He gaped at me.
“Oh.” I laughed and patted his chest. “I thought you meant you were someone famous. Besides being…you know.” I turned around, studying the group of cabins that were also starting to spin. Like trying to walk across an in-motion Merry-Go-Round. “I…don’t think I can walk that far.”
“Which one is it?”
“I’m… Maybe on the left?”
It was not the cabin on the left. In fact, it took us three tries and waking two fellow and mightily unamused guests before we—Rory—managed to locate my cabin. At some point he also located my keys and managed to get the door open, but I was out for the count by then.
I vaguely recalled coming around as I climbed, with his help, in between the chilliest sheets this side of the Rockies—or that side of the Rockies—to ask Rory again if he’d doctored my drink.
“Absolutely not. Why the hell would I do such a thing?”
“You lied about being in the FBI.”
“What?I didn’t—” He pulled himself up short. “No. Nope. We’re not having this conversation until you’re back to normal. Well, in your case, back to usual.”
I pulled the bedclothes up to my chin and said, “I hope I’m not poisoned.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “Do you think you’re poisoned? Should we try to get you medical assistance?”
“How should I know?”
“Well… But…”
I was giving it my careful consideration. “No. But I’m not knocked out either.”
He said darkly, “Not yet.”
I laughed manically and closed my eyes.
I was not laughing the next time I opened my eyes.
I blinked up at an unfamiliar wooden ceiling with an unfamiliar cobweb, and moaned, “The hell…?”
The good news was the bed, cabin, New Hampshire had stopped spinning. The bad news was the damage was done, and I barely had time to jackknife up and fling myself into the telephone-booth-sized restroom, where I was utterly, wholly, and absolutely sick.
It was brutal but fairly quick. When it was over, I rose shakily, relieved myself in the more usual fashion, splashed freezing-cold water on my face, rinsed my mouth, blinked at the bloodless, red-eyed, wild-haired reflection in the mirror, and lurched back toward the bed, where I got a worse shock.
Special Agent Rory Torr—I hadn’t dreamed that first part, right?—was sitting in my bed.
Inmy bed.
“How are you doing?” he inquired, which was surely a rhetorical question.
“W-what’s going on?”
Nothing fun, clearly, since he was completely dressed. And armed.
Rory, unreasonably composed for a man who’d slept in his clothes, never mind witnessing the ungodly vision of my return to consciousness, said gravely, “Good question. We should discuss it, if you’re feeling up to it.”
“Were you here all night?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“That’s part of what we should discuss. How much of last night do you remember?”
