Page 76 of Mastered By Desire

Jaxon speaks next. “No basement access or anything like that?”

“There is, but it’s covered by the cameras. Nobody left that way.” She points at the screen.

Lin rewinds the footage again. We watch it several more times. I start to pace, feeling caged as we watch. Too much time is passing.

“I don’t know.” Lin rewinds it yet again. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything. At least not around the time of the alarm being pulled. If someone took her, they got her out a lot earlier, or later.”

“Or she didn’t leave,” Dmitri says. “She’s still in the hotel.”

“As in, she’s being kept in the hotel?” I clench my fists. “How are we going to find her if she’s still there? We’re wasting too much time.”

Nobody says anything as we mentally deliberate the problem. Dmitri keeps glancing at his phone. I wonder if he’s thinking of calling his grandfather, or checking the time. We’re stumped, but Leah is out there somewhere, in danger. Scared.

We have to do something.

An idea strikes me. “Lin and Leonie, can either of you get into the hotel’s system?”

“Psh, child’s play.” Leonie swings her gray braid over her shoulder. She taps the keyboard a few times. “Here you go.”

“Can you tell me which one is Leah’s room?” I ask.

She clicks around a little more. “She’s on the fifth floor, 535.”

“Is there a map of the building?”

“Yeah, I have one here.”

Room 535 is located halfway down the hallway. There are rooms above, below, and on either side. If I wanted to harm someone or keep them captive, I wouldn’t do it there.

“Did anyone buy a group of rooms together?” I ask.

She scans the computer screen. I read over her shoulder, searching.

She taps the monitor. “This card number, 4401, bought a block of rooms. Three on the second floor, and one directly beneath the middle room on the first floor.”

“They’re trying to buffer against noise,” I say. “If someone took her, they would’ve taken her to that middle room on the second floor.”

“I bet you’re right,” Dmitri says, while Jaxon and the others nod.

“What’s the name on the credit card?” I ask.

Leonie clicks another button on her keyboard. I see the name at the same time as everyone else.

“Randall Wentz.”

21

Leah

An hour goes by. Maybe two. It’s hard to keep track of time. I don’t let myself cry. I don’t even try to scream—there’s no way people would hear me, not through the duct tape gag, not through the walls. I do experiment with banging my feet on the floor, but the guy in the baseball cap points to the gun in his waistband and makes a shooting motion with his fingers.

The counter shard feels like tile or something similar. It’s sharp against my fingers. I wrangle it around and try to use it to cut at the duct tape binding my wrists. The angle is awkward, painful. But if that one rock climber could cut off his own hand to save himself from being trapped under a rock, I think I can suffer a few minutes of wrist pain to get free of my bindings.

“Hey!” The bearded guy stands up suddenly. “What the fuck are you doing in there?”

I freeze, the shard cutting into my palm.

All four guys are looking at me now.

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