Chapter 11: Her Turn

Monday, September 9th, early morning

“This is stupid, Chloe!” I called out over my shoulder, throwing a glare at her as she emerged from the shelter.

She gave me a neutral glance while slinging one of the parachute belts over her shoulder, keeping her amusement hidden. It didn’t work ... I knew it was there.

Dot dash dash dot, dot dot dot, dot dash, dot dash dot dot, dash, dot, dot dash dot.

We had taken shifts all night doing the same thing over and over again. That stupid pattern was burned into my brain so deeply that I could have recited it in my sleep.

“There’s no way this is going to work!”

“Marcus,” Chloe said, leveling her gaze at me as she raised her hands, displaying her palms toward the sky to show them empty. “If you have a better way of trying to reach them, I’m all ears.”

She was right, of course. As stupid as it seemed, Chloe’s plan felt like the only half-plausible way of possibly getting anyone’s attention. Our problem was simple: since no one had come for us, the helicopter’s transponder was likely broken, so there was no way for anyone to find us. Well, there was no way, except one, and that was the tracker Chloe had Shea implant in me when she messaged me for the first time in Vegas. The problem is ... she hadn’t told anyone else about it. Even Shea had been fed some bullshit about it being a treatment for stress and sleep regulation to help me deal with the complications of becoming a billionaire. I didn’t understand all the lingo, but the words ‘subdermal’, ‘cortisol’, and ‘neurological therapy’ were used. Apparently, she didn’t want anyone getting wind that she had a way of tracking me, except for people she could trust to not only keep it a secret, but take that secret to the grave if needed. The only one that fit her criteria was Henry Psalter.

It was a fine idea until we ended up lost in a Norwegian wilderness with no way to know if anyone would bother telling Psalter about the situation. After all, he was busy doing important work by tracking down Roger VanCamp’s stupid face. He could very well show up in the next five minutes, or it could be days or longer before he was informed and was able to utilize the tracker to find us. Chloe wanted to do everything possible to minimize the chance of the latter.

And that’s where the remote to Helen’s vibrator came in. Besides the helicopter transponder, which Chloe had been unable to reach through the wreckage, it was the only thing that came even close to resembling something that could connect us to the outside world. After suggesting it around the fire last night, she interrogated me on how much I knew about it, which wasn’t much. I recalled what Erin had told me as she was packing my bag:

“It just has one slider for vibrator intensity ... no fancy controls like pulse. It won’t show you battery life or anything, but it’ll still work. As long as you’re in range of a cell tower, you can probably use the remote, too.”

“Sounds like magic,” I’d said.

“Money works miracles,” Erin had responded as she laid a couple of shirts on top of it.

“This would be one hell of a miracle,” I muttered, manipulating the slider on the remote again. My thumb was going to have permanent arthritis after this.

“What was that?” Chloe asked, taking a couple of steps closer to me.

“Nothing,” I said. “Have a nice day at work, dear.”

“I’ll bring you back a present,” Chloe said, actually giving me a soft smile. She turned, kipped the pack up on her shoulder, and strode in the vague direction of the cabin. “Tell Astrid I said hey.”

I watched Chloe leave, appreciating that well-sculpted ass poured into denim that clung tighter than it had due to their dampness. It was difficult to stay dry when the air was soupy. At least it wasn’t hot like some southern swamp.

Chloe was bantering with me. It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than the occasional dry snark I was used to. I knew she was quick-witted, but I didn’t think she could be funny and ... pleasant.

I also didn’t know she could fuck like that. For all her talk about conserving energy, Chloe was a machine who wouldn’t quit until I was too tired to go on. I’d always enjoyed Chloe’s company when she decided to do more than grunt, but this was a whole new level. If we weren’t roughing it so much and afraid for our lives, I might have enjoyed it out here with just the two of us, getting to know her better.

There was Astrid, but she didn’t count, and I’d essentially been ignoring her since I called her out for her attempts to manipulate me.

... which was something I probably needed to rectify.

Sighing, I stood up and headed toward the shelter to pick up a power bar and some water, manipulating the controls every few minutes as I did so. Then I made my way to the helicopter, calling out as I reached the entrance. It wasn’t like she could do much damage, but I didn’t want to scare her and perhaps risk her attempting to utter a Norwegian curse that would follow my children ... or whatever they did up here.

“You awake?” I asked.

A voice drifted from the helicopter a few moments later, “Yes.”

“Thought you might be hungry,” I said, leaning against the twisted remains of the chopper’s passenger door. I held up one of the rations as I peered down at the trapped woman.

“Starving,” Astrid said, and despite having the ability to display a great deal of emotional control, I saw the look of relief in her eyes as she focused on the food in my hand. It might have even been lust.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t come down last night to feed you. I kind of forgot about you.”

If what I’d said bothered her, she didn’t show it. “Chloe visited me briefly last night. She gave me a few more of those warmers, a cup of soup, and filled me in on her plan.”

“Oh?” I asked. It must have been after I passed out—which didn’t take long. After a day of scrounging and surviving in the wilderness, sleeping came quickly ... especially in the arms of a warm, naked woman. We hadn’t even had sex. “Good.”

“I get the impression she doesn’t like me.”

“She’s pretty intuitive,” I admitted. “She could probably tell there was something off between us.” I tore open the packaging and waited for her to wriggle an arm free of its confines to reach for the offered food, biting a third of it off and chewing it ravenously.

“Mm,” she said, her blue-green eyes sliding halfway shut as her jaw worked to chew her food. She laid her head back down and reveled in the taste before swallowing it. I watched the muscles in her throat work up and down. Her pale porcelain skin was marred by streaks of dirt and a little bit of grime, but she was still beautiful enough that I imagined my fingers wrapping around that throat. I could almost feel it against my lips.

As she lay in that position, swallowing her food, she looked an awful lot like she could have easily swallowed something else I gave her. Bobbi came to mind, lying across my bed with my hand wrapped around her neck as I slid my full erection past her lovely lips. I remembered the bulge in her throat pressing against my palm, causing me to throb as my brain bathed in lust-addled power.

I could have done the same to Astrid, and you know what? She probably would have let me. What was she going to do? Bite it off? Chloe and I were her only chance of getting out of here alive ... and she certainly deserved it after what she’d done to Bobbi. I licked my lips as my gaze traveled down that ivory tower to the hollow in her throat.

Maybe Astrid wasn’t the only monster out here, after all.

“It’s a stupid idea,” Astrid said, pulling me out of my momentary lapse in attention.

“What?” I asked.

“Chloe’s plan.” Astrid’s gaze dropped to the device in my hand. “That.”

“Chloe told you about that?” I asked, holding the remote up.

“The likelihood of Helen using it is remote,” Astrid said. “There isn’t much reason if the person with the controls isn’t around. Besides that, what are the chances that it’s sending a signal all the way out here?”

“Does your phone work at the cabin?”

“My father had cell towers installed out here five years ago, yes. But—”

“Good enough for me,” I said, cutting her off. I made sure Astrid could see the remote in my hand as I manipulated the slider again, drumming out the pattern. I gave her a look of defiance that suggested that I was enthusiastic about the idea, despite my misgivings.

“Helen was ordered to leave it in until ordered to remove it,” I said. “If it’s working, she’ll feel me banging out Morse code against her ovaries like they were African drums.”

Astrid gave a hearty laugh, which felt good. I didn’t enjoy hating people, and despite our disagreement about Bobbi or the way she had been trying to manipulate me, it was nice to see the young heiress acting more like the sweet, calming person I had met in the boardroom that day, rather than some predatory lizard person.

“That image,” Astrid said, reaching up to scrub at the corner of one eye. “Seriously,” she said, “What are the chances she would keep it in? Most people would pull it out after half an hour. It’s ill-advised for a woman to leave things like that for a week at a time inside her anyway.”