The Gilded Cage (32 page)

With a forced shrug of her shoulders, she relaxed and focused on Emery’s face. After years of studying kidnapping cases she’d noticed something crucial in a certain style of kidnappings, a tendency by the predators to repeat patterns of behavior. When she’d started digging through Emery’s case and read the hundreds of articles and police reports, she’d sensed it. That prickling sensation at the back of her mind that warned her that what had been started twenty-five years ago wasn’t over yet. She hadn’t been able to save Rachel, but she would save Emery.

I have to.
She owed it to Rachel, owed it to herself and to everyone who’d lost someone to the darkness, to evil. Guilt stained her deep inside but when she saw Emery’s face in that photograph, it reminded her that not every stolen child died. A part of her, one she knowingly buried in her heart, was convinced that talking to him, hearing his story, would ease the old wounds from her own past that never seemed to heal. And in return, she might be the one to solve his kidnapping and rescue him from a threat she was convinced still existed.

She wasn’t the boldest woman—at least not naturally—but the quest for truth always gave her that added level of bravery. Sometimes she felt, when in the grips of pursuing a story, that she became the person she ought to be, someone brave enough to fight the evil in the world. Not the tortured girl from Kansas who’d lost her best friend to a pedophile when she was seven years old.

Sophie would have preferred to conduct an interview somewhere less intimate, preferably wearing more clothing. But Emery was nearly impossible to reach—he avoided the press, apparently despising their efforts to get him to tell his story. She didn’t blame him. Retelling his story could be traumatic for him, but she didn’t have a choice. If what she suspected was true, she needed the details she was sure he’d kept from the police because they might be the keys to figuring out who’d kidnapped him and why.

She’d made calls to his company, but the front desk there had refused to transfer her to his line, probably because of his “no press” rule. Thanks to Hayden she knew Emery rarely left the Lockwood estate but he came to the Gilded Cuff a few times a month. This was the only opportunity she might have to reach him.

Emery ran his father’s company from a vast mansion on the Lockwood estate, nestled in the thick woods of Long Island’s Gold Coast. No visitors were permitted and he left the house only when in the company of private guards.

Sophie tucked the photo back into her corset and looked around, peering at the faces of the doms walking past her. More than once their gazes dropped to the cuffs on her wrists, possessively assessing her body. Her face scorched with an irremovable blush at their perusal. Whenever she made eye contact with a dom, he would frown and she’d instantly drop her gaze.

Respect; must remember to respect the doms and not make eye contact unless they command it
. Otherwise she might end up bent over a spanking bench. Her corset seemed to shrink, making it hard to breathe, and heat flashed from her head to her toes.

Men and women—submissives judging by the cuffs they bore on their wrists—were wearing even less than she was as they walked around with drink trays, carrying glasses to doms on couches. Several doms had subs kneeling at their feet, heads bowed. A man sitting on a nearby love seat was watching her with hooded eyes. He had a sub at his feet, his hand stroking her long blond hair. The woman’s eyes were half closed, cheeks flushed with pleasure. The dom’s cobalt blue eyes measured her—not with sexual interest, but seemingly with mere curiosity—the way a sated mountain lion might watch a plump rabbit crossing its path.

Sophie pulled her eyes away from the redheaded dom and his ensnaring gaze. The club was almost too much to take in. Collars, leashes, the occasional pole with chains hanging from it, and a giant cross were all there, part of the fantasy world created amid the glitz and old world décor.

Sliding past entwined bodies and expensive furniture, she saw more that intrigued her. The club itself was this one large room with several halls splitting off the main room. Hayden had explained earlier that morning the layout of the club. She had pointed out that no matter which hall you went down you had to come back to the main room to exit the club. A handy safety feature. A little exhalation of relief escaped her lips. How deep did a man like Emery Lockwood live this lifestyle? Would she find him in one of the private rooms or would he be part of a public scene like the ones she was witnessing now?

She was nearly halfway across the room when a man caught her by her arm and spun her to face him. Her lips parted, ready to scream the word “red”, but when she met his gaze she froze, the shout dying at the back of her throat. He raised her wrists, fingering the red ribbon around her leather cuffs. His gray eyes were as silver as moonlight, and openly interested. Sophie tried to jerk free of his hold. He held tight. The arousal that had been slowly building in her body flashed cold and sharp. She could use the safe word. She knew that. But after one deep breath, she forced herself to relax. Part of the job tonight was to blend in, to find Emery. She couldn’t do that if she ran off and cried for help at the first contact. It would be smarter to let this play out a bit; maybe she could squeeze the dom for information about Emery later if she didn’t find him soon. For Sophie, not being able to get to Emery was more frightening than anything this man might try to do to her.

“I see your cuffs, little sub. I’m not going to hurt you.”

His russet hair fell across his eyes and he flicked his head: power, possession, dominance. He was raw masculinity. A natural dom. He was the sort of good-looking man that she would have mooned over when she was a teenager. Hell, even now at twenty-four she should have been melting into a puddle at this man’s feet. His gaze bit into her. A stab of sudden apprehension made her stomach pitch, but she needed to find Emery and going along with this guy might be the best way to get information. He tugged her wrists, jerking her body against his as he regarded her hungrily. “I need an unclaimed sub for a contest. Tonight is your lucky night, sweetheart.”

Y
ou are cordially invited to the engagement party of Hayden Thorne and Fenn Lockwood—”

With a pained gasp, Callie Taylor ripped the expensive cream card. Then she tore it again, and again until she littered the floor with a pile of tiny scraps. Agony choked her as her heart stuttered to a stop. She couldn’t think. It was too awful…As pieces dropped to the floor, she jumped up from the small desk in her bedroom, bumping the wood edge hard enough that it knocked a small vase of wildflowers onto the floor. The shattering of the glass briefly drew her out of her spiraling sense of anguish.

Footsteps on the stairs drew her attention. She rushed to the bedroom door and flung it open.

Wes Thorne, the harbinger of her own personal doom, stood there, worry knitting his brows as he gazed down at her. He was Hayden Thorne’s brother, and Hayden was marrying Fenn Lockwood, the man Callie loved. Wes had brought the invitation to her a few minutes earlier and foolish woman that she was, she’d rushed off to read it in the privacy of her room, not knowing it was a wedding invitation. Her stomach roiled and she flattened a hand over her abdomen as she stared at him for a brief instant, unable to hide her tears. It only deepened her shame and self-loathing.

“I’m sorry.” She shoved past him and ran down the stairs, tears almost blinding her vision.

“Callie,” her father Jim Taylor called out as she ran past him through the living room and out onto the small porch of their ranch house.

Even as the fresh Colorado mountain air hit her lungs, it wasn’t enough. She still couldn’t breathe. Her lungs burned and she sucked in shuddering breath after shuddering breath. She needed space, distance, to clear her head. She knew her father wouldn’t follow her, but Wes might. That was the last thing she wanted.

Something about him unnerved her. He was so damn quiet and intense. She didn’t like that intensity; it made her pulse beat faster and her palms sweaty. Not like Fenn. Fenn was safe, didn’t make her edgy or her breath quicken. It was too confusing. Wes made her feel like a skittish barn cat.

Shoving thoughts of him away, she sprinted to the barn where her quarter horse Volt was in his stall, happily munching on oats. A ride. That’s what she needed. To get outside and ride away from everything that left her hurt and confused. Volt was fast and he’d help her escape. Ever since she’d been a child, riding had been her outlet, a way to get free of everything. It was her father’s fault, really. When her mother had died, Callie had only been four, and her father had bought her a small pony to give her something to care for and learn to ride. From then on, her breaking heart and riding were tied closely together.

Callie quickly threw a bridle over Volt’s head and then put a blanket and saddle on him. Volt huffed and bumped his nose affectionately against her shoulder as she cinched the girth strap and then led him from his stall. She didn’t even wait to get out of the barn before she mounted up.

Once she had mounted, she kicked his sides, clicking her tongue, and Volt jolted forward. She broke him into a canter to warm him up. He didn’t need much to get into the rhythm. Another switch kick and he was shooting across the back field, straight toward the mountains. The wind lashed across her face, whipping her hair in stingy slaps, but the pain felt good. It ate away at the numbness inside her.

Volt seemed to sense her need to flee, and he ran like a bolt of wild lightning from a summer storm. Ahead of them the wooded mountains were carved with trails of bright green grass. During the winter these paths formed popular ski trails. Callie urged Volt to gallop parallel to the grove of Aspen trees that bordered the farthest edge of her family’s property. The white trunks looked like slender ghosts weaving through the dappled sunlight. The brilliant gold leaves reminded her of the cadmium paint color she’d been mixing on her palette this morning.
This morning.
So much had changed since then.

A few hours ago she had been experimenting with acrylic paints—dabbling really, since she had no clue how to use that particular medium. A half-painted canvas, one depicting the Aspen leaves falling, was supposed to be a gift for Fenn Lockwood, to remind him of home—this home, anyway. But he had found a new home in Weston, Long Island with his real family, a twin brother and his parents. Callie knew she and Jim weren’t biologically his family, but for the last twenty-five years, even before she’d been born, Fenn had been here in Colorado, living under another name and being raised by a stranger. Walnut Springs had been his home.

And now he was getting married. To another woman.

Her heart throbbed in dull agony, and her throat tightened. Tears dripped down her face. She wasn’t even sure if her tears were caused by the wind or her broken heart. Tugging on the reins, she slowed Volt down. He dropped back into a canter and then to a walk.

“Easy boy,” she crooned and patted his muscular neck. “You always want to push too hard for too long.”

Volt tossed his head, his black mane flaring in a ripple over his skin as though to protest her words. She allowed him to plod along the line of Aspen trees, his hooves churning the blanket of vivid yellow leaves. A north wind came down from the mountains, stirring the air around and filling Callie’s lungs with the crisp scent of coming winter. They were a few months away from heavy snow, but there was no mistaking the distant aroma of winter. Something about that scent calmed her. Snow buried. Snow covered. It hid away things that needed to be erased or at least temporarily forgotten.

Could she forget her broken heart if it lay beneath an early snowfall? Perhaps, but it didn’t erase the fact that she would have to go to the engagement party. The mere thought left an acidic taste in her mouth. The last thing she wanted to do was see Fenn announce to the world that he was marrying someone else. And not just anyone, but the red-haired, beautiful, East Coast socialite Hayden Thorne.

Callie wanted to hate her, but doing so was impossible. She and Hayden had gotten along from the moment they’d met a few months ago, when Hayden had come to Walnut Springs to tell Fenn he was the lost Lockwood twin and that his life was in danger. Callie had opened her home up to Hayden and her older brother, Wes, who’d hoped to see Fenn reunited with his family. It had been worth it, even though the reunion had cost her dearly.

The winding gold trail that Volt climbed soon led to a small hill where large grey rocks littered the slope. She tugged back on his reins and he halted. Callie slid off his back and after a quick pat on his neck, she led him to a copse of trees and slid to the ground. After looping his reins around the sturdy low branch of a nearby tree, she walked over to the outcropping of rocks and climbed up a particularly thick, waist-high rock half covered in pale wintergreen moss. She let one leg dangle down the front of the rock while she tucked her other leg up and rested her chin on her knee.

Clouds swept across the skies, their shadows playing a game of chase upon the rolling hills and tree-strewn valleys below. Her father had shown her this spot after her mother had died. She’d been only four years old and the two of them had been lost without her. Nature had become the mother she’d lost. Her father had taught her that a person could find peace here, under the brilliant skies and in the changing winds.

A few stray tears escaped her eyes, but she didn’t wipe them away. She was not ashamed of her emotions. She loved Fenn. Had always loved him. Deep down, she had sensed this day would come, the day she realized she would never have him. But she hadn’t thought it would be so soon. A sense of loss had always filled her when he was near.

Then again, she knew she was a fool to think that. He was thirty-three, a grown man, ready to settle down. She must have seemed a child in his eyes. Only twenty-years old and knowing so little of the world. She hadn’t even been able to go to college because their ranch had been on the rocks financially for the last couple of years.

Hayden had helped there, too. She’d proposed a plan to save the ranch and Jim had jumped on it immediately, loving the idea. Callie would only trust that they were saved from ruin when the mortgage was finally released. Until then, she wouldn’t hold her breath. Life had dealt her too many losses to expect much good. There would be no Cinderella moment for her, no grand transformation. Just life on the ranch and, perhaps a job in the town, if she didn’t need to work with her father.

I’m being a ninny
.

She sniffed and wiped her eyes, a heavy emptiness filling her. Funny, she hadn’t ever thought she could feel so hollow. She rubbed her palms on her jeans and then slid off the boulder. Volt was still waiting for her, his large lashes fanning up and down as he stood patiently. He nudged her shoulder as she unwound the reins from the branch.

“Time to go back.” She didn’t want to, but she was a big girl and had to face this, even if it killed her piece by piece.

“Come on, Volt.” She swung herself into the saddle and then rode for home.

When she came in through the back door of the barn, she slowed Volt to a stop and then dismounted. He waited patiently as she led him back to his stall, removed his reins, saddle, and blanket. The horse buried his nose in his oat bucket. Callie picked up a brush from her grooming kit and started stroking the brush across his withers and left side. The sense of being watched made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise. She spun in the narrow stall and gasped.

Wes Thorne stood at the stall entrance, one shoulder leaning against the wood frame. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he gazed down at her with those startling cobalt blue eyes. He was so much like his sister, Hayden, in looks, only taller. Six-foot-two easy, but they both had that stunning shade of red hair. Yet, when she looked at him, she didn’t think of his sister, or the pain flaying open her chest at the thought of Fenn’s engagement. Instead, something inside her became very still and quiet, almost as though she were an animal being stalked. She couldn’t think when she felt like she was prey.

Callie swallowed, trying to get past the sudden dryness in her throat. She turned back to Volt, scrubbing his coat with the hand brush even as she felt Wes’s eyes on her back.

“Are you all right?” Wes did not move from his position in the stall doorway.

She barely contained a bitter laugh. “All right? Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him drift a step closer, and heard the soft shuffle of his expensive Italian shoes on the hay-strewn floor. He was always dressed in those fancy suits, except for a few days a month ago when he’d worn jeans. Even then, he’d seemed out of place at the ranch. Too intense for the quiet life here.

“Here, let me.” Suddenly he was right behind her, the heat of his body searing her skin through the thin layer of her jeans and shirt. His right hand settled over hers gently, grasping the brush and sliding it off her palm. Her hands settled on Volt’s coat as Wes kept her caged while he continued to brush the horse. She watched the way his hand moved the brush swiftly over the horse’s flanks. Did he know much about horses?

Funny, she hadn’t thought to ask. When she’d last been around him, he’d seemed more a dark shadow, a presence just out of sight while she’d been focused on Fenn and the threat on his life. Now, though, she had to admit she was curious, even if he scared her a little. He patted the horse’s back and then turned to her, handing her the brush.

“You seem to know what you’re doing,” she finally said, peering over her shoulder at his face.

Observing his profile, she noticed the twist of his sensual lips in a bare hint of a smile.

“You might say that. I own six of them. I should hope I know what I’m doing.” His words lit a strange fire deep within her belly, and she knew she’d bump into him if she leaned back even an inch.

Callie took the brush from him and set it in the grooming kit outside Volt’s stall. She dusted her hands off on her jeans as she waited for Wes to leave the stall.

“You really have horses?”

He actually laughed. The rich sound of it did funny things to her stomach. It quivered and a slow wave of heat moved across her face.

“You seem surprised,” he noted as he closed the stall door and then latched it.

Callie retreated a few steps—the barn suddenly feeling much warmer than it had half an hour ago.

“Well, you never said anything before about horses. And you don’t look like you do a lot of riding.” She swept her gaze down his dark charcoal suit, with the crisp white shirt and crimson tie. She remembered how muscled his forearms had been the few times they’d been bare, and the very feel of his hands on her skin always seemed to burn her in those brief times he’d touched her in passing a month ago. It unsettled her, and she didn’t like it. She grabbed the saddle and headed for the tack room, hoping he would take the hint and not follow her.

That silent prayer went unheard because he filled the space of the tack room doorway, as though to stop her from escaping him again. She focused on putting her saddle away.

“I play polo. A man has to be very good on a horse.” He paused and that caught her attention. When her eyes met his he continued. “I enjoy riding, and not just the horses.”

For a second, she had no clue what he meant. Riding…Then it hit her and she flushed with mortification. He was implying that—
oh!

Callie needed to get away from him and his dark, sinful suggestions. She wanted to be left alone, left in peace. He was just playing with her. Nothing more. There was no way a man like him would have any interest in her, and she didn’t want him to. She wanted a man like Fenn. Fenn. Pain stung her chest again, and she blinked back an unexpected swell of tears.

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the best mood. You should probably just go.”
Please go away.
She prayed. If she had to ask again, she feared her ability to hold off tears would fail.