Page 113 of Pressure

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Marissa felt sick as she listened to Austin explain that Solitaire was closed until further notice. She reclined in the comfortable seat on their private jet, willed herself not to puke.

“How’s Lance?” she whispered.

“Not taking it well. Working around the clock to figure this out.”

Marissa sat up and reached for her bag. “I should be doing the same.”

Austin placed a hand on her arm. “Patrick may have disabled Wi-Fi access. You can’t do anything up here. Just rest.”

Marissa scowled. Why were Doms so damn pushy?

“You sure you don’t want to go lay in the bedroom?”

Marissa shook her head. “I’m fine. I just want to get home.”

She fingered her short pixie cut and tears pricked at her eyes. It had been the only cut that made sense. Austin insisted she was adorable, but that just made her stomach lurch. She didn’t do cute and adorable. Besides, Lance liked her long tresses and now they were gone. Would he ever look at her the same?

She pressed the backs of her hands to her eyes and willed the tears to go away but a few escaped.

“Oh sweetie. It’s going to be OK. Go lay down.”

With a sigh, she pushed out of the seat and made her way down the aisle toward the bedroom. Maybe laying down was the smarter idea.

When they touched down in Chicago, Patrick insisted they ride in the back of a car with her to her apartment. She was embarrassed for them to see where she lived, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Lance will have my balls if I don’t get you home safe.”

Marissa grimaced. “First, Lance doesn’t own me. Second, Lance doesn’t want me living where I do to begin with.”

Austin patted her arm. “I lived in some shit holes when I was in college. You’ll get yourself a better place soon. Doesn’t stop our men from worrying.”

Marissa hadn’t been in college for almost a decade and she still lived in a shit hole. But she had the means to change that. She promised herself to go apartment hunting after a good night’s sleep.

But sleep evaded her, and she ended up nestled in a pile of pillows with a laptop. Who the fuck was Jodie and who had she been talking to that night?

On a whim, she logged in to the Solitaire database and began looking through the names of all the guests who had checked in Friday night.

As she went, she eliminated all women, all the men she’d spotted on her way out the door, and on a whim, all males she knew to identify as submissive. There were still a lot of names to weed through by the time she finished her first round of eliminations.

Next, she pulled up the past six months of check-in records and found that Jodie had been coming to Solitaire for a while. Why was she new to the house sub program then? That didn’t make any sense. She made a note to ask someone on the board.

She checked for matching names around the time Jodie began the house submissive program. There was a reason she was targeting Lance.

Patrick said the guy was too tall to be Forcythe and up until recently, he’d been in prison.

Whoever this was wouldn’t risk coming to the club often and they needed to have some kind of connection to Nicholas Sutton. Patrick and Holly were the only ones who came to mind and she knew it was neither of them.

She continued marking off names until she got to the Gs.

Art Glenstring. Where had she seen that name before?

She zipped through the records again and highlighted all instances of his name.

He’d checked into Solitaire exactly twice in the last six months. Once the night Jodie first attended the club and again last night.

Humming, she pulled up records for all of Solitaire’s history and found one more entry for Art. Who the fuck named their kid Art? He’d attended the grand opening party for Solitaire nearly two years ago.

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