Acting on pure instinct, Nadia slid off the edge of her bed and rolled into the deepest shadows beneath it. The noise of the mattress springs seemed loud as a scream, and the thump of her body hitting the floor sounded like a gunshot, but she knew both were adrenaline-fueled illusions.
Nadia watched from under her bed as her door was slowly, carefully pushed open, letting in an ever-widening beam of dim light from the hallway. The light hit the edge of the bed, but couldn’t penetrate the shadows beneath.
Nadia breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw Athena step through the door. She was letting paranoia get the best of her.
“Nadia?” Athena asked in a hushed voice as she frowned at the bed in puzzlement.
Nadia almost answered. But then she noticed that Athena was in her nightgown and robe, and her feet were bare. The stealthy footsteps that had triggered Nadia’s internal alarm had definitely not come from bare feet.
There was someone else out in the hall.
“Nadia?” Athena asked again, knocking on the bathroom door and then peeking in when there was no answer. Nadia noticed that she used her left hand to knock and open the door, and that her right hand was buried in the pocket of her robe.
Hiding something?
Someone else stepped into the room, a tall, sturdy-looking woman dressed in the pants-and-blazer uniform of the Sanctuary staff. No one Nadia had seen before, but then she didn’t usually see anyone who worked the night shift.
“You said she wouldn’t leave until three,” the staffer said in an irritated hiss, closing the door behind her and flipping on the light.
Nadia blinked in the brightness, the bed still shielding her from view—which it would continue to do nicely, right up until the moment it occurred to Athena and the staffer that Nadia was hiding. Apparently they had not factored her paranoia into the equation when they’d invaded her room. She might almost have convinced herself they were here to help, except they were being too sneaky about it. And, when Nadia’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw that the staffer was holding a stunner in her hand.
Nadia wasn’t sure what the two women were up to, except that it was no good.
“That was the plan,” Athena said, sounding equally irritated. “You didn’t fall asleep while watching the security feed, did you?” She’d taken her hand out of her pocket, and Nadia saw that she was holding a small canister with a spray nozzle.
Nadia was a sitting duck under the bed, and it would be mere seconds before the women would think to look there. She had to do something, and do it fast, though both the stunner and the mysterious canister Athena held worried her.
Sucking in a deep breath and holding it, Nadia quickly rolled out from under the bed and snatched her pillow from it. Athena and the staffer were both surprised by her sudden appearance, which was the only way Nadia was able to get hold of the pillow before they converged on her.
Holding the pillow in front of her as a shield against the stunner, Nadia once again surprised the women by charging forward. The stunner made an electrical popping sound as it made contact with the pillow, but its charge couldn’t penetrate the stuffing.
Out of the corner of her eye, Nadia saw Athena raise the little canister and point it in her direction. She pulled in a quick breath and held it, closing her eyes and shifting as the staffer tried to slip the stunner in around the pillow.
There was a hissing sound, which Nadia assumed came from Athena’s canister. The Sanctuary staffer made a sound of protest, then gasped and collapsed.
Still holding her breath, Nadia cracked her eyes open tentatively. Athena was standing about five feet from her, the canister held out at arm’s length. The nozzle made a hissing sound as she sprayed another fine mist of … something … in Nadia’s direction. It wasn’t pepper spray, because it wasn’t making Nadia’s eyes sting or burn, but it looked like it had knocked the staffer out cold.
Nadia used the pillow like a fan, hoping to blow the mist back in Athena’s direction. She didn’t know if it was working—the mist was only visible right when it was first coming out of the nozzle, but Athena took a couple of hasty steps back and stopped spraying. Continuing to fan the air, Nadia gave a brief thought to screaming and awakening the whole hall, but quickly rejected the idea. If she sounded the alarm, she’d never be able to get to the phone.
Her lungs were starting to protest the lack of air, and Nadia knew she couldn’t hold her breath indefinitely. She dropped the pillow and ducked down to grab the stunner the Sanctuary staffer had been trying to zap her with. She had every intention of zapping Athena with it, but Athena was staggering woozily, having apparently gotten a lungful of her own knockout gas.
Nadia darted for the door and bolted out into the hall, where she could finally draw a breath. Her first instinct was to run for the hall door and enter the override code, but she jerked to a halt after a couple of steps. She had no idea if the override code was even real. Plus, she had no idea how long her attackers would be out—or even if Athena had gotten a big enough dose of her own medicine to lose consciousness. If she took off running now, they’d catch her in no time.
Heart thumping heavily in her chest, Nadia turned back to her room. What had Athena and her accomplice been planning for her? Why had they snuck into her room in the middle of the night armed with a stunner and knockout gas? It was hard to believe their goal had been anything short of murder. Nadia tried to tell herself none of this had anything to do with the blackmail recordings, that it was some sort of vendetta against her family. They were more than powerful enough to have enemies, people who hated them just for existing. But really, what were the chances that the Chairman wasn’t behind this? And he wouldn’t dare try to kill her unless he’d found the recordings.
Nadia jerked her mind away from that line of thought. She couldn’t afford to ponder the hows and whys right now. The only thing she dared think about was how to survive the night.
Taking another deep breath and holding it, Nadia stepped back into her room, the stunner at the ready, but she didn’t need it. Both women were out cold. She closed the door and picked her way across the room to the window, sliding it open in hopes of clearing the air. After sticking her head out the window for another deep breath, she hurried over to Athena and took the canister away from her. Then she used the belt from Athena’s robe to tie her hands together behind her back, tightly.
Nadia used the belt from her own robe, which hung from a hook in the closet, to tie the staffer’s hands. The woman groaned softly, and Nadia took the precaution of gagging her with a pillowcase. It was a clumsy gag that the woman would probably be able to get rid of in time, but it would do for now. Nadia then patted the woman down, looking for anything that could be useful in her escape attempt.
What she found was chilling.
On the plus side, the woman—whose name, according to her ID badge, was Lily Hughes—had a key card that would no doubt be a big help in Nadia’s escape. But she also had a handful of zip ties in one pocket, a ball gag in another, and a small snub-nosed gun on a holster strapped around her ankle. Worst of all was the sheet of white paper with a typewritten message on it, one Nadia suspected they’d have forced her to write by hand herself, once they’d subdued her.
It was a suicide note. Apparently, Nadia was so distraught at the turns her life had taken that she couldn’t bear to live anymore. Nadia wasn’t sure how the suicide was supposed to have occurred, but a precipitous fall from her window onto the flagstones below was a good guess.
They had really been trying to murder her.
The fresh air was beginning to bring Athena and Lily back to consciousness. Nadia used the zip ties she’d found in Lily’s pocket to secure her hands more tightly. For good measure, she then used the belt to hog-tie her wrists and ankles. Satisfied that the woman who’d been sent to kill her wasn’t going anywhere, Nadia turned to the one who had betrayed her.