Page 31 of Stand: Part One

“We’re assuming Jaden had the chance to even consider it. Kayla may have had no choice but to leave her behind,” I reasoned. “Either way, Jaden still lied to me.” Her body had already confirmed it.

“Maybe she knows where she was headed then.”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. Jaden would have told her to keep it to herself, so even if I did find out, she wouldn’t be able to give her up, even if she wanted to.”

Scott nodded. “So where would she go to hide?”

“She’s just untrained, not dumb, so she would know to stay away from anyone she knew who could recognize her.”

I started pacing again, my arms folding over my chest as I went over the unlikely possibilities of her escape. Maybe I wasn’t giving Kayla enough credit. She had managed to make it this far for this long without being detected. But I was not convinced she had done it all alone.

“She had to have had help somewhere along the line. She doesn’t have the skills to remain hidden for this long,” I mused.

Was there anyone Kayla could rely on? A single ally in the world she could hide behind and trust to keep her safe?

And then it hit me like a punch to the gut. There was only one person I could think of that she might have sought out, the one person she would know who has managed to remain undetected throughout all my efforts. No doubt Jaden would have told her about the son of a bitch at some point.

“She found Jaden’s ex.”

Scott’s eyes lit up with recognition. It was the only thing that made sense.

“Well, fuck,” he growled.

“We need to double our efforts. If Kayla did find that fuck, then she had to have left a trail somewhere. Plus, she may still prove useful in getting Matt to back the fuck down.”

I’d gladly hand her right back over to Matt if it meant I could get him off Daniel’s ass and save myself the aggravation. But if he somehow managed to kill Daniel, then I’d kill her and send him the recording.

Scott nodded in agreement. “I’ll dispatch another team specifically for her. She had to have made some mistakes along the way. If we find her, we find him.”

I released a heavy sigh as a new plan was formulated. But even that wasn’t enough to quell the fresh rage still blazing through my blood.

If I saw Jaden now, I might just accidentally kill her. The only proof I had of her involvement was circumstantial at best, but her body would always tell me the truth no matter how much she tried to mask it.

I would need to be tactful in this, patient, let her believe nothing was wrong until the time was right to confront her about her deception.

Suddenly, my need to ensure Jaden’s swift recovery was overshadowed by a need to punish her for trying to undermine me.

For fucking lying right to my face.

If she thought she was getting out of that bed anytime soon, she had another thing coming. I was going to drag it out until it drove her so crazy she’d be begging me to let her walk again.

And I did so love it when she begged.

It was time to give her a little taste of the past and remind her of her fucking place.

11

Baby Steps

The past two weeks threw me for a loop. After forcing me to crawl like the asshole he was, Darren had disappeared for three days.

No one would tell me where he was, and I didn’t care to keep pressing it. When he did return, he seemed different, broody, reserved, and incredibly stern.

For some reason, he took it upon himself to be my primary caretaker, which was odd, seeing as he never had this much time for me before.

He was annoyingly attentive, dutiful in every way, reliable to a fault, and suspiciously eager to help whenever and wherever he could. In fact, he rarely let me do a single thing without his assistance, and it was driving me nuts. I was temporarily disabled from the waist down, not a quadriplegic.

He was also oddly strict when Sid suggested I start doing light exercises in bed, only allowing me to do them once a day so I wouldn’t strain myself, which was absolute nonsense. I had rested enough and was dying for some movement.