And that did it. That f**king did it. No f**king way was this scumbag manhandling her and hitting on her in the nastiest way. In an instant, she launched her high-heeled foot forward and kicked him hard as a hammer in the balls with her sharp black heels. She sent him reeling backwards as he clutched his family jewels, crying out like a wounded animal. She joined him in the noise department, screaming as loudly as she could.
But the scream didn’t last long. Within two seconds, he had his slimy hand on her mouth, silencing her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday, 1:39 p.m., Las Vegas
“Hi. I’m sorry I’m not Julia, but I found this phone right outside the VIP room. Your number was the last one dialed, and it looks like you’ve been calling too,” the man on the other end said, and Clay wasn’t sure whether to kiss the phone or slam it into the wall.
He opted for neither. This was a clue and hopefully it would take him to her. “Where are you right now?”
“By the blackjack tables. I’ve got on a pink shirt. I walked past the VIP room, and the phone was on the ground with a ton of missed calls, so I grabbed it,” the man said, and Clay turned around and ran to the roulette tables, taking long, fast strides. At one point, a waiter called out to him to slow down but he ignored him, quickly finding the pink-shirted man with Julia’s cell phone.
“You found it by the VIP room?”
“Yes, poker room.”
Clay clapped him on the arm, scanned the tables quickly for signs of a VIP room along the walls, then spotted an arched doorway not far away. He took off again, gripping her phone while calling Brent with his own. His brother answered immediately and Clay didn’t wait a second.
“There’s trouble at the Allegro. I need you here right away. I need you to call your friends in security. I think something’s happened to Julia,” he said, and Brent responded with, “On it, now.”
He stopped quickly at the entrance, expecting to find throngs of players, high rollers engaged in big bets, maybe even some scummy dealer holding her hostage. Hell, he was prepared to stumble upon Charlie himself, looking like the cat who ate the canary, all cool and collected and ready to impose new terms of servitude. But the room was cruelly quiet—empty and eerie, as if it had been cleared out on purpose. Off in the far corner, he spotted a brown door that nearly blended into the wall, then he caught sight of something shiny on the floor. Something that looked familiar. Racing over to the object, he bent down and picked up Julia’s watch, and the hair on his neck stood on end.
Then he heard a muffled scream that made his blood turn to ice, and his heart drop with fear. His hand shot to the door handle, but it was locked.
Think. He patted his pockets, an instinctive act, as if he could find a key there to unlock this door. But the hotel key would do nothing. Credit cards never worked except in the movies. He patted his front pocket, touching the outline of the ring. There was no way a ring would open a door. Then he felt the size and shape of the necklace in his other pocket. It was his only chance to get in there before security came, and he had no idea when that would be.
Sometimes you just had to use the tools you had with you.
* * *
Neither one of them could speak. Her mouth was covered by his palm, and he appeared to be shrieking silently from the kicking, sucking in the cries his body must have wanted to emit.
The best part? He couldn’t even smack her with his free hand. He was grasping his balls with that hand while wincing and crying soundlessly. So, with his focus on his groin, she tried again to escape, pressing her thumb towards her pinky, aiming to make her hand and wrist as small as could possibly be, narrowing it, turning her hand into itself and tugging loosely, gently.
Her wrist inched past the metal the slightest bit, and her heart tripped with hope. The cuff wasn’t too tight. Maybe she could slip out of here.
Dominic was still moaning under his breath so she craned her neck behind her, trying to get a visual on the handcuffs to see if she stood a fighting chance of slipping out. An idea flashed through her head. A crazy notion, but sometimes crazy notions took hold of you in desperate circumstances, and with Dominic still nursing his bruised balls, she quietly dipped her free hand into her back pocket, slid off the top of the tin, and scooped out a healthy dollop of lip balm on the pad of her thumb, then began rubbing it on her right wrist.
Lubrication was a splendid thing.
It made objects fit in places they didn’t belong. It made engines hum. It made tight rings slip off swollen fingers easily. And right now, it might, just might, give her back the use of two hands. If the handcuffs had been locked any tighter, this would never work. Maybe he’d only wanted to scare her, not to hurt her, so he left a bit of give in the metal. Either way, she’d take those extra millimeters because that sliver of space was her chance for freedom. She was tempted to yank her hand out, but instead she spread the balm around her wrist, and—she’d have to send a thank-you note to her parents if she pulled this off because her hands were on the small side—started to slide it out.
The doorknob rattled.
She flinched involuntarily and glanced at the door. The silver metal was shaking, moving, clattering around. Someone had heard her, or them. She’d be out of here. But wait. What if it was a cohort? She needed to move quickly, free herself, push his stupid hand off her mouth and get the hell out.
The knob shook once more, and Dominic spun around, finally noticing the sound. He dropped his hand from her mouth, and she screamed. Like a heroine in a horror film, she unleashed a blood-curdling cry.
* * *
He’d seen enough movies, had watched the entire library of MacGyver three times as a kid. But you didn’t live in the movies. You lived in the real world. And just because a TV show hero could pick a lock with the filament from a lightbulb didn’t mean he’d be able to pull this off. But he knew the basics—and hell, what man with a brother didn’t know how to get in and out of rooms? For Brent and him, locking each other in or out of bedrooms, bathrooms, even the house had been daily pranks, and they’d both mastered the fine art of breaking and entering each other’s rooms. You needed to lift the pins from inside the lock. Most doors had five to eight, so the trick was methodically finding each one.
Fortunately, he had a Purple Snow Globe necklace. Though he’d lost his lucky tie, maybe it was luck that the Etsy seller had only had a T-bar clasp because a regular clasp would do jack shit. He needed this one, about the length of a bobby pin. He set to work sliding that into the lock, then listening for the sound of the pins falling. He wiggled it around, prodding, searching for the final pin. When the tension yielded a few seconds later, he knew he was almost home.