52. CASSANDRA

The room isn’t in the Regent. Of course it’s not, that would be stupid.

It’s in the Hotel James, a fleabag off of Times Square. The three goons are posted outside in the hallway, and I’m alone with Randall Buckner. Randall Fucking Buckner. How could I have been so stupid?

“You know,” he says, “I should have just given you the key that day in Hell’s Kitchen instead of those roses,” he says, sitting on the swaybacked old bed and pulling off his boots. “I was pretty sure you were the one at that point – that’s why I bought you the white bouquet. They’re supposed to symbolize purity.”

He looks me up and down like a steer at auction. Like I should know the color of the rose that symbolizes fucking purity. This guy makes me sick.

“Course, I guess that doesn’t apply anymore,” he mutters, a disgusted grimace scraping his face. “But I guess we’ll make up for it.”

“I don’t understand,” I breathe. “What’s going to make up for it?”

He’s acting like someone who always gets his way, as if there’s no other possible outcome. I never really appreciated just how special Carson is among the obscenely rich. He’s a real person. A human being.

Most of them are just obscenely entitled.

“Well, like I told you on the ride here, I decided to forego my refund in order to get you for a night.”

“Because the Russians think I cheated,” I say. “But they’re wrong! I didn’t cheat!”

He chuckles. It makes his jowls quiver like a pair of turkey wattles.

“Man alive, you are a feisty one!” he hoots. “That’s going to make this even better. Anyway, they want me to soften you up a bit so they can question you afterwards. They’re worried that maybe you and Drake are trying to collect some damning evidence to use against them.”

“But we didn’t! We would never!”

He untucks his cowboy shirt and starts to open the buttons.

“Doesn’t really matter to me what they do with you after,” he says. “I just have to make sure you’re receptive to it. I’m good at making gals receptive. I rented out the whole floor tonight, just in case things get loud.”

He slides his belt out of the loops on his jeans and coils it around one fist.

I will the blood to rise into my cheeks.

“No,” I whisper, lying through my teeth. I just need a second’s opening. I’ll rip this fat fuck to shreds. “It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Honey, you’re going to do that anyway.”

Panic creeps across my face as my eyes dart around the room.

“I’ll be good,” I plead, shuffling closer to him. “I can p-please you.”

He stops and gives me the once-over. I take that as a good sign and move even closer. I reach under the overhang of his belly and unbutton the fly of his jeans.

His leathery palm whips forward and strikes my left cheek with a dry smacking sound. I gasp.

“I didn’t say stop, bitch,” he growls.

I avoid his eyes and tug downward on his jeans until the waist is around his knees.

“What are you waiting for, stupid?” he says. “Take ‘em all the way off.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, grabbing his right wrist in my left hand and twisting it inwards. The motion drags him toward me and to my right, where his nose connects squarely with my rising elbow.

The wet crunch it makes is the most satisfying sound I’ve heard in a long time.

“Guhnf,” he croaks as he stumbles forward. The waistband of his jeans trips him at the knee and he hurtles face-first toward the floor. My right knee stops his momentum, snapping his head back. The blow sends him sprawling onto his side on the floor, out cold.

I time the thump of his fat gut landing with a scream.

“No, please!” I cry, tugging off the ring that came in my Chase package. I realize now that it’s how they tracked me and sent Buckner to my location. I stuff it into his bleeding mouth.

I clap my hands together hard and follow it up with another shriek.

“Oh God! Someone help!”

Meanwhile, I examine the window. There’s a slide opening at the bottom, but it’s not wide enough for me to wriggle through. The upper casement is big enough to fit through, but it doesn’t open.

I figure I’ll have less than a minute before the goons in the hall come charging in.

It’ll have to do.

I pick up Buckner under his armpits and drag him toward the window. If I have to do this, might as well get some poetic justice out of it.

I drop him on his knees on the windowsill and grip his skull on both sides. With a swift motion, I jerk it back and then drive it forward, shattering the glass.

The inevitable knock comes as I wrap my hand in the curtain and knock out the remaining shards.

“Sir! Everything all right?”

I hop out onto the fire escape and swing onto the descending ladder. We’re on the third floor, so I have to hop from the end of the ladder onto the balcony below, then down its ladder and onto the alley below that.

A goon’s head appears in the window just as I look up. I see the flash of the muzzle an instant before I hear the cough of the silencer. A slug kicks up chunks of pavement less than a dozen inches from my foot.

I sprint from the alley into the street, melding into the Times Square crowd. It amazes me how someone who had the brains to become the seventeenth richest person in America could be stupid enough to pick a hotel right next to the most congested spot in North America.

I emerge into the Square and get my bearings. Avoiding the goons in here shouldn’t be difficult. The question is, where do I go next? The goons took my phone, so I can’t call Carson.

Thank God it’s Times Square, one of the few places left in the country that still has payphones. This is going to be easier than I thought.

As I rummage in my pocket for a quarter, I scan the area. And suddenly, all my bravado dries up and flies away like a feather in the wind.

Across the street, Tricia is sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside a coffee shop. Next to her is a swarthy man I’ve never seen.

He’s pointing a gun at her under the table.