Swimsuit

“You didn't order this, did you, Mandy? This is about three hundred dollars.”

“Wasn't me. We must've got somebody else's bubbly.”

I reached for the card the waiter had left on a small silver tray. It read, “The Dom is on me. It's the good stuff. Best regards, H.B.”

Henri Benoit.

Fear shot right up my spine. How had that fucker known where we were when I hadn't known where we were going myself?

I got to my feet, knocking over my chair. I pivoted around, a full 360 and then back again in the other direction to be sure. I sca

Where was he? Where?

I stood so that I blocked Mandy with my body, and I felt the scream tearing out of my throat.

“Henri, you bastard. Show yourself.”

Chapter 96

After the scene in the dining room, I locked and chained the door to our suite, checked the latches on the windows, closed the drapes. I hadn't brought my gun, a gross mistake I wouldn't make again.

Mandy was pale and shaking as I sat her down next to me on the bed.

“Who knew we were coming here?” I asked her.

“I made the reservation when I went home to pack this morning. That's all.”

“You're sure?”

“Except for calling Henri on his private line, you mean?”

“Seriously. You talk to anyone on your way out this morning? Think about it, Mandy. He knew we'd be here.”

“I just told you, Ben, really. I didn't tell anyone. I just called in my credit card to the reservation clerk. That's all I did. That's all.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

I had been thorough. I was sure of it. I revisited that night when I'd just returned from New York, and Henri called me at Amanda's apartment minutes after I'd walked in the door. I'd checked Mandy's phones and mine, checked both of our apartments for bugs.

I hadn't noticed anything unusual around us on the highway this afternoon. There was no way anyone could have followed us when we took the off-ramp to Santa Barbara. We had been alone for so many miles that we'd practically owned the road.

Ten minutes ago, after the maitre d' escorted us out of the dining room, he'd told me that the champagne had been phoned in, charged to a credit card by Henri Benoit. That explained nothing. Henri could have called from any point on the globe.

But how had he known where we were?

If Henri hadn't tapped Mandy's phone, and if he hadn't tailed us -

A stu

“Don't even think about leaving me in this room alone,” Amanda said. I sat back down beside her, took her hand between both of mine and kissed it. I couldn't leave her in the room, and I couldn't protect her in the parking lot either.

“As soon as it's light tomorrow, I'm dismantling your bike until I find the bug.”

“I can't believe what he's doing to us,” Mandy said, and then she started to cry.

Chapter 97

We held on to each other under the bedcovers, our eyes wide open, listening to every footstep overhead, every creak in the hallway outside the room, every groan and pitch of the air conditioner. I didn't know if I was being rational or extremely paranoid, but I felt Henri watching us now.

Mandy had me tightly wrapped in her arms when she started crying out, “Oh, my God, oh, my God.”

I tried to comfort her, saying, “Honey, stop. This isn't such bad news. We'll find out how he's tracking us.”

“Oh, my God – this,” she said, poking me hard high on my right buttock. “This thing on your hip. I've told you about it. You always say it's nothing.”

“That thing? It is nothing.”

“Look at it.”

I threw off the blankets, switched on the lights, walked to the bathroom mirror with Mandy close behind me. I couldn't see it without contorting myself, but I knew what she was talking about: a welt that had been tender for a few days after Henri had clubbed me in my apartment.

I'd thought it was a bruise from the fall, or a bug bite, and after a few days the soreness went away.

Mandy had asked me about the bump a couple of times, and, yes, I'd said it was nothing. I reached around and touched the raised spot, the size of two grains of rice lying end-to-end.

It didn't seem so nothing, not anymore.

I rifled through my toiletry kit, dumped it out on the vanity, and found my razor. I beat it against the marble sink until the shaving head broke into parts.

“You're not going to? Ben! You don't want me to do it?”

“Don't worry. It'll hurt me more than it hurts you.”

“Wow, you're fu

“I'm fucking terrified,” I said.

Mandy took the blade from my hand, poured Listerine over it, and dabbed at the spot on my rump. Then she pinched a fold of skin and made a quick cut.

“I've got it,” she said.

She dropped the bloody bit of glass and metal into my hand. It could only be one thing: a GPS tracking device, the kind that are implanted into the necks of dogs. Henri must've injected it into my hide when I was lying unconscious on the floor. I'd been wearing this damned bug for weeks.

“Flush it down the toilet,” Amanda said. “That'll keep him busy.”

“Yeah. No. Tear some tape off that roll, would you?”

I pressed the device against my side, and Mandy ripped off a length of adhesive tape with her teeth. I patted the tape across the chip, securing it to my body again.

“What's the point of keeping it?” Mandy asked.

“As long as I'm wearing it, he won't know that I know that he's tracking me.”

“And? what good is that?”

“It starts the ball rolling in the other direction. We know something he doesn't.”

Chapter 98

FRANCE.

Henri stroked Gina Prazzi's flank as his breathing slowed. She had a wonderful peach-shaped ass, perfect rounded haunches with a dimple on each cheek at the small of her back.

He wanted to fuck her again. Very much so. And he would.

“You can untie me now,” she said.

He patted her, got up, reached under a chair and into his bag, then went to the camera that was clipped to the heavy folds of the curtains.

“What are you doing? Come back to bed, Henri. Don't be so cruel.”

He turned on the floor lamp and smiled into the lens, then went back to the canopied bed, said, “I don't think I caught the part when you were calling out to God. Too bad.”

“What are you doing with that video? You're not sending it? You're crazy, Henri, if you think they'll pay.”

“Oh, no?”

“I assure you, they will not.”

“It's for my private collection, anyway. You should trust me more.”

“Untie me, Henri. My arms are tired. I want a new game. I demand it.”

“You always think of your own pleasure.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. “But there will be a price to pay for this.”

Henri laughed. “Always a price.”

He picked up the remote control from the ornate night table, turned on the television set. He clicked past the hotel welcome screen, found the cha

First there were sports scores, then a market wrap-up, and then there were the faces of the new girls, Wendy and Sara.

“I absolutely loved Sara,” he told Gina, who was trying to loosen the knots binding her wrists to the headboard. “She never begged for her life. She never asked any stupid questions.”

“If I had use of my, ah, hands, I could do some nice things for you,” Gina said.

“I'll think about it.”

Henri clicked off the remote, rolled over, and straddled Gina's fantastic ass. He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbed his thumbs in circles at the base of her neck. He was getting hard again. Very hard, painfully so.