I wake.
Or maybe I’m not awake.
My eyes are shut. I try to open them, but my eyelids are too heavy to lift. It’s the same sensation I experienced at my house, under the jacaranda tree on the night the two intruders nearly suffocated me with chloroform. Only this time, I’m not quite as zonked out.
Maybe Joseph used too much last time. No wonder he’s usually so quiet—he’s been afraid to talk. Because now that I’ve heard him in panic mode, I’m 99.9 percent positive that the butler was one of the attackers that tore my house apart.
I’d recognize that whine of desperation anywhere.
But who was the other attacker?
It must have been Anthony. Right?
No, he would use his people. Like he used Joseph.
Whoever it is, will he … kill me?
Today?
I try to think effectively, but my mind’s still fuzzy. Wherever I am, I’m alone, for the moment. I want to shout for help, but as the fog starts to clear from my brain, I realize my lips are practically smeared across my cheeks, and I must have a wide strip of heavy-duty tape plastered across my mouth.
Crap.
At least I’ve still got my black dress on—I can feel the soft organic cotton against my body—but when I wiggle my toes, they’re free, my shoes gone. I reflexively try to stretch my legs but can’t—they’re bent and pushed up against my chest, and my hands are tied with what feels like rough-hewn rope in front of my knees. I’m bunched up like a pair of dirty socks, stuffed in the back of a drawer. Or, since my back is against a wall, and my toes are butted up against an opposite wall, maybe it’s a broom closet.
I force myself to breathe—deeply.
Breathe. Breathe.
Calm. Calm.
My heavy eyes are still shut and stinging, but I’ll never give Joseph or Penelope or Anthony the satisfaction of tears.
Or fear.
Nope. I won’t.
Breathe.
Then, I smell …
The ocean.
Nature.
Fuse with it. Fuse, fuse, fuse.
I breathe in the salty effervescence of the great and wondrous water—the birthplace of all things—and my spirit begins to light. We are friends, the ocean and me. We have a relationship, just as I do with every beloved entity in my life, and with that thought, the wind that perpetually rides the sea’s undulating crest, obeying her every command, building in strength for a tumultuous storm or insouciant gust, brings me …
Two more scents.
Not close to me, not yet, but near enough to waft beneath the closet door.
I know that it’s Penelope De Vos—I recognize her breath, which carries the hint of lavender and pepper.
It is always there—with Penelope.
Usually light, airy.
But now it’s heavy, as if she doused herself in the expensive vodka. Now, the scent of the ocean has lit up my neurons, and those odors elucidate for me the depth of Penelope’s despair.
I’ll bet she has drunk … a lot.
And so the ocean has given me a means of escape.
Or a start, because now I know …
Not only has Penelope been drinking.
She is very likely … inebriated.