Chapter Sixty-Three
Slowly Jane came to. Her head ached. Voices swirled around her. She could almost see them tumbling across her vision, and she couldn’t decipher which word meant what. A meaningless rush of familiar sounds.
Her tongue felt as though it didn’t fit in her mouth. She couldn’t swallow. Her dry throat wouldn’t allow it. Just like her eyes wouldn’t stay open.
Jane tried to roll over but couldn’t. She had no feeling in her limbs nor strength in her neck to lift her head. Had she died? Jane didn’t think death would give her such a painful headache.
So, not dead. Not awake. She was too tired to care.
Unable to sleep, bits of memory teased the edges of her mind. Chance made her happy. Teddy made her…worry. A cold prickle of panic tingled at the back of her neck. Why did she worry for Teddy?
“This is killing me,” Gigi’s theatrical cry rang clearly and broke through Jane’s fog.
Yet Jane still couldn’t move. But she could hear—and remember. Memory upon memory came into focus and zoomed away as though she were watching a slide show. The reporter and the damning pictures. Chance explaining the truth. She whimpered, recalling how Dax had pressed a caustic cloth over her face.
Though her eyes were closed, she sensed someone approaching. Jane lay perfectly still, scared to take a breath.
“Did she make a noise?” Lark leaned close to Jane’s side.
“I thought I heard something also.” Gigi lifted Jane’s wrist and dropped it.
Helpless to control her body, her arm bounced to her side. Jane couldn’t have moved it on her own, even if she wanted to.
“There’s nothing to hear. She’s not waking up,” Dax said.
“I know,” Gigi muttered. “But this is a lot of work—”
“Think of all the shopping you can do.” Lark moved away. “Think of the media bookers that will want your story on their shows.”
Jane’s ears burned. She still couldn’t move and didn’t understand. Where was she? And what were those sounds?
“What about this?” Lark asked.
“Yes!” Dax cheered. “Throw it against the wall.”
“Do not throw that against the wall,” Gigi cried. “At least not until we’re ready to leave. A little Chanel is fine. A bottle soaking in the carpet?” She gagged. “I won’t stick around.”
“How much more should we do?” Dax asked. “Everything?”
Both women hummed in contemplation. Jane moved her pinky finger.
Her ability to orient herself came back to her in spurts.
She could feel fabric under her palms and, minutes after Lark had been by Jane’s side, the tilting sensation of her crawling close—on a bed—came back.
It was as if her senses were on a delay.
Jane opened an eye. Her headache throbbed.
She could see, but that didn’t matter. Nothing registered yet.
Her other eye opened. If she could’ve winced, she would have.
The lights weren’t bright, but they stabbed into her eyes—she almost knew where she was.
The familiar location was on the tip of her tongue—the Thanes’s bedroom. She was in their bed.
The sounds of rips and tears mixed with the clicks of wooden hangers tangling. Jane could stretch her fingers. Her fingernails dug into the comforter.
“Remember this one?” Gigi called. “I wore it to the Met.”
Dax laughed. “It looks like a trash bag with sequins.”
“It is a trash bag with sequins,” she agreed.
Jane tilted her chin and squinted toward the voices. With a knife in one hand and the dress in the other, Gigi stabbed and sliced her bag dress until it looked like it had been used to capture clawed animals.
Jane opened her eyes wider. Dax, Gigi, and Lark worked diligently through Gigi’s clothing. They cut, tore, and shredded.
More confused, panic pressed on Jane’s chest. Her fear and lucidity came in bursts. She clenched her fingers, wriggled her toes. Jane fought the stranglehold that had paralyzed her. The pounding headache worsened. Jane wanted to vomit. Instead, she opened and closed her fists.
One by one, her muscles returned to her control, but she wouldn’t make a move until she could run.
Jane managed movement in her right leg, but not her left.
She couldn’t do anything with her arms beyond her wrists.
Carefully, she tested her neck’s range of motion.
She froze, staring at the nightstand. A vodka bottle and container of cranberry juice were lined up next to a row of Gigi’s Xanax bottles.
“Where’s that pencil skirt I hate?” Gigi asked.
“On the bed?” Lark suggested.
Jane closed her eyes and returned to her original position as best she could.
“No, never mind. I already did that one.”
“I think we’re almost finished,” Lark said.
Dax’s heavy footsteps crossed the room. He opened a closet and returned, dropping something next to Jane’s head. He cackled. “I haven’t used this thing since that IPO went buckwild.”
Gigi groaned, muttering, “Don’t forget, you got sick for days.”
Jane cracked her eyes when Dax walked away. A red funnel connected to a long plastic tube laid on the pillow next to her. A beer funnel.
Jane’s clarity came in one astonishingly calm second.
The slashed clothes. The liquor, pills, and funnel.
If it would have done any good, she would have screamed.
They were going to kill her, and the story would tell itself.
The brokenhearted nanny, who lost her handsome boyfriend to the billionaire beauty, drowned herself in booze, ending it all in a jealous, newsworthy rage.