Page 86 of High-Priority Asset

They entered the stairwell. Cupping her shoulder with his free hand, he steered her up the stairs. Not down, out of the hotel and into a car.

“Where are you taking me?” She clutched her purse against her belly and used the noise of their footfalls to cover the sound of the zipper as she inched it ever so slowly, in the slightest degrees, trying to get the opening wide enough for her hand without him noticing.

“It’s a surprise.”

She swallowed the scream churning in her belly, rising in her throat, and reminded herself there were cameras everywhere. Someone in security would see this, find it odd, report it.

They reached the landing one floor up and he opened the door.

In the hallway, there was a family leaving their room. Two kids were fighting, a girl and a boy, maybe eight and ten respectively. The boy hit his sister and their father snatched him up by the collar and reprimanded him as the mother closed the door. The girl smiled and stuck her tongue out at her brother behind her parents’ backs.

A similar incident from her past flashed in her mind with her and Miguel. Emilio had been furious that Miguel had hurt her one day and when he’d been punished, she’d remembered feeling special, untouchable.

I have a brother.

“Keep quiet unless you want kids to die,” Chad whispered to her.

The family seemed a million miles away as they walked to the elevator, not noticing them at all.

Chad stopped her in front of the first door on their left. Took out a key card and inserted it. The green light flashed, the door unlocked, and he shoved her inside.

Something creaked under her feet. She looked down. There was a thick layer of plastic covering the carpet. Industrial strength.

She stepped deeper into the room. Plastic covered the surfaces in the bathroom. More plastic had been placed over the rest of the carpet, the dresser, nightstands and the bed.

A large suitcase sat near the window.

Dear God. He intended to kill her.

Don’t panic.

Too late. Her mind was being sucked down a dark vortex, chased by pure terror.

“There’s security footage of us together. You can’t,” Isabel said, her brain reeling. It was all she could do not to beg, plead, offer to do anything he wanted, if he wouldn’t go through with this.

He chuffed a smug laugh behind her back. “The security guards here make fifteen dollars an hour. I just paid two of them fifteen thousand each to ensure technical difficulties of the security cameras. Nothing is recording.”

She spun around. Chad had put on a plastic coat and had the gun aimed at her head.

“I’m sorry...about everything,” she said, lowering her eyes, recalling the time when she’d come out of the bathroom and overhead Mindy speaking in private to Brett. “Let me make it up to you.”

The gun lowered to his side, and she looked up at him. Chad stepped closer with his brow furrowed. “If you’re sorry, prove it.”

“Take off your clothes,” she said, digging her fingers in the leather of her purse, rubbing the outline of the stun baton. “Make love to me.”

Chad backed up to the edge of the plastic near the dresser. The opening of her bag wasn’t wide enough yet to get the baton out and his gaze was pinned to her, watching her every breath. He pulled the plastic down and placed the gun inside the bottom drawer. Then he replaced the thick covering.

Even if she got away from him, he’d overpower her before she’d get the gun.

Keeping the plastic coat on, he reached underneath it and removed something hidden behind his back. Steel glinted in the dim light from the drawn curtains. He tossed a large hunting knife with at least a nine-inch serrated blade on the floor in the corner of the room near the suitcase.

She’d be crazy to go after it and that was probably exactly what he was counting on.

Chad slipped the strap of her purse down her arm and tossed the bag onto the bed by the pillow. Her chest rose and fell with tight, anxious breaths.

Isabel kicked off her shoes, realizing at some point that she’d need to run, sat on the bed, scooting up, and lay back as close to her purse as she could get.

Chad pushed her down against the mattress, the eerie sound of the plastic creaking underneath her. Grasping her jaw, he kissed her aggressively, almost violently.