Fuck.
Where was she?
I exited the room as fast as I entered and went in search of her.
I continued to search the house, the bathrooms, the living room, the sunroom, but I found absolutely nothing.
My footsteps echoed in the hall against the silence.
Where could she be? I made my way to the far corner of the house to my surveillance room. Inside there sat two of my men, each one behind a computer staring at the images of the property.
“Where is she?”
There was no reason to clarify who I was talking about.
Robert looked up from his monitor and started to hit buttons on the computer dashboard on the desk. The fact that he didn’t know off the top of his head grated at my nerves.
But at that moment, his ability to do his job properly wasn’t my number one importance. Finding Anya was.
What if Ridley had kept me busy at the office while one of his staff rescued Anya? What if she was taken by someone else?
No.
She was here somewhere. They just needed to do their goddamn job and find her.
“Pull up all the footage for today,” I barked out, and within a few seconds, the day played by on the monitors overhead.
“There!” I shouted, pointing at the screen. “When was that recorded?”
“An hour ago,” answered Robert.
There on the screen, clear as day, was Anya. With her head held high, back straight and proud, she was walking out the back door of the house.
“Pull up the images from outside,” I ordered, and I waited for the new footage. With the pride she had in her stance, I wondered if maybe she might’ve tried that tree again.
She wouldn’t have gotten very far. It wasn’t possible to leave the grounds without my permission. Not with my men stationed outside the perimeter of the property, but if anybody could escape, it would be her. She had proven herself to be resourceful.
“There.” I pointed at where she was walking.
In the image, she was taking the path toward the maze.
Was she lost? Or was she going there on purpose?
Not a good idea.
Once inside, if you lost your bearings, it could be hard to find your way out.
It was constructed that way. When I took possession of the property as my own, I made tweaks, let hedges grow out, but that was neither here nor there at the moment.
I couldn’t have Anya lost in the maze and starving to death.
If I was being honest with myself, a part of me still didn’t want to see her hurt, even after what her father had done to us.
It was an odd thing to come to realize. I shrugged off the thoughts running rampant in my mind and set off for the maze.
When I stepped outside, I was surprised by the temperature. It had dropped.
The sun was about to set, and I needed to find her before that happened. Although I knew the maze backward and forwards, it still wouldn’t make finding her easy.
I stayed on my path, entering the dark shrubbery. Once within the maze, the natural light from the sky flickered out. It reminded me of when a candle was burning and about to be snuffed. It was dusk in the maze with just enough light to make my way.
The farther I submerged myself in the labyrinth, the more concerned I grew. I couldn’t pinpoint what this feeling was at first. Alarm coursed through me, and it felt like an empty void in my stomach gnawing at my gut.
Fear.
I was afraid for her.
Suddenly, as I made my way to almost the center, the clawing feeling had grown. It had a life of its own. My throat tightening with trepidation, I was terrified of what I would find.
The revelation of my concern was not something I could think about. The only thought was where she was and that she was safe, but it became harder to stem my roiling thoughts with each minute that passed. There was no reason she would be gone that long. I turned the corner and my feet stopped, and my eyes grew wide—
There she was.
Anya.
Dressed in a flimsy yellow dress, thin straps over her delicate shoulders. Feet adorably bare.
She looked like a nymph.
Tempting.
Taunting.
Something about her made me want to reach out and pull her in my arms. Her loose hair drifted as she stepped on the tips of her toes against a hedge.
I didn’t make a sound as I watched her. She was reaching for something high in the tall shrubs.
Her right arm was stretched out far above her head. I watched her for a beat as she struggled to reach whatever she was trying to grab. Then her foot wobbled, and I knew she was going to fall.
I didn’t wait for that to happen. I sprang into action, catching her in my arms before she hit the ground.
“What are you doing?” I scolded. “You could have hurt yourself if I wasn’t here.” My anger was misplaced, and I knew it. I wasn’t angry with her. I was angry with myself for letting this woman make a dent in the wall I had erected around myself.
“One could ask you the same thing,” she fired back.
She pushed my hands off her, righting her position.
My head cocked to the side, but I didn’t speak. I just appraised her.
“You can’t touch me like that. . . ”
“I thought you wanted me to touch you . . .” I drawled out. Hints of seduction lingered in my voice.
“You thought wrong.”
“I must be confused,” I smirked. I didn’t need to bring up the ploy. There was no point seeing as we both knew how that turned out. I won. I always did.
“If you must know, I was trying to help that bird.”
“Bird?”
“The one stuck in the shrubs.”
I moved past her, looking in that direction. “Where?”
“Shh, be quiet so you can hear.”
Peering into the high shrubbery, I saw a flash of blue.
A blue finch was caught in the tightness of the leaves. Instinctively, I reached in, the backs of my hands were scratched as I forced them within the thin branches. Cupping the bird in my palm, I gently eased it out from the bushy twigs and held it out at chest level. It lay still in my hands, unmoving, the beat of its heart rapid against my fingers.
Anya came closer. “Is it hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What should we do?”
Without a second thought, my hands fell open, and the bird seemed to think about its chance at freedom for a few seconds. It sprang into the air with a fluttering of wings as it took flight, up and out of the maze, flying toward the dark sky.
“You let it go?” she said wistfully.
I looked at her. “A beautiful creature should never be caged.”
The realization struck us both at the same time—our eyes fixed on each other’s as the moment settled into something more, something unfathomable.
She turned her back on me, reaching for my hand, and I waited, considering whether to take it. Whether to let her have this be what she wanted it to be.
It was nothing, really. Me guiding her out. Doing the right thing for a nanosecond before I could go back to the plan.
Remember the fucking plan.
I reiterated this thought as I wove my fingers through hers. Her touch was an annoying simmer beneath mine. A low current absorbed into my skin and deeper still into my tendons until it thrummed in the bones of my hand.
Anya and I walked out of the maze and I led us back toward the house, not willing to let her go just yet.
Just me protecting my asset.