Page 9 of Collin, Episodes 13-15 (The Residency Boys #5)

“I won’t join the entire tour, but we can drop in on them for lunch or dinner one of the days.”

“Us, sir?”

“You and I, Collin. We’re both working on the project. And showing up in person tells them just how seriously we take it. Consider this a test run. If it goes well, we’ll arrange these imagination tours for each local station.”

Calm. Calm. Calm. Collin couldn’t help the wide grin that broke over his face. “Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Reevesworth waved away Collin’s gratitude, but a pleased smile lingered on his face.

Eleanor took her leave, hinting that she had a date, and Collin set out lunch for Mr. Reevesworth, himself, and Ash, who slipped in a moment later. Over the meal, Ash made his weekly general report.

Mr. Reevesworth scrolled through Ash’s document. “Your writing is getting much better, and I like the new sections and subsections. It makes it easier to read.”

Ash bit his cheek and nodded, eyes darting everywhere but Mr. Reevesworth’s face. “Bruiski said to do it.”

“Well, you did good. Paulsen put in an application to assign you training. What do you think about that?”

“I want to stay here.”

“You can. It’s training. Even though it’s with him, it just allows you to become certified. Did you two talk about this?”

Ash waggled his hand side to side. “He asked if I wanted to learn more; I said yes?” His voice went up in a question as if he wasn’t sure that counted as talking about it.

“I’ll approve it as long as you can keep up with your duties here and after your current extra work calms down.”

“Awesome.” Ash hunched over his take-out bowl and stuffed food in his mouth.

Collin cleared his throat and straightened his back.

Ash thumped his fist in frustration against his forehead and sat up. He chewed and swallowed. “Thank you, sir. I can keep up.”

When Collin got home in the early evening, he curled up with Artemis in his lap on the couch. Mr. Reevesworth and Mr. Moreau were at a function. The house felt empty without Damian. Collin texted him: How’s it going?

It took a while. Collin played on his phone with his language app. Damian was probably still working, considering the time-zone difference of two hours. Eventually, Damian texted back. Road blocks. Some progress. One more meeting to go.

Lonely, Collin texted Alice. She replied with voice-to-text. Hey! Something came up. I’m driving right now.

He wrote back: You okay?

Two minutes later she answered. LOL. Fine! Just helping a friend.

He ate leftovers and fell asleep cuddling Artemis while waiting for his doms to come home. A phone call woke him up.

It was Ash. “How do I buy someone a hotel room?”

“Um…” Collin blinked back sleep and eyed the clock. He’d only been out for twenty minutes. “Credit or debit card and you call them. Or you can do it online.”

“They keep asking me if I’m over eighteen.”

“You or the guest?”

Ash muttered to himself, like he was sorting through webpages. “The guest, I think.”

“Then answer for the guest. Do you have a friend coming?”

“Yes. No. I mean, it’s for a friend. They aren’t coming here. Thank you! Bye.” He hung up.

Collin stared at his phone screen for a good two seconds and then flopped back onto the couch. Sometimes the people in his life were weird.

Wednesday morning, émeric woke Collin with nibbles to the back of his neck and a hand on his ass.

They snuggled, kissing sleepily, until Richard woke and joined them.

Then Collin slipped out of bed to go see Nihal.

If Richard and émeric wanted to go late to their workout, that was their call, but he had an appointment to get abs.

Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself as he pushed through Nihal’s routine.

How could the man be so cheerful so early in the morning?

Nihal had to be one of the most positive people in the entire state, but it was a lot to handle when his thighs were burning and he was still yawning.

Get abs. Get abs. He repeated the phrase like a mantra in his head.

He wanted abs so he could do more fun things, like rope work with émeric and predicament bondage with Richard, and maybe even be able to go for a run with Damian and Matthew one day if they promised to go slow. Matthew had legs for days.

Ash was not just distracted during Mandarin class again but downright stressed and constantly checking his phone when Zhou Laoshi wasn’t looking.

Collin had a headache by the time they were finished.

He followed Ash to his tech dungeon, but for once, Ash said he had to work and didn’t even want help putting the new buttons on the door.

Perplexed, Collin moved on to his own office with Eliza, Veronica, and Katharine.

Katharine waved and smiled as he came in, and Veronica chuckled and nodded at Collin’s desk. There was a large coffee cup smelling of mint chocolate by his monitor. The note on the side said, “Hello from CA.”

Collin grinned and texted Damian a picture and a gif saying “thank you.”

About an hour in, the mint mocha hit his bladder with force.

He stepped out to see his Master. Mr. Reevesworth was out, but he texted Collin permission to go ahead and use his own key.

Part of their new contract had been that during workdays and when apart Collin would carry a key and use it with permission and notify one or both of his doms. No one wanted a repeat of a certain previous incident.

On the way back to his desk, his phone rang. It was Alice on a group call. He answered in the hall.

“Hey.”

“Mikhail is here.”

Ice shot through his veins. “At your school?”

“No. Go see Ash. He has video.

“Door’s open.” Ash’s voice came through Collin’s phone too.

What? Collin beelined it to Ash’s techno dungeon. “ Where are you?”

“Near that place Dad used to take us, not the camping but the city where we’d get ice cream before heading up into the mountains for camping.”

“I remember.” Collin was nearly to Ash’s tech dungeon.

“Ash told me he was having trouble finding Dana. I said I’d walk around the neighborhood with a camera in my sunhat and let him look, see if it helped. But…I found something.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ash muttered.

Collin reached Ash’s door. Ash had it open, as promised.

The hacker had a line between his eyebrows and a headset tangled in his red hair.

One of his hands was in his hair pulling on it, and he was bouncing from foot to foot, not even sitting on his stool.

On his secondary main screen was a blown-up still of a video frame: a small, white, wood-paneled house, the kind that you could find in thousands of Californian neighborhoods.

It had a tiny front yard, more of a garden bed with a mailbox under the front window.

Scratched in the paint behind the mailbox was Mikhail’s signature—a sunflower on a stem with two wilted leaves, like downward-pointing akimbo arms.

A live feed of the same house was on the main monitor. It looked like something you would see from a headset camera. There were fuzzy things around the edges as if the camera was hidden inside something. Maybe flowers.

“This is you. You’re streaming this?” Collin said to Alice.

“Yes.” Alice’s voice was tight. “Why the fuck would he be back here? I thought he was gone for good.”

“Problem for another day. Just get out. Now.” Collin’s voice tightened down to almost nothing. His hand curled around the phone at his ear. He darted a look to Ash. “Where is she, exactly?”

Ash pointed to another monitor with a map application open and a moving dot.

On Alice’s end of the phone, a child screamed.

“Shit.” Alice’s feet pounded on the ground, and the headset feed bobbed up and down on Ash’s screen.

Collin’s eyes darted over Ash’s desk. “Got another line? Call 9-1-1.”

Ash’s eyes were big. He scrambled through his desk, grabbing a smartphone but not the one he usually used.

In the live feed, Alice ran around the corner of a privacy fence to a gravel parking lot right beside the house. There was only a narrow gate in and out. Trees and a wall hid most of it.

“Help, please! Mama!” That was definitely a child in complete terror.

Alice raced around the wall. In a gravel parking lot between two houses, partially closed off with trees, was Barker, dragging Dana Reevesworth out of the side door of the house by her arm. A woman raced out after them, screaming.

She lifted her arms, both hands wrapped around a gun. “Let her go. She’s my daughter!”

Barker turned back, struggling with Dana. “That wasn’t the deal, you stupid…”

The woman fired. The shot went wide. The woman screamed at the girl to move.

Dana tried.

Barker snapped off a shot.

The woman swayed, and her hands went slack. The gun crashed to the gravel.

“Mama!” the girl screamed.

Ash pressed his phone to his ear. It was ringing.

Barker swung his gun toward Alice. On the live feed, it felt like he was pointing straight at Collin and Ash. “Stop right there.”

Alice’s hands appeared on either side of the video feed as if she had raised them. “Just let me check to see if she’s alive. Please.”

“She better hope she’s dead. Get in the car.”

Alice moved sideways, both toward the woman and toward Barker. “I saw that she was threatening you. I get it. Self-defense. But the little girl is scared, and that gun could go off. Just let me help.”

Barker’s chest heaved as he sucked in air. “Yeah, well, I’m down a nursemaid and you’ll do. Saves me from leaving two bodies here. I’m sure as fuck not leaving a witness.”

Dana Reevesworth slipped out of Barker’s grip and ran toward the woman on the ground. “Mama!”

Barker swore. He pointed the gun at Alice. “Grab the girl and get in the car now.”

“Fine. Fine.” Alice moved toward Dana.

No. Collin’s body filled with ice. Don’t get into the car, Alice. Don’t get into the car. But what choice did she have?