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‘Have fun! I know Mikey is big into girl-on-girl when he’s hammered!’ His meaty chuckle made her skin shrink as she levered open the door-handle with her elbow and slipped inside.
There were no speakers installed here, and the sounds of the party barely penetrated the thick walls and heavy door of the opulently furnished ‘safe’ room.
Her eyes flew immediately to the polished side table against the wall opposite the white leather couch. The blue and white porcelain ‘pilgrim’ flask was still there, small and unobtrusive, its delicate beauty quite beneath the notice of the other four occupants of the lamp-lit room.
Thank goodness it hadn’t been placed in one of the glass-fronted cabinets that lined the room, she thought as she crossed to the man lolling on the couch.
Emily knew he was thirty but Michael Webber—’ Mikey’ to his less salubrious friends—looked at least a decade younger, his thin face almost formless in its lack of character. He accepted the drink she handed him with a foolish grin and an unsteady hand.
‘Sorry you had to wait but it’s a madhouse out there,’ she murmured.
‘No worries, babe…’ he drawled, snagging the bottle as well, and Emily saw that there were indeed none as far as he was concerned; beneath his floppy fringe his eyes were at half-mast, revealing the tell-tale pinpoint narrowness of his pupils. He had merely been on a drunken high when she’d left, but now he was skimming the edge of the stratosphere. Emily glanced at the chief suspect, the shrink-wrapped, bleached blonde sitting on his lap, who glared her defiance and beckoned for the remaining glass with long red talons.
‘I’ll take that,’ she said, gloating over Emily’s demotion to mere waitress.
Mickey made a slightly incoherent toast to the girl in his lap, and the redhead and brunette snuggled up on either side of him—the little entourage he had collected along his meandering tour, and whom he had been cruelly playing off against each other all evening. Typically, he appeared not to remember any of their names, but addressed them all as ‘babe’. Emily’s opinion of him sank even lower as he topped up all their glasses and urged: ‘Bottoms up, girls—literally I hope!’
They all giggled madly at that, except Emily, who realised that the drug-taking session in her absence had rendered her the outsider of the group. At the moment they were all ignoring her, giving her the message that she was superfluous to their fun and games, but she didn’t know how long she could trust that to last. At least she could be confident that none of them was in any condition to be reliable witnesses if anything went wrong.
Conscious that she still had to stay in character, Emily put on a sulky expression and flounced over to the handbag she had left tucked safely out of sight behind a boxy white armchair. She made a big production of her annoyance as she carefully delved, muttering, into the stygian depths of the stiff-sided, black leather bag. By the time she had produced a cheap lipstick and mirrored compact, Mickey had embarked on one of his long, rambling, pointless stories and the three women were twining around him like snakes. Emily moved closer to the table with the flask, ostensibly to take advantage of the better lighting focused on the monochromatic modern canvas on the wall.
Blocking the view from the couch with her back, she lowered her open handbag to the level of the po
lished surface. Her heart skipping, she reached in and removed the lid of the rigid brown box wedged into the centre of her bag with a thick padding of bubble wrap. Her nerves were jumping but she was proud to see that her hand was as steady as a rock. Used to handling very fine and fragile objects, her slender fingers skilfully peeled back the layers of acid-free tissue paper and lifted the small blue and white flask out of its soft nest of expanded polystyrene.
With a smooth action she had practised over and over in her studio at home, she placed the arched flask onto the table top with delicate precision and almost simultaneously scooped up the one that had been standing there. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, but conscious of the stickiness on her skin she held it only with the tips of her fingers. With a frisson, her sharp, professional eye found and traced the barely detectable line that indicated a poorly repaired break. It was already starting to discolour and in time would become obvious even to the uninitiated. Anger momentarily blotted out her sense of self-preservation as she stared down at the evidence of her betrayal.
Jolted back to awareness by a brief hush behind her, she quickly lowered the flask into the lined box in her bag, glancing sideways to encounter a familiar pair of coldly condemning blue eyes watching her from the open doorway, directly in line with her position.
Dismay froze her face while her fingers continued to work blindly, refolding the protective layer of tissue over the porcelain and guiding the lid back onto the box. She saw the elegant stranger’s grim gaze shift from the flask on the table to her hand as it withdrew from the depths of her bag, innocently clutching the plastic compact and shiny lipstick case.
How long had he been standing there, and how much had he actually seen? Had those arctic eyes watched the whole, sly exchange, or had he just arrived to catch the tail-end of her furtive movements?
Unfortunately he looked as sober as a judge and twice as censorious, but then, as Emily well knew—appearances could be deceptive. She put him at about thirty, nearly a decade older than herself, but his pale, angular features were stamped with more than an extra decade’s worth of arrogance.
Was he really as stern and stuffy as his flinty face and austere formality would suggest? If so, what was he doing at a party like this in the first place?
The panicked questions tumbled through Emily’s mind as she forced herself to click the incriminating bag closed, open her compact and start applying the garish, blood-red lipstick with feigned self-absorption.
Bracing herself for his ringing denunciation, she held her breath as he stepped into the room, and glanced over to see the grinning Neanderthal in the hall behind him, tucking a red banknote into his jeans pocket as he backed away from the self-closing door.
A hundred-dollar bribe?
Oh, God, thought Emily, this cannot be good!
She hurriedly finished glossing her mouth, rolling her lips together to disguise the slightly ragged outline where her hand had begun a betraying tremble.
Nerves shredding, she checked the intruder out through her heavy lashes as she dropped the make-up into the side-pocket of her bag and settled the strap securely over her shoulder. Sure enough, her humming instincts were right—he was still watching her with a chiselled frown, suspicion and disapproval oozing from every arrogant pore. But at least he wasn’t pointing an accusing finger.
Perhaps he hadn’t seen anything after all. Perhaps he didn’t realise she was as guilty as sin, and his reaction was purely a hangover from their previous encounter. He had dismissed her as beneath his notice then…perhaps he could be goaded into doing it again.
Recklessly she lifted her head and took the offensive, staring openly back at him and forming her ultra-shiny red mouth into a slow, extravagant mockery of an air-kiss.
Then, swinging her hips, she sashayed over to him and flipped a derisive finger at his fastidious black tie.
‘A little overdressed for our private orgy, aren’t you?’ she taunted huskily.
He caught her finger in a controlled grip, and slowly forced it back down to her side. A wicked thrill ripped through her body at his commmanding touch and she felt him stiffen, a tiny blue flame flickering in the iceberg eyes.
