“Easy there, Texas. I’m not that fast.”
He chuckled. “Give me a break. I know a working girl when I see one.” He took out a roll of money and peeled off a hundred dollar bill and slid it under her glass. “How about it?”
“Five hundred for the night,” she said, and plucked the bill off the counter and slipped it into her purse.
“Five hundred’s steep.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“You worth it?”
“Every cent.”
He laughed. “We’ll see about that.”
He was trying to get her cocktail dress off before they even got into his suite on the fifteenth floor, and it was only through experience that she managed to keep her clothes on in the elevator, then during the long walk through the hallway. By the time they were inside his room, she pushed him away and walked into the living room while he locked the door and began peeling off his own clothes.
It wasn’t until he was strutting after her in his boxers that he started to feel the effects of the drug she had slipped into his drink sometime before the last entrée. She had been a little afraid she hadn’t timed it correctly, but looking at him now as he stopped about ten feet in front of her and felt for his head with his hands, she guessed she had, after all.
“What’s happening to me?” he asked, his words slurred.
Allie sat down on the end of a sofa and watched him trying to shake it off. He had the look of a man who didn’t know what was happening to him and began groping the wall for a handhold. He ended up stumbling into an end table and knocked the vase off it before dropping to the floor on his butt.
“What’s happening—” he said, but never got the rest of it out before he toppled over to one side, his cheek hitting the carpeted floor with a nice, solid thump!
She opened her purse and took out the phone and called down to the parking lot.
Lucy answered on the first ring. “Are you decent?”
She smiled. “Bored yet?”
“Getting there…”
“Go get some food. I hear they have a pretty good buffet in the hotel next door.”
“Oh, I see, you get to enjoy the four-star hotel while I get stiffed with the inn next door, huh?” Lucy let out an exaggerated sigh. “Eh, I have to take Apollo for a walk anyway. He’s getting a little antsy in the backseat.”
“Get him something to eat, too.”
“Will this take long, or shouldn’t I have asked?”
“I’ll give you a shout when I’m done,” Allie said, and put the phone away.
It took almost two hours before he opened his eyes, about an hour after she had everything in place. He was still just in his boxers but was now strapped to a chair in the bathroom, his arms bound behind his back with plastic zip ties and his ankles similarly restrained. Duct tape covered his mouth, but his eyes were wide open and free to see her standing at the sink counter, looking at the contents of his wallet.
She glanced over and made tsk tsk sounds at him. “You lied to me, Glen. Your real name’s Mick Anderson.” She held up his driver’s license. “Out of Tucson, Arizona. You’re a long way from home, too.”
He said something, but the words were hopelessly muffled against the duct tape.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and picked something up from the sink. It was a small metal tube, but when she flicked it, it expanded into a sixteen-inch metal baton.
His eyes widened and his entire body went stiff.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, turning to face him. “‘She’s just a girl. She’s not going to do anything. It’s just a bad attempt at intimidation.’” Allie smiled at him. “I assure you, Mick, that this is going to hurt you way more than it hurts me. On the plus side, I’m going to enjoy every second of it.”
She took a step toward him and he attempted to retreat, but of course he barely moved against his restraints.
She stopped and pointed at the floor. “Oh, you’ll note the plastic I put over the floor. We wouldn’t want to make a mess for the hotel to clean up, now would we? Wouldn’t be fair to housekeeping.”
He started shouting something into the duct tape when she struck him on the shoulder, the thwack! of the metal tube slamming into flesh, echoing off the bathroom’s tiled walls. The blow left a thick purple bruise against his exposed flesh almost right away, and he screamed into the tape over his mouth and tried to move his arms but only ended up almost toppling sideways.
She reached out to steady him. “Easy there. Don’t want you to fall again. It was tough enough dragging you in here. You’re a big boy, Mick. I bet that comes in handy when you have to keep the girls in line, huh?”
His eyes teared up and he might have been begging, but it was hard to tell.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” she said, and landed a second blow—thwack! — against his left thigh.
He jerked his body up as if he was trying to leap off the chair, but of course he didn’t get very high before coming back down on the tarp. He couldn’t stop the tears from falling, but he must have realized pleading wasn’t going to work, so he resorted to firing daggers at her with large, bulging red eyes.
She leaned back against the sink counter and twirled the baton in her hand. “I know that look. You’re mad. I can see how you’d think I’m being sadistic, but I’m really not. I’m just trying to impress upon you the seriousness of your situation, Mick.”
Muffled sounds against the tape.
She ignored him and continued. “One of your johns gave you up, in case you were wondering. Told me everything. How you arranged young girls for him and his friends. You’re a bad man, Mick. A very bad man who is far from home, doing very bad things. And, oh, the guy you were waiting for? I found him outside the hotel and told him I’d call his wife if he didn’t turn around and never come back. I may or may not follow up with him after tonight depending on my mood. I guess I could always use more practice with this thing. Practice makes perfect, right?”
She pushed off the counter and squared up against him again. He tensed up and the anger in his eyes vanished in a blink, replaced by real fear. If she had any doubts, he convinced her when urine drip-drip-dripped from his boxers.
“Glad I lugged that plastic tarp all the way up here,” she said just before she hit him again, this time on the right arm.
Before he could finish screaming into the duct tape, she struck him a fourth time in the right thigh.
Ten minutes later, he told her everything.
The man who answered the motel door when she knocked on it had at least fifty pounds and five inches on her, but none of that did him any good when Apollo slammed into his chest and knocked him to the floor. The man was reaching for something in his jacket when Apollo growled and clamped down on his wrist. The big man let out a hellacious scream that probably woke up every single one of his motel neighbors.
Allie followed them inside and locked the door behind her. “Apollo, back.”
The dog let go of the man’s wrist and backtracked, but he snarled and showed his fangs to the man.
“I’d stay down if I were you,” Allie said.
The man grabbed at his bleeding arm while Apollo sat down on his hind legs five feet away and never took his eyes off his prey. If the man thought he had any advantages, he quickly realized that he didn’t and didn’t make any effort to get up.
“My hand,” he moaned instead.
“You’re lucky you still have a hand,” Allie said.
The man thought about replying but wisely kept his mouth shut. Allie crouched next to him and stuck her hand into his jacket pocket, the same one he had been reaching for, and took out a small pistol. She put it away then looked around, but there was no else in the room.