Chapter Nine
Ethan
I will give Casey one thing, she’s brave as hell. And she doesn’t back down once she sets her mind on something, which is why she’s now in danger. Jack is circling like a shark that smells blood in the water. He wants her dealt with properly. He’s been trying to convince me of that for three days, and when my FBI contact told me that there was a woman claiming to be held hostage in my home, he was there. It was the worst possible timing.
I need that damn phone she used. I have my suspicions about how she got it, and also, how quickly she called the FBI.
I could try asking her about it yet again, but right now, she is exhausted, and I have enough security here to make sure nothing happens to her. Federal and private. This girl doesn’t know it, but she’s as well protected as I can make anyone. Unfortunately, that may not be enough.
Picking her up, I carry her upstairs and to my room. She’s already dozing lightly, the sleep of a well-fucked woman. When she wakes she will be sore. No doubt bad-tempered, but for now I take her into my bedroom for the first time, lay her down on my bed, and undress her slowly, letting her drift in and of that space that is more than just orgasm. She’s riding on a wave of endorphins released during the submission she gave me.
When she is naked, I go to the bathroom, run a few washcloths under the hot tap, and wring them out until they are nice and steamy warm. I bring them back and rub her down, removing the sticky cum that clings to her flesh, the sweat that beaded all over her skin. She whimpers softly as I work very gently over the cane lines too. I have a gel for those that will settle the skin, and I apply that with the same care.
She is mine, and I am going to take care of her, even when I have to punish her. And I did have to punish her. I’m not sure she learned the lesson fully either. Her absolute refusal to do as she was told and give me the phone is not acceptable. We will have a long discussion about that tomorrow. For now, I slip her beneath the covers and let her curl up with me again.
She hates me, but she reaches for me. She wants to be free of me, but she nuzzles under my chin and wraps her arm around my waist. She is a bundle of contradictions, and I don’t yet know her as well as I need to, to untangle them all.
* * *
Casey
I wake in the middle of the night. Ethan is fast asleep in bed next to me. Seeing him there sends flashes of memory through me. He chained me down and caned me. He fucked my ass as punishment. He made me come so hard I thought it might be the last thing I would ever do. But I didn’t give up that phone. That’s my lifeline. That’s my way out.
I need to pee, so I get up as quietly as possible. Every step is pain, but I make it to the bathroom. Ethan doesn’t seem to stir as I pad past the bed and out of his room. I am naked and I want clothes. And I want something else too.
I find my room in the maze of the house and dress myself in a knee-length skirt, a silk blouse, and one of the few pairs of flats I’ve been allowed. And then I go to the hiding place where I secreted the phone. To my immense relief, it’s right where I left it. They didn’t find it.
I turn it on, knowing how much trouble I will be in if I am caught with this. But this is no three-bedroom two-bath house. There are dozens of empty rooms to hide in. I find one of them and look at the phone.
There’s a message.
Need help, Casey?
Shit. Someone has sent that to me. Knows I have this phone. It could be a trap. Could be Ethan trying to get me to text him and give away where it is. But I don’t think so. Ethan doesn’t seem to be one for traps and tricks. He’s one to just grab you and try to make you do something. It’s more likely to be from the FBI, I reason. Maybe an agent who saw what happened to me and wanted to make it right.
Y. E. S. I tap the three letters into the message and return it.
It’s three o’clock in the morning. Whoever sent the message sent it hours ago. If I do have an ally in the FBI, I’ve just woken them up.
I’m shocked when the phone buzzes again a second or two later. The reply is a set of instructions for getting out of Ethan’s place undetected. Certain doors, hallways, certain paths. Whoever sent this knows this place well. Again my suspicion spikes. Is this Ethan?
I’m so nervous about that, I put the phone away and sneak back to Ethan’s room. He’s in bed, and I can tell from his breathing that he’s fast asleep. He’s not texting me escape routes. Someone else is.
Fuck it. This is the first offer of help I have gotten from anyone since this started, and I am not going to turn it down. I follow the directions on the phone exactly, slip out of the house, through the gardens, and find myself standing on a side road I didn’t know was there.
A car sweeps up. The passenger window rolls down.
It’s Jack Ford.
“Come on,” he says. “Get in.”
“What are you doing?”
“Helping you get out of here,” he sneers. “Unless you like being tied up and fucked publicly? Or think that it will end well once Ethan gets tired of you? You’re a problem, Casey. Vipyr doesn’t tolerate problems.”
He’s right. And I’ve been wondering what will happen to me when the novelty of fucking my ass wears off. Ethan could be with any woman. There is no reason for him to keep me around.
But still. This is Jack Ford, and he gave me a bad feeling from the beginning.
“Get in,” he repeats. “First chance and last chance. I’m risking Ethan’s cops coming down on me to do this.”
So Jack doesn’t like Ethan’s means of controlling the law either. We’re allies in that regard. I reach for the passenger door. I took a dislike to Jack, but he is the first person who has tried to help me. He was the only one who seemed to object when he found Ethan caning me. He might actually be the most sane person in miles. And he’s the only one I know Ethan can’t buy off.
“Uhm, just before I get in…”
Jack sighs, reaches into the glovebox, and pulls out a fucking gun. Suddenly I realize how stupid I am. I am alone. On a dark road. There are no security people here. And now Jack Ford has a gun on me.
“Get in.”
There’s something about the barrel of a gun that hypnotizes and sedates. I find my brain moving so much slower than it should. The options for escape, which I know must be there, don’t present themselves to me.
“Get. In,” he repeats. The order doesn’t seem to be coming from him. It seems to be coming from the gun itself—and there’s no arguing with a gun. I get into the car, knowing I have probably made the very last mistake in a long line of mistakes.
Jack accelerates away from the house, and as Ethan’s mansion recedes into darkness, so does any and all hope.
“Where are you going to take me?”
“Away,” Jack says. “Somewhere you won’t be a problem.”
“Like, Russia?”
He snorts. “Don’t have to go that far.”
I’m not the best with directions, but it’s obvious we’re not heading into the city. We’re heading away from it, further into the hills. My stomach twists.
“Jack…”
“Hm?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Jack’s silver gaze slices over to me. “Someone always dies in the end.”
Jesus. Christ. I have never felt fear like this. Jack frightens me to my core. He’s not like Ethan. He’s far worse. Ethan twists the world to his will. Jack carves through anything that doesn’t suit him, and I know I don’t suit him. He hasn’t liked me from the moment he met me.
We are getting deeper and deeper into wooded territory. I am nauseous with fear. I wish I was back in bed with Ethan. Hell, I wish I was back tied up in his house, being punished with the cane. I would rather be anywhere on Earth with anyone else than where I am now with Jack Ford.
“That phone…”
“Yes, I made sure you got it,” Jack smirks. “Ethan likes to pay people off, but he forgets that someone who is willing to be paid by one man is willing to be paid even more by another man. Notice an absence of guards tonight?”
“Yeah…”
“Mhm. Though it took you long enough to take that phone. I had that guard leave it a bunch of places before you finally took the bait. And then you called the fucking FBI,” Jack snorts with dour laughter. “Best and most stupid thing you could have done.”
“Not the most stupid,” I murmur under my breath. The most stupid thing I ever did was walking into Vipyr and thinking I could make a difference.
“You have the kind of stupidity smart people always have,” he says. “You think in logic. But logic is hyper-fallible if you don’t have all the data, and you don’t have nearly enough information on what you’re wrapped up in. Vipyr isn’t a software company at all.”
“What is it, then?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“You’re going to do that anyway.”
Jack muses on that as he sends the car flying around a bend on the mountain road. I hear the tires scrambling at the gravel, losing traction and then finding it again. He’s going to kill both of us before he kills me at this rate.
“You’re probably right,” he says as we straighten out again. “Vipyr offers software downloads, but we’ve been meshed into the DOD and several federal agencies for years now. We make most of our money via government contracts nowadays. And the data we collect, it’s used to ensure the safety of the populace. So we’re the good guys.”
He looks over at me and flashes a wide, manic grin that terrifies me more than the fact we’re speeding up the side of a mountain in the middle of the night, more than the fact that I am going to die soon. Jack Ford is utterly unhinged.
“It’s boring, being the good guy,” he complains as the car fishtails around another bend. “Ethan likes it. Has a fascination with discipline, doing the right thing. He would never tell you the classified secrets behind what you found, because he knew that would make you even more of a liability. So he tried to turn you into his perfect little fuck doll instead. But you didn’t want that either. Could have had it all, Casey. Could have had his babies. But you wanted to out him. Because you think he’s the bad guy.”
Jack throws his head back and laughs at that, as if he’s told a hilarious joke. “You’re smart enough to reverse engineer our product. Too fucking stupid to know when you’re being offered the deal of a lifetime. What is it about you women that makes you destroy every good thing you encounter? Do you know how to love? Do you even know what love is?”
I don’t have time to answer. I don’t have time to think as he throws the car around another corner. The back end steps out and then the front goes too. We skid sideways, drifting around the apex.
“You did this to you, Casey. Remember that.”
Jack jerks the steering wheel the other way and sends us careening into loose gravel. We skid sideways into park at what I guess is a rest stop parking lot. He throws open his door and points the gun at me again. “Get out.”
“Jack, please…”
“Get out. I don’t want your brains on my car.”
The fear has reached a crescendo where I can no longer process it. I have become numb. Stupid. Compliant in the way all prey animals become compliant at the end. A fawn willing to let a bear eat it alive, because there is no choice. This is how the world ends, with predator taking down prey.
I get out of the car. The night is stunning. The stars are shining above, and from this height I can look out over Silicon Valley and see everything I’m leaving behind. Is it peace I’m feeling?
“Go to the edge.”
“Huh?”
My brain is processing things very slowly. It’s overloaded. Error.exe.
Jack walks over to the edge of what is a very tall cliff. The most beautiful places are often the most dangerous, and at this moment I am overwhelmed by the view. This will be one of the last things I see before I go.
“Come to the edge,” he says.
I walk toward the edge, just like he tells me to. It is a long way down. I think. It’s dark down there, a big void waiting to embrace me.
“I’m not going to kill you. You’re going to have an unfortunate accident.”
The gun is on me again. He is nudging me back toward the precipice.
“They won’t find you for a long time down there,” he says conversationally. “And when they do, well, it will be natural causes. You’ll be shown on Ethan’s cameras walking out of the house in the middle of the night all of your own accord. It will all be one big tragic accident, which, of course, will be covered up.”
I look into his face, but I don’t see what I’m expecting: a blank stare, or a leer of aggression. His lips are twisted, his nose is screwed up, his brows drawn down. He looks like he’s about to cry. The cold mask he wears is slipping, and I’m starting to see what he never lets anybody see. He’s not psychotic. He’s not angry. He’s in pain. He’s hurting. Bad.
I swallow. Gather the courage to ask the question I have to ask.
“Why are you doing this to me, Jack?”
“Because I know why women fuck men. I know what you’re going to do to Ethan when you’re done with him.”
“Ethan is the one who wants me…”
“I’m sure he thinks that,” Jack says bitterly. “That’s what I thought too.”
“You thought I wanted you?”
“Not you. Emma.”
“Who is Emma?”
He clenches his jaw, readjusts his grip on the gun. “I guess I can tell you,” he says. “It’s not like you’re going to be able to tell anyone after this.”
I nod, draw in a deep breath. I’m buying time. Even if it’s only a couple of minutes.
“Emma was a VC I met at a party,” he says. “She was sweet, beautiful, talented. She was just like you.”
Jack really doesn’t know me from a can of beans, but I’m not going to interrupt him now.
“I was never good at love,” he smirks to himself. “But Emma made it feel easy. I loved her. And you know what she did?”
“Betrayed you?” I answer in a soft voice.
“Clever girl,” he says bitterly. “So fucking clever. She was smart too. I was going to ask her to marry me the night I found out what she’d really been doing. Stealing Vipyr code. Selling it to other companies. Industrial espionage.”
“Is that it?”
That was the wrong thing to say. I know it the minute it comes out of my mouth.
“She fucking lied to me about everything,” he snarls like a feral animal. His hand is shaking so hard I’m afraid the gun is going to go off. “Women always lie.”
“Ethan kidnapped me, took me to a police station, and beat my ass for trying to stop you harvesting data,” I say, starting to get equally impassioned. “And yes, I am trying to stop him, but I’m not fucking lying about anything.”
It’s not a good idea to yell at an unstable man with a gun, but adrenaline does crazy things. He’s removed the option for flight. I have a cliff behind me, and a gun in front of me. That means I’ll fight with my words until that thing goes off.
“You took the bait,” Jack growls back. “I set a trap only a traitor would take.”
“I’m not a fucking traitor. I’m a prisoner!”
“Then I’ll be the one to set you free.”
“Asshole.”
Calling him names. Another terrible idea, but really, fuck everything about this.
“I’m sorry someone screwed you over, Jack. But that’s life. I’ve spent the last week getting my ass handed to me every damn day, but I’m not going to drive anyone to a cliff and threaten to shoot them over it. For fuck’s sake.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Jack shouts at me, spittle flying from his lips. “Shut the fuck up, Emma! You fucking whore!”
And that’s when I realize he really isn’t all there.
“Not this time, Emma,” he says, gripping the gun with both hands. “You won’t hurt me this time.”
Wwweeeeeeooooooo Wweeeeeooooo Eeeeeeooo!
The night suddenly explodes into lights and sirens. One moment it is just Jack and me up there on the precipice, the next it seems as though a dozen cruisers have materialized. They must have come up slowly, without lights or sirens. They must have been creeping through the night, a pack of hunters looking for a beast to bring down.
Now the area is bathed in red and blue. Now it is Jack who suddenly looks small. In a moment of pure panic he rushes toward me, grabs me, pulls me against his chest and sticks the gun hard against my head. That hard little barrel could do so much damage if his finger squeezes that trigger a little too hard.
“How the fuck did you get here?” He’s shrieking the question at a figure emerging from the red and blue haze.
Ethan. Always Ethan.
“Put the gun down, Jack. And hand her over.”
Jack yanks me back a step. Now there are inches between the pair of us and eternity. Ethan is here, but I am not safe. I am not saved. Not yet.
“Tell me the fuck how you found me!” Jack is garbling his words in shock.
“I did find the phone,” Ethan says grimly. “I switched it out for another one, swapped the sim card out. I didn’t expect this to go down in the middle of the night, but…” He looks at me and I feel enough guilt to swallow me whole. “We got here in time.”
“Really? Because seems to me you got here far too late,” Jack says. He still has the gun to my temple. At any moment my world could still end.
“Don’t be stupid, Jack. Let her go. We can deal with this.”
“You think I’m fucking stupid?” Jack’s voice shakes with outrage. “You’re the one keeping a girl around who wants to destroy you. This little bitch doesn’t give a fuck about you, Ethan. I was trying to help you. She needs to be gotten rid of.”
The fucked-up thing is, Jack is right. I was trying to destroy Ethan. And Jack. And Vipyr. If there really is this much at stake, getting rid of me makes sense. I’ve refused to be paid off. I’ve refused to be subdued. I’ve proved myself to be an enemy at every turn. I don’t want to die, but I can’t blame Jack for wanting to kill me.
“She’s no threat,” Ethan says. “She’s a silly, spoiled little girl.”
“Don’t underestimate women,” Jack growls back. “Women are way more fucked up than men are. You’ll never know if she means what she says. You’ll never be able to trust her. Ever. Whether it’s today, or tomorrow, or in ten years, she’ll fuck you over.”
There’s so much angst and anger in Jack’s voice. More than that. There’s rage. A kind of rage I know I didn’t spark.
“This isn’t about Casey,” Ethan says, taking another step forward. “And you know it. So put the damn gun down already and let her go. We can talk about this.”
“I try to kill your little fuck doll and you want to talk? Don’t lie to me. You want me dead.”
“I want both of you alive, you asshole,” Ethan snaps.
“Really?” Jack’s question echoes my own sentiment.
“Yes, really, now let her go, goddammit!”
“Why? She doesn’t love you!”
“I love her,” Ethan says, his voice holding a note of truth that makes me want to weep.
“It doesn’t matter. I loved Emma. And Emma still wanted me dead.”
I can feel Jack’s body pressed hard against mine. He’s trembling all over like a nervous Chihuahua. This is not a man who wants to kill in cold blood. This is a man living in two places at once.
“Emma was one woman,” Ethan says. “Not all women. They’re not all the same. You know that.”
“I loved her.”
The emotion in Jack’s voice would break my heart if it wasn’t hammering a million miles a minute. It’s the broken sound of a man who let himself love once, and was betrayed so completely he’s lost all faith in the concept.
“I hurt her,” he sobs against my ear. “I hurt her so badly in the end.”
Chills flash down my spine. Did he kill her?
“It was self-defense,” Ethan says. “She tried to come at you with a knife, Jack.”
“She was just a woman. I should have…” Jack sobs against me, one arm wrapped around my waist as he holds me like a teddy bear, comforting himself with my terrified form.
“It’s hard to love someone and hate them at the same time.” I hear myself start to talk. “It’s hard to want them to want you, and be afraid that they’ll never really want you, even if they say they do. Because you know they have to be with you to stay in control of you.”
“Jesus,” Ethan curses under his breath. “That is not me and you, Casey. Emma was a Chinese agent. She seduced Jack. When she found out he was on to her, she was prepared to kill him rather than let him stop her.”
“I know it’s not me and you. But I thought it was, in the beginning. You did all those things to me and you didn’t even know me. I thought I was just a thing to you. I thought…”
It’s hard to have a moment when you’re being held hostage by a sobbing billionaire, but somehow we’re connecting more than ever. Jack has forced full admissions of our real feelings.
“I love you, Ethan,” I say as tears well in my eyes. “Even if this goes wrong. I love you.”
Jack takes a deep sobbing breath, pulls his arms away from me, and pushes me. Hard.
Toward Ethan.
Ethan rushes forward and grabs me so tight, holding me to his chest as if I’m the most precious thing in the world. “Are you alright?” He murmurs the question in my ear.
He means physically, I guess. I nod.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’ve got you and I’m not letting go. I…”
“Put the fucking gun down!”
The cops start shouting. Jack still has the gun. Theirs are drawn. A dozen guns to one, but that doesn’t matter because Jack has no intention of giving his weapon up. He has no intention of leaving this hill at all.
“I hope she makes you happy,” he shouts to Ethan. “I hope love is real for you!”
“Jack! No! Don’t be a fucking idiot!” Ethan curses over my head.
“We built something cool, Ethan, but it’s over now. You’re never going to let me go after this. You’re going to have me arrested. You’re going to take Vipyr for yourself. It’s what you’ve wanted all along.”
“It isn’t!”
Jack’s instability is obvious. He projects such a casual facade most of the time, so controlled. So utterly unshakeable. But now all that has crumbled and what’s left is a man with nowhere to be. Money doesn’t make a man happy. It can give his worst traits the chance to destroy him. Jack is ruthless and vicious and cold and he is capable of hurting people around him badly. But not nearly as badly as he hurts himself.
He is a broken monster of a man and the world is no kinder a place to monsters than it is to normal people.
“Jack, please. Come on. We can talk through this.”
Jack drops the gun.
Ethan breaks his promise. He lets me go and we both dart in the same direction, toward Jack. I grab his ankle. Ethan catches a leg. Jack’s head and shoulders are over the edge already as the police surge forward in a dark blue wave to pull him back up and over the edge.
He’s screaming and crying and there’s shouting and it’s total chaos. Ethan has lost control of the situation. The police are in charge now, and just like Jack said it would be. They have him in cuffs and they’re putting him in the back of a car.
“Don’t let them hurt him,” I find the plea on my lips.
“He’s not going to be hurt,” Ethan says. “He’s going to get the help he needs, and how about, for just once, you worry about yourself?”
His arms wrap around me. He holds me close against the cold of the night and the chaos of events. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I had no idea Jack was still in such a bad way. I thought he might try something, but not this.”
“It’s okay.”
“It is not okay,” Ethan says firmly. “Not at all. Come on. Let’s get you home.”
Home. That sounds good.