Page 121 of Disarming Caine

Two. What was two? Where was I?

"How long will she be like this?" Angry woman. Refined speech.

"You think I've done this before? He said it would last an hour.” Angry man. Petulant. Argumentative. “But I don’t know if that’s from when she took it or when she passed out.”

“Did she take the whole thing?”

“I don’t know!” he shot back. “I hurried out to the corridor as soon as I gave it to her. You were close to the ballroom. You should have watched.”

Two glasses of wine and a glass of champagne, my ass.

I tried opening my eyes, but the lids refused to move. My head weighed at least fifty pounds.Don’t move it, anyway. Don’t give yourself away.

"You’ll need to carry her downstairs when the car arrives." The woman was still angry but wouldn't take the actions herself. She was in charge.

“Carry her? I told you we should have gotten a room on the first floor.”

“You fool. We can’t book a room around here. Even if there were any left on New Year’s Eve, we’d be caught.”

“We should have used a maintenance closet.”

She made a noise of disgust.

I surveyed my body, checking for sensations out of place. The headache. Sore neck from my head lolled forward. Something holding my mouth shut.

Something else was wrapped around my forearms. Wide, flat, and tight around the tops and sides, a narrow bar underneath. Duct tape holding me to a chair? Then it must have been duct tape over my mouth.

Oh shit.

My heart rate picked up and I held my breaths as long and slow as I could.

My stomach had settled with no food left in it, but energy jostled inside.

Relax, Sam. Observe.

One leg was covered, likely with my dress, the other cooler, so just covered by the stockings. Lower legs taped to the chair, too.

“When’s he going to arrive?” she said. “We’ve only got so much time to deal with this and get to the house for the safe.”

"And to pick up the paintings." The sound of clattering nearby, then water running.

“I told you that wasn’t happening anymore.Thiswill get us the real money and we won’t be indebted to those lunatics.”

Feet. Only one shoe on. Was the other still in that corridor? Would someone find it and figure this out?

I managed to crack an eye open, only enough for a blurry view of my lap and the floor. With my head down, that wouldn’t give me away. The carpet—it was the same pattern as inside the hotel. Antonio’s cologne in the air. He wasn’t in the room; it was lingering from when we’d been there earlier.

What was two? Right. Orient.

I was in our hotel room. Duct taped to a chair. The man or the woman had put something in my drink and he’d brought me up here.

My phone buzzed somewhere in the room, in the distinctive pattern that indicated a text from Antonio. My clutch was here. Of course it was. They’d used my key card to get in. If I could get out of the chair and find the phone, I could call for help.

The tap stopped and the man must have grabbed the phone, as he said, “She just got a text from the boyfriend. He wants to know where she’s gone.”

The woman said, “Text him back. Say she’s got a migraine or something.”

“Phone’s locked.” He hummed. “It’s facial recognition.”