Authors: Kristen Brockmeyer
It may have been
one that Frank Lloyd Wright would have felt right at home in, but I recognized a cage when I saw one.
Two seconds later, everything came flooding back to me—Chance inert on the floor and Fisher slumped in th
e chair—but everything seemed distant, like it happened to someone else and I was too tired to even cry about it.
Gingerly, I scooted to the edge of the bed, hanging on to the hem of my skirt and feeling woozy. When I woke, the dress had been demurely covering my knees, but the thought of that whack
job or one of his men arranging it that way while I was passed out creeped me out beyond words. I shuddered, thinking of the assessing look Dominick had given me in Fisher's room.
Dear God, Fisher
. Now the fear was sharper, piercing through the fog in my brain. Was he dead already? Along with Nate and Tanya? Obviously things hadn't gone according to plan on their end. And Chance, facedown on the floor… I couldn't go there.
There was a light tap on the door, and I stumbled across the room to heft the hairbrush. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. My hands trembled so hard I almost dropped it as a lock clicked and the door swung inward on silent hinges.
I let out the breath I'd been holding on a long sob and dropped the brush when Julian walked in, the door clicking shut behind him. He looked just fine, dressed nattily in a suit and tie, and even though his eyes were exhausted and worried, a smile shone broadly from his furrowed face.
He held out his arms to me and I lurched toward him.
"Chickie."
The smell of peppermints and menthol surrounded me
. I buried my face in his coat and sobbed while he held me tight and rubbed my back in soothing circles. "We're going to die, aren't we?" I finally gasped, pulling my face away from his now-soaked lapel.
He handed me the red handkerchief that had been tucked in his breast pocket and I scrubbed at my face, breathing deep and feeling a little better despite my certainty that we were going to meet an awful, bloody death any time now.
"Now, settle down," Julian said firmly, as I blew my nose into a square of fabric that was probably Egyptian cotton and disgustingly expensive. "We probably are, but it won't be for a couple of days anyway. Dominick gave orders to let me come in to see you for a few minutes, but one of the guards is going to be here soon to take me back to my room. He said something about having to go attend to some business matters and to—" his face hardened in disgust and he stopped.
"
What? He told you to what?"
"
To tell you he'd welcome you personally when he gets back."
I swallowed back a quick surge of bile. I was pretty sure I wouldn
't like whatever Dominick's welcome entailed.
"
What about Chance and the others? Do you know what happened to them? Where we are?"
Julian shook his head apologetically.
"I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure we're in a house somewhere, but they doped me with something on the plane here, so I don't even know where here is. I've pretty much been left alone, except for when someone brings in meals on trays— complete with meds, so you don't have to worry about me keeling over any time soon. I've also got books and records, but with the lack of TV, I've missed a few episodes of
Young and the Restless
, I'm sure," he commented with a dry chuckle. "My room doesn't have windows either and all I've seen of the place has been a hallway full of doors with a stairway at the end."
My brain was skittering around, looking for possibilities and trying to formulate plans, but I still felt dulled from what I now figured was the same thing Julian had been drugged with and my eyelids were so heavy
. I felt like keeling over, myself. I heard footsteps in the hallway, and hugged Julian again.
"
I think someone's coming," I whispered in his ear, in case the room was bugged. "Do you know how many guards?"
He
squeezed me back and said aloud, "Try to get some rest." In an undertone, he added, "I've only seen three. Two big, dumb oxen, and a woman once, who brought in my pills. She looks like one cold fish, though, so something tells me to be glad I didn't see more of her."
I nodded and reluctantly let him go as the door opened again.
One of the men who'd been in on the ambush in Fisher's room, the one with the Tommy gun, stuck his head in the doorway. He had short brown hair, deep-set dark eyes and a set of pitcher-sized ears that looked designed for flight.
"
Let's go, old man. Back to your room."
Julian stood with his usual dignified grace and gave me a last look over his shoulder as he was ushered out. The door closed again and silence settled into the opulence around me. I couldn
't even hear traffic outside. Feeling so utterly isolated made me want to jump out of my skin, so I crossed the room to the record shelf and pulled one out at random. The Anderson Sisters smiled up at me brightly from the cover, and when I turned the machine on and dropped the needle down, the first notes of
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
tinkling out made me feel a little better. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was in my own living room, with my own beat up record player. My record player that had met an untimely end along with all of my other precious junk treasures. Except—I leaned down and squinted—for my Sinatra records, apparently. Either those were my stolen albums, or in an amazing coincidence, Dominick had scored a copy just like mine that
also
had a Salvation Army price tag covering the "R" in the title,
A Swingin' Affair
.
Abruptly, another wave of weakness hit me and I shuffled back toward the bed like an old woman. Kicking off my flats, I climbed beneath the covers. As the Andrews Sisters sang about their military man, I pictured Chance
's face in my mind and clutched the pillow tightly.
A clatter woke me, and I jolted upright in bed, gripping the covers to my chest. It was Big Ears, and he was carrying a silver breakfast tray. Without so much as a word, he carefully arranged a red rose on the salver with his thick fingers and then left the room, never even glancing my way. The slide of the lock snapped firmly behind him.
My stomach growled at the smell of fresh bacon, and I got up. At this point, I figured practically, I might as well eat whatever had been sent. It wasn
't like Dominick was going to poison me before he'd gotten a chance to rape me, murder me, and fit me with size 8 cement shoes.
Pushing my hair back, I sat down at the small table. Dominick obviously believed in breakfast being the most important
—or at least the most luxurious—meal of the day. Crisp bacon was nestled beside buttery scrambled eggs that still wafted steam. Two lightly golden pieces of sourdough toast lay next to a small dish of plump, blushing red strawberry halves. There was even a small, ribbon-wrapped box of Godivas, and a delicate glass of champagne next to a shorter tumbler of juice. Great, the bastard was wooing me with food and Mimosas.
I wolfed it all down, setting aside the
Godivas for later and leaving the champagne untouched. My head had cleared after sleeping, though I wasn't sure if I'd been out for an hour or three days, and I wanted to keep it that way. I had some escaping to do.
I prowled through the room, looking for air vents, deadly weapons, or escape hatches,
and tried to keep Chance and the others out of my head. The all had to be alive. I was sure that Dominick would want to toy with everyone a bit more before his big dénouement, and if they were here, which I desperately hoped, they were probably in other rooms nearby. I'd hit my fists as hard as I could against all of the walls in the room, hoping at the least to get some kind of a response and at best to suddenly find superhuman strength and knock a me-sized escape hole, but from the dull thumps and sore fists that resulted, I figured the walls were heavily soundproofed and reinforced.
My inventory left me with nothing more deadly than a toothbrush, some bottles of expensive French perfume, and the va
se on the table. If I were MacGyver, I'd already be out of here, but since I was just plain old Lucky MacFarlane, I was shit out of luck. I did, however, have the means to smell good and keep my teeth clean while I was confined. I briefly considered hiding behind the door and beaning Big Ears with the vase, but I figured that was too clichéd to ever work. I also considered dressing in one of the vintage evening gowns in the wardrobe and pulling a Mata Hari—tricking Big Ears or his compatriot with a seduction act and then slicing them up with a broken bottle of Worth perfume—but I discounted that one as stupid, too.
After racking my brain until it hurt, I still didn
't have any ideas. Lacking anything better to do, I showered quickly and changed into the least flashy outfit in the wardrobe. The Chanel dress was deep red with a full skirt, nipped in waist and ballerina neckline. A rose was outlined on the bodice with tiny silver Swarovski crystals. He might have been obsessed with the 1940's, but Dominick obviously didn't know enough about women's fashion to claim historical accuracy. This one was early 1950's, postdating his current favorite decade by a few years. It was also pretty, but the fact that it fit me perfectly completely weirded me out.
I didn
't want to use the brush, since there were blond hairs already tangled in the antique boar bristles, so I just knotted my hair in an unflattering bun and mentally added "hairpins" to my weapons roster. Then I put on my shoes on, cranked up the phonograph with an old Bing Crosby album and sat on the bed to wait.
The album had almost played through when the doorknob rattled again and my pulse spiked. This was it
—I still had no freaking clue what I was going to do, but dammit, I was going to do something.
Big Ears came lumbering through the door with another tray.
I smelled pork chops.
"What the hell is that," I shrieked, and he jumped, looking at me for the first time.
"
What?" He looked around wildly, startled, and his baffled expression would have been hilarious under any other circumstances.
"
Is that pork?" I demanded and stalked over to where he had paused in confusion while lifting the silver lid from the tray of food.
"
Uh…"
"
I can't stand pork!" I screamed and grabbed a fork, stabbing it into his other hand where it rested on the table.
We both drew in a deep, shocked breath and stared at the fork where it stuck out of his hand, still quivering from the force I
'd used. Blood welled up around the tines. I swallowed hard. Puking would ruin my absolutely messed up in the head, nonexistent plan. I looked up into his face and saw the exact second his bewilderment turned to rage.
Crap
, here comes act two
, I thought, and grabbed the empty breakfast tray, sending dishes flying everywhere. The tray was solid silver and weighed a ton. Big Ears started to lunge for me and I gripped one end of it hard with both hands and swung it into his face with everything I had. Bone crunched and blood spurted when the tray connected with his nose. He bellowed in pain and confusion. But, unlike I had imagined in the nanosecond before I'd hit him, he stayed conscious and upright and livid with a strong urge to kill me.
Oh, God.
Act three? What's act three? The Mata Hari?
I scrambled around the table as he grabbed for me, yelling incoherent curses that were becoming muffled around the obscene swelling in his face. He switched directions and headed the other way. We were playing freaking ring-around-the-rosie and I was going to die.
Biting back a moan, my eyes fixed on the huge vase between us.
Cliché or not, it was my last option.
I dodged the meaty fist that swung at me from across the table, taking the bruising jolt to my shoulder instead of the side of my head that it was meant for, and stumbled. Fear greasing my muscles, though, I recovered my balance and kept moving like a spider monkey in front of an especially murderous rhinoceros. I scooped up the vase mid-flight and grabbed the roses from the top with one hand. Big Ears had switched direction on me and was moving clockwise again when I crushed their fragile blooms in one fist and lashed their stems hard across the side of his face. Crimson petals scattered in an explosive burst and he howled and grabbed at his eye where the thorns had bit deep into tender skin.
Awkwardly, I flipped my grip so my fingers were hooked tightly in the ceramic neck. I grunted and heaved the twenty pounds of porcelain over my head, landed a brutal kick to his knee that felt like it broke three of my toes but had the advantage of making him temporarily stumble, and then brought the vase crashing down on his head with all of the strength in my terrified body.
I leapt back and watched,
winded and sore, as Big Ears made a rumbling sound deep in his throat and collapsed, landing a few inches from my throbbing toes in a heap.
Oh, there was no way that had worked. I stared at his still form on the floor for a few seconds, my mouth gaping in shock. Then, still flying on adrenaline and disbelief, my heart nearly bursting and a coppery panic taste in my mouth, I lifted one of the chairs. With shaky arms, I slammed it down against his prone back, WWF
-style, because I believed in hedging my bets. The chair splintered into three pieces but Big Ears didn't even twitch.
Panting and searching wildly around for another weapon, but finding only a pork chop, I turned back to the where Big Ears
was still sprawled on the floor, facedown. He still wasn't moving.
And unfortunately, I didn
't see a ring of keys conveniently hooked to the back of his belt. My instincts were hollering to
move, move, get out!
C
rap. I was going to have to roll him over.
Shaking and quivering wit
h the urge to throw up, I hooked my fingers under his outstretched arm and tried to pull. Except for the arm I was yanking on, he didn't even budge, and I let it flop back to the floor. Moving around to his other side, I grabbed fistfuls of his suit jacket, and wrenched so hard on it, a side seam ripped. Damn it! I turned around to find something to kick in fury and saw a ring of keys on the floor a few feet away. Hysterical laughter bubbling in my throat, I snatched them up and moved cautiously toward the open door.
Behind me, Bing Crosby sang cheerily, advising me to accentuate the positive.