Chapter Thirty-Six
Ian
The meeting with the owners of Savage and the four other kink clubs in the area had gone well. Better than he’d expected it would, actually. He still didn’t care for Raven but that had always been true and would probably continue to be true forever. Ah well.
At least they’d agreed to keep and share a database of unsafe players. Maybe that would protect more of their members and after a while he’d feel good enough to reinstate the reciprocity agreement they’d had with Savage. Maybe extend it to the other clubs.
He’d missed having Ryker there. Not because his friend ever said much at these things, but he didn’t have to. There were a lot of tops who walked around calling themselves sadists, “true” dominants, Masters, all that jazz, but Ry was the real deal. Effortlessly. Also, Ian just…missed him.
Ry was his friend, his partner, and the loft felt oddly empty without his surly presence. Stella wandered around meowing all day, looking for the fucker. He knew, too, Coco felt guilty. Like it was her fault he’d left which was ridiculous. She hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t done a damn thing to “force” him to go. She’d said her safeword when Ryker had hurt her and he couldn’t deal. Which was fucking weird.
No, Ry had never been cuddly or solicitous. He was stone cold and rigid. But Ian had seen him react when other partners had safeworded. He wasn’t overly affectionate by any means but he hadn’tabandonedthem. He would halt play immediately, sit next to them, ask if they were okay, get them a glass of water and maybe something to eat, grab the first aid kit if necessary. He was a good, responsible, attentive top.
So why the fuck was he such a miserable piece of shit when it came to Coco? It was inexplicable. Whatever, he wasn’t going to worry about it right now. No, right now he was going to check on their little girl who was playing up in the nursery or maybe napping.
It had made him twitchy to not have her in his lap or snuggled up with Huds during the meeting, like she was his security blanket or favorite stuffie. He’d missed her and they’d only been in the meeting for a couple of hours.
Unable to wait, Ian vaulted up the stairs two by two and couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips as he swung around the doorframe into the nursery.
“Hey Coco, Papa’s back. What’re you—”
Except she wasn’t there.
Crayons and coloring books and some of her ponies were on the colorful rug she liked to lie on, tummy down with her feet swinging in the air. His gaze darted to the crib but that was empty too save for Hopscotch who was perched at the edge as though she’d been watching Coco.
The bathroom door was open and he ducked his head in, heart racing as it revealed another empty room. Where was she? Had she gone down to their bedroom? Was she watching TV or getting a snack or fooling around with the foosball table? Maybe looking at Hud’s homebrew set-up? She was fascinated by all the tubes and tanks and dials.
Before heading down to the second floor, he peeked into Ry’s room in case she was sitting in there, crying, missing her Sir. Nothing, though, just Ryker’s freakishly neat stuff, his bed made like he was coming back that night, not like he’d abandoned them. All three of them. She wasn’t in his office, either, only Stella meowing at Ian cantankerously from on top of Ry’s desk.
Dread pooled in his stomach and Ian felt near hurling as he jogged down to the second floor. Hudson was in the kitchen, and when Ian got closer, he could see his friend was making snack snails—Coco’s favorite. They had celery and peanut butter and apples and raisins and skinny little pretzels and yeah, they actually tasted pretty good, not to mention they were cute as fuck. Some of the tension in his gut unfurled. Hud must’ve found her.
“Coco was hungry, huh?”
Huds looked up from the cutting board, a small frown denting his brows and his chin. “I assumed so. We’ve been gone for a couple of hours and you know she eats like a bird. I thought you were going upstairs to check on her.”
So much for relief. The blood in his veins turned to ice as his stomach pitched.
“I did. She wasn’t there. Not in the playroom, not in Ry’s room, not in his office.”
Their gazes locked and the color drained out of Hudson’s cheeks right before he called out, “Cosy? Where are you, babygirl?”
Dropping his knife, Hud strode out of the kitchen and Ian wasn’t far behind him. No Coco in the living room or at the dining table. No Coco in a pile of blankets in the bed the three of them had shared since the first night they brought her home. No Coco sneaking into their rooms to leave them pictures she’d colored or other little treasures she’d made or found.
Where the fuck was she?
They both called out for her, increasingly frantic, before Hudson grabbed his arm in the hallway. “You think she came downstairs to find us? We should check the back staircase.”
No sign of her there, either, though, and no response despite them using their coaxing tones in case she thought she was being funny by playing hide and seek. Except Coco was terrible at hide and seek. Honestly, she didn’t like the hiding part, she loved best to be found.
“You try calling her phone?”
Hudson shook his head and Ian dug his phone out of his pocket. He never called Coco since they were almost always together—and if they weren’t, it was because she was with Hud.
He heard a faint ringing coming from their room and his stomach dropped. Yeah, she wasn’t the best about remembering to keep her phone or the walkie with her all the time, but if she had gone somewhere, she would’ve taken it. If she wasn’t holding both his and Hudson’s hands, she clutched it in a fist when they went on field trips, double- and triple-checked her bag for her phone and charger whenever they left the house. Just in case she got lost, she would say. He and Hudson had always assured her they would never ever lose her but—
They tore the place apart in case she’d fallen asleep somewhere odd or she’d left a note that she’d gone to get ice cream from the corner store or she’d called Uncle Jethro to bring her over to the garden center to see Sable and the twins, any damn thing that would give them a clue, but there was fucking nothing.
Dread and panic were making a noxious stew in Ian’s stomach and he wanted to do something—but what was there to do? There was one thing they ought to do before they did anything else.
“We need to call Ry,” he told Hudson, and his friend nodded, looking grim.
They might be angry with each other but this was bigger than that and their tiff would just have to wait. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking long enough for him to key in the code to his phone correctly but luckily Huds was steadier in a crisis. Always, for that matter, and he was able to dial their partner.
Ryker might be a stubborn and emotionally unavailable motherfucker, but he wasn’t rude so he picked up after the first two rings. Ian hated to imagine the look on his face when Hudson didn’t even greet him but led off with “Cosy’s missing.”