“I’ve been right here,” she said, her voice small with worry.
“For how long?”I snarled, my blood hot with agitation.
She shrugged her shoulders as she sat up from the floor.“Maybe fifteen minutes?Why?What happened?”
“Did you find her?”I could hear Daniel shout from down the hallway before pushing through the doorway.
Just then, Scott, Sloane, and several other guards barged in behind me, their sighs of relief collective as they all relaxed.Ignoring them all, I stormed my way across the room, reached down, and pulled Jaden up by her arm.
“What the hell!”she protested as she righted herself to stand.
“Turn around,” I told her, spinning her around and pulling her hair to the side.
Running my thumb along the edges of her collar, I made sure nothing was out of place or disturbed, no gouges or missing diamonds.When it was clear Jaden’s collar hadn’t been physically tampered with, I pulled out my phone and checked the signal again, only to find it had reappeared.The little red dot pulsed on my screen like it had never left, absolutely mocking me.
Looking back at me with wide eyes, Jaden sucked in a breath.“You lost my signal,” she suddenly stated.Releasing her shoulder, she turned to face me, a knowing smirk on her face.“How interesting.”
My gaze pierced hers, my jaw clenching as I stepped closer, forcing her to take several steps back.“This isn’t something you should find amusing, Jaden,” I growled, stepping in close until her back was against the wall.“If this signal is disrupted and I can’t find you, then the whole fucking world will burn down until I do.It doesn’t matter how many people I have to kill or how many lives I have to destroy.None of it stops until you are found.Do you want to be responsible for that much death and destruction?”
Jaden’s face remained perfectly passive, her jaw set and her body tense, but her frightened eyes gave her away.
“No,” she replied, her arms folding across her chest.It was a gesture I noticed she’d make when she was trying to regain her failing composure around me.
“Good,” I snapped, pocketing my phone.“From now on, keep the volume down on your headphones.You should have easily been able to hear the fucking uproar of this house when everyone was looking for you.Had we been under attack, you would have been completely unprepared.Don’tlet it happen again.”
I watched her throat work as she swallowed.“Okay,” she murmured.
After giving her one last warning look, I turned away and left her there with Sloane, my rage nowhere near as diminished as it should have been.Now that Jaden had been found and the signal returned, the next point of business was to figure out what the fuck had disrupted it in the first place.
As my guards filtered out of the parlor and back to their stations, I suddenly stopped in my tracks halfway down the hall, pausing as realization suddenly hit me.
Kayla had the device that could block the signal.
My eyes shot to Scott’s who was still standing just outside the door.“Arrange for an immediate search within a five-mile radius of my entire property.Search the water, the sky, all of the nearby cities.Not one stone goes unturned.Do it now.”
Scott cocked a brow as he pulled out his phone to initiate the search.“For what?”he asked.
“For all of them,” I answered.“Any one of them could have that cloaking device.I doubt they would bring Kayla this close, but it could lead us to the rest of them.”
Scott nodded as he turned away to make the calls and arrange the search.They had to be within one square mile of the signal in order to disrupt it.They were so dangerously close to finally losing this little game they’d foolishly decided to play with me.
“You think Jason has the cloaking device for Jaden’s collar?”Daniel asked.
I glared at my brother who was speaking entirely too loudly in this hallway.
“If he found Kayla, then yes,” I answered firmly.
Daniel’s eyes narrowed for a moment and then snapped back toward the parlor we had just left Jaden in.“And how the hell do you know Jaden wasn’t in on this little experiment?!”he nearly shouted as he pointed down the hallway.“She could have?—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Daniel,” I growled as I stepped closer to him, ready to haul him into the next world.“Before I shut it for you.”
He turned to snarl at me.“Why are you being so willfully blind to this!If what you told me is true about Matt and Jason working together, then we could end this right now by?—”
Slapping my hand over his mouth, I slammed him into the wall, absolutely ready to obliterate him.Daniel had never been so rash before, so careless in his thought process, not to mention increasingly defiant.Clearly, this TBI of his really had altered his brain chemistry.And that was becoming a problem.
“If you say one more fucking word,” I threatened, but then I heard a pair of light footsteps enter the hallway.
“What’s going on?”Jaden asked from down the hall, Sloane right behind her.