Finally, she spotted him. Ellie eased up next to him and sparked up a conversation. It went well—so much so that he asked if he could buy her drinks, maybe even dinner. When she said yes he called his friends and told them that he wouldn’t be able to meet up tonight.

For the next two hours, over drinks and fancy appetizers, Ellie worked overtime, pretending to be dazzled by the story of how he had used a good portion of his trust fund to successfully invest in a lot of up-and-coming start-ups, Mackenzie telling it in such a way that he expected her to drop her panties right then and there. He was good-looking and he knew it, gave off that cocky frat boy vibe, like the world had been created solely for him, and when one a.m. rolled around he pretty much told her she was coming back to his place for a drink.

Ellie said yes. She had to get in his pants. Her job depended on it.

Mackenzie had had too much to drink, so instead of driving he ordered an Uber. She’d had a good amount of booze herself—top-shelf bourbon, all of it paid for by McDouche, as she privately called him. During the drive, while they made polite conversation, Ellie spent most of her time inside her head, strategizing the quickest way to knock him out and get him ready for pickup.

Mackenzie had been the perfect gentleman at the bar and in the car. That changed the moment they entered his house, which wasn’t really a house but a mansion in Bel Air. There was no way a twenty-three-year-old dickwad could have afforded such a palatial estate. He took her to the pretentiously titled “drawing room,” complete with its own bar and a pool table. Ellie saw her opening and took over the bartending duties.

“Sit,” she said. “Tell me what you like.”

“Right now I’d like for you to slip out of that dress you’re wearing.” His smile was more creepy than confident, although Ellie suspected it had worked on a fair share of women with low self-confidence and major daddy issues. “But I’ll settle for a Scotch whisky on the rocks. The Glenmorangie.”

“I’m seeing, like, five bottles with that name.”

“Go with the 1981 Pride, the Highland single-malt Scotch whisky. And only use two cubes. You don’t want to water it down. That’s primo stuff—and expensive.”

As Ellie poured the drinks, her hands carefully concealed from his view, she slipped into his glass the pair of white tablets Anton had supplied her. She had taken them from her purse, back at the bar, right before they left. The Rohypnol dissolved easily and quickly.

Ellie sat down next to him on a stiff sofa, the kind designed more for looks than for comfort. As they sipped their drinks, he let her in on his latest venture with some company that she had no interest in. Ellie nodded politely, keeping an eye on his glass. She needed him to drink it all for the pills to work, but all he did was keep sipping.