Lottery 1
At one in the morning Aston made his way down to the front desk and distracted the clerk. He looked up the name of the reporter and made a note of the room number she was in. His phone vibrated as he reached the elevator.
It was Lou Artou.
“Yes?” Aston answered.
Lou’s displeasure was more than obvious as he barked over the phone, “Where are you at? We’ve been trying to contact you for days.”
“Can’t I take any personal time?” Aston entered the elevator.
“Devine has the brother.”
“The brother?” Aston was shocked, though it explained why the girl was with the reporter and not her brother. Assuming she was the girl with the reporter, he still had no proof.
“Yeah. He’s going to find out where the sister is, and the money.” Lou sounded proud of himself.
“So you don’t know where the woman is yet?” Aston looked at the numbers as he passed the floor he knew the reporter was on.
“No.” Lou cleared his throat, “Actually I don’t know what’s going on yet. I’m waiting for a report. You need to come back here, so when he finds out where the girl is you can get her.”
“I may already be ahead of Devine, in that department.” Aston exited the elevator into his penthouse suite.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say this is a working vacation.” Aston hung up on his boss and grabbed the supplies he would need.
In a black canvas backpack he tossed in rope, zip ties, and two pairs of handcuffs with fuzzy covers over the cuffs. He tossed in a few gag type toys, and a leather whip. Inside a small leather case were two syringes with enough sedative in them to keep the women knocked out for at least six hours.
He went down to the hotels shops and picked out some sexy lingerie and silk robes. He tucked them into the backpack and glanced at the time, it was near three in the morning.
He called room service and requested a room clean up for the reporters room in thirty minutes. Then he waited in the hallway for the maid to arrive. He offered her two thousand dollars cash for the master key and to keep her mouth shut. She agreed and left the cart too.
Aston waited til there was no sound coming from the room and it grew dark. He put on his night vision glasses, and slowly opened the door. He held a stun gun ready and he entered the room. He was so silent that neither girl awoke.
He sedated them with the syringes he’d brought, and changed their clothes. He gagged them and handcuffed them with the fuzzy handcuffs he’d bought. Then he carried them out, one by one out the back of the hotel to the rental car.
No one took any notice of it.
When Shaniqua finally awoke, the first thing she noticed was that she was in an uncomfortable wooden chair. Then she noticed her hands and ankles were tied to the wooden chair. She also noticed the ball gag in her mouth. Lastly she looked down to notice she was wearing a light cocoa, sexy nightgown. A nightgown she had never seen before.
She glanced around the room but it was bare except for herself and the chair. The walls were eggshell white, the carpet was a light tan color. There was a single window that let light in, but all she could see through the blinds was sky. She knew Lucy was in another room just like this one.
Shaniqua shook her head, to think they had just escaped the mob only to be captured by sex slavers. Or worse. But judging from the way she was dressed, she could figure at any time two men would come in the room. One would be holding a camera.
She should have known, two women traveling abroad. She was a news reporter, she knew about these kidnappings. She tried to think of whom she had spoken to that seemed out of place. She could think of no one but the oriental man she knew worked for the mob. Maybe she was so fixated on the mob she hadn’t noticed. Maybe because of her situation she wasn’t paying close enough attention to her surroundings. She was looking for the mob, but she should have been looking for a passive observer.
Maybe if she played nice she could get out of this alive. Maybe she could charm her captors and win their trust. There were too many maybes, and not enough facts.
Steven woke up and could barely open his swollen eyes. He longed for an inhaler to breath into as he took short shallow breaths to stay alive.
“Ah good your awake.” Devine stood up and walked over to the man. “Good maybe you can talk some sense into your sister.” he pressed some buttons on Steven’s phone, the other line began to ring. The phone rang and rang but no one answered. Devine looked at his watch, “She should be awake by now.”
Steven couldn’t do anything but focus on his shallow breathing.
“Hmm.” Devine hung up the phone and leaned over in Steven’s face. “That’s real inconvenient for you. You are of no use to me without your sister, and if I can’t get in contact with her, then I can’t use you for trade. That’s all you are to me. You are either worth a half billion dollars, give or take a few million. Or you aren’t worth anything at all. And if you aren’t worth keeping alive, I wont.”
Devine calmly added, “You can kill yourself and save me the trouble if you want. It’s all the same to me.” Then walked out of the room and closed the door, leaving Steven in total darkness.