Slow down, man. You cannot just throw her on the couch and fuck her. Not yet.
“Okay, I think I’m good.” She took a step back and brushed the tears off her cheeks.
“I’m glad.” He was the one who needed control now.
He had the sudden urge to grab his phone and ask the women in his life how he should handle this. Not the guys. They were mostly dumb, even the ones who were already married. Big Tag would yell at him about condoms. Michael would overthink the whole thing. But the ladies would take it all seriously.
He might have gotten too invested in the McKay-Taggart carpool text group. The fact that he was the only male on the list and he had zero children probably had gone to his head.
First he needed to figure out what the problem was.
“I’m so sorry. I’m exhausted. I’ve been up since…” She glanced down at the smart watch around her wrist. “It’s over twenty-four hours now. I couldn’t sleep last night. My flight to Sedona was at six this morning, and then I had to meet my cousin, get her and her boyfriend checked into the resort and get to my flight to Chicago by noon, and then I turned around and came here.”
“Why the extra flight?” He moved to the couch, offering her a seat.
She yawned behind her hand. “In case someone was physically following me. I thought I would be able to recognize if someone was on all three planes. I picked seats in the back of the plane and made sure I didn’t get on until right before they were closing the doors.”
“They don’t have to physically follow you. They could track your records.” He hoped she’d truly thought this through. Yes, she was a genius, but that was in science and technology. Sometimes an Ivy League education didn’t translate into street smarts.
“Which is why I bought fake identification,” she replied.
What the hell was Maddie Hill doing buying a fake ID? He had about a million questions. “Let me see it. Maddie, that’s dangerous. You can get into real trouble. If TSA figures out you’re flying with false ID, you can get put on a no-fly list for the rest of your damn life.”
She huffed and slung her backpack off her shoulder. She was still sniffling but seemed better than before. “I paid for the best. I did a ton of research and found someone good.”
She pulled out her wallet and handed him her ID.
It was a perfectly legitimate-looking California driver’s license. He checked the back. She was right. Whoever had done this had been a master at his craft. “Okay. This guy seems to be good.”
Her nose wrinkled in that way that let him know she was annoyed with him. “Girl. Woman. She’s excellent. She typically works with women running from abusive relationships. She helps them get away when everything else fails. Charged me ten times what she normally does. I paid it happily because I happen to know she also does it for free when a woman has no money.”
Ah, there was the girl he remembered. He handed back her fake ID. “Now why don’t you tell me why you need a fake ID? Who are you trying to evade?”
She sat back, weariness apparent in her every move. All she seemed to have with her was that backpack. She set it on the floor at her feet. “My boss. Something’s happening at Byrne Corp.”
“Okay.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and quickly dashed off a text to both Ian and his partner Alex McKay requesting a meeting. “I’ll get you into the morning conference. At McKay-Taggart we have a morning conference three times a week where we can present cases for consideration. Can you explain it all there? We can go over it in the morning, but they’ll need a complete rundown of what you suspect is happening so we can come up with the right team.”
Her eyes had widened. “Team?”
“Yeah, you need an investigative team, right?” He was already thinking about how he would handle the meeting. He would need to make certain Big Tag understood this was about more than just his dick because Big Tag was definitely going to accuse him of that. “That’s why you came to me. Are you in immediate danger? I can make sure you’re safe here tonight, but we’ll hire an extra guard if you need protection twenty-four seven.”
“I don’t think anyone knows what I’m doing. I don’t have friends at the office, so I haven’t talked to anyone about it. I know I seem paranoid, but I’m only being careful. The project is at a delicate stage, so I think caution is a good thing. I know something’s wrong, but I can’t get to the system I need in order to figure out what’s happening.” She yawned again. “But I didn’t come here to hire McKay-Taggart. I’ll figure this out on my own. I need you to…this sounds so stupid.”
Ah, so they were getting back to that one little word that had shaken his world. “Just say it.”
She seemed to steel herself. “Okay. But it is stupid. It’s…I needed to get closer to Nolan and I found out that he was interested in certain topics and liked to talk about them.”
Damn it. “Let me guess. BDSM? Nolan Byrne is in the lifestyle?”
She seemed to consider how to reply. “No. He’s interested in the lifestyle. He’s a weird guy. He goes through these phases, and then he tends to surround himself with people who are similarly minded. Like a couple of years ago he was completely obsessed with competitive biking. Suddenly no one was driving to work. They were all biking and wore the worst shorts. It was not a good time to be there. Chess was a good year of his life. The breakrooms were covered with dudes playing chess. Often it’s because he’s seen some movie or read a book that catches his imagination. Everyone knows that one way to move onto whatever team Nolan’s interested in is to talk about his favorite subject of the moment.”
“He openly talks about his sex life?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. This one is kind of a secret. I was reading a book about BDSM and his assistant caught me, and she was the one who mentioned he was trying to get into a club. Not just any club. Apparently there are many around the LA area, but he wants access to the one in Malibu.”
He knew it well. He had a couple of friends who played there. “The Reef?”
Her eyes widened. “It’s true. You are a BDSM guy. BDSM person.”
“We tend to prefer to call ourselves Doms or tops.” He remembered his recent mistake. “I personally identify as a Dom. Many men are subs or bottoms. Same for women and nonbinary people.”
A brow rose over her eyes. “That’s awfully forward thinking for a guy from Calhoun, California.”
“I’ve learned a lot over the years. You’ll find I’m pretty open to whatever makes a person feel happy and complete. Especially when it doesn’t affect me in any way. I can only truly understand my own experience. If a man feels wrong in his body and feels better as a woman, who the hell am I to say he’s wrong. How does her happiness make the world a worse place?” BDSM had smoothed so many of his edges, teaching him to not merely tolerate differences, but to find joy in them. He now had friends of all kinds. “So why were you reading about BDSM?”
Her face flushed slightly. “I had a friend who talked about it. I was interested in the theories behind it.”
Liar. He still knew her tells, and the flush was proof she wasn’t telling him the truth. He had the insane urge to lower his voice and explain to her that lying wasn’t acceptable between them. He could explain that if he was going to be her Dom, there would be rules, and he would be happy to discipline her when she broke them.