Given the various near-catastrophes tonight, I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t noticed a piece of paper fluttering out of my pocket.
Okay. Proceed to Plan C.I started hitting every possible combination of buttons. 62534. 25643, and the like, wildly, again and again, all to no avail. A single drop of sweat raced down my face. The young men standing behind me were an almost physical pressure, their eyes boring into me like drills.
Okay. Proceed to Plan D.A window and a brick?
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second and turned around. “Uh, guys, we?—”
The door opened. Automatically. Which was odd because there was no one on the other side of it. I felt the sudden, ridiculous urge to hop back in the Porsche and leave the other two in a cloud of very expensive dust. But fuck if I had just gone through the dinner from hell for nothing, and if I thought I couldn’t face the accusing eyes of that poor slave boy before, how much would I loathe looking at my own face if I bailed out now? After all, these girls were just slaves, too. The police sure weren’t going to help them.Nobodywas going to help them if I didn’t help my own.
That’s why we were going inside if it killed me, and at this point, the chances felt like roughly 50-50.
I took a deep breath and led them into a hallway with plush carpeting and ornate wallpaper, doors concealed in the shadows of alcoves, each one a dark rectangle. The decor was about what I’d expected from the outside—1950s architecture updated to look contemporary, and nothing immediately nefarious. The staircase looked like gray marble, the steps winding up and out of sight, the rail adorned with detailed carvings that were unreadable in the dim light filtering in from some invisible source. I spotted an elaborate bar cart, which Felix made a beeline for, pouring a generous helping of tequila into a glass.
“Well?” he asked as he drank.
In my brief exchange with Lemaya, in which I’d explained the bare bones of my plan, she had directed me toward threespecific rooms upstairs. That, at least, still seemed valid. But I couldn’t just let them in there, could I? The ultimate goal, after all, was tohelpthese poor girls, which meant keeping them as far away from these clowns as possible. With a sigh, I started up the stairs. In the upstairs hallway, I paused, swearing I heard a noise fromsomewhere, though I couldn’t tell which room it might be coming from.
Felix’s eyes glinted sharply in the moonlight when he pointed out the three doors. “What, only one each? If anyone’s down for a trade after, let me know.”
Fucking hell. The first thing I would do if I ever got out of this was take a long, thorough shower.
I turned to Door One. If there was someone in that room—and I miraculously managed to both convince her that I wasn’t some depraved sickoandget her to play along—maybe she’d be able to give me the insider’s guide to finding my way—and hers—the hell out of here.
No such luck. The screaming started before I even opened the door.
6
HER
“Get it anywhere near me and I’ll bite it off!”
Yeah, I’d rehearsed that line, but how the fuck else was I supposed to have occupied myself for the past hour?
My arms were numb and stiff, almost frozen, and I was certain my wrists were rubbed raw by now, probably bleeding. I’d adjusted them hundreds of times until every possible position stung more than the last. Still, I strained against them, gritting my teeth and praying, somehow, for the sheer force of will to get myself out of this. Therehadto be a way out of this.
My heart picked up again as, in the gloom, the form neared. Tall, broad-shouldered. Well, shit. Whoever this perv was, he wasn’t, as I’d hoped, some scrawny weakling.
“I’m here to?—”
I screamed, loud enough to drown him out.
At once, a hand clapped over my mouth. A rough palm and metal that clanked on my teeth. Rings. Thick, ornate ones. Oh, a fancy boy, was it?
“Would you stop?—”
I started thrashingandscreaming. It shot shafts of agony through my poor arms, but thank God my legs still worked and he hadn’t tied them down. I kicked wildly, aiming for the money spot.
“What the hell? Would you pleasestop? I told you, I’m not going to—ow,fuck.” My kick must have landed somewhere good because his hand fell away from my mouth as he hissed in pain.
“Oh, you don’t like that?” I taunted. “Well, that’s too bad, you sick fuck. You’ll have to gag me, or this is what you’re going to get, all the way through. Is that what you want?”
When I’d had my wisdom teeth removed last year, I’d come out of anesthesia in tears, not knowing why I was crying, just knowing I had to cry. But no.No.I wouldn’t open my eyes, crying or any other way. Because not this man. This man wore a suit more expensive than anything my father owned. This man had a gold watch on his wrist in place of?—
With nothing but the weak shaft of moonlight cutting through the high window, I saw his beautiful face, blinking at me, every bit as shocked as I was. And before I could even take inthat, my senses were already full: full of that familiar calloused thumb wiping away the tears now flowing from my cheeks; the incredulous sun-chapped lips landing lightly on my mouth as if testing to see that I wouldn’t melt away.
And then, to my surprise, he just collapsed there. His moonlit hair spilled across my breast, the tension in his impossibly strong shoulders slowly crumbling as if he’d been bearing the weight of something far too heavy for far too long.
My only regret was that I couldn’t hold him. Not the way I was.
