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It’d been too long.
A week since the fall from the window, and I could do nothing in this state. I had to wonder if I could even stand, much less follow her.
Ava Jade. What have you been up to?
The question ate at me, striking a new fire in my blood. Enough to propel me to standing.
My legs buckled, but I braced myself on the cool wall, damp with condensation.
It took minutes to cross the small room, but I got there, to the long desk and the sleeping monitors awaiting the stroke of my fingers to wake them.
I slipped into my chair, numb fingers turning each one on in turn before reaching below to the small fridge to grab a bottle of water.
The unwatched video and audio files were in the hundreds. I settled in to watch and listen to every last one, sipping the chilled water as they began to play, their sounds filling the space. Filling my mind. Sharpening my focus and my resolve.
It took hours, and with each recording, my muscles tensed. Until they burned. Until I burned.
My knees popped as I rose once more, going to the wall where I kept her.
Her face stared down at me with anger. With disdain. With resolve. With eyes sparking with life.
I pressed a palm to one of the photos I developed. The one of her asleep in her room at Briar Hall. So innocent. So peaceful. It was a face I doubted any other man had ever seen. I treasured it most of all.
I thought she would, but she didn’t wake when I crept in. Not when I hid in the shadows at the edge of the room with her panties in one fist pressed to my face and my cock in the other. I liked that she smoked pot with Becca some nights before bed. Those were the nights she slept the soundest. Though I wouldn’t tolerate such behavior once she was in my possession.
My eyes shut as I recalled that scent. The scent of her pussy. The taste, diluted by the soapy flavor of her laundry detergent.
Soon, there would be nothing to dilute that taste. Nothing to corrupt its singular essence.
When she was mine, and no one else’s.
I traced the red line of string fastened between two pins on the wall, the one tracing upward, to the blueprints for Briar Hall, and across to the picture of Rebecca Hart. Her network of red lines flaring out like a spider’s web over the top of the wall. To her father and his business dealings. Her mother’s death certificate. Her connection to the Crows. She was always my mark. The girl Rook Clayton had taken a sexual interest in last year. The girl who had every reason to hate the Crows. The girl who, if I worked her just right, would prove a worthy asset and informant. I’d hoped, eventually, to turn her into a full blown spy. Convince her to bed them, gather better intel. For me. For us. For all the things she ever wanted but couldn’t have.
Once, Becca’s was the only female face on this wall.
And then everything changed…
I could hardly believe it when I saw Ava Jade all those weeks ago on the pre-dawn streets of Thorn Valley. There she was, muttering curses to herself as she hauled a swollen suitcase up the street. Though I didn’t know her name then, only her face. Those fiery eyes. The whip of her sleek black hair.
I wasn’t certain at first, but I followed her, unwilling to lose her again if fate had brought us back together.
I’d searched for her after that night in Lennox at the train tracks, but I never found her. I assumed she’d run after what she did.
The memory made my cock hard in my soiled jeans and I pawed at it, a shuddering breath passing my lips.
If I’d known how she would haunt my every sleeping and waking moment, I’d have taken her then, but I was younger. I hadn’t come into myself. I didn’t know what it was to own another person. To bend them to my will. To break them. To burn myself so irrevocably into their minds—to imprint myself so fully onto their souls—that they were no longer them anymore, but just extensions of me.
Mine.
And just like Ava Jade, there was no one to miss them when they never resurfaced again.
But I wouldn’t bury her.
Her, I would keep. I would practice restraint for her.
She would see, I could be her everything and more.
How serendipitous, that if I hadn’t taken her father’s life, she never would have left Lennox. Never would have gone to Thorn Valley. I might never have found her.
