She missed Nate. She missed Gerri. She missed her own clothes. She missed the city, and the freedom to go out when she wanted. She even missed her parents, angry though she was with them for sticking her here.
Every day, Nadia prayed that her mother would have a change of heart and would send for her. Not that she harbored any real hope of that. The soonest she was likely to get out was Friday, and the day couldn’t come fast enough. If her mother tried to keep her here for more than a week, Nadia swore she would stage an escape attempt.
At home, Nadia rarely went to bed before midnight, but here at the retreat, boredom was driving her to her bed a little bit earlier each night. After yawning her way through some ridiculous card game that required absolutely no skill or attention at the recreation center, Nadia fled the bingo game that was forming and returned to her room in the main building. It was barely nine o’clock. Too early to go to bed, but she couldn’t stomach any more “fun.” At least she’d gathered a stack of books from the library. Reading the dullest book in the universe was more fun than playing bingo.
Nadia’s room in the dormitory wing was pleasantly cozy. Or might have been, if it were more private and contained anything that actually belonged to her. Every time she set foot inside, she was painfully aware that someone had tidied up while she was gone, whether the room needed it or not. It was strangely disturbing to return to her room at night and find that someone had stacked the library books so that their bottom and left edges were all perfectly aligned, and that her bed had been smoothed out so you couldn’t see that she’d sat on it when putting on her shoes. At home, she’d never found the idea of servants cleaning her room even mildly invasive, but it was different here.
On her first night, Nadia had rinsed her bra and underwear in the sink and let them dry over the shower bar overnight. They were still damp in the morning, so she’d tucked them into a drawer that contained her spa clothes to hide them. When she’d come back from breakfast, the undies were gone, replaced by a fresh set in the ubiquitous spa blue.
Nadia made it till almost ten before boredom got the best of her and she heeded the siren call of her bed. She changed out of her tunic and pants, leaving them crumpled on the floor on the off chance it would annoy someone, and into the soft blue nightgown that had been left folded on her bed. She hated the feeling of being so firmly under control that she wore the clothes that were laid out for her like a little kid. She’d tried sleeping in her clothes one night, but couldn’t drift off. Then she’d tried sleeping naked, but that hadn’t worked, either. She felt too vulnerable.
She pulled back the covers and, to her shock, discovered a folded sheet of paper there. Nadia hurried to the door to make sure it was locked, because it would be just her luck if housekeeping was making another sweep at just this moment.
No longer feeling even remotely sleepy, Nadia grabbed the sheet of paper, eyes darting to the end to read the signature first. The note was from Dante, and he asked her to meet him at the fence at midnight. He’d drawn a rough map of the retreat and marked the spot where he wanted to meet, then told her to tear up his note and flush it.
Nadia read the note three times, looking for subtle nuances that would let her know what was happening. Had the recordings been found? Was Dante contacting her on Nate’s behalf in a last-ditch effort to save her before she experienced some kind of unfortunate accident? Surely if he’d gone to the trouble of smuggling this note to her and driving out to Long Island at this time of night, it meant something bad had happened.
Checking the clock, willing midnight to hurry up and get here so she could end the suspense, Nadia changed out of her nightgown and back into her spa uniform once more.
Nadia’s pulse raced with nerves as she slunk through the dormitory halls. There was no curfew at the retreat, and she was free to wander the grounds at any time of night she wished. However, wandering around for a clandestine meeting with a friend from the outside was very much against the rules. If no one saw her leaving, then no one could ask her where she was going and what she was up to. She wasn’t sure what the consequences of breaking the rules would be—it wasn’t like the retreat staff could out-and-out punish one of their paying guests—but they surely had something in place to discourage such behavior, and she had no wish to find out what it was.
There were no formal retreat activities available after 10:00 P.M., so most of the guests were in their rooms, either in bed or preparing for bed, as Nadia hurried toward the fire stairs that were the exit closest to her room. She wasn’t supposed to use them unless there was a fire, but there was no alarm, and the less time she spent in the hallway, the better. She winced at the sound the door made thunking closed, but no one came running to investigate.
Phase one of her nighttime escapade had been successfully completed, and Nadia felt a little calmer. The hardest part should be over. Moving as silently as possible in her spa moccasins, which really wanted to squeak with her every step, she made her way down the stairs until she reached the fire door at the bottom. There was an alarm on this door, but Nadia took advantage of a manual override and slipped out into the night.
The moment Nadia stepped outside, she realized she should have put on one of the sweaters the retreat had conveniently provided. It was late March, and the weather was usually temperate and comfortable during the day. Nighttime was a different story, and the spa uniform wasn’t exactly toasty warm. Nadia shivered, but she wasn’t about to press her luck by going back to get a sweater.
The walking paths around the retreat were all lighted, though only with small, dim bulbs discreetly marking the way. Nadia didn’t like the idea that someone looking out a window might see her in that dim light, so she avoided the paths, trying not to trample the flowers as she wended her way toward the rendezvous point Dante had marked. Her sneaking around would probably make her more conspicuous if someone spotted her, but there was no one out and about at this time of night, at least not that she could see. Every once in a while, she glanced over her shoulder at the main building, checking the lighted windows to reassure herself that no one was looking out.
Eventually, she came to the wall of trees that hid the interior of the retreat from view. It also hid the fence from the view of the guests, but for Nadia out of sight had never been out of mind.
The rendezvous point Dante had marked on his makeshift map was, naturally, a long way from the lighted, guarded front entrance. The wall of trees Nadia had to fight her way through was not as carefully pruned and weeded here as it was at the entrance, and she wished she had a machete-wielding guide to help her through. But the weeds and underbrush provided extra assurance that no one from the retreat would witness her clandestine meeting.
Nadia moved slowly through the trees, trying not to betray her location. There was no reason to suspect there was some kind of trap waiting for her, but after all that had happened to her in the past weeks, she didn’t think paranoia was at all unreasonable. She came to a dead stop as soon as she could see the fence through the trees, and she crouched down to examine her surroundings more closely while keeping under cover.
The line of trees ended about ten yards short of the fence, giving way to a strip of neatly mowed grass. Nadia feared she would be terribly exposed out there, but exposed to whom she didn’t know. There were no guard posts, and no one patrolled the perimeter of the retreat. The place might feel like a prison to her, but it wasn’t a prison. And there was nothing but woods on the other side of the fence, so there shouldn’t be anyone on that side who could see her. She stared into those woods until her eyes hurt, trying to find Dante in the darkness, but he either wasn’t there yet or was well hidden.