Beneath me, very soft, sweet-smelling sheets caressed my skin, on a non-lumpy mattress.
Hotel?
I sat up.
A soreness in my arm registered with me, but I paid it little attention because all of the events from the day before started coming into my head—all but how I got here. I vaguely remembered a taxi ride to get away from that psycho guy... the money... shit. What had I done?
A quick survey of the room indicated that there was no one else in it. It didn’t look like a hotel. I couldn’t say why, it just... didn’t.
I scanned for my purse.
Nowhere in sight.
I looked down at my arm, and two very bad pieces of information came into view.
One, I was naked.
Two, I had an IV in my arm.
I jerked the covers back up over my body.
The light in the room was getting brighter, and a blue orb on the desk where it came from was fading to purplish pink. It was actually a very pleasant way to wake up—ifyou happen to know where you are, and you don’t have an IV in your arm, and you don’t have a set of memories that began with getting spanked by a random stranger, trailing off into a fog of taxi rides and money and strip malls...
I couldn’t see my purse. I couldn’t see my clothes. I didn’t want to get up and walk around, but what else was there to do?
I surveyed the IV situation. It looked pretty professional, which at first reassured me, but then I took for a bad sign. Drugged? Probably. Serial killer danger level was getting pretty high.
For a second,thatthought gripped me by the guts and I almost completely lost my shit, thinking about Hannibal Lecter and all that.
But I was fairly practiced at getting my cool back. Panic was not the remedy for anything.
Luckily for me, dealing with Lucy had put me in a lot of emergency rooms, where there was nothing much to do but watch. So I knew I could pull the IV drip out without too much hassle.
On second thought, I pulled out the whole thing. It hurt like a fucker, but if this crazy psycho, whoever he was, wanted to get more drugs in me, he’d have to start a new IV.
I felt like crap, I noticed, as soon as I stood up and wrapped the sheet around me. By then, there was a nice brightness in the room, so I had a good clear view of the fact that there was...nothing.Just a door to what was obviously a bathroom, which I scurried over to, because I had to pee.
Crisis or not, serial killer or no, one thing I couldn’t put up with is having to pee. So if this stop ended up being the difference between life and death, I probably wouldn’t totally regret it.
The bathroom was huge, and I couldn’t find the light, so I just hurried in. The light activated for me, to reveal ahugeroom with ahugetub and another orchid in a small window and not much else besides spotless white and brown granite. It looked like a spa.
The toilet was in a small room off to the side, again with the automatic lights, and as I peed, my sanity started returning.
Okay. I had to get out of here.
I didn’t flush, thinking this obviously high-class room was like my own apartment, where you were alerted to everyone waking up every time someone flushed the toilet anywhere in the building. I gave the small window with the orchid a look: the glass was frosted, and it was too small to bail out of, even if I broke the glass. An option, if all else failed—I could always hope that someone would see me waving.
And decide to call the cops.
Before Serial Killer did me in.
Yeah. Right.
I tried the door in the bedroom area next.
Of course it was locked. I tried again anyway, but it was as locked as locked could get. And the cold feel of it in my hands let me know it wasn’t some wood door I could kick at and get anywhere. I sat back down on the bed.
There was a large frosted window, which seemed to have changed from just opaque white to frosted as I had been sitting there, behind the orchid. It was big enough to climb out of, and it seemed like outdoor light was behind it.
