Running around to the front of the hotel would take too much time, and Tristan didn’t have a key card to operate the elevator to take him to the top floor or a nifty device that would electronically unlock the stairwell door.
There was another way into the presidential suite, though.
Tristan ran to the ropes that were dangling under the balcony, grabbed one, wound his leg in the tail of it, and started climbing.
41
Anjali
Colleen
Colleen stood in the main bedroom of the presidential suite, her hands shaking because she could not find her best friend.
Jian Laio was sitting on the side of the bed, his shoulders slumped. He tried to say something to her, but only a hoarse croak came from his throat. Rags and a sock lay on the pillow.
One of Rogue Security’s commandos stood in front of him, bending at the waist and trying to look at his face. The guy unclipped a canteen from his belt and offered it to Jian.
Jian was waving his hand like he was trying to point, but he grabbed the canteen from the man and swallowed greedily. After his throat worked, he took the canteen away from his lips and panted for a moment before he rasped, “Anjali locked herself in the bathroom. She’s right there.”
Colleen sprinted the few steps to the door and pounded on it. “Anjali! Anjali! It’s me, Colleen! Come on, open the door and let us in. I swear to God, it’s me, and we’re here to get you out. Open the door!”
Under her hands, Colleen felt the door rattle from the inside.
“Anjali! It’s Colleen! Unlock the door and let us in!”
“No. It’s not you. It’s them,” Anjali’s voice whimpered through the door.
Colleen fell to her knees beside it and pressed her palms and cheek to the cold wood. “Anjali, it’s me! I swear to God. I can prove it. I know everything about you.” Colleen recited the few lines of Tamil that Anjali had taught her.
The door didn’t move.
“You brought back my monitor a few days ago after I lent it to you because Tristan King had hired me as a coding consultant,” Colleen ventured. “You like samosas better than pakoras, but you like onion rings the best. You still have to teach me how to make Kashmiri dum aloo so your aunties can arrange me so I can marry an Indian guy. Please, Anjali, open the door.”
And then Tristan was beside Colleen, his arms around her.
His arms and warmth steadied her.
Those bastards had hurt Anjali, Colleen could just feel it. Anjali didn’t shut people out. She was a hundred percent about community. If she had a problem, everyone else had a problem, too.
Knowing that Anjali was behind that door and hurt was flaying Colleen’s heart. Anjali had been there for her.
Tristan’s strong arms enveloped Colleen, and she leaned against his chest while she tried to talk to Anjali. The parts of her soul that had been in danger of flying to pieces steadied, and her voice shook less while she tried to talk Anjali into coming out.
Anjali whispered, and Colleen had her ear jammed against the door so she barely heard her. “Just Colleen can come in.”
Something heavy scraped the tile floor, and the doorknob clicked.
Colleen was kneeling on the floor, so she crawled inside because she didn’t want to waste a second, fearful that Anjali might change her mind and shut the door again.
When she scooted through, Anjali slammed the door behind her. Sitting with her butt on the tile and using her legs, Anjali pushed the porcelain toilet back behind the door to barricade it.
The bathroom was wrecked, and it smelled.
Wet towels stuffed the pipe coming up from the floor where the toilet had been, and the cover for the air conditioning vent lay in the tub. The duct leading out of the room was only six inches square.
Colleen flipped and grabbed Anjali around the shoulders, hugging her. “You’re all right. You’re okay. I’m so sorry I got you into this. I never should’ve introduced you to Jian. I never should’ve gone with Tristan. I would never have talked to him if I’d have known it would end up like this. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Anjali was hugging Colleen back and sobbing into her shoulder. “I knew you would come back for me. I was afraid they’d captured you and were using you to get me to open the door. They wouldn’t let Jian talk to me anymore after he told me to keep the door closed when they were beating him. I was afraid they’d get you.”
“Did they hurt you? I will murder those assholes if they hurt you.” She pushed Anjali back to look at her. “I was sitting outside, waiting with the guys who blew the windows in, and I imagined terrible things. I will murder every single one of them.”
Purple and brown bruises smudged Anjali’s left eye and around her throat and upper arms. “I’m okay.”
“Did they—” Colleen swallowed the sick in her throat. “Did they assault you?”
Anjali shook her head, and the shake seemed earnest enough to be honest but not like she was going overboard to hide it. “No. They hit me. He choked me. They said they would rape me if Jian did not tell them where Tristan King was. Then the next time they let me go to the bathroom, I unscrewed the toilet from its footings and pushed it against the door. With that, I could brace myself against this wall and hold it there with my feet. I was so afraid, and I almost came out when they started beating Jian, except he kept yelling at me not to come out. I know some Malay because a friend of mine in India was born in Malaysia and she taught me, so we have been talking in Malay when we didn’t want them to know what we were saying. Jian said that Tristan would come for us. He said to have hope because Tristan wouldn’t forget his friends. And I told him that you are my best friend in the world and that you can shoot a gun, and that you would come and kill these men. That’s how we kept our hopes up.”
Colleen was crying again by the time Anjali had finished, and they were hanging onto each other’s necks. “You’re not wrong. I swear to God, if they touched you, I was going to murder every one of them. Please tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m all right. I’m okay.”
“How long have you been in here?”
“Since this afternoon.”
“Tristan is right outside, and so is Jian. We can go out now. It’s safe.”
Anjali nodded, and Colleen braced herself and used her legs to shove the toilet far enough aside that they could squeeze out the door. “Jeez, is the water tank still full?”
“I stuffed rags in it and then refilled it to make it heavier.”
“Anjali, you did such a good job. I’m so proud of you.”
She blinked a lot and sniffled.
When they emerged from the bathroom, Tristan was sitting on the bed with his arm around Jian’s shoulders.
Anjali rushed over to Jian and hugged him. Jian was slow to put his arms around her and winced as he moved his arm. “I am so sorry, Anjali, my heart and soul. I have failed you.”
With the kidnappers secured, the commandos had removed their night-vision goggles. All of them were absurdly tall, which Colleen chalked up to self-selection for athletic and special forces types.
A man leaned in through the open door. “It is time to go. The police have been called and will arrive shortly. Our technical person has already uploaded the footage of what we found to the police. The video and audio that we have turned over to them is more than enough to charge and convict them. A complaint was already filed.”