Page 6 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

Then again, he also used to say, sometimes the only way to know if it’s a trap is to step right into it—and hope you see a way out in time.

Langer Enterprises Technical Consultant

Okay. Send me everything

A pause. Then:

Unknown Number

I will but I have to go

I needed a plan. I also needed an insurance policy.

It came to me the next day.

“By the way,” said Langer, over a catered sushi lunch from a place he’d described as “the best,” and which I didn’t like nearly as much as tacos, though I liked it much better than I’d expected from the description.

“I found out this morning that Corey invited two guys from the Orbital Dynamics marketing team to fly in from San Francisco. They were supposed to meet, have dinner, and tour the office and the labs, but apparently, no one got around to telling them he was, uh, indisposed. They can still do the tour, I guess, but I’m busy and won’t be around, so they aren’t going to be happy. But frankly, that’s not my problem.”

“Wait, Corey invited them?” I asked, pausing with a roll awkwardly impaled on the end of a chopstick, only to have the roll fall apart before it got to my mouth. Fuck this. I gave up and tossed the plate on the table. “To tour the labs? The White Cedar labs?”

These codes should help you next time. Feel free to bring some friends.

“Yeah, but you don’t have to do anything,” Langer replied. “I’m just giving you a heads-up to make yourself scarce, too. The assistants will get the dubious honor of trying to explain what happened to Corey, which I figured was better done in person. They’ll hate me for it, but what can you do?”

My brain was going about as fast as I had driven the Porsche down Interstate 10 the other day, despite having nowhere to go. I didn’t have a full strategy yet, but I could see the opening moves. Pawn to e4, set the trap, force a reaction.

“Has Corey ever met with them before? The marketing team?” I asked, hoping the question didn’t sound as urgent as I was afraid it did.

“Not as far as I know. Both of the guys are kind of new, from what I understand.” He flicked a glance over at me curiously. Not suspiciously. Not yet. “Why?”

Damn. “Just trying to figure out how many different areas of the business he managed to fuck up before you got rid of him,” I answered quickly. “Well, we got rid of him.”

Max laughed and clapped me on the arm. I laughed, too, for a second. And not only about Corey’s severe brain trauma.

And that’s when I realized that Max thought I had stopped snooping. He thought I had made peace with Resi. He thought I was on his side.

He thought I—his reluctant, stubborn, rude, insolent protégé—had made him proud .

And even though I’d rather die than admit it, there was the tiniest part of me, now, that wanted to have made him proud.

Stunned and horrified by this realization, I stuffed one last piece of spicy eel roll in my mouth and slipped down the corridor and back to my office. Closed the door and rested my head against the thick, cool glass for a second, closed my eyes, and just breathed.

A good player controls the board. A great player controls his opponent.

Well, shit.

HER

The sunset outside 211 Cholla was a witchy purple streak behind the massive cottonwood trees that lined the avenue.

I crouched, only breathing, outside the basement stairs behind a sprawling mid-century rambler in one of the city’s oldest, most expensive neighborhoods, wearing my favorite jeans and black hoodie, but my mind hadn’t moved on with me.

It was still dwelling in the adobe house near the university a week earlier.

But I didn’t pause before punching in each number Maeve had given me.

Because if I paused for even a second to think about how girls like me didn’t do things like this, then I would no longer be a girl who could do something like this.

And right now, that was the only thing in the world I wanted to be.

The box beeped, bright blue light flashing rapidly, and like an idiot, I jumped back about three inches, my heart racing. Stupid, scared baby.

Girls like me didn’t do things like this for a reason .

But I didn’t run.

Instead, I closed my eyes and thought of Irish poetry.

One second, two seconds, three seconds passed. I waited for something to happen. Nothing did. So I pushed open the door.

I was in. So why was I still standing here paralyzed?

Maybe because, when the door swung open and I started creeping down the dim corridor, I realized this didn’t look anything like how Maeve had described it.

Especially not the second door on the left, which was supposed to be my escape route.

I’d volunteered to buy them twenty minutes.

Them , meaning Maeve and the girls. We’d all been horrified at the idea of letting Maeve go back, but with Erica and Milagros and their network shut down, there was no one else to do it.

And Maeve, despite only being familiar with one area of the house, had assured us, thanks to her friend Lemaya, that twenty minutes was all she would need to slip the trapped girls out through a different door while I created a distraction for the security guards and escaped via this door.

We’d diagrammed it all out. We’d planned it.

But instead, standing there like some demented host waving me inside with a flourish, was the pockmarked, toothless face of the old gardener, grinning as if the moment he’d waited ten years for had finally arrived.

And this was not part of the plan.

“Oh, don’t look so worried.” He chortled. “You’re right where you belong.”

Obadiah.

That was the name embossed on the shiny, elegant name badge pinned to the front of his crisp, brand-new security guard’s uniform. Not that it mattered. I knew who and what he was, and a new name didn’t change that.

And I couldn’t say I was pleased to (re)make his acquaintance.

He’d been standing right there behind the door when I opened it, no warning, no time to react.

Just the instant, stomach-dropping knowledge that I’d walked straight into a trap.

Especially when he grabbed my wrist with all the glee of a pervert’s wet dream and cackled with that gaping idiot’s rictus that had always made me queasy.

If Langer or whoever had freed this bastard and bought him that fancy uniform, wouldn’t you think they could have at least paid for him to get his fucking teeth fixed, too?

The house itself was enormous, far bigger than it had appeared from outside. At least three stories, with wide hallways, tall ceilings, and an eerie, expensive, tomblike quiet that managed to feel both empty and claustrophobic. A musty mothball aroma like half a century of decrepitude.

Ten minutes. It had to have been ten minutes by now at least, I thought.

Enough time for me to still accomplish my mission if I didn’t freak out or die first. After all, I had come here to create a distraction—and running, screaming, or fighting back might save me, but it wouldn’t necessarily help Maeve or the girls.

After all, I didn’t even know where I was going. There was nowhere to go.

I could do this.

In all the years this guy had terrorized me, he’d never actually touched me—he’d valued his life, even though it was shit.

But now, I had to face the disgusting fact that his greasy paws were all over me as he dragged me stumbling behind him, one hand locked around my wrist, leading me down a long hallway lined with sleek gray molding, walls bare except for one huge, baroque mirror that made the space feel endless.

We passed two closed doors before he turned and shoved me through the third: a room decorated with Greek columns, carved like bleached bone.

About the size of a master bedroom but colder.

The floors were polished stone overlaid with plush carpet.

A light odor of incense and eucalyptus wafted through it, a potpourri to mask fear.

A bed in the middle, like a white leviathan.

The whole thing was clean, sterile, eerie, like a temple intended for human sacrifice.

Guess what I was about to be?

He unzipped a black bag on the dresser and pulled out a sheer chemise trimmed with lace and red satin ribbon. New. Expensive. “You’ve been requested to wear this.”

“By who?” A stupid question. I knew he would just laugh. I was right.

“People know where I am, you know,” I said. “Not to mention that when Daddy finds out about this, he’s gonna cut your dick off.”

He laughed again. “Is that so? Remember, you’re not the princess here, princess. And Daddy isn’t the king.”

Choking in the stuffy, airless room, I slowly, clumsily pulled the soft fabric of the hoodie I’d had since I was twelve over my head, a security blanket being ripped away.

I let it slip off my shoulders and glide down my body to slump helplessly at my feet.

There had to be some way to do this with dignity, but I couldn’t kid myself.

I was about to be forced to undress in front of the most disgusting pervert I knew, and nobody was going to burst in and stop it.

My fingers trembled against the fabric of my T-shirt.

I slowly slid it off my shoulders and stepped out of my shoes, my jeans and panties now the only barrier between me and pure exposure.

I didn’t meet Obadiah’s jaundiced eyes as they followed my every move, reveling in his own refusal to hide his lust. He stood at an angle by the dresser, close enough to block the door, not touching me, just watching.

Smiling. My pale, vulnerable body screamed for me to protect it, to not let this happen.

As if it sensed something that, if violated, could never be put right.

And that was only being forced to undress. Not whatever might happen after.

Don’t think. Don’t panic. They’d realize something was wrong. They’d come for me. Someone would come for me. If not Maeve, then Erica. Or Milagros. Yes, they had their futures to think about, but this was my life .