Chapter Four
It’s past midday when I wake up, exhausted from the long night before. It’s not uncommon for me to wake up in the afternoon, so having light streaming gently into the room at the particular angle that heralds dawn for wastrels and artists and programmers alike doesn’t immediately remind me how strange everything has become.
It’s the pain that does that.
Where the hell am I? Why does my ass hurt… oh. It all comes flooding back as I wake up. Yesterday was a hell of a day, and it has taken its toll on me. The skin of my ass feels tight and when I put any kind of pressure on it whatsoever, it aches and throbs until I roll off it again.
Fucking Ethan Keller. Took me. Beat me. Fucked me. And put me in this room like… it really doesn’t bear thinking about. I am not a morning person, so waking up fills me with a native aggression that gives me all the impetus I need to make an escape.
I pick my jeans and sweater up off the floor. My underwear is ruined. Filled with my juices and his cum, it’s crusty past the point of being wearable again. I leave it where it is and set about getting the hell out of here.
I’m half expecting to find myself locked into the room, but when I go to the door, it’s open. I can’t quite believe it. Does he really expect me to just… stay? If so, he’s severely overestimating his charm.
The place is huge, but I can retrace my steps easily enough. Back down the hall, left turn down the stairs and into the grandiose foyer. I don’t know if Ethan is in the house. It doesn’t really matter. Unless he materializes directly in front of me he can’t stop me from leaving.
The guards are still present, strolling about in predetermined patterns like sprites in a video game. I could try to slip past them, but this is real life and I want to know what happens when I try to leave anyway.
I walk down the long drive and find my way toward the gates. On my way down I meet a two-man patrol. They’re dressed in suits, far too formal for a midmorning stroll, but I guess Ethan likes his goons to look tidy.
As soon as I approach the gates, the security men move in and shake their heads. The message is clear. I am not allowed off the property. Except they’re not actually stopping me. They’re not even speaking. They’re miming disapproval. I think I can deal with that.
Ignoring them, I walk straight for the gate. As I suspected, nobody stops me. I simply leave.
I walk down the manicured grass verge outside Ethan’s home, feeling nervousness course through me to the point that I feel like I’m escaping prison or something. To the casual observer’s eyes, I’m just a woman walking down the road.
It’s a long walk back to the city, but that’s okay. Gives me time to think. I’m going to get out of town before I blow the whistle. I don’t want him coming and picking me up again once he realizes his secrets are out and there’s nobody to blame but me.
Before I leave, I need to go and get some stuff. My car has probably been towed, but that’s okay. I have a backup phone and laptop at home. Ethan can keep the stuff he took from me. It’s all secondhand, and it requires extensive logins to find what he’s looking for, none of which are stored on the hardware, all of which are in the cloud.
I’ll go grab that stuff, a few clothes, a bag, and get the hell out of Dodge. It’s a bit of a walk to anywhere I can hail a cab, but that’s okay. It’s a nice day and as my nerves settle, a feeling of freedom and glee begins to sink through me. That fucking asshole thought he could keep me locked up like an elephant at the end of a rope leash. He thought he could condition me into helplessness. He forgot that I’m an engineer. I test systems. Rigorously.
It takes me well over an hour to get back to my place, a little apartment in the middle of a bunch of other little apartments. I’m half worried someone has already been inside it, and I don’t have my keys either thanks to Ethan Keller. What I do have is a spare, in the middle of the fourth garden bed, beneath a small rock shaped like a toad.
I let myself in and I’m quickly reassured nobody has been in there. I keep my place kind of messy. Not that I like the mess, but when you’re working all day and night, totally absorbed by a screen, you kind of let the world around you slide.
If anyone had been in here looking for anything, the mess would be more disturbed than this. As it is, it seems to be pretty much as I left it. Good.
I grab an old laptop and an older phone, pull some clothes into a backpack, lock up and head out. The rent is paid up for another couple of months and hopefully by that time Ethan Keller has moved on to harassing someone else.
The quickest way to get out of state would be to fly, but I hate flying and I suspect someone like Ethan is probably tapped into airline records, or could be pretty quickly. I need a less upmarket form of travel: bus.
I figure I don’t need to get that far away. I just need to get somewhere rural. Somewhere the cops aren’t likely paid off. Idaho fits the bill perfectly. I have enough cash to hole up in some little town and stay well off his radar. I doubt he’ll put the effort into finding me.
It’s a thirteen-hour trip to Idaho, but that’s fine with me. Time to catch up on some sleep, work on a little code.
The ticket works out to be ninety-nine dollars. Small price to pay to get away from the brazen clutches of a billionaire. I’m banking on the fact that Ethan is so rich and so powerful, he’s probably forgotten about the myriad little, uncomfortable options that poor people have at their disposal. He lives in a world of toilets that flush by themselves. I make sure to pay cash too. I’m sure he has access to bank accounts. Evading Ethan is going to be all about going low-tech.
Sitting in a crowded bus terminal, waiting for my bus to load, I think smug thoughts to myself. He’s never going to find me. And once I’m free and clear, I’m going to start making trouble for him. His little network of data-sniffing bullshit is going to come down. Hard.
I’m going to expose him. I’m going to see him go down. He’s going to pay for every embarrassment he put me through. I’ll see him be arrested, just like I was, except when it happens to him, it won’t be for show. It will be for life.
Boarding for Boise.
I almost miss my call, I’m so busy congratulating myself on my plans, but when I see dozens of other people getting up, I follow them out to where the big metal steed that is going to take me away from all of this is idling at the ready. In a few minutes I’ll be gone. No electronic trail to trace me, no way to catch me.
It’s going to be a noisy trip. There’s a young guy and girl arguing further up the line and a small family screeching with excitement behind me. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except…
An arm slides around my waist, startling me. I look up to see Ethan Keller standing next to me. He smiles down at me with a dark, predatory smile. Those cold blue eyes bore into me, chilling me to my soul.
“You had to know it wasn’t going to be this easy,” he murmurs down at me. “Come on, Casey. It’s time to leave.”
“I’ll make a scene,” I growl under my breath. “Let me go.”
“Make all the scenes you want,” he purrs back. “A disturbance will make it that much easier to have you removed from this facility. We can call the police again if need be…” A single brow rises suggestively down at me.
Fuck. He’s got me.