in, change lines, then change lines again. Coming above ground, I wander the streets until I find a nice hotel, just a few blocks from the White House.
“I’m waiting for my husband,” I say to the bored-looking concierge. “Is there a computer I can use until he gets here with our bags?”
She waves me over to a machine on the edge of the lobby.
I run a couple of quick searches, tracking down a shabby motel that’s walking distance from a subway stop. I delete my search history out of habit.
When I get to the motel, they require a credit card, which I’m not willing to give. I demand to speak to a manager, who ultimately agrees to take cash if I leave a massive deposit—andgrease his palm with five crisp twenties. My room is on the second floor, overlooking the car park.
I feel naked without a phone or computer, but there’s no way for Wolf to find me. Tomorrow, I’ll start to rebuild my life, replacing the tech I’ve lost. I’ll figure out some way to reach the Raiders, far away from Winter Reckoning.
Lying on the lumpy motel bed, I’m so restless it feels like ants are crawling over my arms and legs. I get up to pace from one end of the room to the other, but that does nothing to quench my twitchiness. I drop to the threadbare carpet and knock out one hundred crunches, but they don’t change a thing. I flip over and try pushups until my arms give out.
Nothing.
I want to cut. Ineedto cut. But the dark spiders of Dr. Patel’s stitches frighten me. I’ve never done that before, misjudging the scalpel’s depth. I’m terrified I’ll make the same mistake again, and now I’m alone. Now there’s no one to save me if I start to bleed out.
I need order. I need control. I need the knife-sharp discipline of Wolf’s dungeon.
That’s the one release I’ll never be allowed again.
I shove my hand down the front of my jeans. Half an hour later, I have an aching wrist, a chafed clit, and the certainty that I’m the most broken woman in the history of the world.
Fumbling for the television remote with my clean hand, I start flipping through channels, trying to numb my brain into forgetting everything I want, everything I’ve never had, everything I’ve lost forever.
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 seeingKatebleed 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.
