Page 15 of Bought

It’s a thirteen-hour trip to Idaho, but that’s fine with me. Time to catch up on some sleep, work on a little code.

The ticket works out to be ninety-nine dollars. Small price to pay to get away from the brazen clutches of a billionaire. I’m banking on the fact that Ethan is so rich and so powerful, he’s probably forgotten about the myriad little, uncomfortable options that poor people have at their disposal. He lives in a world of toilets that flush by themselves. I make sure to pay cash too. I’m sure he has access to bank accounts. Evading Ethan is going to be all about going low-tech.

Sitting in a crowded bus terminal, waiting for my bus to load, I think smug thoughts to myself. He’s never going to find me. And once I’m free and clear, I’m going to start making trouble for him. His little network of data-sniffing bullshit is going to come down. Hard.

I’m going to expose him. I’m going to see him go down. He’s going to pay for every embarrassment he put me through. I’ll see him be arrested, just like I was, except when it happens to him, it won’t be for show. It will be for life.

Boarding for Boise.

I almost miss my call, I’m so busy congratulating myself on my plans, but when I see dozens of other people getting up, I follow them out to where the big metal steed that is going to take me away from all of this is idling at the ready. In a few minutes I’ll be gone. No electronic trail to trace me, no way to catch me.

It’s going to be a noisy trip. There’s a young guy and girl arguing further up the line and a small family screeching with excitement behind me. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except…

An arm slides around my waist, startling me. I look up to see Ethan Keller standing next to me. He smiles down at me with a dark, predatory smile. Those cold blue eyes bore into me, chilling me to my soul.

“You had to know it wasn’t going to be this easy,” he murmurs down at me. “Come on, Casey. It’s time to leave.”

“I’ll make a scene,” I growl under my breath. “Let me go.”

“Make all the scenes you want,” he purrs back. “A disturbance will make it that much easier to have you removed from this facility. We can call the police again if need be…” A single brow rises suggestively down at me.

Fuck. He’s got me.

Chapter Five

Ethan

This girl is adorable.

I left her door unlocked for a reason. It would be easy to hold her captive, but that wouldn’t teach her anything. I wanted a reason to punish her sweet ass again and of course she gave me one. This is a game she’s not even aware she’s playing. She is trying the most obvious routes of escape, but all the obvious routes are traps I’ve designed with the aim of being able to punish her when she tries them. Eventually she’ll stop trying, and then she’ll be trained.

I was notified the moment she left my home. And of course she was followed. I didn’t even have to send an actual human to do it. There are cameras everywhere these days. Private and public, and both open to me if I want them to be.

I watched her attempted escape while negotiating a new deal on a batch of processors. She seemed so proud of herself too, especially once she got to the toxic wasteland that she seems to call home.

Maybe I should have had her picked up and brought back earlier, but it was amusing and instructive to see what she did and didn’t do. She didn’t blow the whistle on me, which was interesting. At least, it wasn’t the first thing she did. Her first instinct was to go to ground, because that’s what prey does. And now she’s freezing, just like prey does.

I lead her out of the bus station by the hand. She follows me quietly, choosing not to make a scene. Good girl.

I have a car waiting outside, one she gets into without any further argument. She’s actually quite compliant once I get hands-on with her. It’s when she’s alone and has time to think that the trouble starts.

Makes sense. She doesn’t know me yet. She doesn’t know how serious I am about owning her, or how far I’ll go to make sure she stays mine. Right now, she’s a petulant little captive still looking for a way out. But there are no ways out. I could tell her that, but it’s going to be far more instructive for her to learn it on her own.

“You knew that wasn’t going to work, didn’t you?” I ask the question as I slide in beside her. She’s so much smaller than me, but big trouble can come in small packages.

She shrugs. “Was worth a try.”

“You don’t know that yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there are consequences for disobedience, Casey.”

“Like what?”

“Like this will be the last time you sit down comfortably in a very long time.”

She looks at me, and I see the clockwork behind her eyes. I expect her to be angry and afraid. What I don’t expect, is what I get: a smile.

---