CHAPTER 46

WHEN GRACE’S EYES fluttered open, she found herself tucked underneath a down comforter. She felt warm all over—and clean. She smelled of soap but had no memory of taking a shower or a bath.

What she did have was a vague memory of talking to the big-muscled guy who had introduced himself as Paul. She couldn’t recall any of the details of their conversation, but she had the sense he had been kind to her. Or was she imagining that?

She brushed the comforter away from her face, found herself no longer lying on a mattress dumped on a dingy carpet with a bucket to use for her bathroom needs. She had been transferred to a new room—a small one, no bigger than a prison cell (not that she’d ever spent any time in one). The walls were bare, a pristine white, and smelled vaguely of paint. The wall across from the foot of her bed (no, not a bed, she noticed—it was a cot) wasn’t a wall at all but a pane of glass that stretched from floor to ceiling.

No, not glass, she thought dully. You didn’t use glass inside a prison cell, which was exactly where she found herself. Only this one had a stone floor and a barrier made of what had to be plexiglass. That or whatever clear, thick material was used at, say, the teller windows at banks. It made her feel like a specimen in a zoo.

It was difficult to collect her thoughts. Her brain felt like it had been replaced with glue, everything trapped inside her skull sticky and slow. Okay, she had been moved into this place—this prison cell. Okay. Right. So why am I not frightened? Why am I feeling so . . . content? No, that wasn’t the right word. She knew she’d been taken, knew she was a prisoner, and yet she felt like her brain had been rewired, circuits fried, or something, because while she knew she should have felt worried, even panicked, she felt the complete opposite, her body telling her, Hey, everything’s okay. Life isn’t all that bad, so chill.

And her clothes were different. Her nightclub clothes were gone, replaced with a black cocktail dress. She sat up and saw that she was barefoot. Her fingernails, she noticed, had been painted a lovely shade of red. She brought her hand up closer to her face.

“I hope I did a good job.”

Grace jumped at the voice. It came from above her. She glanced up, saw the speaker, then from the corner of her eye caught someone standing in front of the plexiglass barrier—Paul.

“You look beautiful,” Paul said. He wore a dark suit with a blue shirt and a nice tie, and looked like some smart Wall Street banker type with his glasses, smiling like he had scored big on an investment. “Do you feel beautiful?”

She did, actually. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling that, given the circumstances, but strangely, she did. Why? How? Had she been given some drug while she was sleeping? What’s going on here?