I’d never taken an incapacitated woman to bed, and I wasn’t going to start now. Still, she’d said she was staying with me. Did she have a room somewhere? A small purse dangled from her wrist. Once I got her to my suite, I’d take a look through it for a hotel key.

The elevator dinged and the double doors parted.

And there stood my brother Roy with his new wife, Charlie.

Fuck it all.

7

Zee

My eyes darted open.

Where was I?

Right. My hotel in Queens.

Except…

My bed was a full-sized, and this bed…

This bed was narrow. Like a cot. The mattress was thin, and—

I jerked upward.

Darkness surrounded me. There was a window in my room. Where was it? It must still be nighttime.

I waited for my eyes to adjust.

And my whole body turned prickly.

This wasn’t my room.

And then the hammering in my head began.

Or became more pronounced, because it had been there since I woke up.

A nauseating headache. Was this what a migraine felt like? I’d never had one. But this pounding was on both sides of my head, not just one. In fact, it was all over my head, behind my eyes, on the crown, at the back of my neck.

A jackhammer.

Pounding so quickly I couldn’t get a grasp on the speed. Like a hummingbird’s heartbeat, only loud and obnoxious and pulsating through my body, landing in my gut.

Crap.

Literally.

I had to go to the bathroom. I stood. The bathroom was…

I stumbled, trying to orient myself. The bathroom was to the right.

Except all I saw to the right was a wall. This room was small.

Really small.

Where was the door?

I walked the small room blindly, feeling at the walls to support myself. I could pass out at any moment. My stomach was gurgling, my head hammering.

My heart stampeding.

Finally, something hit me in the belly.

“Ouch!” I reached down and touched my bare skin.

Then my fright increased a hundredfold.

I was naked.

I’d gone to bed in a T-shirt and panties. Hadn’t I? My mind was so muddled I didn’t trust my thoughts.

My hand brushed against the object that had hit my belly.

A door knob!

I twisted at it frantically, to no avail.

I’d found the door, but I couldn’t open it. I fumbled along the doorjamb for a deadbolt or something to unlock.

Nothing.

I was locked in.

Locked in a strange room.

Naked and ill and my head throbbing in time with my heart.

I slid down, scratching my unclothed back on the wall.

I sat on the floor, shivering.

Naked, afraid, and shivering.

“If you don’t want him,” Mo said, handing me a glass of wine, “mind if I take a stab?”