her want to cry. Stop it, she told herself.
Reggie took out his cell and walked toward the doorway to look out. He put the phone up to his ear. “I got her,” he said. “She’s tied up, but she came here in Declan Wainwright’s car.”
Sailor was stunned. Reggie had a partner? How could that be? What could be in it for someone else? The person on the other end apparently began talking, and Sailor rolled onto her stomach and inched her way toward the mattress. Thank God her hands were bound in front.
“It’s a fucking Lamborghini, he’s gotta have some kind of LoJack system. He apparently tracks everything. I gotta get it away from here, drive it a few miles, maybe send it down a cliff.”
The knife was on the far end of the mattress, out of Reggie’s line of sight. In the scuffle, it was possible he hadn’t seen it or heard it drop, wasn’t even aware she’d had it.
“Not until she’s in the car,” he continued, picking up the conversation. “I’m not dragging another corpse up that hill. It’s brutal. And she’s bigger than Charlotte. Wherever she gets dumped, she’s getting there on her own two feet.”
Sailor reached the knife. She grasped it in her bound hands, sharp edge up, tip pointed toward her. She slashed awkwardly.
The rope held—but it frayed.
“I will if I have to,” Reggie said from the doorway, “but I’d rather not. It’s going to be a loud fucking noise.... All right.” He was winding up the conversation. And walking toward her.
She slashed again. The rope frayed some more. Halfway there. It would have to do.
She slid the knife under the mattress a second before he reached down to pull her up by her arm, saying, “Let’s go.” She kept her wrists firmly together, not knowing how much force it would take to break the rope, praying his focus would be elsewhere.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“A mutual friend,” he said, making her wonder who else of her acquaintance was a sociopath. He steered her to the door. Outside, the rain was coming down at last.
“What if I don’t want to go?” she asked, resisting. Reggie let her go so abruptly that she lost her balance and fell.
He laughed. “Then I shoot you,” he said, pulling a gun from his jacket pocket.
He was holding it wrong, too low on the grip. Random details penetrated her fog of fear. The gun was a 1911, a .45 caliber, which she knew because she’d had one as a prop in an off-off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set in 1940s Chicago. A complete turkey of a production, but at least she knew a cocked 1911 from one that was uncocked with the safety on. Reggie, she realized, wasn’t a gun guy.
There had to be a way to use that. She needed to keep thinking, keep her mind on details and away from the panic that was nibbling at the edges of her brain. She got to her feet awkwardly, her legs as wobbly as fettuccine, and she wondered if she would even be able to run if the opportunity arose. Reggie might not want to shoot her until she was in the car because he didn’t want to carry her dead weight up the hill, but once in the car, she was as good as dead, and it wouldn’t take much expertise to put a bullet into her brain at point-blank range. And that meant she couldn’t get into the car.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a murderer, Reggie,” she said, and pulled her hands apart, testing the rope to see how much strength it had left. So far it was resisting.
“Me neither. Funny what you discover about yourself. Thought I was just a sex addict with a taste for celebrities. Always going for the bitch who’s out of my league.” He glanced at her. “You’re not much to look at right now, but with your clothes off? You’d qualify. No time for that today, though.”
“But you enjoyed it?”
“Which? The sex or the killing?”
“Either. Both.”
He laughed. “Are you kidding? Both! Charlotte Messenger. Charlotte Messenger. She couldn’t get enough of me. Me! And then she started bleeding like crazy and I watched the life just drain out of her, and let me tell you something, she didn’t even care. As long as I was on top of her, she didn’t care that she was dying. It’s a fan boy’s wet dream. You can’t even imagine.”
“You didn’t know she’d die?”
“I