Chapter Eighteen

Cora could almost forget the previous day’s tragedies when she tumbled out of bed and went in search of the man she’d spent a night of reckless and wild love making with. All her joints and muscles panged, a sweet symphony of pain she was beginning to crave a little more with every passing encounter with the man himself. She’d never been one for pain and submission. The whole idea had always struck her as ridiculous, but James had a way of bringing it out in her with only a touch. And it was never enough.

The man himself sat at her rickety kitchen table, a mug of coffee in one hand, the morning paper in the other. He was already dressed in a baggy gray sweater and dark cargos. His feet were encased in thick, leather boots.

God, he looked good.

He looked fuckable.

What was it about the man in the morning that made her want to straddle him and take her own pleasure, even though they’d spent the entire night racing to see who passed out first?

He was turning her into a sex addict.

The idea made her snort under her breath. The sound had James’s head lifting. He caught sight of her leaning against the doorframe and raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you look like you caught the canary?”

“Because I might have.”

She bit her lip and stepped into the room.

He set his paper down. “Are you suggesting I’m the canary?”

With a coy little shrug, she moved to the coffee machine.

“I might be.”

She felt the predatory line of his gaze following her, tracing the naked contours of her limbs where his t-shirt didn’t cover and knowing she was completely naked underneath.

“Do I want to know what has you in such a good mood?”

Hot, rich brew filling her mug, Cora turned with it cradled between her hands. She squinted over its rising steam and shrugged.

“I can’t explain it.” She took a sip on her way to join him. She dropped into the chair opposite and set her mug down. “I just feel like something really amazing’s going to happen. Have you ever felt that?”

James shook his head.

“Well, it’s going to be a really good day. I can feel it.” She stole the newspaper from him and flipped it around to see what he’d been reading. “Thinking about buying a house?”

He took the paper back. “It’s not safe for you here.”

The mug she’d lifted to her lips paused midway as his words drifted around them.

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be safe here?”

Something in the way he refused to meet her gaze chilled the warmth in her belly. She set down her drink and waited.

“You’re just not,” was the only answer he allowed her. “You need something better.”

“But—”

Liquid silver eyes shot up, their warning clear. “Cora.”

The need to ask burned into her with hot little fingers, each one sizzling upon contact until it was all she could do to keep from screaming at him.

“You can’t tell me I’m not safe and then not tell me why you think that,” she shot back. “I have a right to know if I’m in danger.”

He contemplated that a full second before replying, “Fine, you’re in danger.”

“Prick.” Snatching her mug up, she shot to her feet. “I can’t believe I keep forgetting what a monumental asshole you are.”

No sooner had she slammed her cup down on the counter when his hands tangled in her hair. Her neck was forced back.

“Watch your mouth,” he growled into the side of her face. “I will not be disrespected.”

She thrashed against him. “All you’ve done since I met you was disrespect me. Get off!”

To her surprise, he released her. She spun to face him properly.

He stared at her, head rocking slightly from side to side.

“You are the worst submissive I’ve ever had the misfortune of getting stuck with,” he decided with a shake of his head. “You don’t learn.”

Cora blinked, bewildered, horrified ... infuriated.

Submissive?

Her?

The very idea was ludicrous. She’d seen submissive women masquerading as furniture and getting spitted on by burly men in some dank dungeon while being tied up to the point of zero circulation.

How was that her?

How dare he think it ever would be?

“Is that what you think I am? Some weak-willed woman who will bow to you?”

James stared at her and it was in a way he’d never looked at her before, like she was something to be pitied, a creature too pathetic and sad to be considered a threat. It was almost enough to make her want to throw her coffee at him.

“Is that what you think a submissive is? Weak-willed?”

The question derailed her anger momentarily while she tried to decide how to properly answer it without losing her patience.

“I’ve seen what submissive women are,” she countered. “I’ve read the books. I’ve seen the images. I won’t bow to you. I won’t let you tie me up and flog me. I don’t get off on pain or humiliation. I will never submit to you.”

“That’s just it.” He bent his head a fraction to one side. “You already have. All of that. In some form, you have already given yourself to me.”

Her mouth opened, words, angry, brittle words poised ... and died.

He was right.

Slapped with it, all she could see was the number of times he’d used only his voice to quiet her, all the times he’d held her down and made her be his, the spankings, the humiliations, the absolute relinquishment of her power.

Hell, hadn’t she just been thinking how liberating submitting to him had been?

“I saw it in you the moment we met face to face,” he continued, softer. “You were born for it.”

“You ... you brainwashed me.”

James quirked an eyebrow as if to say, seriously?

“I’m not weak!”

James sighed. “Submissive women are probably the strongest women I have ever met. It takes strength and courage to give up control to someone else.”

“But I don’t want to give you anything, especially not...”

She wanted to say her power, her strength, her control, but the words kept lodging in her throat as she was reminded yet again of all the times she’d done so willingly. She hadn’t even noticed. Not once.

“Why would you take ... why would you tell me...?”

Hot and cold waves of betrayal and terror washed over her. Mortification quickly followed, prodding her with icy fingers, mocking her for being so incredibly stupid, for allowing him to slip beneath her skin and convert her into something she hadn’t even known she was.

He did this to her, because a month ago, she was just Cora, a normal twenty-five-year-old with men issues and a bar to run. Suddenly now she was some helpless woman who needed a man to ... what? What exactly was his purpose? Crush her? Degrade her? Morph her into some obedient slave?

Of course.

That was his plan.

Break her until she no longer even recognized herself, until she was what he wanted, what he made her into. That was how prisoners of war were converted into loyal followers. Torture and submission until they conformed. Only, he was using sex and blackmailing.

“Oh God...”

“Cora.”

She backed away from him when he made to reach for her. “Don’t touch me.”

“Stop. Let me explain.”

She smacked the hand that extended towards her arm. “I said, don’t touch me!”

She bolted past him to her room. The snap of the lock had never sounded so loud.  She dropped down on the bed and pressed her face into her palms.

This couldn’t be happening.

Deidra was right. Maybe this was Stockholm syndrome. Maybe she really was weak and easily brainwashed.

“Cora.” His voice echoed through the heavy barrier between them. “Let me in.”

She ignored him, nerves too frayed and jittery to think rationally enough for a conversation.

“We need to talk.”

Cora shook her head even though he couldn’t see it.

“Open the door, Cora, or I will.”

He meant it.

She knew he did.

Nothing would stop him from getting in.

Heart hammering, she lunged to her feet and ran to her closet. She threw on the random articles of clothing she could find and hurried to the window. Without waiting for him to follow through with his threat, she pushed open the frame and crawled out onto the fire escape.

The metal contraption groaned at the added weight. The thing hadn’t been used since she bought the building. She wasn’t even sure it could hold her. But she picked her way down gingerly and jumped the last three feet into the alley between her bar and the locksmith next door.

Her sneakers crunched on broken bits of glass and gravel when she landed. A splinter of pain shot up her right ankle, but she ignored it as she bolted in the opposite direction, away from Main Street, knowing James would think she’d take the safety of a crowd over seclusion.

But seclusion was exactly what she needed.

Isolation.

Alone time.

God, she needed alone time.

She needed to think clearly without a million voices clamoring around in her head.

She needed a few hours of peace and quiet.

There was only one place to get that — the hiking trail she used to run back when her life had been moderately simple.

After opening the bar and sleeping late into the afternoon to make up for going to bed so late, jogging had fallen to the side, but she missed the manmade path of concrete cutting through half the city in various directions. She missed the company of trees and endless nothing to distract her. She sucked in her first breath in what felt like eons and just walked.

She didn’t think about James, or her parents, or anything to do with that whole last week.

She didn’t dwell on her future or where it would take her.

She simply let her mind drift to a blissful blankness she hadn’t ever allowed herself.

It was creeping towards lunch time before she realized she needed to head back. She had no money and no phone, and nearly three hours of walking ahead of her. She’d be lucky to make it in time for dinner, and she was starving. Hiking around the city on a couple of sips of coffee had probably not been her brightest idea. But she felt better. She felt calmer, which was a drastic change. She felt like she could face James rationally and tell him she refused to be his submissive. It wasn’t her and he couldn’t make her. She even had a whole speech planned out in her head outlining all the reasons she would make a terrible submissive.

Then, they would eat something.

No.

Food first.

Then the speech.

Lost in her hopeful dreams, Cora almost missed the scuffle of feet behind her until a loose stone clattered across the pavement. The appearance of other hikers on the path were too normal for her to worry about it, but something about the prickle along the back of her neck had her glancing over her shoulder.

It was a guy. Just one. Dressed in a leather jacket and dark jeans. The hood on his pullover was drawn over his head, obscuring her view of his face, but she could just make out long, dark hair peeking out around the sides.

For a second, she thought it was James, but the build was all wrong. This guy wasn’t tall enough, built enough. He was too hunched. His shoulders were pulled too high around his ears.

James walked with confidence, with authority.

He dominated his strides.

Nevertheless, Cora scooted off to one side of the path, giving him plenty of space to stalk past her.

Only, he didn’t.

He came up right behind her, slowing down so he remained there.

Cora felt his hot presence slither down her spine. It didn’t fade even when she quickened her pace.

He quickened his.

Heart rampaging in her chest, she stopped and faced him.

“What?” she demanded. “Did you need something?”

It was a stupid question, one that invited all manner of stupid answers. Her companion was no different.

“Hand over your wallet.”

Cora gaped. “Are you serious? Does it look like I have a wallet?”

He hadn’t been expecting that, because he seemed to hesitate as if not sure what he was supposed to do next. Cora hoped he’d just leave. No one got hurt. There was no point sticking around.

“Then give me the bracelet.”

Cora looked down at her wrist, at the bracelet James had given her the day before.

“No.” She cupped her hand over it. “My husband gave me this and it’s mine.”

Her companion recoiled, surprised by her refusal.

“Are you stupid?” He stuffed both hands into his pockets. “I said, give it to me!”

A switch blade was unearthed from the folds of his coat. The blade glinted as it was snapped open with a flick of his thin wrists.

Cora did the only thing she could think of that didn’t involve pitching her bracelet in his face. She spun on her heels and ran. Her captor yelled at her, and when she didn’t stop like he wanted, he sprinted after her.

In the midafternoon sunlight, there should have been plenty of hikers making their way through the park during their lunch break. The park was normally full of people, except when she actually needed someone to save her.

The path was empty. Not a single soul to hear her scream, not that she could when all her energy and oxygen was going into pumping her legs. Fire burned in her lungs. Stitches tore open along her sides, feeling like her insides were going to spill out. She could feel herself slowing down, could feel the momentum leaving her. She would have cried out, except there was nothing, no air, no energy. She was going to die.

“Just give me the fucking bracelet!” the guy panted, voice high pitched and shrill with his labored breaths.

“No!” Cora doubled over, wheezing. “You’re going to have to kill me.”

The guy shook his head. “What’s the matter with you, lady?”

“I’ve been wondering the same fucking thing,” came a familiar, booming voice from behind Cora.

The world spun when she did to face the newcomer. Her already thundering heart clapped with a new insistence at the sight of him, tall, dark, beautiful coming towards her with that familiar gait she loved so much.

“James.”

The phone in his hand was stuffed into his coat pocket. His gaze shifted away from the knife wielding nut job to her. It was a flick, a barely feasible once over before he went back to her companion.

Without missing a beat, or a stride, he reached behind him and unholstered the gun from the back waistband of his cargos.

He shot the guy.

The explosion ripped through the afternoon, clouding it with the stench of gunpowder and blood.

The guy dropped to the dirt, howling like a wounded animal and clutching at the clean hole just above his kneecap. Blood seeped through his fingers to gush across the pavement.

James had definitely hit an artery. And he wasn’t finished.

He aimed a second time.

Higher.

His face a mask of cold, brittle rage.

Cora leaped in his path.

“What are you doing?”

Without uttering a word, he shoved her aside and fired again.

The bullet went straight through the man’s shoulder, ripping leather, muscle and bone to embed into the ground behind him.

His scream was excruciating, no longer man or animal but a shredded howl that sent chills down her spine.

“James!” She grabbed his arm. “Stop!”

Still not speaking, he grabbed her arm and dragged her after him, leaving the guy bleeding and sobbing on the hiking trail. His wails followed them for almost a mile before it vanished into the background. The only sound then was her labored pants as she fought to keep up with him dragging her like a disobedient child back to the apartment. His fury roiled off him in thick plumes of heat that made her think of a campfire. It singed her skin, yet filled her with an icy dread that made her queasy.

“James?” she whispered.

He said nothing.

They reached the apartment much faster than she anticipated. He hauled her up the stairs and straight into the living room.

She thought he’d toss her on the sofa and start screaming at her. She wished he would scream, yell, rant, rave, throw something. His eerie silence, the rabid and violent rage swelling off him was so much worse.

So much more terrifying.

“James?” she tried again, her voice a tiny squeak slathered in fear.

He grabbed her in powerful hands and whipped her around. The momentum stole what little air she could suck in just before it was torn out by the punch of something solid coming up against her abdomen.

The armrest on the sofa bent her in two. The weight of her body pinned her arms beneath her, tangled and restricted by the bulk of her coat. Her nose brushed the velvet cushion. Her toes barely brushed the floor. She was restrained without anything actually restraining her. She gasped as the blood rushed to her face.

Her sweats were torn open. The material was forced down around her ankles. She tried to protest as cold air licked exposed skin, but it was nothing compared to the burning slap of something long and wooden kissing her cheek. The first one, she had no time to react, no time to process. The stinging pain was overshadowed by shock.

But the second one...

Holy fuck the second one burned. It ripped skin. It seared with a biting gnaw that could never be explained. The third one made her scream and thrash uselessly with no escape. By the tenth one, she was sobbing. He was no longer even aiming for her ass, but had started on the backs of her thighs. Her skin radiated heat as though he’d lit her on fire. It blazed with a pain she couldn’t even see straight.

At fifteen, he stopped. But it didn’t matter. All she wanted to do was curl up in the corner and die.

Instead, hands fisted in her coat and she was lifted gently. He lowered her face down on the sofa and left her there. She heard his boots fading somewhere into the distance, heard him leaving. Then silence.

The welts on her ass had risen to an intensity of pain that prickled like a third degree burn. All she wanted to do was scream, but all she could do was cry into folded arms.

Something ice cold draped over her ass. The conflicting sensations made her jump.

He’d draped a dishrag over her wounds and placed bags of peas overtop. Nothing was offered for her thighs.

Then he took a seat across from her in an armchair and said nothing. He barely moved. His pale eyes bore into hers, still bright with livid intensity. On the arms, his fingers curled and uncurled absently.

Between them on the coffee table, one of her wooden stirring spoons from the kitchen lay taunting her on the glass. Her parents had never spanked her, not even a swat on the butt as a child. They’d sure as hell never used a spoon.

Cora hiccupped.

The sound seemed to stir him. His gaze flicked away from her to something across the room.

Neither of them uttered a word for what felt like hours.

He broke it.

“What were you thinking?”

Cora’s wet lashes lifted until she could see him over the bend in her arm. She didn’t speak. He didn’t seem to need her to.

“Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?” Silver flames sparked in her direction. “You could have broken your neck climbing down that death trap. You could have been captured. You could have gotten lost or hurt. You could have been stabbed over a fucking bracelet.” Anger boiled in his voice, growing in intensity with every word he chewed out through clenched teeth. “Why wouldn’t you give it to him? Why would you choose to be killed, even encouraging him to do it over something I can get a thousand of for you?”

Because it’s mine, she wanted to whisper, but found no energy to summon the words.

“Do you have any idea how fucking scared I was thinking I might not get to you in time, that I might lose you over a fucking bracelet? A worthless piece of fucking metal. Does it really mean that much to you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, the single words no more than a numb movement of her lips.

James’s jaw flexed. His fingers twisted into fists on the armrests.

“Well, it means nothing to me,” he bit out. “Not a fucking thing without you. Nothing does.”

She peered across the distance at him, through the dim light shadowing the room, through the steady leak of tears she couldn’t stop, to where he sat staring at her, no longer with ferocity, but ... terror. Fear. So much fear it nearly destroyed her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

James closed his eyes, switching off their burning glow and casting her into darkness. Their absence cut some invisible cord inside her and she dissolved into a new river of tears. The same two words rotated over and over again in between gasping pants that ripped up her insides. But she couldn’t stop.

The cushions dipped and she found herself encased in his arms, smothered into his chest. His fingers curled into her hair and he gripped her to him with an urgency that left fresh bruises. His full length aligned alongside hers in a solid cocoon of strength and heat.

“You’re going to be the end of me, sweetheart,” he murmured into the top of her head. “I don’t even know that I care anymore.”

Something about those words had her fingers tightening in the folds of his sweater, as if worried he might pull away and leave her abandoned there alone.

“Don’t leave,” she pleaded in a tiny, helpless voice that sounded nothing like her. Even to her own ears it rang with vulnerability and an insecurity the normal her would never have willingly revealed.

Not to him.

Not to anyone.

He kissed her temple. “Not going anywhere.”

A heavy curtain of dusk layered the apartment when Cora opened her eyes again. It shimmered around the sofa, in the air like tiny speckles of dust in the light. It settled on intertwined limbs closed together in a fierce embrace and stung her eyes.

Cora blinked to chase away the burn, but the sensation persisted, following her from dream to reality and the sweltering heat dampening her skin with sweat.

She gasped, trying not to shift too much and wake James. She just needed to shake off her coat and shoes, maybe pull her pants up. They’d both fallen asleep still fully clad in all their outside clothes and the bulk made leaving the confines of his encirclement a task.

But that wasn’t the thing that had woken her.

There was a smell, an odd odor that was making her head hurt and her lungs ache.

“James?”

He jerked awake to the sound of her quiet murmur. His arms tightened around her instinctively as he squinted at the darkness pooling around them.

“What?”

Cora lifted her head from its nestled place against the warm flesh of his neck. “Something’s wrong.”

He pushed upright into a sitting position and glanced around the room. The movement sent her off him onto two bags of defrosted, mushy peas. But she didn’t notice.

Nothing was out of place.

Even the silence was familiar.

But the air was different.

It was thicker.

Hotter.

It seemed to shimmer slightly.

James raised his chin, the familiar movements of a wolf picking up a scent. Dark brows furrowed over narrowed, searching eyes. He bent and placed a flat palm on the floorboards between his feet.

“Fuck.” He bolted upright and grabbed her. “We need to get out of here.”

She didn’t ask. She allowed herself to be pulled up and made to stand while he dragged her sweats back around her hips. Her hand was captured in a crushing grip that would have made her wince, except she held his tighter.

Together, they sprinted for the front door. James wrenched it open.

Blinding heat wafted up at them in a blinding rush of leaping flames that lashed at their faces. It blazed in a frenzy of hot orange, devouring the stairs and working its way along the walls.

Cora screamed, but James had already shoved her back with one arm. The other heaved his entire weight against the barricade, slamming it closed and keeping the angry demons at bay.

Temporarily.

He spun with her wrist still caught in his hand. His gaze scanned her apartment, searching for another way out.

“We’re trapped,” she gasped.

James’s fingers tightened around her. “No. Not yet. Come on.”

He dragged her into the bedroom. The door was sealed behind them, adding another blockade between them and the inferno giving chase.

She realized what he was doing even before he hauled her to the window and forced the glass open. The fire escape loomed below the sill, a beckoning mockery of a true escape. But it was all they had.

“I’m going to go down first,” he told her, one leg already tossed over. “I want you right behind me, understand? Cora.” He was in front of her when she couldn’t shake herself to answer right away. His unnaturally warm palms cupped her cheeks. “Did you hear me?”

He was right, of course.

They needed to get out and the only other exit in the place was through that window. Somewhere, at the back of her mind, she heard her uncle’s voice insisting she needed a better, safer escape route beyond the front door and fire escape, but that had meant destroying the building’s historic façade. She’d already remodeled so much of it, carving the dusty storage into her little sliver of home. She was certainly regretting that now.

“Cora.” James shook her gently.

The room was getting hot. The fire from below had begun to eat away at the floorboards. Smoke coiled from between the planks, draining the room of breathable air.

She nodded quickly. “Right behind you,” she mimicked.

“Good girl.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Right behind me, okay?”

Again, she nodded, and stepped back when he hoisted his leg back over. He hesitated. His head turned back to her, apprehension burning.

“Right behind you,” she promised.

A muscle twitched along his jaw, but he levied his weight onto the fire escape and made his way downward.

It seemed much more precocious in the dark, Cora noted. The bottom was a vast void of black broken by glimmers of wet asphalt. She wasn’t sure she could find her way down without some semblance of light. A hindrance James had no problem with when he hit the bottom, barely making a scuffle.

“Cora!”

His low hiss carried up to her, jolting her from her paralysis and the numbing disorientation of being awakened to her apartment going up in flames. She gripped the ledge and struggled to lift her leg over, but her earlier punishment hinder all possibilities. The agitated flesh screamed in protest, bringing tears to her eyes before she managed to vault herself into the frigid air.

She made her way down gingerly, gripping tight to the rusted rungs slick and cold with early morning dew. At the bottom, James’s hands were there, gripping her hips and drawing her safely to the ground.

From within, liquor bottles popped, a succession of rapid fire that reminded her of bullets leaving the chamber of a gun. Beams crashed. Windows shattered. The cacophony of destruction roared through the night, a soul crippling cry of her whole life collapsing around her.

“No!” Cora moaned as everything she’d ever built went up in flames.

“Come on, sweetheart.”

James dragged her away from the building.

Even from blocks away, there was no missing the hot, liquid gold leaping in the darkness in a flurry of joy. Tunnels of black smoke columned into the night sky, churning the navy blue into a slate gray and soaking the air, filling it with the stench of things burning, wood, plastic, fabric.

Everything she owned and cherished.

In the distance, sirens wailed, the sound of approaching rescue, but James never stopped. He gripped her with one hand, a bruising force crushing her fingers, and his gun in the other. His strides were wide, clipped, too long for her short ones to keep in time with. Every one lunge from him was four scurried scrambles from her. But she knew he wouldn’t stop. He was a man on a mission and that mission was getting her as far away from that place as possible.

They rounded several corners, went down a dozen streets, and passed no one. The wee hours of the AM had most normal people confined to their beds. It was probably just as well, she mused, lungs aching. The way they were running, someone might have suspected them of robbing a bank.

At Main Street, he hailed a cab and forced her into the back. He rattled off her parent’s address, then pulled her into his side.

“Get low,” he murmured into her temple.

Cora wiggled as far down as her stinging ass would allow against the worn leather.

“It was deliberate,” she murmured as the cab took to the open roads. “Someone disconnected the fire alarms. None of them went off. I had them all checked a month ago. I know they were working. And all the exits were blocked.” She tipped her head back on his shoulder. “Who would do that? Why?”

His response was to dig out his phone. She saw the screen flash Nicholas’s name before it was pressed to his ear.

“He went after Cora,” was his greeting when the other man picked up. “I’m taking her to her parent’s. No. I’ll meet you there.”

“Who?” Cora started to lift her head, only to have it dragged back down.

“I told you to stay down.”

“But who’s after me?”

Her question was ignored a second time with another call.

“I have Cora. Open the gates.”

He disconnected and stuffed the phone into his pocket.

“James!”

“Not now!”

She lost him after that. He sat in a dark, murderous silence that choked the very oxygen from the cabin. Even the cabbie shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel. His gaze darted between the road and the rearview mirror as if he expected James to snap and kill them all.

The moment they pulled beneath the steps of her parent’s home, he paid the relieved cabbie and hauled her from the backseat. She was hoisted up the stairs to the front door without a shred of gentleness. He pushed them inside without knocking and slammed the door shut behind them

“It’s three in the morning,” Cora hissed. “My parents are—”

Giovanni stalked into the foyer, wrapped in a black, silk robe and matching pajamas. His face was perfectly shaven, his hair immaculately combed back. He did not resemble a man who was jolted out of bed, nor did Elise, who followed after him in a white, satin slip and robe. Neither one looked surprised to see James or Cora there.

“What happened?” Giovanni demanded.

“We need to talk,” was James’s answer. “Now.”

A muscle bunched against her father’s jaw, but he turned to his wife and daughter. “Both of you upstairs. Stay in your rooms.”

“What’s happening, Gio?” Elise hurried to Cora’s side and took her arm.

“Someone burned the bar,” Cora answered for him. “Everything’s gone.”

Elise’s jaw went slack. Cora’s face was immediately captured between soft hands.

“Are you hurt?”

Cora nodded. “I’m fine, but my things ... my bar...”

“I don’t care about things,” Elise cried. “Things can be found and replaced, and your bar can be rebuilt, but you...”

Cora sighed. “I’m okay. I promise.”

Elise exhaled and turned to her husband. “Who did this?”

“I’m going to find out,” he told her firmly. “But until I do, no one leaves this house. Now, both of you in bed. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”