Read Rx Missing (Decorah Security Series, Book #10): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel Online
Authors: Rebecca York
Following scuffling sounds, Mack came to another wide hallway where a man and woman grappled in a ferocious struggle. He had her back to the wall, and she was trying to extricate herself from his grasp.
The woman was slender, with short-cropped dark hair. She was dressed in jeans and a pretty emerald-colored blouse. Mack was sure he had seen her before, but didn’t have time to ponder where or when, because it looked like her attacker was bent on killing her.
Dressed in sweatpants and jacket like the ones Mack had been wearing when he woke up, the guy was tall, blond and at least six inches taller than the woman. He was making harsh, guttural sounds as he tried to wrap his hands around her neck.
“Get the hell off her,” Mack shouted as he sprinted toward the struggling pair.
The guy’s head jerked around, his steel-blue eyes wide and crazed, as Mack leaped forward, catching the attacker with a blow to the face that made him waver on his feet.
When the woman dodged to the side, gasping for breath, the guy switched his attention to Mack, throwing punches like some mechanical maniac. Or a man with the desperation of insanity.
Mack ducked under the blows, pressing his face into the guy’s chest so that the large fists landed on his back.
He slammed the top of his head upward into a bony chin, just as the woman darted in and aimed a kick that caught the attacker in the shin.
He went down from the double whammy, and Mack was on top of him, landing a couple of clock-cleaning punches, surprised that he hadn’t even broken a sweat from the exertion.
He waited to make sure the man was out before turning to the woman.
Pale and shaken, she stared at him with round, frightened hazel eyes.
“Are you all right?” Mack asked.
She flexed her arms and legs. “I think so.”
“Any reason he should be trying to kill you?”
She shook her head helplessly. “I can’t think of any. Did you get hurt?”
“No,” he answered, studying her, trying to recall where he’d seen her before. “Do I know you?”
“No.”
But she’d hesitated for a fraction of a second, making him wonder if she was as uncertain as he—or lying.
He kept staring at her, cataloguing her narrow face, her slightly shaggy haircut, her slim build. When he tried to place her, he couldn’t come up with anything specific, only vague feelings of familiarity.
And protectiveness.
When he saw she was wavering on her feet, he pulled her into his arms, feeling her trembling in reaction to the attack as he cradled her in his embrace.
“You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” he said, wondering if he was speaking the truth as he stroked his hands up and down her back, feeling a shiver travel over her skin. He still didn’t know where the hell they were or why.
He liked the feel of her body against his and wanted to keep holding her. To reassure her? Or himself? Or was he simply feeling the need for human contact? In this strange, empty place, he’d finally met two more people, and one of them was obviously dangerous.
“We’ve got to secure this guy before he wakes up.”
Reluctantly easing away from her, he looked back the way he’d come, saw a telephone sitting on one of the desks. When he picked up the receiver, there was no dial tone, like with the one in his room. After yanking out the phone cord, he carried it back to the man on the floor and began tying his hands behind his back. He’d have to get more cord for the legs.
Just in time, because the guy made a gurgling sound and started to stir.
After hoisting the limp form over his shoulder, he carried him to the nearest doorway, aware that the woman was following. Beyond the door was a small office with a computer sitting on a desk, a printer and a brocade sofa, where Mack laid the captive.
He moaned, still dazed. When he focused on Mack, anger flared in his eyes, and he jerked forward.
Mack pushed him back onto the couch. “Take it easy.”
“Not fucking likely,” he bellowed, his face turning red with anger as he struggled against his bonds.
“You speak English?”
“Of course I do, you moron.”
“How did you get here?” Mack asked.
“Jesus! I don’t know. I was on my motorcycle. Then . . . I don’t know.” He stopped and looked around as though the surroundings would tell him something. “I woke up, and here I was. Get your paws off of me, you son of a bitch.”
“Calm down.” He glanced at the woman. “Did you just get here, too?”
“Yes.”
Taking his eyes off the guy for a moment was a mistake. Even though he was tied, the captive lunged at Mack who jerked back, barely avoiding a savage bite as large white teeth clanked together.
The woman gasped, and Mack spared her another quick look as she stood with a horrified expression on her face.
The bound man glared at her. “Stop pretending it’s not your fault.”
“It’s not!”
He answered with a snort.
“There’s something wrong with him,” she whispered.
“Apparently.” Turning back to the man, Mack asked, “Can you tell us your name?”
“Jay Douglas. Want to make something of it?”
“Great to meet you,” Mack answered.
“And who the hell are you?”
“Mack Bradley.”
“That doesn’t mean jack shit to me.” He jerked his head toward the woman. “What’s your name, bitch?”
“Lily Wardman.”
He snorted. “You’re lying.”
“Why would I?”
“So I can’t hex you.”
“Right.” Mack sighed. “Sorry, buddy, if there are other people here, we don’t want them untying you and getting hurt.”
“Fuck you.”
The guy turned his head away, but the brunette kept her eyes on Mack as he rummaged in a desk drawer and found some packing tape, which he first used to secure the guy’s ankles, then as a gag, working from the back so he wouldn’t get bitten. When he saw the guy trying to pull the phone cord off his wrists, he reinforced the bindings with more packing tape, inwardly cringing at what he was doing. Yet it was obviously necessary to keep the man from hurting someone.
Lily stared at the captive. “He needs medical attention.”
“Uh huh. We’ll call the house physician—as soon as we find where the staff went. Meanwhile, all we can do is keep him immobilized,” Mack answered as he wrote a note on a sheet of printer paper. “The guy in here attacked unprovoked. Keep your distance. Do not untie him.”
After signing his name, he backed away.
The brunette stood staring at the man on the couch, her expression uncertain.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked.
Did she hesitate for a split second before saying, “No”?
He’d been thinking he had to get out of here. Contact the authorities. But deep in his gut he had the sneaking suspicion that would turn out to be impossible.
When she followed him out of the office, he closed the door behind them and taped the note at eye level where nobody could miss it.
“I hate to leave him like that,” she said, still sounding doubtful. “I mean he must be having some kind of mental problem.”
“Right. But he’s a danger to himself and others.”
“Yes.” She agreed reluctantly.
He turned to face her, wondering if he could find anything out by giving more information. “I woke up a little while ago in a bedroom upstairs—room 222. What room are you in?”
“250,” she answered automatically, then looked like she wished she’d kept the information to herself. “I came down here to find out what I could.”
“Yeah. Me too. What’s the last thing you remember? Mack asked, trying to keep his voice as normal as possible. “I mean before you ended up in this insane asylum?”
“Is it an asylum?”
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s pretty upscale.”
“Yeah. It must cost thousands a month. What about your last memories?” Mack prodded.
He saw a thoughtful look cross her face. “I guess . . . driving to work.”
“Which is where?”
“Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. I’m a nurse on the surgery floor.”
“And you never got there?”
“I don’t think so.” She swallowed and looked down as though she were trying to hide her expression or work out what she was going to say next. “What about you? Are you from Baltimore, too?”
“Western Maryland, but last I remember, I was in an F18 over . . . the Middle East,” he said, heeding the admonition not to reveal his exact assignment. “I got hit and bailed out.”
She dragged in a sharp breath. “Hit?”
“Heat-seeking missile.”
“You’re lucky to be alive. How . . . how did you get here from there?”
“No idea.” No use saying he wondered if he
was
alive. Or if this was an outpost of the Twilight Zone.
She tipped her head to the side, studying him. “But you don’t remember anything after the plane?”
“Maybe I remember a hospital bed. Maybe I remember
you.”
He made that last part a challenge as he kept his gaze fixed on her.
Her breath
caught, and some of the color drained from her face.
“That’s impossible.”
“What if you were hurt, too? What if we were in the same hospital before we got here?”
She shrugged, then looked like she was making an effort to stay calm. “I’m not sure of anything.” He watched her take in a breath and let it out. “Sorry. I’m . . . scared. I mean, I wake up in a strange bedroom, come downstairs, and some guy tries to choke me to death.”
“Yeah.” He wouldn’t go so far as to say he was scared. Not yet. But he was definitely worried about this whole setup.
She made a quick change of subject. “Do you think there are other people here?”
“Yes.” The answer came from Mack’s left. He and Lily both turned to see a man and a woman walking toward them. The guy was wearing a running suit. The woman had on a long flowing dress with a bright pattern. She was slightly overweight and looked like she dyed her curly hair dark brown because there was a tinge of gray around the edges. The shapeless dress did nothing to enhance her dumpy figure. But her eyes were keenly speculative, and she looked like she was functioning pretty well mentally.
The guy, not so much. He appeared to be in his late thirties, fit and tanned with close-cropped brown hair and large brown eyes. He kept sticking his hands into his pockets and pulling them out again.
“I need my phone,” he said when he caught Mack watching him. “My wife’s going to be worried.”
“Where were you before you got here?” Lily asked.
“Playing touch football with friends.”
“Wouldn’t you put your phone down before playing football?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Mack went on to the classic question. “I don’t suppose either of you happens to know where we are?”
The woman raised her chin. “I’m betting this is the Mirador Hotel in Agra, India. Five stars and pricey.”
Lily looked surprised—and impressed. “What makes you think so?”
“I’m a travel agent. I’ve been here on a familiarization trip. The place is top-of-the-line as far as luxury goes. With two staff members to every five guests. Male staffers in tunics and turbans. Women in silk saris. Too bad none of them seem to be around to give us any information.”
“Yeah,” Mack agreed.
“I’m Paula Rendell.”
“And George Roper,” the man added, his attention barely focused on Mack and Lily as he kept looking around nervously.
“You know each other?” Mack asked.
With an effort, the guy brought his attention back to them and shook his head. “No, but we decided that it’s a good idea to use the buddy system.”
“Right,” Mack agreed.
He and Lily introduced themselves.
“After the initial panic, some of us settled down in the bar. Why don’t you join us,” Roper said.
“Initial panic?” Lily asked.
“Yeah,” Roper said obviously struggling to keep his voice calm. “Like how did we get here? What’s wrong with this place? Why aren’t the phones working—or the computers? Where is the staff?”
Mack looked toward the double glass lobby doors, thinking he should get the hell out of here instead of standing around quizzing people who didn’t know any more than he did.
If he was in India as the Rendell woman suggested, he should call the U.S. Embassy. Let them know that Lieutenant Commander Mack Bradley wasn’t dead. But he was willing to bet a month’s pay that walking out of this place wasn’t going to be so easy.
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m splitting,” Roper said as he started toward the door.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Paula answered.
“Why?” Mack asked, curious to hear why she sounded so sure of herself.
“Because this is India. Or maybe it isn’t.” She ran a hand through her bouncy curls.
“The point is, there’s an enormous difference between the atmosphere in a luxury hotel in this part of the world and what’s on the street. If you’ve been to India, you know what I mean. Beggars who won’t take a polite “no” for an answer. Cows wandering all over the place. People sleeping on the side of the road. Like the movie Slumdog Millionaire, only you’re in the middle of it. Take my word for it. You don’t want to go stumbling around on your own. There are too many bad things that can happen.”
Did she believe what she was saying or was the warning a ploy to keep them where they were. Was she really a travel agent? Or was she here to ride herd on a group of strangers who were struggling to figure out what was going on? Or was someone else the ringer? Another hotel guest he hadn’t met yet. Or one he had.
“I’ve never been out of the U.S. You think this is really India?” Lily asked. She seemed too worried to be in on the joke—if there was one. Or maybe she was a good actress. Like in that Truman movie, where Jim Carrey is raised from birth in an artificial environment, and everybody else is an actor. Even his wife and parents.
The travel agent shrugged. “Is this really India?” she repeated. “Either that or an elaborate stage set.”
Which was something like what Mack had been thinking. But what was it
for?
And how had they gotten here?
“We might as well hook up with the other people in the bar,” Lily said.
Mack considered his options. He still wanted to get the hell out of here, but he’d come to the conclusion that it would be smarter to get some more information first.
“The bar’s around the corner and down the colonnade.” Paula pointed toward another exit from the lobby. “I don’t know about you two, but I could use some fortification.”
She led the way across the lobby and out onto a covered walkway that bordered a courtyard, surrounded by the hotel on three sides. The far end was open, leading to a wide lawn that ended in the high stucco wall Mack had seen from his bedroom window. Beyond that were the trees he’d also seen.
“Are we out in the country?” he asked.
“No. The Mirador’s in the city, but most posh hotels in India have a wall and a strip of forest separating them from the
hoi polloi
. A luxury hotel here is its own little world. With security guards at the gate.” The travel agent stopped talking and surveyed the scene. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean?” Lily asked.
“The temperature out here seems to be the same as inside. It should be a lot hotter outside the air conditioning.”
“So you think we’re not really outside?” Mack questioned.
She shrugged, then looked at the blue sky overhead. “No pigeons.”
“Pigeons?” Mack asked.
“There are a lot of them in India. They’d be all over that fountain, unless there was a guy standing around flapping a towel to scare them away.”
A sudden flash of movement had them all looking toward the trees. A huge black bird came swooping down, circled the woods and disappeared into the greenery.
“More like a buzzard than a pigeon,” Mack muttered, thinking it was the first animated thing he’d seen besides these few people.
Paula shuddered and started walking fast—past a brass statue of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesh, to a cluster of cast-iron tables and chairs. Beyond them was a door that led to a softly lighted bar decorated with peacock motifs. It was furnished with comfortable sofas and chairs grouped around small glass-topped tables.
Again, no hotel staffer was on duty. But a dark-skinned man with shaved head and young woman with shoulder-length chestnut hair and light eyes were sitting at one of the tables. An athletic looking guy was pacing nervously back and forth. The woman wore the kind of running suit Mack had woken up in. The guy at the table with her wore khakis and a light blue golf shirt.
The pacing guy looked at them. “I’m supposed to be at a lesson in twenty minutes,” he muttered. “They’re going to fire me.”
“They’ll understand,” Lily said in a reassuring voice.
He stopped and glared at her. “I don’t need your uninformed opinion. I need to get out of here.”
“Did you try?” Mack asked.
“Oh yeah. The front gate has bars. And on the other side, a couple of tigers were staring in at me like I was lunch.”
“Tigers!” the woman at the table breathed.
“Yeah. Like in a zoo. Only I got the weird feeling we’re the ones inside.”
Mack took that in. Was the guy hallucinating? Making it up?
The man snatched up a glass from the table next to where the other two were sitting and took a swig of what looked like Scotch.
“That doing anything for you?” the dark skinned guy asked.
“Hell if I know.”
“But you can taste it?”
“Taste it? Yeah I can taste it.”
The seated black man picked up the glass in front of him and sipped. “This is supposed to be gin and tonic, but it might as well be distilled water for all I can tell.”
Lily’s head snapped toward him. “You’re sure?”
He thrust out the glass. “See for yourself.”
When she took a small sip and said, “Gin and tonic,” he glared at her. “Someone else try it.”
The travel agent picked up the glass and sipped. “Gin and tonic.”
“Christ,” the black guy exclaimed. “Then what the hell’s wrong with me?”
Mack could feel the tension building in the room, and he could imagine some kind of mass panic attack. “We need to stay calm and figure this out.”
George Roper glared at him. “Figure it out how, smart-ass? You have some inside information?”
“I wish I did,” Mack admitted. “We could start by exchanging particulars and see if we have anything in common.”
“What particulars?” Roper demanded.
Mack took a seat at a table adjacent to the others. “Name, occupation, where we were before we got here.”
“What does it matter where we were?” Roper demanded.
“Because those are our last memories before we got here,” Mack answered.
Lily sat with Mack. Paula and Roper sat together. The ones who had already met Mack and Lily repeated what they’d said earlier.
“I’m in insurance,” Roper added.
“You look more like a football player,” the woman at the table said.
“Used to be. In college. I play for fun now.”
“And you live where?” Lily asked. “Boston.”
“I was on a train from DC to New York,” Paula told them.
Mack looked at the pacing man who was too restless to take a seat.
“Chris Morgan. Ski instruction. “The last thing I remember is a rundown an advanced slope—to check it out for one of my students.”
The black man who’d complained about the drinks spoke up. “I’m Ben Todd. Lawyer. I was at a home improvement warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia. I needed some stuff for a project.”
“What project?” Paula Rendell asked.
“Is that relevant?” He shrugged, then said, “I’m adding a patio in the backyard.”
The woman with the chestnut hair had scrunched down in her seat, obviously hoping to avoid talking.
“And you?” Mack asked.
She gave him a nervous glance. “Jenny Seville. Schoolteacher.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and she looked like she wanted to disappear through the floor. Mack understood the feeling, but he pressed her a little.
“What city?”
“Catonsville, Maryland.”
“School was in session?”
“No. We were about to start.”
A sudden noise at the door caught everyone’s attention.
Another man strode in. He was lean and tanned and handsome, with sun-streaked hair. Wearing jeans, boots and a black tee shirt, he looked surer of himself than anyone else in this damn place. So was he in on the secret joke? Or was he just better at hiding his fears than the rest of the group?
In answer to the inquisitive looks, he opened his hands in a disarming gesture and smiled. “I saw some of you heading out the door and followed.”
Mack was instantly on the alert. He didn’t like the way this guy had materialized after the rest of them had gathered together. Had he been hiding out and waiting to make an entrance? Or had he finally decided he wasn’t going to learn anymore on his own. But why?
“So who are you?” Chris Morgan, the ski instructor, asked from behind the bar where he’d pulled out a bottle of rum and a can of coke. He and the newcomer were the only ones standing.
“Tom Wright. If you want a great deal on a new or used car, I’m your guy.”
Well, he did look like the type. Slick and ready to capitalize on any weakness.
“From where?” Mack asked.
“Philadelphia. And you all?”
In turn, the people in the room repeated the personal information.
When they finished, Wright recited back all the names and occupations. Either he had some super ability to memorize, or he already knew who everyone was.
Earlier Mack had wondered about Paula. Now he was thinking Wright could be the ringmaster. Or maybe they were acting together, working the group. Or what about Jenny Seville. She was obviously worried about something. Or was that just an act?