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Gabby turned around on the couch, the smattering of freckles across her nose scrunching as she grinned at Rae.
“Oh, hey, Ms. Dixon.”
“Hi, Gabby.”
Gabby stood up, the venti drink in her hand the size of her forearm. She took a long suck of what looked like pink milk and smiled again. “How are you doing with, like, everything? That’s got to be so hard having people trash you all over the internet like that. I know it’s been crazy hard for Lil. Isn’t that right?”
Lily didn’t look at her friend as she turned down the TV.
“We’re doing fine, Gabby, but I think it’s time for you to go home.”
“You don’t have to leave,” Lily said to her friend, her face suddenly apprehensive, like she was being left to the wolves.
“Sorry, Lil, gotta meet up with Zayden at the mall,” Gabby said as she slinked past Rae to get her Prada purse hanging in the entryway. “My mom said it’s probably not a good idea for me to be seen here anyway.”
“Gab, wait.”
But Gabby was already out the door. Lily jumped up from the couch, arms crossed tight.
“God, Mom, it’s not enough for you to ruin your own life, but now you’ve got to ruin mine too?”
“Please, sit back down, Lily. We need to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” she yelled and ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Rae rushed up the stairs to follow her and was greeted with a door slammed in her face.
She almost broke her own rule about privacy, but she stopped herself from busting through the door and knocked instead. She got radio silence.
“Lily, honey, please.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and the article was taken down, so people can’t share it anymore.”
Still silence.
“You can’t keep ignoring me.” But she knew firsthand how stubborn her daughter could be at times, something Lily had inherited from her. The only tactic that usually worked to bring Lily out of her room when she was upset was her favorite food. “I’m going to order a pizza from Hideaway. Extra bacon.”
The pizza arrived and still no Lily, although Rae heard her slip downstairs to grab some slices as she was finishing her own whilewatching an episode ofBig Mouth, something they usually watched together.
After dinner and a glass of wine she normally reserved for the weekend, Rae texted Devon a coded message to find out when the next party at the Coulter mansion would be:Hey, girl, just need to know when the next get together is going to happen. Really enjoyed hanging out at the last one. XO V
A few minutes passed before her phone dinged:Sorry, I’m not sure when the next one will be, but I hope to see you soon! X MM
So, Devon, whether she was lying or not, wasn’t going to be any help. Rae had already searched through every kink site she could think of, scrolling through pages and pages of event notifications, but none pointed to the Coulter mansion. They had to spread the word somehow, and her only guess was that it was by word of mouth. Surely, others within the community knew something about the parties, but she couldn’t simply create posts asking about it online. She’d need to be stealthy about it.
She went through the events calendar again on her favorite local kink site and saw there was going to be a play party on Saturday night. It was at a local dungeon where she had taught BDSM workshops several times over the years, and she knew it would be packed with both Dominants and subs.
Rae submitted her RSVP and paid her door entrance fee through Venmo. Normally, she looked forward to play parties, but not this one. This time, she’d have to somehow get information without placing herself on the radar, and she wasn’t sure why she should have to do anything at all when Dayton admitted he didn’t think she or Angel had anything to do with Thomas Highsmith’s disappearance. But the fact that they were still on the suspect list at all was enough for her to at least try to get the information the detective asked for. More than that, she hoped her help would lead the investigators to find not only Thomas but the missing submissives, the women the police didn’t seem to careanything about. Or at least they didn’t care enough to throw resources behind searching for them.
If she succeeded, she and Angel would be cleared and perhaps their business could survive. And maybe Lily would eventually allow her to explain why she’d lied, and she could rebuild trust with her daughter. She had to succeed because she didn’t want to think about what could happen if she didn’t.
CHAPTER 23
RAE
2009
Rae held up her new driver’s license again, her cheeks hurting from smiling so much. It displayed her old name, Echo Phalin, because she had no choice unless she legally changed it, which she promised herself she would do someday. It took much longer than she’d expected because she had to obtain proof of identity from Oklahoma first, which meant doing something she had wanted to avoid for the rest of her life, if possible.
A man with a highish voice had answered the phone when she’d made the call. “Hi, um, is Jill there?” she said.
