Page 41 of The Diamond Thief

“Point taken.”

“I’m going to walk out of this hotel room, and you are not going to follow me,” she says, shoving my head back down.

I allow myself a small smile, since my face is pressed into the pillow and she can’t see it. My voice is muffled as I say, “All right. I accept your offer.”

“Do not move,” she says.

“Not moving an inch.”

Jade obviously has been trained in knots. She jerks the sheet aside, and I can feel its cool lengths wrapping around my wrists. Within seconds she has me properly hogtied ankle to wrist.

She rolls me on my side so she can look me in the face. Now that I’m tied, she drops a lipstick tube next to me. “At least it’s called criminally red.” She laughs.

So it wasn’t a gun after all.

“This goes with me,” she says, picking up my phone from the side table. “Don’t expect to see it again.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “Thankfully, I can afford to have it replaced.”

She shoves it in her pocket and checks the knots one more time.

“I’m going to take this up with Antony,” she says. “If he was following us, obviously he’s concerned about how you are handling something. He definitely won’t like the idea that you drugged me.”

“I understand. Do what you have to do.”

She stares at me a moment, as if wondering why I’m so darn calm. I am careful to keep the smile off my face this time.

“Very well,” she says. “You probably won’t see me again. I don’t plan to go back to the Den.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to. If you have trouble finding a buyer for the swords, everything is already arranged.”

“Antony will know?” she asks.

I nod. “Antony will know. He’ll want a percentage.”

“He always does.”

She glances around the room, as if not quite believing it’s this easy.

Of course it’s not.

She backs away and heads to the door. The knob turns easily and she opens it, probably expecting to see a clear autumn sky and falling leaves and perhaps the parking lot of a small motel.

What she doesn’t expect is a steel wall.