When the new goon moved away, I could see Terry Wilcox was sitting opposite me in an armchair.
It was a nice cabin, very swish, the kind of rental for upper, upper middle class Texans to hire when they felt like a change of scenery. Two guys were with us, both steroid-fuelled, like Goon Gary, Terrible Teddy and The Moron but I had never seen these guys.
“Take off her gag,” Wilcox ordered.
Both of the guys were dark-headed, one darker than the other and taller and maybe hitting the pharmaceutical websites a little too hard. He came forward and took off the gag. The minute he did, I realized how tight it was because my cheeks hurt. I opened and closed my mouth to exercise my cheek muscles.
Then I glared at Wilcox. “That hurt.”
“I’m sorry, India. Precautions. We can’t be too careful, can we?”
Was that a dig at my idiot act of walking out of my house and into the clutches of the villain?
My eyes narrowed.
I knew I was an idiot, I didn’t need this guy rubbing it in.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
He ignored me. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to wait too long. The plane will be ready soon and we’ll be leaving.”
Uh-oh.
Did he say “plane”?
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You and I are going to disappear. We’re taking a long vacation.”
I stared at him.
I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.
“I don’t want to go on vacation with you,” I informed him, I thought, unnecessarily.
“You’ll enjoy yourself.”
My eyes got wide. “Enjoy myself?”
“Shopping, eating in the finest restaurants. I’ll get you anything you want. We’ll go wherever you want. I’ll show you the world.”
Wow, Lee wasn’t wrong. This guy was nuts.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, I don’t want to go on vacation with you.”
“We’ll spend time together. You get to know me, you’ll like me.”
Yep, totally nuts.
“You kill people,” I told him.
“I do what I have to do to get what I want.”
Holy crap.
“I don’t like people who kill people. They’re creepy. You’re creepy.”
Perhaps I should have been more careful with what I said but it was like he had selective hearing and he chose not to hear that part.
“We’ll have to stay out of sight for awhile. I have a friend who’s letting us use his lovely house, on the beach in Costa Rica.”
Oh my God.
This guy was talking about lovely beach houses to a woman he kidnapped.
Totally a nut.
“You’re creepy and icky,” I broke in, hoping to get through to him. “I don’t want to go to a beach house in Costa Rica with a creepy, icky guy who looks like Grandpa Munster.”
He continued to ignore me and my insults. “You can sunbathe every day. I’ll buy you two dozen bikinis. I think six months, maybe more. Then, perhaps, we’ll go to Paris.”
“I’m not going on vacation with you. I’m staying here,” I announced.
At this, he smiled his oily smile.
Serious euw.
Time to get down to it.
“Listen,” I said, changing tactics and leaning forward to show my sincerity, “I’m really um…” I was losing it, I couldn’t think of a suitable lie. I couldn’t remember the last time I couldn’t think of a suitable lie. I just went with the first word that popped in my head, no matter how hard it was to say it. “Honored that you like me and everything but I’m in love with Lee. I’ve been in love with Lee since I was five. We’re living together. We’re going to get married, eventually, when he asks me. He has it all planned out.”
“I’ll help you forget Nightingale,” Wilcox told me.
Okay, seriously, this guy was nuts. Even if he wasn’t a weird, creepy, icky, scary bad guy who killed people, there wasn’t a woman alive who would forget Liam Nightingale, especially if she’d seen him naked.
And what was taking Lee so long? He should have stormed in here and saved the day by now, surely. I was somewhat experienced with being kidnapped and now was about the time for a grenade or tear gas or Lee to saunter in looking badass and pissed off and scaring everyone into doing what he wanted.
“Perhaps you should be asleep for the first part of our journey.” Wilcox broke into my somewhat fevered thoughts.
I realized my mistake at once. I’d been spending so much time talking to Wilcox, I hadn’t paid attention to the Steroid Sidekicks. One was walking toward me, carrying a loaded syringe.
I stared at him coming toward me and I felt the chill of fear.
This was just like in those movies, where they tranquillized the heroine and she woke up lying on silk pillows wearing an I Dream of Jeannie outfit and finding herself a member of a harem where all the other girls hated her.
I didn’t want to be a member of Terry Wilcox’s harem, even if I was the only one.