Page 70 of The Weekend Getaway

He’d come to his room last night. Or, had it been the night before? Phil couldn’t remember. His sense of time was off. What had he and Alex talked about? What had he told him? Something about the notes he’d been getting.

Mia sent them … She knows it was stupid, but she was feeling guilty because she was the one who convinced Sarah to lie to your father …

Phil didn’t believe him. He’d known Alex was lying. He remembered something about Alex lying to him and his father.

Alex had wanted to see the notes, so Phil showed him. As Alex read the notes, Phil saw the panic and rage racing across his face, like something astringent, washing away the layers of deceit, exposing Alex for who he really was. Revealing what Alex was …

A man who’d never been his friend. Someone who’d lied to him, betrayed and used him, set him up for a crime he’d never committed.

These notes make things pretty clear.

After Phil had come to at his party, dazed and disoriented, wrapped in blood-stained sheets, Alex pretended to be a confidante, offering help and protection, insulation from the harsh consequences of a disastrous decision.

Something … happened … with you and … Sarah …

That had been a lie. Probably not the first lie Alex had told him. Certainly not the last. There were more lies to come. The worst ones told to Phil’s father, a week after the party. Alexhad promised to be a mediator, someone who could explain the situation to Phil’s father, which Phil couldn’t do. He’d been too ashamed of what he’d done—not knowing, at the time, that he hadn’t done anything. Not realizing that Alex had set everything up to make Phil look like a depraved monster.

Phil and Alex had sat in Phil’s father’s giant, cavernous office, a dark, gloomy space filled with dark hardwood furniture, that smelled like tobacco and whiskey.

His father had been imposing and blunt, injecting questions as Alex told the sordid story, breaking into the narrative, casting disapproving and disgusted glances at Phil.

“Mr. Richart, Phil did make a bad mistake,” Alex said, his tone appropriately deferential in the presence of oppressive power. “But it really wasn’t his fault.”

“Interesting,” said his father. “Explain to me how raping a girl wasn’t my son’s fault.”

Phil had winced, hating himself. As soon as Alex had told him what he’d done, and then showed him the proof, Phil had sunk into a pit of desperate self-loathing. How could he have done something so vile? And to a girl like Sarah? A beautiful girl he wanted to get to know better, and maybe ask out on a date?

Alex cleared his throat. “Mr. Richart, Phil was … not in his right mind?—”

“Not in his right mind?” His father scoffed.

“Phil probably had too much to drink,” Alex said. “He wasn’t operating with all of his facilities.”

“Nor was he operating with any of his morals or ethics,” his father said, leveling him with a blistering glare.

Sinking into the antique Chippendale chair, Phil wanted to disappear. Or maybe to die.

“In any event,” Alex went on. “Unfortunately, someone videoed… what happened. And now that person is threatening to make the video public unless you pay him.”

In the end, Alex convinced his father to part with five million dollars, which supposedly was supposed to be given to the person who’d video Phil lying between bloody sheets with Sarah. And in exchange, Alex would get the video and hand it over to Phil’s father, who would destroy it, and thus preserve his legacy, avoiding the tainting of his bloodline.

Phil had been grateful to Alex.

Until he’d gotten those notes.

Sitting on the ground, leaned back against something hard and rough. The ground beneath him was dirt. Damp earth. A few dead leaves and jungle vines. The air was humid. Thick and stagnant, clinging to his skin.

His eyes started to close again, but he fought the grogginess.

He tried to swallow but his mouth was dusty and dry. His throat scratchy. He tried to speak, to cry out, to yell and scream for help but he couldn’t.

He was gagged. A wide strip of tape stretched across his mouth. Panicked, he tried to pull the tape from his lips, but his hands wouldn’t move. There was a sharp, stinging pain around his wrists as something tight pulled against his flesh. Rope. His hands were tied. Boundtogether behind his back. His heart lurched into his throat but it couldn't escape. He was going to choke on it. Coughing, he thrashed about, but the expelled air was trapped, with nowhere to go except back into his lungs.

Phil gagged, felt the wave of panic rising, but forced himself not to get sick. With the tape across his mouth, he might choke to death on his own vomit. Closing his eyes, he told himself to breathe through his nose and to remember the techniques and coping mechanisms his therapists helped him develop when he was in rehab.

But there were too many questions in his head. Questions he couldn’t ignore.

Who had tied him up?

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