23. June 16th

JUNE 16TH

TB

With the firstnote of Flame's scream, he was out of the chair and up the two flights of stairs. When he got to her, she was a whimpering mess on the floor, her phone shattered from her reflexive throw.

"Flame!" He crossed the room, gathered her up into his arms, and sat down on the edge of the bed with her in his lap. She was clutching him so tightly around the neck he could barely breathe.

"Flame, sweetheart, what happened?" He ran his hands over her body, checking for injuries. Finding nothing, he managed to pry her arms from around his neck and frame her face in his hands. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her pupils were blown out wide with fear, her teeth were chattering, and her body began shaking uncontrollably. "Jesus, woman," he muttered as her skin turned ice cold in seconds.

He stood up, tore the quilts back on the bed, and slid her inside the bedding, tucking her in tight. Then he hit a button on his watch. "Call Doc." As it rang, he muttered, "And he better not be out on a midnight swim."

After three rings a deep voice went, "Yeah?"

Waves were crashing in the background.

"It's Flame. Something's wrong."

"Symptoms?"

"Complete meltdown. Skin is ice cold, eyes blown out, shaking like a leaf?—"

"Shock. Lay her down. Elevate her feet. Loosen her clothing. Get her warm. No food, no water until she's back with you."

"Got it."

"What happened?"

"No clue. She's not speaking. She got a phone call from Kubrick. Then the phone rang again, and she started screaming."

"Call Waters. I'm on my way."

TB disconnected the call and went back to Flame's side. She had curled up into a ball, pulling all the quilts over her like she was creating a cocoon. He sat on the edge of the bed and gently began pulling the covers free piece by piece. She didn't fight him, but she had a death grip on the portion she had pulled over her head. "Flame, let go, sweetheart. I'm here. Nothing can hurt you."

He pried her fingers from the quilt, but then she just curled further into herself. He didn't know what else to do. He rebundled her in the quilt and brushed the hair out of her face as he called Waters.

"Cock-blocker," the grumpy voice came over the line.

"Something happened. Flame went into shock again."

Waters' voice went instantly serious. "She just got off the phone with Kubrick. How?"

"I heard the phone ring again over the monitor after they hung up. I heard her answer, and then she started screaming. I'm guessing the stalker finally dug up her number."

Waters sighed. "You call Demon?"

"Yeah, he's on his way over, but I'm gonna call him off. I don't think there's anything he can do for this."

"I'll call him. Just take care of her. Leave the phone on, but turn the ringer off. I'll have Midas start working on it. Conference room at oh-eight-hundred. Bring the phone."

"Roger that."

TB disconnected. He crossed over to the pieces of her phone, picked them up, and reassembled them. Making sure all the pieces were present and the ringer was turned off, he set it on the edge of her desk.

Returning to the edge of the bed, he could see she wasn't shaking as violently, but she was still shivering. Without thinking about what he was doing, he pulled off his boots, then propped himself against the headboard. He gathered her to him so they were face-to-face, pulling her legs up over his, and tucked her close to his side. She was still in her robe and nightgown, so he didn't need to loosen anything, but he did use his free hand to undo her hair, gently combing through it with his fingers. Pulling the quilt up to her neck, he cocooned her in the blanket as he had during aftercare. He held her close, brushing his chin back and forth across her forehead until she fell into a restless sleep. He thought about getting out of the bed then, but he stayed and stared out the window into the night.

I'm coming for you, asshole, whoever you are. She may not be able to be mine, but I will protect her like she is. With my last breath.

He feltit as she drifted up from the depths of sleep and knew the exact moment her body registered that something was off. Groggily, she tilted her head to the bookcase above her to check the clock. It was just after five a.m. "Go back to sleep, princess. You don't need to be awake yet."

She turned in the direction of the voice to see TB holding her close, one arm around her shoulders, the other around her waist. Their legs were tangled together under the comforter. Within seconds, the events of the previous night must have slammed into her memory, causing her to gasp and lock in place.

"Shhh," he comforted her, his arms pulling her tighter to him. "You're safe."

"I'll never be safe," she whimpered.

"You saying I can't protect you?" he rumbled.

"I know you think you can. But he threatened you, and he meant it."

There was a pause as he processed her words. "Breathe, Flame. No one's getting to me. The house is alarmed. Nemo was outside all night. Midas is already working on tracing the call." Lightly, he brushed his chin against the top of her head. "We've got a lot to talk about today, so I need you to rest while you can."

"I don't think I can go back to sleep."

"You don't have to. Just rest."

They lay together in the bed, not talking, not looking at each other, just tangled up in each other, warm and comfortable. He felt one hand slide up his stomach to rest on his chest, the other between their bodies, gripping his T-shirt tightly.

He absently pressed his lips against her head.

She burrowed down further into the mattress and bedding, and TB pulled her closer again.

At six-thirty,he roused her out of bed. "We have to be at Tribe by eight. I'm sorry to drag you with, but after last night, I can't leave you here alone, and the team needs to meet. Bring your laptop. You can work in my office after the meeting."

"You have an office?"

"This surprises you?"

"Difficult to see you behind a desk."

"I didn't say that I used it, just that I have it. My workspace tends to be the armory bench table."

"Now that I can see."

She floated downstairs to her room, and shortly thereafter, he heard the shower start up. Today was going to be a rough one for her. She was going to get asked a lot of questions, most of which she wasn't going to want to answer, and all of them were going to make her uncomfortable.

He jumped in the shower, dressed, then headed downstairs to clean up his mess from before he ran upstairs in the early morning hours. Luckily, she was still upstairs getting ready, or he would have had a lot of explaining to do. In reality, she was the one who had a lot of explaining to do, but he'd rather be on the offensive for the conversation than try to backpedal with her like he would have been if she'd seen he was aware she had secrets.

Files pocketed into his laptop sleeve, security files neatly piled on the dining room table, he began to poke around in her kitchen. "Who doesn't have coffee?" he mumbled.

"Me," the soft voice came from behind him. "I never acquired the coffee craving other human beings seem to have been born with."

"What do you do for caffeine?" he grouched.

She shrugged. "Don't really need it. I live by myself and keep to my own schedule, so when my body wants to sleep, I go to sleep. When it wants to wake up, I get up. Caffeine isn't necessary for that lifestyle."

"How does your body develop a normal sleep rhythm?"

"It doesn't. I know it's not healthy, but to be honest, sleep and I have an odd relationship anyway." She was picking at an imaginary thread on her wrist cuff.

Evasion. File that away, along with the "odd relationship" comment.

The ride into Tribe was quiet. He knew she wasn't thrilled about being pulled out of her home to spend the day at his workplace, but she didn't complain. Meeting as a large group at her house would draw more attention than they wanted, so they needed to meet somewhere it wouldn't, which was the office.

He dropped off her computer bag in his office and then escorted her to the conference room. Cherry already had coffee and a continental breakfast in the room, so he got her settled in his regular seat, which put her next to Midas.

"Good morning, Rapunzel!" Nemo greeted. "Since your fire-breathing dragon isn't going to ask, what can I get you to eat and drink?"

She shook her head. "I'm not hungry," she told him.

TB lowered his register when he spoke. "Flame, all you had to eat last night was ice cream, and you didn't eat this morning before we got here. You need to eat something. So, either pick something to eat and drink, or I will, and you will eat every bite of it whether you like it or not."

She looked up at TB. "Dom voice, much?"

He leaned closer to her and whispered, "You're going to get more than the voice if you keep this up. And I won't wait until I get you home."

He watched her eyes flick over his expression, almost like she was considering being a brat on purpose. Instead, she rolled her eyes. "Danish, please."

"I know you don't want coffee. Do you want Cherry to make you some tea? I saw that at the house."

Before she could say not to bother, Cherry interjected, "I'm already making some for myself. I'll get you a cup."

She frowned at him.

"She really does make some every day," he reassured her.

TB went over to the side table. He gave Nemo a shove. "I'll get her food, Nutjob."

Midas sidled up next to him. "Cherry picked up the raspberry ones for her special," he whispered.

TB looked at him with a scowl.

"It's on her Facebook page. I finished her book already, and I was bored." Midas shoved a doughnut in his mouth and walked back to his seat.

TB wrinkled his face in distaste. There was way too much there to unpack. He shook his head and put a raspberry danish on a plate, put some breakfast fruit salad in a cup, grabbed a fork and some napkins, and then took them over to her at her seat.

Midas was already at his spot at the head of the conference room table, teasing her about something, and he had a book between them that she was writing in.

"What the hell?" TB asked.

Midas smirked. "Just getting her autograph."

"I thought you were already dating Alexa?" he asked.

"Nope. Siri. Alexa is our love child." Midas winked at Sylvan. "Thanks, Flame. I'm gonna try out pages one hundred thirty-four through one hundred forty-seven sometime."

"Oh, good grief," TB muttered as he went back to the food. Once he got there, he turned back, flashing a look between the two laughing faces. "What's on page one hundred thirty-four through one hundred forty-seven?" he asked suspiciously.

Nemo hopped into the seat on her other side with his own book. "Oh, no, Total Bookworm. You'll have to learn to read first. Then you can read it and find out for yourself." He winked and gave two clicks of his tongue. "Totally worth it, buddy." His attention went completely to Flame. "Good morning, again, Rapunzel. Will you sign mine as well?"

TB watched her smile and turn to the title page. Then he looked around the table. "Am I the only one concerned about this?"

Waters just smirked and tried to hide it behind taking a sip of his coffee.

TB narrowed his eyes at him.

"What?" Waters shrugged. "Page one hundred thirty-four through one hundred forty-seven is fuckin' hot. You should try it. Worked for me." The last sentence was muttered into his coffee.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," TB muttered, grabbed his coffee, and crossed over to the seat beside her. After he put his cup down, he grabbed the chair Nemo was sitting in, pulled it from the table, unceremoniously dumped him out of it, then put it back to the table and sat down with his own butt in it.

Nemo went and sat in his usual seat on the opposite side of the table, to the right of his brother and directly across from Flame, smiling from ear to ear. "This seat's better anyway. I can sit here and gaze at her without getting a crick in my neck."

Flame was blushing, and TB did not like it one bit.

She's not going to succumb to his shit, is she? I'll kill him.

A booming voice came out of nowhere. "Is everyone here?"

Flame looked around the room. TB motioned to the speaker in the center of the table and mouthed, "Our boss."

"All right, everyone, let's get going." Waters focused everyone's attention. "So, already, we've had an escalation in contact. Looks like our security system pushed him into making a call. Midas, were you able to pull it off the system?"

"Yup."

Flame's posture went ramrod straight, and all color fled from her face. Midas looked at her. "I only pulled your conversation with him, not with Kubrick."

She clearly understood that Midas had heard the other conversation as well. Midas put a hand over hers that were shredding the napkin in front of her. He leaned in to whisper in her ear, "I promise." Midas' eyes glanced quickly at TB.

She nodded, immediately stopped shredding the paper, and withdrew her hands, putting them, tightly clasped, in her lap.

"Okay, here comes the playback," Midas warned her.

"Kai, I don't want to be a part of a triad with you, even if it's just verbal. If you're calling me to?—"

"I won't share you."

"You were promised to me, Jolie. You've always been mine. And soon, you'll be mine to do with as I please. But first I'm going to take care of that new boyfriend of yours. And it will hurt, Jolie. I'll enjoy hurting him. Then it will be your turn."

There was a dial tone, a scream from Flame, the thunk of the phone hitting the floor, and then nothing.

"Call lasted sixteen seconds from connect to disconnect. Burner phone, but he was close by. Within a mile," Midas said.

"How did he get past Nemo?"

Nemo frowned. "No one got past me. But I was pretty close to the house in the big cedar tree."

"He didn't necessarily need to be by the house," Midas explained. "Depending on how he's monitoring, a telescope and a clear sightline is all he would have needed. He could have been in a lot of different places. All he needed to know was that her line was clear. We swept for bugs and cameras. Found nothing."

"Well, if his comments are anything to go by, he clearly knows about TB and that he's connected to Flame," Waters observed.

"Play it again, Midas," God barked.

They listened to the recording again.

"He said, ‘You were promised to me.' Odd turn of phrase," Steel commented.

Waters nodded. "Like it's connected to something before. Do you know what he's talking about, Flame?"

TB watched her closely. Her eyes were watching her hands twist in her lap.

"No. I've no idea."

Truth.

"Do you recognize anything about the voice? I know it's going through a synthesizer, but anything about the language used or the cadence of the speech pattern?" Midas asked. He played the recording again. "Anything?"

Flame shook her head, eyes still not leaving her lap.

"Flame." TB used his Dom voice. "Look at me."

She looked up into his eyes.

"Do you recognize that voice?"

Her gaze was solid on his, but her breathing was elevated. "That voice doesn't sound like anyone I know in L.A."

Okay, that's the truth, but something's not right.

The men in the room looked around at each other.

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

Answered too fast, and her eyes are still locked. She's working to hold my gaze.

"And you have no idea why he would think you were promised to him?" Waters asked.

She looked at Waters. "I didn't promise to date or ‘be' with anyone."

Truth.

"What about before L.A.?"

Her body stiffened, and her face paled further. "What do you mean?"

She's stalling.

"Did you make any promises to anyone before you came to L.A.?" Waters asked.

"What makes you think I haven't lived in L.A. all my life? And even if I had, I've never dated anyone, promised to date anyone, been engaged, or anything similar."

Never dated anyone? She said she wasn't a virgin.

Waters just stared at her. His gaze was like a hawk on a telephone wire, watching its prey in the grass for a while before it struck.

"I know you didn't. There's no record of a Sylvan Jones in L.A. prior to 2017. No driver's license, no tax return, no school records, no medical records."

Waters continued to stare at her for a few more moments, then leaned forward on the table's edge, forearms supporting him on the conference room table. "Flame, we can't help you if you won't tell us the truth."

"I have told you the truth. I haven't made any promises to anyone."

"Who's Jolie?"

The question over the speaker was a bomb in the room. God went right for the jugular.

"J-Jolie?" Sylvan stuttered.

"Ms. Jones," God continued. "Who. Is. Jolie?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying, little Flame," TB murmured next to her.

"Maybe it was a wrong number."

"Another lie, princess. Remember what I told you about honesty?"

She whirled on him, her emerald eyes flaming with rage. "This is not a BDSM scene, TB. Don't start trying to rack up punishments that neither of us has any intention of following through on."

The room was so quiet all he could hear was the hum of the digital clock on the wall.

They stared at each other. She didn't back down, and he certainly wouldn't.

Without looking away from her, TB spoke out, "Midas, put the photos of the girls on the screen."

TB hated this, but rattling her was the best possible option right now.

The five girls who had disappeared over the past seven months blinked into existence on the telescreen behind Waters. She looked at them blankly.

He leaned back in his chair, leaning on his hand, his index finger and thumb forming the arch to keep him in place.

"Do you know who any of them are?"

She shook her head and turned to TB in confusion. "No. Should I?"

Definitely not a lie. A little curiosity but no recognition.

"These five girls have all gone missing over the past seven months."

"That's terrible," she exclaimed. "Are you looking for them?"

"Yes, we are," Waters said. "But we've run out of leads."

"I don't understand. Why would you ask me about them?"

"Look at them again, Flame," TB ordered.

She studied them.

"What do you notice?"

She looked at TB, more confused. "I don't understand."

"Look at them. Really look at them. What do you notice?"

Exasperated, she turned her head back to the screen and looked over the women. He watched her eyes, her mouth, her facial muscles. He watched her hands and her posture.

Her eyes went from jumping from woman to woman to moving more smoothly from one to the next. Her fingertips gripped the edge of the table, and she leaned slightly forward in her seat. She inhaled slowly.

There it is.

No one in the room said a word as they watched her.

"They all look similar."

Waters spoke up. "Describe them to me, Flame. If you had to give someone a description of them as if they were one person, what would you say?"

"I'd say they were all young women, in their early twenties, I'm guessing. They have pale skin. They look… rounder? I don't know what word I'd use. They're not skinny, that's for sure, but not overweight. They all have red hair, sort of auburn, like…" She trailed off. She swallowed, then looked at TB. "The color of mine. And long."

"Yes, princess," he confirmed. "They all look similar to you."

"But I don't understand. I don't know them. I mean, it's a little creepy looking at them, but what do they have to do with me? You don't think I had something to do with them being missing?"

"No, Flame," Waters assured her. "But it does concern us that they look similar to you, given the circumstances."

"I don't mean to sound insensitive, but there are lots of missing women in the world, including L.A. Millions of them are probably redheaded and built a little curvy. Why do they connect to me?"

TB continued to watch her.

Waters explained, "The fifth one, Tilly Moll, disappeared on March twenty-ninth from the parking lot of The Library. The other four, the last place any of them were seen, was at that same club. We can't say for one hundred percent certainty that they disappeared from there, but we're pretty sure."

"But still?—"

"The first one disappeared seven months ago," TB interrupted. "Just after you and I made contact. Just after the audio discussion with your readers about your intent to write a BDSM romance with the help of a consultant." TB grabbed one of her hands and gave it a squeeze of reassurance. "The night that you met me at The Library, your stalker saw us. He was there."

Waters handed the private photo to TB, who slid it in front of her with his free hand. "But then I was gone for work. We were out looking for Ka-Bar outside the country. So he must have thought I was out of the picture. He waited. Then something upset him, and he made contact at the house. And then I moved into the house, and he took another step forward and called you."

Her eyes filled up with tears, and she looked back at the photos on the screen. "They're missing because of me."

"Not because of you, Flame," Waters redirected. "He hasn't been able to get to you because you stay inside. There's been no suitable opportunity. So, he's been taking these other girls from the club because they remind him of you. But now his plans are being upset because TB is back in the picture."

One hand went over her mouth, one arm around her stomach. "I feel sick," she murmured.

TB swept her up in his arms and took her out of the conference room and to the ladies' room down the hall. No sooner had he set her down on her feet, she ducked into the stall and vomited everything she had eaten and drank that morning.

He grabbed several paper towels from the dispenser and wet them down with cold water. One he folded into a small, neat rectangle. He stepped around the wall and into the stall, bent over, and swept Flame's hair off to the side to place the rectangle towel on the back of her neck. Making sure to keep her hair out of the toilet and vomit, he began to dab the other paper towel along her sweating brow.

"It's all right, sweetheart. Get it all out."

He handed her a third wet towel to wipe her mouth, then rubbed her back in small circles to comfort her.

After a short while, he heard her make a noise that sounded like a laugh but not a happy one. Then she spoke.

"You're going to ruin your reputation with them."

His hand still rubbing her back, he asked, "Why's that?"

"Total bastards don't comfort women who are vomiting."

"I just don't want Cherry kicking my ass for not doing it," he lied.

She sighed, sitting up on her heels, and looked up at him. "Not exactly how I thought I'd end up on my knees in front of you."

He blinked at her. He thought his mouth might be making fish faces because he could feel it moving, but nothing was coming out.

Did she seriously crack a sex joke? Now?

"Ex-cu-cuse me?" he finally stuttered.

"Well, I mean, you've gotta admit, it's sort of funny." She grinned weakly, a hand moving, gesturing between them. "You're a Dom. I"m a sub. Women's bathroom, I"m on my knees in front of you."

He swallowed. "Nothing funny about it."

She shrugged and started to get up off the floor. Without thinking, he reached underneath her arms and lifted her up to stand. As soon as she was on her feet, he let go and took a step back from her. Then another.

"I'll, umm…" He darted a look around the bathroom. "I'll let you freshen up."

And then he tucked tail, and if he could have run, he would have. As it was, he nearly steamrolled Cherry over as she came through the door with a toothbrush and toothpaste brought from her apartment upstairs.