Page 21 of The Lasso Master

Harper was gone.

The soft creak of silence woke Reed fully; the sound was too hollow in a room that should have been filled with the soft rhythm of her breathing. The scent of her lingered in the sheets—faintly floral and deeply female, like heat and memory pressed into cotton. But her body was nowhere to be found. Just that last breath of her, fading by the second.

She was gone.

Not out for coffee. Not pacing the hallway. Gone in the way that left ghosts in her place—like a whisper that vanished before he could catch it, like the echo of her last breath curling into the sheets. The kind of absence that didn’t leave footprints but still hollowed out the room with its weight. Her silence rang louder than any scream.

The ache in his muscles from the night before hadn’t faded. The ache pulsed in his thighs and shoulders, and in the place where she had curled against him. The memory of her voice—husky with need and whispering his name—still rang in his ears. The way her fingers had gripped his hair, the way her body had opened for him, enveloped him, clung to him as if she wasn’t afraid to fall. She hadn’t just surrendered last night. She’d shattered in his arms and trusted him to hold the pieces. She’d given him something raw, something unguarded, something she didn’t give lightly. And now she was gone, leaving behind the echo of everything they'd shared like a wound still bleeding beneath the skin.

He rose fast; the sheets falling from his body as he scanned the room. His bare feet hit the cold floor with a muted thud as he crossed to the closet, yanking on a pair of pants with sharp, practiced movements. His eyes cut across every corner like a blade—every piece of furniture, every shadow checked with military precision.

The hallway was still. Too still.

No overturned furniture. No signs of a struggle. No smudged footprints, no scrawled note on the bathroom mirror. Just silence. The kind that felt like it had teeth.

His phone was on the nightstand, casting a faint blue glow in the dim room. No messages. No calls. The soft hum of silence pressed in around him, too loud, too empty, the kind that made the back of his neck itch with the weight of something missing.

He moved through the house with sharp, deliberate steps, checking every door, every room. It wasn’t just that she was gone—it was that she had disappeared like a ghost, the same way she’d probably entered a hundred places she wasn’t supposed to be. Silent. Smooth. Clean.

"Dammit, little thief," he muttered, jaw clenched.

By the time he hit his office, he’d cycled through anger, confusion, and the beginnings of a darker suspicion. Had she used him? Manipulated him with her tears, her heat, that smart mouth and submissive gaze?

Had the whole thing been a setup?

He grabbed his phone and hit Gavin’s number. It rang once.

"She gone?" Gavin asked without preamble.

"Yeah," Reed said, his voice like gravel. "Vanished. Left me in my own damn bed, high and dry."

Gavin exhaled. "She leave a trace?"

"Not yet. And that’s what worries me."

"You think she ran?"

Reed's jaw worked. "I don’t know what the hell to think. Part of me—the one that's been burned before—says yeah. Says she played me."

"And the rest of you?"

Reed glanced around the room, his gaze sharp and unsettled. "The rest of me is pissed she didn’t say goodbye."

He ended the call before he could hear Gavin's response, the burn of frustration still crawling under his skin. He paced once behind the desk, every step tighter than the last, before slamming his fist down hard. The desk shuddered. The pen tray rattled and flipped over, scattering its contents.

He didn't care. Let it all fall.

What he cared about was that he’d let her in—really let her in—and now she was gone. Just like that. No warning. No goodbye.And he was left in the echo of it, pissed off and aching in ways he couldn’t name.

That’s when he saw it—small, black, and impossible to miss. A flash drive, centered like a challenge on the middle of his keyboard. A single red ribbon was tied around the base, the knot meticulous and intentional. Reed froze. That ribbon wasn’t just flair. It was a message. Harper’s brand of mischief and meaning, hidden beneath something deceptively delicate. The air in the room shifted, the chaos inside him crystallizing into something cold and focused.

She’d left him something.

Not a goodbye. A breadcrumb.

Reed stared at it for a long moment, his pulse steadying as the suspicion shifted into something colder, sharper. He sat down at the desk, hands deliberate, sliding the flash drive into the encrypted port of his laptop. The screen flickered to life.

Files locked. Of course they were. Harper wouldn't leave anything wide open.

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