Page 123 of Cruel Dominion

I was quickly proven right. Multiple rooms had their windows boarded up, but the neon OPEN sign still blinked from the lobby door. I parked my car right outside the front entrance and stormed in, Summer scurrying behind me.

The front desk was manned by a skinny, redheaded guy in his early 20s. If he wasn’t selling weed, he was definitely using it by the reek permeating the entire room. He looked up at me with glassy eyes.

“Hey man, checking in?”

“I’m looking for a tall man, brown eyes, brown hair,” I said, not wasting time. “He’ll have a young woman, pretty, long dark hair with blonde highlights and green eyes. Are they here?”

The redhead blinked. “I can’t tell you who’s staying here, man.”

Reaching into my wallet, I pulled out three hundred dollar bills and put them on the counter. “Yes, you can.”

“Sorry, I’m really not supposed to,” he said, scratching his chest.

I grabbed the collar of his polo and pulled him forward. “The woman is in danger. Talk.”

He shook his head. “Man, privacy. I can’t.”

I slammed his head down hard against the desk. The guy cried out, while Summer shrieked behind me. So much for no hysterics.

“Have you seen a silver Prius?”

“I…I…”

I punched him in the jaw. His bones felt damn good under my fist. When he didn’t answer I grabbed his hair, pulled him out from behind the desk, and kneed him in the stomach. Each cry of pain soothed the rage building inside me.

Anna’s gone. She might be dead. Every minute this asshole wastes is the minute I might have needed to save her.

“Carter Cole!” Summer screeched. I looked up to see her standing beside the desk, holding up a ring of keys. “Enough wasting time. We can check the rooms ourselves.”

The front desk clerk was huddled on the floor, a bruised and bloody mess. I had no idea how long I’d been punishing him. Wordlessly, I took the keys from her, pulling the first half from the ring and pushing them back into her hand.

“Go, you get the ones on that end.”

She nodded and took off.

I unlocked each door, then made a quick look around the room. Most of them were empty, with no traces that anyone had been staying there. Three rooms had guests; none of them were Josh or Anna. I could hear Summer squeaking apologies to the motel guests the closer we got to meeting in the middle.

The motel was small; it only took ten minutes to thoroughly search the entire place.

Summer didn’t say anything when we got back in the car. I texted an update to Paulson then plugged the next hotel into the GPS. After fifteen minutes on the road, she finally opened her mouth.

“I really hope she’s okay…”

She trailed off, holding back tears with a sniff.

“What will you do to her ex if you find him?”

“When,” I corrected her. “When I find him, I’ll kill him.”

For two straight nights, I hadn’t slept.

My men and I tore through every motel, trailer park, and camping site in northern California. Paulson managed the entire thing with the sort of organized precision that might save his life when this was through if it led to my Anna back where she belonged.

I declined his insistent offers to have a small team accompany me on my end. Truthfully, at this point, I’d end up throttling my backup soldiers the minute they breathed wrong or did anything to piss me off.

Last night at midnight, Summer called me for an update. She sighed when I reported back that I still had nothing.

“I figured out how he got in the building, if it helps,” she said. “Apparently, Josh sold Alec some pills. They met at a park and after the drug deal or whatever, Josh knocked him out and stole the keys to his car. He drove right into the parking garage and used my spare key to get in. Your guards couldn’t have known it was him.”

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