Page 36 of Dirty Little Vow
“I need help,” I call out and fearful of alerting Oliver, I add, “Please can you get housekeeping?”
“Can you open the door?” the woman asks , her voice strongly accented.
“I can’t. Can you get them to open it from that side please?”
“Oh, si, senora. Un memento.”
I hear footsteps walking away and I want to scream, “Come back!” What if she tells the wrong person about me pounding on the door? But that’s not what happens. Suddenly, the steps grow nearer again and the door opens. A short, robust Hispanic woman appears and the minute she spies my hands her eyes go wide. Rapid Spanish fires from her lips and I lift my bound hands. “Help, please. Can you cut it off?” I motion toward the kitchen. “Knife.”
She seems to understand, and together we race that direction, and while she struggles to free me, she makes it happen. “Gracias,” I say, and then hold my finger to my lips, making a walking motion with the fingers of my other hand indicating that I must run.
Her expression is fear for me, which isn’t unfounded, but I need out of here and I need out now. I rush for my purse and shove my gun inside, already out the door and hurrying to the stairwell, not about to step into an elevator where there will be cameras. I start the walk down and decide I can’t go out the front door. The doorman will call Oliver. Maybe he’s even working for him, and I risk being stopped.
I’ll go to the coffee shop and convince someone to let me use their phone.
Drawing a breath, terrified about what happens if I’m caught, I exit to the lobby and walk with purpose, head up as I travel right past the elevators where I’m no doubt on camera. Once I’m in the main hotel lobby, I spy the open coffee shop door and hurry inside. I’m the only one here aside from one young girl, maybe eighteen, behind the counter. I rush to her and stop at the counter.
“Can I help you?” she greets pleasantly.
“I’m in trouble,” I say softly. “I have a very bad man following me and he took my phone. Can I please discreetly use your phone?”
Her eyes go so wide, they all but bug out of her head. “Oh, no. I mean—yes.” She fumbles for her cellphone, drags it from her apron pocket, and offers it to me. ‘Thank you so much,” I say, and quickly punch in Tyler’s number. It rings three times and goes to voicemail. Disappointment fills me but unwilling to allow the girl to hear what I have to say, I move on to plan B. I text him and Dash a quick message, sure one of them will see it.I’m hiding in the womens’ bathroom of the Grand Hyatt, in a stall. Some of the staff is on their payroll. I don’t have a phone. This is a teen girl’s phone I borrowed so don’t call her back. I won’t be with her anymore. I’m deleting this message. Come get me, please.I punch send and then delete the message before sliding the phone across the counter. “Thank you.”
“You want to come around back to the kitchen and hide?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to start walking. I need out of here.” It’s a lie, in case she’s cornered and has to talk.
I rotate and move toward the door, aware the cameras could lead my enemy to the bathroom, but if I walk out of the hotel, there’s a lot of open space to walk to get past the hotel grounds. Better a locked door than open space, where I could be grabbed. As for the mens’ room, I’ve changed my mind on that idea. What if they don’t have doors like in the womens’ room? I can’t risk being followed inside and trapped without a door to lock.
With my heart truly beating like a drum, I walk evenly, calmly toward the bathrooms, and for the first time I wonder how I look. My hair could be standing on end for all I know, with makeup all over the place, but nowadays, if you own how you look, you can get away with just about anything. So, I own it, and I don’t dare look around for fear I’ll gain attention.
The hallway leading to the bathrooms comes way too slowly, and as I enter the bathroom, I run smack into a hard body. I yelp and pull back, relieved to see a woman with pink hair. We exchange apologies, and I hurry past the sinks and walk the line of heavy doors that reach all the way to the floor and stand way above my head. I count ten doors down and it’s the tenth I claim. I enter, shut the door, and lock it, exhaling a heavy breath.
And now I wait and pray my cavalry arrives before someone else does.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Bella
I’m sitting on a toilet staring at a wall, my skirt tucked under my bare backside to protect me from the public seating, and it’s not a happy place to be.
First, who wants to use a toilet as a resting place? Not to mention, I have no phone, no book, no nothing. With nothing else to occupy me, I hyperfocus on fear for Tyler, with no way to contact him. Thirty minutes into my bathroom stall self-induced captivity, I’m contemplating making a run for it. I’m not a “sit and wait” kind of person, and this is truly killing me. What if my text didn’t go through? Or what if Tyler and Dash are in trouble, and I’m sitting on a toilet waiting for them to rescue me when they needmeto rescuethem?
I stand up, fretting as I do. I don’t know what to do. Go? Stay?
“Bella!”
At the sound of Tyler’s voice, every part of me is alive in ways I was not moments before. “Tyler!” I call out, and I yank the door handle down and exit the stall, rotating to find him running toward me.
Fear and worry fade instantly, and I’m darting his direction. The small space between us is eternal until we collide, his powerful arms wrapping around me, his big, warm body the shelter in a storm that I feared would be the end of me and us. I draw in the scent of him, warm and masculine, and I could bathe in the essence of this man.
His mouth finds my mouth, his tongue licking deep, the taste of him a wicked mix of fear and desperation I once thought him incapable of feeling. And then he’s cupping my face, searching for answers, even before he demands, “Tell me you’re okay. Tell me they didn’t hurt you.”
“I’m okay.” I slide my arms under his jacket and around him, the warmth of his body like coming home. “Now I am. You’re here. I tried to call, and you didn’t answer. I didn’t know if you got the text. And some of the staff is on their payroll and I didn’t think I could leave without—”
“I got the text,” he says, “and I got you now. And I swear to you, Bella, they will never touch you again.”
“Bella!”