A bloodcurdling scream wretched Brynn from the depths of sleep, and she jolted upright, nearly hurling herself off her living room couch. She glanced around frantically, her chest heaving with choppy breaths, but found nothing amiss in her sunlit living room.
She sank back against the arm of the couch and put her hand to her sweat-slicked neck, the rawness in her throat confirming where the scream came from. “Dammit.”
She hadn’t had a nightmare in over a month and had dared to hope she was past them. But the blanket twisted around her legs and her pounding heart confirmed otherwise. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, the familiar images from the awful dream seeping through now that her mind was fully awake.
Unwanted hands. Being trapped. Darkness. Flashes of the always-faceless rapist now mixing with the image of the man who’d attacked her in Kelsey’s stairwell.
She released a groan of frustration and threw the blanket off her. “I am so sick of this shit.”
She wanted to holler the words, throw something through the sunny window, shake her fists at the fates. But she knew none of it would do any good. And right now, she didn’t have time to bellyache about her own problems.
She glanced at the clock on her DVD player. Right past noon. She’d stayed up all night, calling Kelsey’s friends, the clubs she’d worked at in the past, hospitals, and even put in a message with her police contact. But so far, she didn’t have squat and was at a loss as to what her next step should be.
Pound the pavement to talk to people in person? Report her missing?
She shook her head. Part of her wished she could just shrug the whole thing off and chalk it up to Kelsey being irresponsible. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was really wrong. Why wouldn’t Kels have called her or left a note, something? She’d sounded really freaked out on the phone. Was she using again? Was that what this was about? She hoped to God that wasn’t the case. Last time her sister had gone on a bender she’d nearly killed herself.
The memory clenched Brynn’s chest in a vise grip. Kelsey was the only family she had left. If she lost her…
She gave herself a mental shake and took a breath. No. She wouldn’t go there. Would. Not.
She grabbed her cell phone off the coffee table and checked the screen. No messages. With a sigh, she leaned forward to set it back down, but it rang in her hand. The sudden noise made her jump, but she had the phone to her ear in record time.
“Hello?”
“Brynn, it’s me.”
Reid. Even after ten years, he apparently didn’t feel the need to say who it was. Like he knew she’d be able to identify his voice from any other man’s. She could. “Hey.”
“Any word from your sister?”
“No one’s seen her or heard from her. I’m running out of people to call. What about you? Did you find out anything?”
Papers shuffled, like he was turning the page of a notebook. “I talked to someone who’s a member and found out that The Ranch does hire attendants and pays them well. A person gets a bonus of ten grand when he or she completes the intense training program, which apparently involves a few weeks of total immersion in each side of the D/s relationship.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of money.”
“Yeah, no kidding. It could be pretty tempting for someone like Kelsey.”
She tucked her legs beneath her. “So how do I find out if she’s taken a job there?”
He sighed. “That’s the problem. The place is like Fort Knox. The only way you’re going to find out is if you go there yourself and look for her. My friend said he could probably get you in as a guest.”
She swallowed hard. “How would that work?”
“They don’t allow doms to come in as guests, only as full members, so your only option is to go in as a sexual submissive. You would have to be willing to submit to a member.”
Her fingers curled into the twisted blanket on the couch, the material still damp from her sweat-inducing nightmare. A bone-deep shudder went through her. “Reid, I don’t… I can’t… do that.”
The line went quiet, and she wondered if the call had dropped, but then he took a breath. “I could go with you. Save you the stranger part.”
Her throat seemed to close. Not just submit, but submit to Reid? The idea sent her brain and body into a tailspin. Her gaze darted to the picture on her side table—the last one she and her sister had taken with their mom. Before the murder. Before the trial. Anger stirred in her belly.
“Brynn?”
“No,” she bit out, her voice finally returning. “No fucking way.”
He snorted. “Calm down, LeBreck. It was just an idea. If you’d rather hand yourself over to some stranger, I’m sure there will be many at The Ranch happy to oblige.”