by Ivy Nelson
Lance had a sneaking suspicion Russell would find them before the cops.
The conference room door opened, and Eli and Hunter stepped in.
“Solitaire is closed until further notice,” Eli said without ceremony.
Beside him, Hunter gave a solemn nod. “We’ve already talked to David and he agrees. This has gone too damn far. Until we know who the fuck is sabotaging our people, we can’t in good conscience let them keep showing up week after week.”
Lance closed his eyes feeling like a failure, but he knew they were right. There was no way to let people attend safely. They really shouldn’t have been open this weekend after the damn server attack.
“I’m fine with that. You two feel like combing security footage?”
Both men settled at the table and he pulled up the footage on tablets, giving them each a different camera go comb over.
It was nearly four in the morning before they finished, and nobody could catch a good glimpse of the man Jodie had raced off with. Their next task was to pick through the guest-list for the night and see if any of the people on it could be the mystery man. And of course, find Jodie.
Lance sent Austin a text.
How is she?
Sleeping. You should do the same.
He didn’t disagree, so he closed his laptop and trudged up the stairs for a few hours of shuteye.
Marissa met him in his dreams, bleeding and unconscious and he knew he would do anything to keep her safe and find the bastards who hurt her.
28
Marissa felt sick as she listened to Austin explain that Solitaire was closed until further notice. She reclined in the comfortable seat on their private jet, willed herself not to puke.
“How’s Lance?” she whispered.
“Not taking it well. Working around the clock to figure this out.”
Marissa sat up and reached for her bag. “I should be doing the same.”
Austin placed a hand on her arm. “Patrick may have disabled Wi-Fi access. You can’t do anything up here. Just rest.”
Marissa scowled. Why were Doms so damn pushy?
“You sure you don’t want to go lay in the bedroom?”
Marissa shook her head. “I’m fine. I just want to get home.”
She fingered her short pixie cut and tears pricked at her eyes. It had been the only cut that made sense. Austin insisted she was adorable, but that just made her stomach lurch. She didn’t do cute and adorable. Besides, Lance liked her long tresses and now they were gone. Would he ever look at her the same?
She pressed the backs of her hands to her eyes and willed the tears to go away but a few escaped.
“Oh sweetie. It’s going to be OK. Go lay down.”
With a sigh, she pushed out of the seat and made her way down the aisle toward the bedroom. Maybe laying down was the smarter idea.
When they touched down in Chicago, Patrick insisted they ride in the back of a car with her to her apartment. She was embarrassed for them to see where she lived, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
“Lance will have my balls if I don’t get you home safe.”
Marissa grimaced. “First, Lance doesn’t own me. Second, Lance doesn’t want me living where I do to begin with.”
Austin patted her arm. “I lived in some shit holes when I was in college. You’ll get yourself a better place soon. Doesn’t stop our men from worrying.”
Marissa hadn’t been in college for almost a decade and she still lived in a shit hole. But she had the means to change that. She promised herself to go apartment hunting after a good night’s sleep.
But sleep evaded her, and she ended up nestled in a pile of pillows with a laptop. Who the fuck was Jodie and who had she been talking to that night?
On a whim, she logged in to the Solitaire database and began looking through the names of all the guests who had checked in Friday night.
As she went, she eliminated all women, all the men she’d spotted on her way out the door, and on a whim, all males she knew to identify as submissive. There were still a lot of names to weed through by the time she finished her first round of eliminations.
Next, she pulled up the past six months of check-in records and found that Jodie had been coming to Solitaire for a while. Why was she new to the house sub program then? That didn’t make any sense. She made a note to ask someone on the board.
She checked for matching names around the time Jodie began the house submissive program. There was a reason she was targeting Lance.
Patrick said the guy was too tall to be Forcythe and up until recently, he’d been in prison.
Whoever this was wouldn’t risk coming to the club often and they needed to have some kind of connection to Nicholas Sutton. Patrick and Holly were the only ones who came to mind and she knew it was neither of them.
She continued marking off names until she got to the Gs.
Art Glenstring. Where had she seen that name before?
She zipped through the records again and highlighted all instances of his name.
He’d checked into Solitaire exactly twice in the last six months. Once the night Jodie first attended the club and again last night.
Humming, she pulled up records for all of Solitaire’s history and found one more entry for Art. Who the fuck named their kid Art? He’d attended the grand opening party for Solitaire nearly two years ago.
As she zipped around through Solitaire’s records, a chat dialogue popped up on her screen.
Riss?
Her heart skittered and she quickly typed back.
Can’t sleep either?
Her phone rang. Was she ready to talk to him? She needed to work through the information she’d found. He would be the best one to do it with. But she didn’t think she could bear hearing his voice right now, so she let it go to voicemail and typed another message.
Let’s talk here
There was a long pause before he responded.
That works. Find anything?
Do you know an Art Glenstring?
While she waited for him to respond, she opened another window and started running searches on the name.
Can’t say I do but I’m looking at the name now. I’ll dig into it.
She saved the database file and sent it to him with the three entries highlighted. They would have to talk eventually, but for now, digital communication was best.
He called again.
With a sigh she answered.
“Go to sleep, Riss. I’m sorry I got you hurt. We’ll talk soon.”
And then he was gone.
A tear slid down her cheek, but she closed her laptop and snuggled into the pile of pillows.
To her surprise, sleep came much faster than she thought it would.
The next morning, she woke up and brewed a pot of coffee while stewing over the information—or lack thereof—she’d compiled last night.
She pulled out every note she’d written down since going to work for the folks at Solitaire and went through everything in her head. Pulling out a notebook, she began listing the names of everyone who had been involved or mentioned over the course of the last few weeks.
Sebastian Forcythe
Nicholas Sutton
Grant Sterling
Jodie King
Garrett Oliver
Isabelle Alvarado
Lance Moss
Art Glenstring
Austin Yates
Patrick Sutton Yates
Elijah Barrett
Holly Barrett
Garrett, Isabelle, Patrick, Austin, and Lance all went on the list because they seemed to be victims in all of this. Elijah was an enemy of Nicholas, though she didn’t fully understand why, and Holly was just as pissed at her dad as Patrick was.
Everything circled back to Nicholas Sutton, but she didn’t know what he was up to. He was in prison or on house arrest during most of this. His power may have been dampened but it wasn’t completely stripped away. Powerful men like him didn’t go down without a fi
ght.
That brought her to Grant Sterling. He’d been a name hovering in the background but maybe it warranted a little more digging. Before she did that, she needed to make a phone call first.
As it rang on the other end, she paced in her tiny kitchen. A loud thump and an angry voice on the other side of the wall told her the neighbor woke up in a fabulous mood again. His poor wife. A new apartment was definitely in order.
“Moss Tech, Kimberly speaking.”
The friendly voice drew her back to the phone in her hand. “Kimberly, hi. It’s Marissa Sullivan. I’m supposed to be making an appointment to sign some paperwork for the new job. Can I come in this afternoon?”
Maybe they would never be a couple again, but she deserved to give herself this chance to make a name for herself in the tech industry and Lance was the best person to set her on that path.
29
“Mr. Moss, Miss Sullivan will arrive at one this afternoon to sign her paperwork.”
Lance smiled. “Thank you, Kimberly. Have her meet me on the ninth floor please.”
The woman agreed and Lance turned back to his computer screen.
He hadn’t laid eyes on her since she was in the hospital in Colorado, and he was dying to see her again. How would she react to her new set of offices? A glance at the clock told him he had another two hours to wait before he found out.
With Solitaire being closed until further notice, he’d been spending his nights digging into every member again. They’d done background checks before accepting anyone, but background checks weren’t always enough. It was time to look at digital footprints for everyone.
Eli was convinced the club was being targeted by Nicholas Sutton as revenge, and Lance saw no reason not to agree with him. In fact, he had a theory that the attacks on his own company were part the same quest for revenge. First, Troy Wilson had kidnapped Holly as a means to get to Elijah. Then, Patrick had been framed for a diamond heist. Those two were obvious. Garrett didn’t have a connection to Sutton, but when he dug deeper, he discovered that Garrett bought lab produced diamonds from his friends and now that he was diving into the world of using diamonds for data storage, so did he. Nicholas Sutton was attempting to take down those involved in the lab produced diamond business, specifically, those involved with David, Patrick, and Elijah’s diamond venture. He just didn’t know how to prove it or how the old bastard had pulled it off.
Three months ago, Eli asked him to dig deeper into Grant Sterling, saying he didn’t trust him. Was it just that he didn’t like the man? Holly Barrett had dated Grant before she met Elijah. Doms like him were notoriously jealous. Hell, Lance wanted to hunt down whatever little submissive boy Marissa had tied up and fucked and cut his balls off and she’d done that after their breakup.
Marissa had just as big of a jealous streak, so it wasn’t just a Dom thing.
Grant also worked for Nicholas Sutton as a close confidant and PR specialist. It was entirely possible that he was helping Sutton get his revenge. He sighed, knowing he needed to put this out of his head for a little bit.
He settled behind his desk and forced himself to focus on the task of paperwork that his assistant had begged him to do. He would much rather be down on one of the programmer floors working on code but she was threatening to quit if he didn’t catch up on paperwork so she could get her records back in order.
An hour later, he stepped into her office and handed her a stack of folders.
She grinned and pointed to the inbox on her desk.
“Thank you, Sir. Want me to let you know when Miss Sullivan arrives?”
Lance shook his head. “I’m going to head to the ninth floor and wait for her.”
Kimberly quirked an eyebrow up. “Anxious, are you?”
He gave a shrug. “I’m putting her in charge of an entire arm of the company, yeah maybe a little.”
“You sure it doesn’t have something to do with more… personal things?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not normally the nosy type.”
She chuckled. “I like Miss Sullivan. I always have.”
With a shake of his head he strode through the glass doors into the hallway and rode the elevator down to the ninth floor.
Pulling a tablet from the bag he usually carried through the building, he settled behind a newly installed receptionist desk and propped his feet up to work on one of his many projects.
At exactly one, he saw a shadow pause in front of the frosted glass door. He fought the urge to stand and open it.
A feminine hand brushed at the letters painted on the door before it slowly pushed open.
He kicked his feet off the desk and stood as Marissa stepped into the room.
“What is this?” she asked quietly.
His first thought was that she clearly hadn’t been sleeping. Dark circles ringed her eyes and her face was too pale. His fists clenched as he fought the urge to scold her. His second thought was that he liked her hair short despite the fact that he didn’t think he would.
Instead he rounded the desk and handed her a thick folder.
“We’re in your new offices. Well… some of them anyway.”
“Some?” She took the folder as she looked around the spacious lobby.
“The tenth floor is yours too. This floor just has the better executive suite, so I had your name stenciled here first. We can change it if you want.”
Her gaze fell to the folder and she flipped it open.
“I don’t understand,” she murmured. “I thought I was coming to work for you.”
“You can. Or you can rent these two floors from me and run your own company. We’ll still work together so we’re not in direct competition with each other, but it will be completely yours.
Marissa blinked and looked around again.
“I feel like you’re trying to do things for me. I appreciate the gesture, but it’s like you don’t trust me to start my own company.”
Lance felt his gut twist. This was supposed to be a pleasant surprise.
But he kept his gaze steady and leaned against the sleek reception desk.
“I just want to make you happy, Riss. Give you what you want most in life. Is that so wrong?”
She sighed. “No. It’s not wrong. Just… I need to be able to do some things on my own.”
“And you will all decision making is up to you. I had some generic construction done so you could get to work right away, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. I just cleared a path for you to be able to do it.”
He watched as she stepped further into the space and eyed the long corridor of offices.
“I always pictured a more open space.”
He smiled. “You can make that happen.”
“I don’t have a budget for construction.”
He sighed. She was going to be stubborn.
Finally, she set the folder on the desk next to him and put a hand on his arm. “I still need time, OK. This is all wonderful and I promise to think about it.”
Her touch caused his eyes to drift closed. He missed her so fucking bad.
“I think I should leave, and we’ll try this again next week. I’m sorry.”
Lance sighed and lifted a hand to brush it through her short tendrils.
“I like the hair,” he murmured.
“Don’t lie,” she said tightly.
His gaze narrowed and before he could stop himself, he gripped the short waves and tugged. “I have no reason to lie.”
When he dropped his hand, she took a step back. “I’ll call Kimberly and set up a new time to handle paperwork. I need to leave.”
He hated watching her leave but he “OK. I’m going to Colorado to take care of some things since we shut Solitaire down for a few weeks. We’ll talk next week when I get back.”
Marissa frowned. “What do you have to take care of in Colorado?”
“Just shutting down the property for an extended period.”
He shoved a hand in his pocket. In all rea
lity, he was going to work with Russell Adler and Jax Fischer to hunt down Sebastian Forcythe and Jodie King. They’d both fallen off the grid.
Hopefully, she believed him.
“I’ll come see you on Monday then.”
She backed out with a little wave, and Lance couldn’t stop the overwhelming sense of disappointment as she walked out.
30
Marissa stepped out of the elevator on the first floor and made her way to the busy Chicago street. Lance was lying to her about Colorado and she didn’t know why that bothered her. It bothered her more than the fact that he was still trying to solve her problems.
Was he going to look for Jodie? She’d disappeared and Marissa still couldn’t find any trace of her.
As she walked down the street to the train station, she pondered other steps to take to find the woman. Something told her she wasn’t actually a submissive and her name might not even be Jodie. But her background check was clear, and her identity seemed legitimate. Something behind her made her turn. The sensation that someone was following her settled in her gut and she hurried to the station.
When she stepped onto the train, she leaned on a pole and surveyed the car full of people. Nobody else got on that seemed like they were watching her. As they lurched forward, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander back to Lance. He’d looked so sad when she said they would need to talk later.
Her fingers drifted to her new haircut. She fucking hated the short hair and couldn’t wait for it to grow long again. But Lance tugging on it had almost made her OK with the near pixie cut. Almost.
At her stop, she stepped onto the platform and walked up to the street to make the trek to her apartment.
As she approached, she spotted an SUV that didn’t seem to belong. Nobody had followed her off the train that she knew of, but something still felt off.