I stretched my arms over my head; even though there weren’t many people there to see it, I had to do it for myself, to be in the right mindset. “Yup. Ready to go.”
“Okay.” Vienna’s lips actually grazed my cheek. “Good luck.”
The breath I drew in was deep and shaky. “Thanks.”
Just like that, she was off. The next breath I drew in was a little less shaky. Gabe gestured me forward; together, we left the ballroom, walked down the glittering hallway into the lobby. I smiled automatically at the people behind the front desk. “Should we walk home?”
Gabe waited until we were walking through the big double doors out onto the street to respond. “Pom. It was pretty rude what you said back there to your parents.”
I blinked. We stopped on the sidewalk in front of the Afton. Somebody towing luggage had to go around us. “Excuse me?”
He cleared his throat. “It was pretty rude what you said back there to your parents. About it being hard to have a relationship with them.”
I placed a hand on my hip, making luggage dodge my elbow. “Excuse me? I thought you’d be happy to hear it, considering the whole argument was about, like, defending you.”
“Well, I’m not.” He shook his head emphatically. Somebody down the street honked as if in agreement. “Don’t bring me into the middle of the relationship between you and your parents. I don’t want to be blamed for making things hard.”
“I wasn’t blaming you,” I said. “I was just saying that—”
“It’s the same thing,” he said. I frowned at him, crossing my arms. “Even if you’re not blaming me, your parents will. Keep me out of it.”
I tossed my hair. It didn’t hit anything, but I straightened myself as if it had. “I’ll do what I want.”
“Fine. Do whatever you want. As usual.” He clenched his jaw. “I need some time to cool off. I’m going to take the subway.”
“That’s the worst way to cool off!” I called after him as he started walking away. His steps stuttered, as if he wanted to stop, but he balled his fists at his sides and kept going.
So be it. Nerves jangled in my stomach. I didn’t really wantto be alone right now, but I would walk home as planned. Alone.
Conveniently, I’d brought along cute glittery sneakers to switch out with my heels. I slung the heels over my shoulder as I walked north, as the tall buildings and bright lights of the hotels and stores on the south end of Central Park turned into the grand, stately prewar buildings of the Upper East Side. Doormen lurked inside, but few of them hung out beneath their awnings this late at night.
So when the gun barrel poked into my lower back and the rough voice said into my ear, “Come with me,” there was nobody there to notice.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Seven
For somebody in the process of being abducted, I felt remarkably calm. I had armed security, who was following at a safe distance; if things went too far, he’d step in. “Are you going to hurt me?” I asked over my shoulder. The assailant was wearing one of those sheer black stocking things pulled over his—because it was definitely a him—head. The nerves that had been dancing in my stomach zipped and zapped with electricity. The mask was a decent sign, right? It meant he was worried that I’d eventually identify him, once I was away from here and presumably alive? “I have a lot of money, you know. I can pay you.”
“I don’t want your money,” said the assailant, voice muffled. I didn’t recognize it, but that wasn’t surprising, considering the muffling. “By the way, I’ve taken care of your security guard. You didn’t think I’d be that stupid not to see him following, did you?”
I stopped, rigid in my tracks. The assailant bumped into my back, the gun digging in hard. He’d “taken care of” my security guy? What did that even mean? “Did you hurt him?”
“Don’t worry about that,” the assailant said, voice low and menacing. Not helpful: I was worried! Very worried!
I was suddenly much less remarkably calm. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you with my money?”
Apparently not. He said, “Walk left. I won’t hurt you as long as you cooperate.”
To my left was an opening in the stone wall that surrounded Central Park. Beyond it loomed the park itself, dark and ominous and spooky without its usual daytime or early evening crowds of people. The occasional standing streetlamp made pools of light along the paved paths, but otherwise there was nothing there. Nobody to rescue me.
Still, what choice did I have? I held my head high as I marched into the park, guided by the man with the gun. It felt like an out-of-body experience; I could almost see myself from above, still in my dress and my sleek gala hair, walking stiffly down the path and into the gloom. He steered me past a playground, where one of the swings creaked back and forth as if a ghost were kicking its legs, and into the dense thicket of the Ramble. Trees knotted together overhead, blocking any light from the moon. The trickling of a stream sounded somewhere in the distance.
My entire body was stiff with tension. The assailant released me, and I lurched forward, but I couldn’t see enough around me to find a safe place to land my feet. I spun to face him. It turned out that the mask he was wearing was sheer, one meant to shield him from cameras but not necessarily from human eyes. I could see him right through it. The steely blue eyes. The straight nose. The determined cut of his square jaw. That thing I’d thought earlier about it being a good thing he didn’t think I’d be able to identify him if I walked free lurched back unpleasantly into the front of my mind.
“Good evening, Kevin,” I said, trying not to sound weak and scared. Kevin Miller stared silently back at me, his lips pressed together. Hilariously—if anything could be hilarious right now—he was still wearing his gala tuxedo, though he’d also changed into sneakers. Black, of course. “What did you do to my security guy?”
Kevin pulled the black sleeve off his face with the hand not holding the gun, then sighed with what sounded like relief. It had to be hard to breathe through that thing. “I didn’t hurt him. He’s just been… detained.”
