I pause for a moment. And then it comes to me.
“Whichever one of us finds her first, and when I say find her, I mean physically reaches her first—gets her hand in marriage.”
Aiden and Luke look at me with what they probably want to be horror, but which we all know is interest.
“One of us has to marry her to make her legitimate in the household,” I say.
“I assumed it would be me,” Aiden says.
“Of course you did. But why should it be? There’s not one of us that has any claim to her more than another. She’s intimate with all of us. She’s attached to all of us…”
“Or not, given she ran the fuck away,” Luke says. He doesn’t get it. With someone like Ella, running away doesn’t mean anything. She ran for dozens of reasons, none of which had anything to do with how she felt about us. Running is the one thing I understand more than anything, because prey always runs.
I feel better, actually, knowing she chose that path. It means at her core she’s not a predator. I had my concerns, here and there, that we might still be getting played. There’s just something about the way I saw her after she gave me my own dose that has stuck with me. In the moment she left, she was more than triumphant. She felt so completely at home doing what she’d done. She was smooth, she was competent and, yes, she smirked and enjoyed the moment, but who wouldn’t. I have been unsettled since.
This is the first thing she has done since that moment that makes me comfortable.
“If you think about this in the right way, it could be framed as a test. Which of us knows her the best and can find her the quickest?”
Aiden and Luke look at each other, and back at me.
“You’re suggesting turning this incident into some kind of competition,” Aiden says. “Instead of treating it like a security concern.”
“Is it a security concern?”
“She could be anywhere. With anything happening to her.”
“All the more reason to find her quickly and stop complaining,” I say.
I am excited by the prospect. I enjoy the hunt. I know Aiden will be in favor. It is just sweet, sensitive, occasionally addled Luke who might decide to play moral compass for the entire family.
“I think you’re all sick, but that’s not exactly news, is it,” Luke says.
“The two of you are going to look very nice as groomsmen,” Aiden says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and retrieve my wife.”
“Hang on,” Luke says “We need to set up some parameters. It has to be fair. We can’t use the private jet, for example, because only one of us could do that. We have to have a set budget, too, and we have to put rules around contacts.”
He’s making rules, and that means he’s in.
I couldn’t be more pleased. This is going to be fun.
“Everyone has two hours of access to our sources and intel. We’ll roll dice to determine who goes first,” Aiden says.
“Not dice. We’ll tear up some paper and draw lots,” Luke says. “I don’t trust any dice you have.”
“You do the lots,” Aiden says indulgently.
Luke busies himself cutting up three identical pieces of paper and carefully pencils a number on each of them. He folds each of them precisely, trying his best to make sure they are all the same size when he’s done, then he puts them in a small bowl that held ornamental things in it.
We each draw a number. Luke gets the first go. Aiden is second. I am third. I am not worried. I wasn’t intending on using our intel anyway. I think I know exactly where our runaway bride would have gone.
“Wait. One last thing. Is it who finds her first? Or who catches her first? Because those might not be the same thing.”
“You have to get her in your custody and back at this house,” Aiden says. “Spotting her isn’t enough. We’re not birdwatchers. We’re going to marry her.”
“Deal,” Luke agrees. I also nod in agreement.
“I’ll leave you in here to do your two hours,” Aiden says. “A hundred and twenty minutes. That’s it.”
