Page 104 of Pay the Price

We found Jace sitting in the kitchen, studying the burner phone they’d bought to use as a clone for Calvin’s. It wouldn’t have been smart to keep Calvin’s actual phone — too easy to trace if someone went looking for him — but it also didn’t make sense not to use it. Aloha had accessed Calvin’s texts and emails a few weeks back, but it wasn’t like he could monitor Calvin’s phone 24/7 when he was doing it as a favor to Jace.

“Thanks for making coffee,” I said, heading for the coffee pot. He didn’t say anything, and I poured coffee for Wolf and Otis, refilled Jace’s cup, then sat down to join them at the kitchen table. “Anything good?”

“Nothing I can decipher.” Jace looked up. “Want to look?”

I’d thought I’d be self-conscious if I ever had the chance to sleep with all three of the Beasts at once, but I wasn’t the same person I’d been when I first started lusting after them. What had happened between us last night felt natural. I didn’t regret it a bit.

In fact, fresh off two orgasms at the hands of Wolf and Otis, I was ready for more, hopefully with Jace as part of the group.

“Can you summarize?” I asked, still coming out of my post-sex haze.

“Just a bunch of random texts,” Jace said. “Some of them are with your dad’s security team. There are a few with women and then a couple since last night from Mr. X asking where Calvin is.”

My stomach twisted. Mr. X.

My dad.

He was looking for Calvin, which made sense because Calvin was always up my dad’s ass. His absence would be noted, even after just a few hours.

“Nothing more specific than that from my dad?” I asked.

Jace shook his head. “One text last night around 9 p.m. asking where he was, another this morning telling him to call.”

“Maybe we should do it,” Otis said.

I looked at him. “Call?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Because when he realizes we’re not Calvin — even if we don’t say anything — he’s going to be on alert,” Wolf said.

Jace looked at me. “How long before your dad tells one of his cronies at the Blackwell PD that Calvin’s MIA?”

“I don’t know. Maybe… a couple days? That’s never happened before — that I know of — and I’m guessing my dad will just think Calvin’s taking care of personal stuff or something. He’s been an employee for almost twenty years.”

“Fuck,” Jace said, pushing the phone away. It slid toward the center of the table. “So after everything we’ve done, we’ve got Calvin working with your dad to kidnap and traffic girls, maybe some kind of connection to the Velvet Rope, and no proof about any of it.”

“How far back do you think this goes?” I asked, turning the coffee cup in my hands. I was desperate for caffeine, but my stomach was on thin ice thanks to the topic of conversation.

“I don’t think we have any way of knowing that,” Wolf said.

“We could dig into missing persons in and around Blackwell Falls,” Otis said. “See if there seems to be a starting point.”

Jace was studying me. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” I said, removing my hand from the coffee cup to rub an invisible stain off the old wood table. “I guess I’m wondering if my mom knew. If maybe that’s why she needed space and would stay at the compound.”

I didn’t want to think about that, because if my mom had known, that meant she’d stayed with my dad anyway, and if my dad was a human trafficker and my mom had stood by and done nothing, what did that make her?

“That’s a big leap, princess.” I was surprised by the tenderness in Jace’s voice. “No offense, but your dad’s a fucking dick. Any sane person would need some space from him.”

I laughed in spite of the loaded topic. “True.”

“It’s just weird, right? That my mom and Mac were close?”

Jace nodded. “Really fucking weird, especially since Mac clammed up about it.”

Jace had told us about his conversation with Mac, how Mac got all cagey and guarded when Jace brought up my mom.

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