The sleepy body atop him moved, shuffled itself, then languidly sat up and stretched, the blanket pooling around her hips.
“How are you feeling, Poppy?”
“So good.” She drew out the vowel sounds, her hands smoothing along his skin underneath his vest. “You were awesome.”
“Glad you’re pleased.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she told him. “You know. In case you want to claim me again.”
It was an honest announcement, nothing contrived or forced. He smiled up at her. “Sorry, little subbie. I’m headed out of town tomorrow, and I’ll be gone for a couple of months.”
She pouted for just a moment, then smiled. “When you come back, maybe.”
“Maybe.”
But probably not. Cosmos was correct. He was spiraling. Had been for some time. Shadowlands was only a bandage for the wound, and not a very good one at that. He wasn’t going to find a solution here.
But where that solution would come from, he had no clue.
TODAY’S FORECAST: JUST ANOTHER SHITSTORM (TWO MONTHS LATER)
Glennon
She had never felt morestupid than now, when everything she thought she had been so smart about went to shit. Case in point—she was currently zip-tied to a chair in a room she’d never seen before, with no idea when or how she’d gotten here, and no idea where “here” even was.
Well, she had an inkling of an idea.
Odd as it was, this thought led to an early Psych 101 lecture during her freshman year of college. Some jackwagon next to her boasted he was a fighter. He’d never flee or freeze in the face of danger. The professor had smiled patronizingly at the young man and cautioned that no one ever really knew how they would react in any given situation until they were actually in it.
Well, the professor hadn’t been lying. Take the catalyst for the whole zip-tie scenario. When her lover outed her as an undercover CIA agent during breakfast, she never would have guessed she’d freeze in place.
She rolled her neck to try to work out some of the kinks from being passed out, sitting upright with her head hanging atan unnatural angle. Her shoulders ached from being stretched behind her, and she couldn’t feel her hands or fingers because her captors had cinched the zip ties extra tight. Her ankles didn’t feel much better, although at least they were bound together beneath her rather than to the individual legs of the chair.
Forty-five minutes ago, she’d woken, cloaked in darkness and silence. Since then, she’d allowed the fogginess of whatever drug she’d been given to dissipate and used the time to take stock of her surroundings as best she could. Given her current predicament, she was well and truly screwed.
If she was honest with herself, she struggled to believe she still lived. Guillermo, her lover… fiancé… target… whatever you wanted to call him, tended to shoot people who betrayed him rather than bother with the trivialities of who, what, where, when, how, and why. So if he had her brought here, he had a reason. But what was it?
She strained to hear movement, voices, or even traffic outside, but only more silence greeted her. She clearly wasn’t at home in the Buenos Aires compound. One of Guillermo’s safe houses? Most likely, but which one?
She shifted in her chair, a wince escaping as a splinter of wood stuck in the tender skin on the underside of her forearm.
Bingo!
Shifting as much as she could to the left so her arms slid more to the right behind her, she raised and lowered her wrists until she found the splinter sticking out of the back of the chair. She broke off the piece of wood, then notched the zip tie around her right wrist against the roughened spot. A divot had formed between the base of the piece of wood she’d broken off and the chair, so she ran the zip tie up and down, sawing quickly and efficiently through the plastic.
Once the tie broke, she gasped in pain. Her fingers and hands immediately screamed due to circulation having been cut off bythe too-tight ties, and it was all she could do not to scream as her shoulders fell forward, impossibly sore from being pulled back and behind her. She shoved aside the desire to feel sorry for herself. Yeah, her arms were uncomfortable, but she was now partially free, and being in pain beat dying any day.
Warmth ran down her arms to her wrists, then down her fingers, from where she originally cut herself on the splinter. She hissed at the sight of blood seeping from the abrasions. Clumsily, as feeling returned to her hands, she tore the flounced hem of her skirt off. Tearing that into thirds, and with the use of her teeth, she tied each strip around a wrist and her upper arm, hopefully to not only stanch the oozing blood from them but also give her at least some minimal protection.
Next, she attacked the zip ties around her ankles. Once free, she kicked off the designer heels on her feet and rotated them to get back circulation. Luckily, there were no open cuts there, merely hints at what would eventually be some lovely deep-purple bruises. No use worrying about a marked-up body. She’d rather be permanently scarred than dead.
Once again, her ears tuned in to her environment. In the absence of voices and general activity, there should be noise of some sort—creaking stairs, rushing water, humming air—but there was nothing. Just pure silence. Nothing environmentally from outside either. Red flag central.
Shakily, she stood and took tentative steps toward the window. Without touching the material, she put her eye to the small gap and saw it was nighttime. When she’d been cornered, it had been early morning. Prominent in the moonlight were the Andes, particularly Cerro Aconcagua, hulking against the dark sky.
Shit. How did they get her so far? When everything had gone sideways, it had been breakfast at the hacienda. Driving wouldhave taken up to eighteen hours. Did Guillermo fly her here in his private jet? Or was she unconscious for that long?
Eyes still on the vista, she bit her lip, worrying it as she considered what she knew. There was no guarantee the events leading to this moment had happened this morning. Right now, her view was limited. However, from what she could tell, the house was close to a body of water, and she could see the mountains in the distance. Faintly, she could make out a group of lights to the north, probably a mile or two away. Given the distance to the iconic mountain, she was across the country and further south, near Volcán Lanín. The only town even near there was San Martín de los Andes.
