“OK.”
I give her a quick smile and duck into the cool bathroom withavant-garde graffiti on the wall. There is a woman at the sink washing her hands whom I ignore because you ignore people in places like that. I go into the stall to do my business. When I come out to wash my hands I suddenly have a scarf around my face. It smells like rose perfume and is big enough to cover my eyes and my nose. Suddenly everything feels off-center. There is a loud sound like a door banging and then men's rough and calloused hands grab my wrists yanking my arms backward.
I feel the cold bite of steel and know I am being handcuffed. A large coat is thrown over my shoulders and I try to scream, but his hands are at my throat, cutting off my air. The man puts his other arm underneath my armpit and around my back to keep me standing. The scarf is taken away from my face and I am able to see that the woman has red hair, but my vision is too blurry to make out anything else. I don’t know what kind of drug they’ve given me, but everything feels like I am walking through water and drowning. My heart races and I panic.
“Oh my God,” the woman says with a high-pitched laugh. “We drank way too many mimosas I think. Fuck, am I drunk.” She makes a big scene as the man lifts me into his arms, tucking me against his chest. I struggle to get out of his embrace and to scream but he has me muscled too close to his shoulder. I think he might break my neck. Then I feel a cold round cylinder at the top of my thigh underneath the coat.
“Say anything, bitch, and I’ll shoot you,” he says, and I believe him.
As they take me through the restaurant I am afraid Mia will recognize me and get herself in trouble by confronting them but I am hidden by the camel-colored overcoat. The guy has one hand over my head and the other holding my legs with a gun pointed at my thigh. The woman beside me is making such a loud fuss about being drunk as we stumble through the restaurant that she trips over a chair.
“Is there a problem here?” I hear someone ask.
I don't remember anything after that.
Chapter Fifteen
Beckett
“Go over it one more time.” I look into my little sister’s red and bloated face as she tells me for the third time how she and Scarlett left without my permission to go to Panache in Midtown. Mia says again how Scarlett didn’t come out of the restaurant after they finished their meal.
“I’ve told you,” she says through her sobs, “now go and find her, God damn it.”
“The police are looking for her, but I need to hear this again. I want to make sure I have the entire story. Start with the beginning and don’t leave any details out.”
She chokes out another sob and tells me again.
Truthfully I don't need to hear her say it one more time, but I have a really hard time believing Scarlett is gone. I don't think she would run away from Mia, so more realistically, she’s been kidnapped. Someone involved with the darker side of CSS is trying to either teach me a lesson or muscle me into decoding my drug. Scarlett’s life is in jeopardy. They already know she is just a mistake; someone I'm married to to save face.
Since CSS assumes Scarlett is not the love of my life, I am sure they don’t expect me to involve the police. It is just going to be some strong-arming. She will probably be handcuffed, chained, and gagged somewhere and I'd have her back in a matter of time as soon as I agree to alter the drug.
The problem is as soon as I heard that Scarlett was gone, my stomach bottomed out. I did something very uncharacteristic of me and I threw up. I didn’t often have a visceral reaction but hearing that Scarlett's life was at stake affects me in such a way I am having a hard time getting my bearings. I need to hear the story one more time to see if I can pick something out of it that makes sense.
“I came to get her at around nine this morning. She was still asleep when I got here, and we talked for a minute. I told her that I was going to take her to brunch and she protested,” Mia makes sure I hear that.
“Did you say where you were going?” The only person who was home at the time Mia entered was my butler, Mr. Craig. Gloria was with Rayne, but her shift had ended, so I wasn’t sure where Gloria was at the time. I’ve been calling her mobile, but she doesn’t answer. For some reason last night she needed to work the overnight shift and switched with the temporary nurse.
“Yes, I told her Panache and we joked about you chaining her up and paddling her if you found out.” She starts sobbing again.
“Yeah, that joke hits a little too close to home.” Fuck. I hope to all hell she isn’t chained up somewhere.
“Then she breastfed Rayne and I held her while Scar got dressed. Gloria was with us, but we didn’t see anyone else until we got to Panache. I’d called them around seven in the morning and used your name to get us a table,” she says so faintly I hardly hear her. She’d left that part out the last two times.
“You did what?”
I try not to be livid with her, but fuck. Using my name in anything that has a database is dangerous because CSS has some of the best hackers in the business. They could have even been waiting for correspondence to pop up on their system with my name at any restaurant in the world. CSS surveillance systems are sophisticated; they could have someone just waiting to see my name pop up on any device, even a digital watch.
It would be extremely difficult to abduct Scarlett from my penthouse. Not only do I have security detail on the property, but I also have cameras and alarms everywhere. There were three in Scarlett's room, however, because I hadn’t told Scarlett that I was monitoring her I didn't turn the sound on.
Mia's story can be visually corroborated on video. I see her jump on Scarlett's bed while she is sleeping and the two of them do in fact talk. When they go into Rayne’s room Gloria is there for a moment,but then she leaves. Scarlett also leaves for a brief period and comes back dressed in a breezy pink sundress. She looks gorgeous on the camera and my heart stabs again.
I try to keep my voice even keel. “You didn’t tell me you used my name.”
“How else were we going to get into Panache?”
“Right. And go on…” The next part is what confuses me a little.
“Well, Scar saw a creepy guy staring at us, well, her and I looked back and he had henchman vibes, but while she went to the restroom and I paid the bill he stayed at his table and was still there when I walked out of the restaurant to wait for her. It was so crowded in there and loud that I just needed a little air. I didn’t expect that Scarlett would never come out.” More tears.
