Noah's Nemesis

by Dale Mayer

  She nodded and then took several more steps. “Wow,” she said, “that last glass really knocked me out.”

  He slipped the glass from her hand and said, “Come on. Let’s get you upstairs.”

  She took several more steps. “Sorry, I should have called it quits earlier,” she said. “I felt a headache coming on a little bit ago.”

  “It’s all right. Let’s get you to your room.”

  She took another step and stopped and, with a funny look, pitched forward.

  *

  Noah dropped their glasses and caught her instead. All the time swearing, knowing he should have kept her glass. As soon as he saw her starting to drop, he had put it down but accidentally knocked her glass over. Several other people rushed over. He smiled and said, “She’s just really, really tired and tripped.” He scooped her up in his arms, snagged her wineglass, and walked quickly out of the room. He had his cell phone in his pocket, but, with her in his arms, it would be hard getting his phone out. He made it to the elevator, pushed the buttons up to the room, propped her up against the side, and pulled out his phone. He immediately sent out a call for help.

  As soon as the elevator stopped at their floor, Rory stood outside, waiting for them. He took one look and whistled. “Is she okay?”

  “I’m not sure. She passed out. Took a couple steps, said she had a bit of a headache,” he said. “Here’s her glass. I haven’t checked it out.”

  He snagged the glass and said, “Something white is in the bottom of it.”

  Grim, Noah nodded. “That’s what I was afraid you would say.”

  “So, even after all that, somebody got a hold of her.”

  “What we don’t know though, is what they slipped her.”

  “It’s not poison?”

  “She’s unconscious, but she doesn’t appear to be foaming at the lips nor has blue extremities nor is having any kind of other reaction, but we need to get her to the hospital fast.”

  They took her down the service elevator to the basement, where they quickly put her into their vehicle. With Noah holding her in his arms, Rory drove, and they quickly made it to the hospital. They explained what the problem was, and the doctors quickly set about pumping her stomach and checking her vitals. It was an hour before Noah was let back in to see her, still unconscious. He walked over, picked up her hand, and gently held it up against his chest. He looked over at the doctor. “And?”

  “It was a date-rape drug,” he said quietly.

  Noah’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow,” he said, “that’s pretty shitty.”

  “It is, but it’s also a good thing you found her when you did. She was given a heavy dose of it.”

  “Enough to kill her?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. Not unless she had some adverse reaction. But it was quite a bit, and she would have been—well, she probably would have just passed out where she was.”

  “I caught her midair,” he said. “She said she had a headache, took a couple steps, and pitched forward on her way to the ground.”

  “Yeah. But, at that point in time, depending on who was around and who could have helped her, the outcome could have been very different.”

  Noah nodded at that. “Good point.” And none of it bore thinking about because, if it had been any other guy, he might have scooped her up and taken her away. Either way, she’d been attacked yet again, and that made him feel really shitty. “Will she be okay?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “We’ll keep her overnight for observation, just to make sure the effects of what she did ingest have worn off.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You brought the glass with you, I heard?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and I’ll contact the police.”

  “We already have,” he said, “and I have a message for you from Levi, which is to stay with her at all times.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” he said, the guilt already rising in him. “I didn’t leave her alone in that conference room either though,” he said, looking up at the doctor. “But they were handing out wine pretty freely.”

  “And that’s a good delivery system,” he said, “especially if she’d already had a drink or two, because she would have been less likely to notice the taste.”

  “Great,” he said.

  “Listen. As you well know, if somebody is determined to do harm, it’s damn hard to get in the way.”

  “That’s true, Doc,” he said, “but it still doesn’t make me feel any better.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you here,” he said. “I can have a cot brought in, if you like.”

  “Thanks, but no on the cot,” he said. “I won’t be closing my eyes while she’s in here.”

  “Good enough,” he said. “I’ll check on her in a couple hours.” And, with that, the doctor left.

  Noah sank into the visitor’s chair, staring down at her. “What the hell,” he muttered. “I had my eyes on you the whole time.”

  And that begged the question of how the drugs got to her, only into her glass? Noah hadn’t seen who had passed her that particular glass, and he doubted that she had either. Somebody probably just came along, offered her a glass, and, with that bright smile, she would have accepted it and kept on going. That’s how these things worked. Lots of people and nobody watching, except for him. And what kind of a watch was he doing, since he hadn’t seen anything either? That would eat away at him. Levi called him just then.

  “You’re not the guilty one.”

  “Of course I am,” he said in disgust. “You know as well as I do that they managed to get that drug in her hands during that conference.”

  “Rory said hundreds of people were there.”

  “Yeah, and I stayed pretty close to her, but we weren’t thinking about drugs or weren’t considering the thousands of wineglasses being handed out.”

  “And that’s where the problem comes in,” he said. “It could have been anybody, and it could have been as simple as somebody specially asking the waiter to give her that glass. The waiter wouldn’t have known anything was going on at all.”

  “No, you’re right. She’s in here for the night anyway,” he said. “The doctor wants to make sure the effects have worn off. It was a pretty-hefty dose that went into her glass too. Rory said powder was at the bottom of the glass, but I didn’t think date-rape drugs left a powder.”

  “No, they don’t, but that doesn’t mean the powder had anything to do with it either.”

  “No,” he said, “maybe not. Or maybe he just did it so we would be suspicious.”

  “Maybe. And again, that’s just like the attack.”

  “So we know, but we don’t know who.”

  “Right,” Levi said, “the waiting game.”

  “We’re on the cameras all around the hotel,” Noah said. “We’ll find him.”

  “Good. Obviously either he’s hired somebody else or he’s changed his appearance.”

  “Both probably,” Noah said. “And I get the idea this Maxwell guy just wants to hang around, but he’s still going after her. Why not Rory or Logan or me?”

  “By now he probably will go after you, since he’ll know for sure that you’re there with her.”

  “But he doesn’t know that I’m your guy,” Noah said, “and, if this is all to get back at you, then he’ll still target Dianne.”

  A moment of silence filled the phone. “No, I get it, and you’re right,” Levi said.

  “We need to deflect it from her and onto me,” Noah interrupted. “Because now she’s been attacked two times—well, three, counting that knock on her head, finding her in her hatch,” he said. “I don’t want to see a fourth attack. The doctor said it was a heavy dose, and thankfully we got to her fast enough and got her stomach pumped, but, if we hadn’t, she would have been out cold very quickly and for a very long time. Anybody could have used that to their advantage.” Noah hated to even think about it because just so many damn predators were in this world. Anything like that happening
to her just made him sick.

  Levi said, “Maybe I should come into town and make myself visible too.”

  “That’s not a bad idea either. It’s not her they want. It’s you. At least that’s the working theory, until we figure out otherwise,” Noah said.

  “The thing is, he doesn’t want to come face-to-face against me. He just wants to hurt those who are in my life, as a way of hurting me,” Levi muttered.

  “Cowards are like that,” Noah said. “But the bottom line is, we have to make sure she doesn’t go through this again.” When he hung up from Levi, he sent Rory a text, asking if he could bring his laptop and a change of clothes for Noah to the hospital. He was still in his evening wear and would much rather be in jeans and a T-shirt, plus have his laptop.

  It wasn’t long before Rory strode in with his bag. He stopped and looked down at her. “How is she?”

  “She hasn’t changed at all,” he said. “Still sound asleep.”

  “But is she asleep?”

  “Well, it’s a drug-induced sleep,” he said. “Not a whole lot we can do about it, until she sleeps through it.”

  “That’s good though. At least, if she’s sleeping through it, we don’t have to worry about her. She’s here, safe and sound.”

  “Levi said he was looking at coming in.”

  “Yeah. I’m also a long-term member of the team, so, chances are, if Maxwell sees me around, he might target me as well.”

  “Well, hopefully,” Noah added, “if Maxwell sees me with Levi, he might understand that I’m part of the team too.”

  “You’re the one who rescued her, so there’s a good chance he’ll suspect that anyway.”

  “Maybe so. We were trying to pull off the relationship thing during the session tonight.”

  “And you did damn well with it too,” Rory said, with a grin. “You guys look great together.”

  Noah rolled his eyes at that. “That was for show.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said. “I watched it. Every time she lifted her head, she was looking to see where you were. You were doing the same.”

  “Exactly,” he said, “that’s the job.”

  Rory shook his head, smiling. “Keep telling yourself that,” he said, “but you and I both know that something’s going on under the surface between you two.”

  “Nope,” he said. “I like her, yes, but that’s as far as it goes.”

  “No, that’s how it starts,” he said, “so good on you.”

  Noah stared at Rory. “Good Lord, you and that whole matchmaking bunch at Levi’s are off the deep end.”

  “Hey, it’s fun to see everybody partner up. When you’re a happy man, you want to see the rest of the world happy too. Especially your friends.”

  “Maybe. She does like to bug me,” he said. “She teases me all the time.”

  “That’s because she likes you.”

  “That would be weird,” he said.

  Rory laughed at that. “Maybe. But whatever works.”

  “Says you.” He just smiled as Rory left. The conversation made him think he wouldn’t mind spending some time with Di when this was all over, when they could do it without the craziness that her world was in right now. So far, it wasn’t something he could even consider contemplating seriously. Besides, he wasn’t sure that she should spend any time with him. He had done a piss-poor job of looking after her so far.

  He pulled up his laptop, determined to get to the bottom of something, then immediately asked Levi for access to some of the hotel cameras. Levi gave him links to those inside and outside the main front door. Noah slowly and carefully went through everything. Finding nothing, he asked for more angles from other hotel cameras, and, by the time another four hours had gone by, Noah himself had gone through everything from the parking lot and the front door, yet found nothing.

  When he asked for the loading bays, Levi said, “Hang on.” A few minutes later, Noah had that link too. Only twenty minutes in, he stopped, picked up the phone, and contacted Levi. “He came in with the caterers.”

  “You think so?” Levi asked. He quickly brought it to the time frame in question.

  Noah said, “That’s him there, with the caterers, the fourth guy who just casually walked right past all the caterers in his cooking outfit.”

  “So, he looks like he’s kitchen staff,” Levi said, “but the kitchen staff knows that he’s not, so assumes he’s with the catering crew, and vice versa.”

  “And he just walked right in,” Noah said, alarmed.

  “That’s quite common in these scenarios with conferences held for a week or a weekend at various hotels. There’s no real security, and people come and go. Everybody is trying to do their own job, without worrying about everyone else’s job.”

  “But, in this situation,” he said, “that’s just bad news.”

  “Well, it is, but it also makes a lot of sense, during a conference like this, that nobody there in the kitchen is tracking who and what is going on.”

  “I guess,” Noah said, shaking his head. “It’ll just make our job that much harder.”

  “No, not really. We’ve already got that problem covered,” Levi said. “What we need to do is make sure this guy can’t access her anymore by diverting his attention elsewhere. So, you stay where you are. We’re already heading into town.”

  “You and Ice?”

  “No, me and Stone. He’s as identifiable as anyone.”

  “Meaning this Maxwell guy will recognize him too?”

  “If not, Maxwell should recognize me,” Levi said. “I mean, to my knowledge, he knew who I was before he approached me on the street, following the death of his child.”

  Noah thought about the video feed. “Did you notice he stayed in the back? At no time did the cameras pick him up in the middle of the hotel or through the lobby.”

  “No, and, even through the regular conference events, he keeps a low profile. So, he comes in, and he’s got a spot to disappear, then shows up again when he’s ready.”

  “Which just means he hid somewhere until he thought it was appropriate. But he waited to the very end of the evening,” Noah muttered. “Why?’

  “Everybody’s tired. The staff is all busy with cleanup, and she’s had several glasses of wine. You guys are more relaxed. Nothing’s happening, so Maxwell’s got a better, cleaner field to work from.”

  “Maybe,” Noah said. “It will be a long time before I forgive myself for this.”

  “But remember. You’re not to blame.”

  “Bullshit,” he muttered.

  “Yep, I hear you. It’s always worse when it’s somebody we care about.”

  Noah stiffened at that and frowned into the phone. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what the hell to say. “I’ll contact you in a little bit.”

  “It’s what, midnight?”

  “Just a little past. Do you really think he’s watching?”

  “Absolutely. Especially right now, he’s looking to see if he’s flushed us out or not.”

  “Then you be damn careful,” Noah said, “because he’s just waiting for a chance to sabotage you.”

  “Good,” Levi said, his voice hard. “We’re just waiting for an opportunity to catch him in the act.” And, with that, he hung up.

  Chapter 9

  Di woke up to mostly darkness. A soft light was on in the room around her, and she stared in shock, as she tried to figure out where she was. She studied the walls, shifted slightly, and her gaze landed on Noah, sitting there, poring over a laptop. “Noah?” she whispered.

  Immediately he hopped up, set aside the laptop, and took one big step toward her, where he sat down on the edge of the bed. He reached out and gently rubbed his knuckle along her cheek. “How are you doing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “My stomach hurts. My chest hurts.” She frowned. “My throat—”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “We were heading up to our suite,” she muttered, starin
g at him with confusion.

  “That last drink,” he said, “you tossed it back and handed me the glass and said you’d been fighting a bit of a headache for the last few minutes. You were really tired, and it was definitely time to go. So you took a few steps, then pitched forward. I was barely able to catch you in time.”

  She stared up at him. “Wow. Why?” Her mind tried to process the information, but it wasn’t making sense.

  “Because you were slipped a date-rape drug,” he said quietly.

  Her eyes opened immediately, and alarm flooded her system. “What?” She tried to sit up, but Noah gently pushed her back down.

  “You heard me,” he said.

  She shook her head and then winced. “God,” she said, “was it him?”

  “Well, I hope so,” he said in a joking manner. “Otherwise somebody else is after you.”

  She just stared at him and sank deeper into the bed. “That’s gross,” she said. “I didn’t even notice any difference in the taste.”

  “And that’s partly why he waited so late in the evening. You would have had a few drinks, so less aware. It is tasteless, colorless, odorless, all that good stuff.”

  “It’s a perfect drug then, isn’t it?”

  “For predators, yes,” he said. “And that just makes it all that much harder to deal with.”

  “Sucks though.” She stared around at the room. “So, he didn’t get me, and I’m not hurt?”

  “He didn’t get you, and, no, you’re not hurt. I carried you out of there, told everybody you just tripped, and Rory met me in the garage, and we brought you here to get your stomach pumped.”

  “Jesus,” she said, “I guess that’s why my stomach hurts.”

  “Absolutely,” he said, with a smile. “So, besides your stomach, how are you feeling?”

  “Well, my head hurts,” she said, “and my throat feels thick. Even my voice feels wrong.”

  “To a certain extent it is, but that’ll all get better as you recover.”

  “How long am I staying here?”

  “The doctor wanted you here at least overnight, just to make sure you’ve worked your way through the drugs in your system.”