Free Fever by Maya Banks

her.”
    Without waiting for a response, Jace turned and left the room. He got on the elevator and stabbed
    the button for the lobby and simmered with impatience as he waited for the doors to close.
    Yeah, Ash was going to think he’d lost his fucking mind. Maybe he had. He certainly couldn’t
    explain this . . . He didn’t even know what to call it . Obsession?
    He knew it wasn’t simple lust. He’d experienced that plenty of times. Lust was uninvolved. Lust
    was about sex and sating a need. Physical release with no emotional involvement.
    And yet how could he possibly think he had an emotional connection to Bethany when he knew
    nothing about her?
    He stepped off the elevator with purpose. She may have run, but he was damn well going to haul
    her back.
    Half an hour later, he was ready to put his fist through a wall. After questioning every single
    employee who may have seen her, he’d gotten exactly nowhere. The doorman reported seeing her
    walk out of the hotel just after dawn. She hadn’t asked for a cab, hadn’t hailed one herself. She’d
    simply walked away.
    Without a fucking coat.
    It was half raining, half snowing and it was goddamn cold. And she’d walked out without a coat.
    What frustrated him even more was that he wanted to track down the catering service and demand
    information on Bethany, but it was Sunday, which meant that until Monday, he was screwed.
    chapter seven
    Jace got out of his car after telling his driver to circle and wait and then pulled up the collar of his
    coat to prevent the drizzle from sliding down his neck. He hurried toward the women’s shelter that
    was sandwiched between an older Catholic church and a soup kitchen on the fringes of the Hell’s
    Kitchen neighborhood.
    It would be getting dark soon, a fact that aggravated him, not because of the approaching evening,
    but because it had taken him all day to gather the information he wanted. And it had taken until now to
    track her down.
    The only information the catering service had on file was her full name and this address. Had
    Bethany listed another employer as her contact information? He could have called the shelter to get
    information, but the moment he’d gotten the barest hint of where she might be, he’d left his office and
    had come straight here.
    He ducked inside the door and shook off the rain. An older woman looked up from where she sat at
    a desk a short distance from the door, alarm in her eyes. He supposed it wasn’t an ordinary
    occurrence for a man to burst into a women’s shelter, and if his employees were anything to go by,
    he’d been brooding and moody the entire day so he was sure he didn’t look very friendly.
    “Can I help you?” she asked as she hurried forward.
    His gaze swept the interior, taking in the smallness, the sparseness of the room—and it was merely
    a room. Cots filled most of the space. There was a sitting area toward the back, with a dilapidated
    couch and a few odd chairs situated around a television.
    There were maybe ten women in view and he was struck by how subdued they were. They ranged
    in age from very young to quite old and they all had a tired, hopeless look to their eyes that made his
    gut seize.
    Was this what his Bethany did? Did she volunteer her time here and then work odd jobs when she
    could for extra money? He felt a surge of pride. He remembered her reaction to the notion that they
    were somehow paying her for sex. And she hadn’t stuck around when it had to be obvious to her that
    he and Ash had money. Ash had been right about one thing. It was usually them ending things with
    women. Never once had they had a woman walk away from them with no expectation for what she
    could gain monetarily.
    Even with his coat on, the inside of the shelter felt chilly to him. His gaze narrowed when he saw
    that most of the occupants wore more than one layer of clothing. Even the older woman standing in
    front of him had a jacket and gloves on.
    “Why the hell don’t you