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Three days after the first run in the desert Cole disciplined me for asking again about my father.
"I've promised I will tell you if there's any change, for the better or for the worse." He stood in front of me, already gleaming sweat from our run. His chest was bare and pale white. He neither burned nor tanned but seemed to glow at times when we worked out together. Shirtless, with the sun behind him, he looked like some kind of minor Greek god.
"He's my father. You have to understand why I – "
The warning look was enough to make me stop. There hadn't been a repeat of the night of the crop. I'd healed from that, and there'd been nothing to heal after the spanking, which had been thorough and embarrassing but not like the crop. It had hurt because his hand was hard and the cropping had been the night before.
But I wasn't stupid. I stopped.
In truth, information filtered into me. I'd hear things about a bust in Washington State. Or just about drugs in the U.S. As more people died from the opiate epidemic the more determined I was to follow through with Cole's program and get back out there.
The drug he was giving me was working. It was natural, with no side effects and only a brutally ugly taste, like drinking dirt.
Now I accepted what he told me about no news is good news and not pushing and I pulled back.
Far enough to be convincing.
And bided my time.
Three days later Cole left the office right outside my cell open.
The cell he was keeping me in was a suite of rooms, a white bedroom with the bed fitted with shackles and tie-downs, a luxurious bath and insane closet, and a sitting area near barred windows.
It was still a prison and I was still subsisting on no news is good news. So when he left the office he used, between the bathroom and closet and front door unlocked, I watched.
That day he came back and continued our yoga practice, remembering to lock the door on the way out. He appeared unaware of what he'd done but I didn't know if I believed it.
The fourth day I chose to. Out of my mind and bored, tired of working out, healed and stupid enough to have forgotten what I'd gone through, I watched when he left the office open. Then as he left the cell altogether and the guards were pulled away as they often were once the door was locked.
The office wasn't locked.
I gave him five excruciating minutes, then ran across the floor to the open office.
It was small and utilitarian. A safe on the wall. I knew better than to waste my time on it. The long desk was neat, very little on the surface. The PC was locked down and password protected.
But the landline was a blessing.
I checked once for any sign of Cole, then settled behind the desk with the phone.
I tried my dad first, but his cell went to voicemail. Mom second, and the same thing. While I'd come in here for a little bit of resistance and a little bit of information, now I was scared, imagining a dozen unlikely scenarios in which my father was back in the hospital or worse, dead from some unforeseen problem.
Mark would logically be at work or working out or for all I knew, on a date.
But he answered.
"Mark! Thank god."
I could hear his initial flat tone greeting turned into avid interest. "Annie? Is that you? Oh, my god, are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I lied and I had a huge smile on my face just talking to him. He deserved so much better, a full time fiancée who didn't run off to be with some other man and get herself punished and live some weird wild life.
But I loved him. I'd figured that out, at least, for whatever it was worth.
"Are you all right?" I asked him.
He snorted. "That's my line. I'm not the one undercover."
I bit my lip and didn't answer that. What I was doing could be considered being undercover.
