Page 63 of Hotter than Wildfire

“Please,” she whispered. “I’m going to throw up. Please let me go to the bathroom.”

They exchanged glances. They were going to kill her. But disposing of a vomit-drenched body was going to be marginally more unpleasant than disposing of a body that had been allowed to throw up into the toilet.

With a disgusted sound Mr. Elegant waved his hand. “Take her to the bathroom.” He pinned her with his black, crocodile gaze. “Try anything and you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

Forcing herself to retch had brought up bile, made worse by his words and the images they conjured up. She nodded her head. The man behind her came around, bent, pulled out a long, sharp knife, as gleaming as the instruments on the table. With a smooth movement, he sliced through the duct tape holding her ankles together and the tape around her breasts anchoring her to the chair.

With a strong hand he lifted her up out of the chair. If he hadn’t kept a grip on her arm, she’d have fallen straight to the floor.

For the first time, she got a good look at him. He was the man on her rainy street. The man she’d thought was Tom for a horrified moment.

Turned out he was worse than Tom.

“Hurry it up,” Mr. Elegant said sourly.

Tears pricked at her eyes. Yes, she should hurry up and die.

“Okay,” she whispered.

The blond man holding her arm in a tight, unbreakable grip, Kerry shuffled more than walked to a door in a corridor she hadn’t seen before. Her legs were extremely weak, from being bound, from the terror she felt.

The man with the funny accent almost carried her. When her knees buckled, he just picked her up with one arm around her waist and hustled her to the bathroom door. Inside was a malodorous cubicle, stained and filthy.

Kerry stopped at the door, shuddering deep inside herself, long deep tremors. Oh God, this was it. Her life, stopping now. However awful the past year had been, on the run from Tom, once or twice she’d thought that somehow some day it would all stop.

She could start her life up again. He’d forget about her and she could move on, into the sunlight, into a regular life, instead of huddling in the shadows. Maybe even start an interior decorating business. Maybe find a nice man to marry. Maybe—maybe even have kids.

And even in the fear and terror of this past year, there’d been good moments. Tea with Irene, the odd funny client. She’d read a lot from the local library, listened to a lot of music on the radio. Solitary pleasures, but pleasures nonetheless.

All ending, right now.

A thump on her back, hard. The door of the bathroom yawned before her. “Get going. We don’t have all day here.” Hiah.

Kerry turned, licking her dry lips. “I’m—I’m going to need my hands.” She looked at him, at his light blue eyes, like colored marbles, just as devoid of any humanity as Mr. Elegant’s. “To…ahm.” Her mind whirred uselessly. “Need my hands,” she repeated in a whisper.

He’d either cut the tape or not. She couldn’t do anything about it.

He whipped out that sharp blade again, the steel whispering against its scabbard, and with one deft move cut through the duct tape. An amazing feat. He sliced through without touching skin, though her wrists were tightly bound together.

So he was handy with a knife. Real handy. She shuddered even more deeply.

He nodded sharply at the bathroom, not even bothering to waste words with her.

“Can—“ Kerry was shaking so hard her mouth could barely form words. She flexed her hands, trying to get some circulation going again. It would be too horrible if she botched this. “Can I close the door?”

He shook his head.

Oh God.

“Can you—can you turn your back?”

Without a word, he turned on his heel, presented his broad back to her. Kerry suspected it was more because he didn’t want to see her vomiting than to provide her with some privacy.

This was her chance, right now. She stepped into the filthy, stained cubicle. It was dark, with only a small window way up high. There was no question of her being able to escape from it, and she knew the two men realized it, as well. Even if she were athletic enough to leap up onto the toilet seat, smash the filthy glass pane and try to haul herself up and out, this man would catch her in less than a second.

No, there was no way out.

So she looked around, heart pumping with dread, tears bleeding from her heart. This was where she’d end her life, in this fetid abandoned bathroom, with only two heartless strangers to witness her passing.