by Cj Howard
Claire smiled. “I think I can go at least one more round,” she told him. “If you promise I can use your shower afterwards.”
“Any time you like,” Benjamin told her. He pulled himself off of her body and rose to his feet, offering Claire his hand to help her up off of his couch. She took it, and in a moment, she was in his arms, standing barely pressed against him. It was almost too much to take the time to go all the way to the bedroom—but that was, after all, why they had gotten up. He brushed his lips against hers, down to her jaw and the column of her throat.
“Just promise I can use the shower by myself,” Claire said. “If you come in with me, we’ll never finish.”
Benjamin laughed. “I promise,” he said. He took her hand and led her towards the bedroom, eager to get to the next round of sex as quickly as possible.
Chapter10
As Claire left Benjamin’s room the next morning, she had to admit that of all the things she’d learned about her boss, his thoughtfulness still surprised her: he’d supplied her with a dress, casual but definitely a higher-end piece, to walk back to her room in, to avoid the “walk of shame” that would go along with being seen in the same clothes she’d been wearing the night before.
She smiled to herself, shaking her head slightly. Benjamin seemed to be prepared for just about anything that could come up—though she wasn’t sure how much of that appearance was actual forethought and how much of it was confidence in the possibility of an outcome he wanted.
She decided to have breakfast in the restaurant attached to the lobby, instead of making something in her room. Though Benjamin had invited her to have breakfast with him, Claire wanted some time to herself to think about what was going on between the two of them.
He had made it clear that he didn’t consider her having sex with him to be a condition of working for him, of paying off her father’s debt, and while Claire had to admit that she hadn’t had better sex in her life, she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep it up. She especially wasn’t sure she wanted to increase the amount of sex with Benjamin when she had to maintain some kind of professional relationship with him.
It isn’t like it would be all that easy for you to get laid otherwise, her mind pointed out to her as she crossed the lobby. How weird would it be to have someone come and see you here? Or to go stay at their place? Claire imagined that it would not go over all that well with Benjamin either—she had a pretty good idea that he was, at least peripherally, keeping tabs on her. After all, he had to have some kind of assurance that she would keep up the job, that she wouldn’t just wait to make sure her father was safely out of harm’s way, out of the state, and then bolt.
“Good morning, Claire,” the hostess at the restaurant said.
Claire nodded to the woman and smiled. She wasn’t sure who did and didn’t know about her sexual relationship—such as it was, after only two nights together, separated by two weeks—with Benjamin, but everyone who knew who she was in the casino seemed to be treating her with respect. Of course, that could be as much because of her job as anything else. Claire sighed as unobtrusively as possible at that reflection. It was impossible not to feel constantly out of her depth in the situation her father had put her in—the casino industry in Las Vegas ran deep, secretive, and personal.
She sat down at a table and looked over the menu. The restaurant she’d chosen was casual service. There was a hostess posted to make sure that people found seats, but since she worked in the casino, Claire was allowed to sit where she liked. The food was reasonably priced, for what it was, and she had the employee discount; no need to use any of her meal vouchers, considering that even with the chunk of her pay taken out for her father’s debt, she still had enough to afford it. She could have, in fact, gone someplace outside the hotel, but she just wanted to eat and then go back up to her room, maybe watch a movie as she took a nap.
Claire ordered something simple: eggs over easy, hash browns, and toast, along with coffee. She sipped water as she waited for her order, looking around her at the dining room’s occupants. It was an odd hour of the morning, but of course there were still a handful of people; most of them looked as though they were taking a break from hard gambling efforts, with bloodshot eyes and haggard faces over their coffee and food. For a moment, Claire pictured her father among them, scraping up a twenty for a quick meal before going back to the tables to try and regain the money he’d lost. She shuddered.
“Ms. Stevenson,” someone said, and Claire looked around, startled, until she spotted the man standing just off from her booth, looking directly at her.
“Who are you?” Claire frowned. The man seemed somehow familiar, in spite of the fact that she was almost certain she had never seen him before.
“Someone who knows your father,” the man said, seating himself before Claire could extend—or reject—an invitation. She caught a fleeting glimpse of movement in her peripheral vision and saw there were other people who had seated themselves nearby, dressed similarly to the man in front of her: suits, but off-the-rack, not the flashy kind that high rollers and the casino owners tended to wear.
“I’m not sure I get where you’re going with this,” she said firmly, thinking of Benjamin, probably having breakfast in his room, lazing about in his bathrobe. But if she called him or texted him, would he come to her rescue? Did she even need rescuing? Her instinct said yes. Her heart had already begun beating faster in her chest, and she could feel the clammy sensation of sweat on the small of her back and behind her knees.
“You’re going to come with us,” the man said. “I’ll do you the favor of letting you finish your breakfast first, as long as you don’t make a fuss. But you need to come with us as soon as you’re done.”
Claire glanced as unobtrusively as she could at the other men who had sat down. She could feel the menace radiating from them and didn’t doubt for a second that they had some kind of contingency plan in place.
“You obviously aren’t employees of Benjamin Minken,” Claire said, keeping her voice neutral. “Why are you on his property, and why do you think you can make me go anywhere with you?”
“Because we have some friends, too—similar to the ones that Minken has,” the man told her. “Besides which, it is greatly to your advantage to hear my bosses out.”
Claire pressed her lips together. The waitress arrived with her coffee, and she considered directly disobeying the man seated across from her by asking the waitress to call Benjamin down or, at least, alert security.
“Is there something wrong here, Claire?”
Claire glanced back at the man. He looked so sleekly confident, so utterly unconcerned about the question, watching her—and waiting for her to either obey his command or not.
“Not at the moment,” Claire said carefully.
“Let me know if you need anything,” the waitress, Sherry, told her, and Claire nodded. “Do you want to order something, sir?”
“No, I’m just waiting for Claire here,” the man said, smiling in a way that somehow looked both pleasant and terrifying to Claire.
“Let me know if you need anything, Claire,” Sherry said again, before leaving.
Claire stared at the man for a long time, while in her mind trying to work through what was going on. Obviously, her father had gotten into more trouble in Vegas than he had told her about. This was someone totally unrelated to the billionaire she had agreed to work for; that much was clear. But what on earth could he have gotten involved with? Who was she going to be hearing from? What could she do about the situation?
The tension of waiting to find out robbed Claire of her appetite, so when her food arrived, she was less than thrilled to tackle it; however, every moment that she took to eat the eggs, toast, and potatoes they’d brought her was another moment she wasn’t going to have to deal with what to do next. It was another moment before she would find out just how committed these men were to their objective of getting her to leave the casino with them, to go—wherever it was they planned o
n taking her. You should at least text him. Tell him something is happening.
“Before you think of evasive action, Ms. Stevenson, you should know that we’re aware your father isn’t in Vegas. We want to speak to you. But if you try and avoid us, you won’t be able to leave the casino on your own without risking your life, ever again.”
Claire scooped potatoes onto her fork and forced herself to eat them without response. These people were clearly less polite, less genteel, than Benjamin was. She finished her plate finally and pushed it aside. “Where are you taking me?”
“I can’t tell you that,” the man said. He had clearly expected the question.
“Why should I go with you—after the threats you’ve made? If you’re claiming I can never leave this casino alone if I try and avoid you now, why the hell would I go with you?” Claire kept her voice carefully low, just in case they were prepared to harm her in that moment, even with witnesses. But she didn’t think they would; they were trying to get her out of the casino with a minimum of fuss, after all.
“I can guarantee your safety if you come with me right now,” the man said.
“You do understand that’s kind of a joke, right?” Claire raised an eyebrow. “You threaten me and guarantee my safety at the same time?”
“I am only telling you that if you do not come with me, you won’t be safe,” the man said. “If you do come with me, you will be.” He spread his hands out on the table.
Claire thought for a moment. She didn’t have many options; she was surrounded, as far as she could tell. She could, of course, contact Benjamin, get him to send security. But even as the more cautious part of her mind insisted that that was the best response—even if she did endanger herself in the future—there was a part of her that was curious.
She wanted, maybe even needed, to know what the hell was going on and what part her father had played in it. Besides which, even if I get Benjamin to get security, there’s no guarantee they’d do something fast enough. She didn’t think the man across the table from her would kill her, but she did think there was a good chance he and his cronies would do some damage to her before security booted them from the casino—and then she’d still be in the dark, and unsafe.
“Okay,” Claire said. “Let me pay, and then I’ll go with you.”
The man nodded, and Claire thought quickly. When Sherry came back with the check, Claire decided that she would do more than just pay—she had to do something to ensure her safety. She scribbled a note at the bottom of the receipt Sherry would take: If I don’t come back in 2 hours, notify Benjamin. She added the current time from her phone and slipped it into the folder.
Claire’s heart hammered in her chest as she followed the man out of the restaurant, feeling the presence of his henchmen following them—not in such a way that they would be immediately obvious, but close enough that Claire knew they were there. She took slow, deep breaths, forcing herself to remain as calm as she could in the situation.
“We can’t let you see where we’re going,” the man said as a car pulled up to the side entrance he’d led her out through: unmarked, black, an SUV of indeterminate origins with tinted windows.
“So what does that mean?” Claire glanced around. The other men—she counted four of them—had stopped around them, at a distance where they could have just been bystanders, but she knew they weren’t. If her mysterious kidnapper—could she really call him that?—proposed drugging her, she was going to do her damnedest to get away from him. There were roads she would not go down, no matter what threats he levied or what curiosity she had.
“We’re going to have to blindfold you,” the man said. “We won’t bind your hands or feet—unless you try and remove the blindfold before you’re given permission.”
Claire glanced around her again. Could she get back into the building, to any kind of safety, before the five men could stop her? Part of her—adrenaline-soaked and irritable—said that she could. A wiser part of her pointed out how ridiculous that was. “Nobody is going to touch me, either,” she said. She knew it was ridiculous to make demands in her current position, but Claire was determined not to give into the power dynamic without some kind of fight. She was going to hold whatever space she could.
“No one will touch you unless you try and take the blindfold off,” the man said. “I told you: I guarantee your safety as long as you cooperate.”
Claire considered—one final, fleeting time—refusing outright. But she knew she was already on the track. There was only so much objecting she could really do. She had to see the whole, bizarre, dangerous situation through, as best as she could. “Fine,” she said.
The man took a long length of fabric, a little better than a glorified scarf, from some pocket on his blazer and held it up quickly for Claire to see what it was. She closed her eyes so that the fabric wouldn’t brush against her corneas and tried not to flinch as she felt the soft caress of it against her skin. Her abductor—presumably—tied it tightly around her head, leaving her nose and mouth clear, but making it impossible for her to see. Claire half-opened her eyes underneath the fabric yet couldn’t see more than slight edges of light below her eyes.
“Can I take your hand to help you into the car, Ms. Stevenson?”
Claire wanted to refuse the help but knew she would probably just embarrass herself, somehow, if she tried to climb into an SUV while blindfolded. She extended her hand and submitted to the situation, all the while wondering just how deep her father’s problems went and what she was going to have to do next.
Chapter11
“Mr. Minken?”
Benjamin moved quickly—but not with any sense of real haste—to the intercom in his room, curious. He had no plans for the day other than relaxation and an absentminded hope that Claire would decide she wanted to see him again that night. There were no meetings, no real work to do. He certainly hadn’t expected to get a call on the intercom.
“What’s up?”
“I just got a note from Sherry, in the diner,” the woman—Benjamin thought it sounded like one of the front desk workers, but a new one—said. “She said that some people took Claire away.”
“Took her away?” Benjamin scowled. This is bullshit. What the fuck? Benjamin took a quick breath to try and keep his mind clear.
“She left a note on her receipt from the restaurant, apparently,” the woman said. “That if she isn’t back in two hours, to get in contact with you. Sherry thought it was probably better to go ahead and contact immediately.”
Benjamin nodded and closed his eyes. “Explain to me what happened exactly,” he said.
“I wasn’t there, but Sherry’s here, she can tell you,” the front desk woman said. Benjamin told her to give the waitress the handset for the intercom and started thinking about how to handle the situation that had just happened.
“Well Claire came in alone,” Sherry explained, “but then when I brought her the coffee she ordered, I saw there was a guy seated at her table.” She went on from there: how Claire had said that it was okay, but Sherry had had a bad feeling; how she’d seen Claire and the man leave the restaurant and how a few other people seated nearby them—all men—had apparently decided to leave as well.
As he listened to the details, Benjamin tried to figure out the best course of action. He had no way to know who the people were who had taken Claire out of the hotel and no way to know where they had taken her. He would need to see if there was any footage from security that he could put to use and get in touch with a PI, if he had to. He needed to know what was going on.
Benjamin finished the conversation as quickly as he could and called down to the security office. “I need you to pull up the footage from the diner and from the side entrance to the casino from about an hour and a half ago,” he told the head of the detail.
“Yes sir,” Chavez said, without questioning it.
Benjamin made two more calls to other people, to put them on notice for what he had in mind, before quickly getting dressed to m
eet with his head of security to review the tapes. He clenched his teeth, trying to keep himself calm. It had only been two weeks since Claire had started working for him, but he already had a kind of proprietary feeling toward her; he was furious that anyone would try and harm her in any way.
As he rode the elevator down to the security level, below the lobby, Benjamin tried to think of what could have spurred the situation that had happened. There were three basic theories that came to mind: either it was something to do with her father and his particularly troubling gambling problems, something to do with the deal that he and Claire had worked on the night before, or something to do with the competition for his business—which, Benjamin knew, was really more of a sub-problem from the arrangement that he and the other casino owners had come to.
One of the casinos or other venues that had been left out of the agreement might have taken exception. Or perhaps, unrelated to that agreement, someone had an issue with him and had decided to take Claire—and do something to her—as a result.
“Hey boss,” Chavez said as he arrived. “What do you want us to focus on?”
“Claire left the casino in the company of about four or five men,” Benjamin said. “So let’s find the footage of her arriving in the diner and go from there.” Chavez nodded and both men sat down in the head of security’s office, peering at the screens together. Fortunately, the security cameras operated on a digital system, so accessing specific parts of the “tape” wasn’t difficult—and zeroing in on Claire, seated at a booth in the casino’s diner-restaurant, was easy as well.
Benjamin and the head of security watched as she placed her order, and then a few moments later, someone came to the table and sat down. Benjamin wracked his brain, but couldn’t place where the man could have been from, couldn’t think of who he could be. Chavez expanded the view from the tape, and they spotted the other men, seated peripherally. There was audio was well, and Benjamin listened into the conversation, frowning.