HIS EMBRACE TIGHTENED.

Then tightened more.

Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted off my feet, my arms pinned at my sides. Alarm spreading, I opened my eyes and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but his grip was too tight and too close for me to get any leverage.

“Gabriel, stop! What are you doing?” I gasped when I realized he was dragging me into the ladies’ room. He swung the door closed behind us, then pushed me hard against the walls.

When my eyes focused, I was staring at a knife.

The blade was curved and sharp on one edge and serrated on the other. I stopped breathing and felt as if my heart was trying to crawl into my throat. Gabriel held the knife just below my neck.

“Don’t move; don’t yell,” he whispered.

I’m not sure I could have done either, even if he’d ordered me to. I was frozen with fear.

“Don’t do anything dumb, and you won’t get hurt,” he growled.

I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My heart thumped so hard I could feel the pulse throbbing in my neck. Breathe, I told myself. If you stop breathing, you’ll faint. But I was beginning to feel sick and light-headed with fear. So it was Gabriel? He was the killer?

“I need money,” Gabriel said.

I heard him clearly, but was so surprised that I almost asked him to repeat it. Money? “I think I have thirty dollars.”

“No, stupid!” he snapped. “Real money. Fifty thousand.”

What? “I don’t—”

“Your father has it.”

My father? Fifty thousand dollars?

“He’s been avoiding me. Won’t go into the same room, won’t answer the phone. I made him so frickin’ much money, and now it’s like I don’t exist.”

I was trying to understand, but my brain was sluggish with fright. The knife looked new and sharp, and it was so close to my neck. “How?”

“How what?”

“Did you—”

“Make him so much money?” Gabriel finished the sentence. “I was the cheese in the mouse trap. Janet would talk the pigeons in, and then I would soften them up for the kill.”

Mice? Pigeons? Was it advisable to tell someone holding a knife to your throat that he was mixing metaphors?

“The kill?” I repeated.

“We didn’t kill anyone,” Gabriel growled. “That’s just what we called it. Janet got them to come to the hotel, but once they were there, it was my job to romance them, make them feel beautiful enough to think they could be models, make their mothers feel beautiful enough to think their daughters could do it. I was the closer, the charmer, the one who got the mothers to part with the money. Without me the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.”

“But Dad paid you, didn’t he?”

Gabriel snorted. “Nothing compared to what he kept for himself. And now I need more, and he’s got it, and you’re going to get him to give it to me.”

That’s when it dawned on me. I was being kidnapped? Held for ransom?

“He’s got till the end of the week, or I go to the police.”

It didn’t make sense. This person holding a knife on me was threatening to go to the police? Shouldn’t I have been the one who threatened to do that?

“You got it?” Gabriel lowered the knife, which was a huge relief.

“No, I don’t understand. The police have already questioned him. They know about the scam.”

Gabriel smirked. “They don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me.”

He shook his head. “Just tell him he’s got till the end of the week. He’ll know what I’m talking about.” He stepped back, slid the knife into his pocket, and gazed at me. “Too bad it had to go this way. You and I could have had a nice thing together.”

I thought of pinching myself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. This guy pulls a knife on me and then talks about what a cute couple we might have been? Was one of us in serious need of a reality check? But I held my tongue. He still had that knife.

“Get out of here,” he said.

I started to back out of the ladies’ room. As Gabriel watched, a nasty curl appeared on his lips. “Oh, wait, there’s something I always meant to tell you. You know all those photographs of famous people your dad has hanging on his walls? They’re stock shots he bought on eBay.”

“But they’re autographed to him.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Not autographed to him, autographed by him. They’re fakes. Now go. And remember, one word to anyone, and your dad is toast.”

I backed through the door, not taking my eyes off him until I was in the hallway, where I could turn and run. Outside the bathhouse, I started to walk quickly, wondering if I should go to the police anyway. What if Gabriel was bluffing? Hoping I’d believe him and not get the police involved?

But what if he wasn’t bluffing?

Was it possible that Dad had been up to even worse than what I already knew?