Page 161 of Captive Audience

No way for anyone to find me.

Not even her.

A small generator powered the one piece of technology in the cottage: a laptop connected to satellite internet. My only tether.

And I used it relentlessly.

Every night, when the wind shrieked through the gaps and the fire guttered, I sat hunched over that screen and watched Asha.

She’d tried to find me. She’d spent countless hours on her laptop, searching for clues until her hands cramped and her eyes burned with exhaustion. But I’d covered my tracks well. She was never going to succeed.

Once she’d run out of leads, she’d settled into a new norm. And it wasn’t good.

She wasn’t acting like she’d been through a breakup. She was acting like a widow. I recognized the stages of grief because I’d lived them too many times myself.

She’d moved through denial, anger, and bargaining. But now, she was stuck in depression.

She’d stopped looking after herself. Half the time, she couldn’t even drag herself out of bed. When she did, she trudged through her days like a ghost, eyes hollow, fire gone.

And Christ, it was killing me.

I missed her with a fierceness that gnawed at me.

Her warm touch. Her scent on my clothes and in my bed. The sound of her laugh. The way she saw my darkness and still found me worthy. I even missed her stubbornness. I’d kill to have her jabbing her finger at my chest and telling me I was wrong.

Every bone in my body ached for her.

I told myself she’d crack soon, that she’d give up on me and move on. That was the only way this could end.

I needed her to let me go.

Because watching her fall apart was killing me more painfully than any bullet ever could.

65

ASHA

If failing to locate the Soul Collector had wounded my confidence, being unable to find the man I loved was a fatal hit.

The more I tried to chase Rook’s trail, the more I realized he’d cut it clean. His email account, gone. His bank accounts, scrubbed. No new charges, no flights I could pin him to. I tore through immigration databases, ferry logs, and property records. Nothing.

Rook O’Connell knew how to disappear, and he’d done it with brutal efficiency.

I’d be impressed if he weren’t hiding from me.

The jerk.

Even though he’d vanished without a trace, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still watching. I’d catch myself glancing at the smoke detector in the ceiling of my living room, the one I knew had a hidden camera behind its plastic shell. Months ago, I’d seen the feed on his wall of screens.

Sometimes, I talked to it. Sometimes, I cried.

Sometimes, I masturbated on the sofa, my eyes trained on the smoke detector so Rook knew I was thinking of him.

Lately, I’d been flipping it the bird while cussing out my ex-husband.

Maybe Rook wasn’t watching me at all. Maybe I’d turned into a crazy person who held daily conversations with a smoke detector.

Most days, it felt like I was losing my mind.