Chapter 65 Wrong room?

Chapter 65 Wrong room?
Jocelyn’s POV

I stood in the corridor with the spare key pressed between my fingers, Lauren beside me and Wade slightly ahead, all three of us watching the second hand on Lauren’s watch move with an excruciating slowness.

“Give it another minute,” Wade said quietly, his eyes on the door.

I nodded even though every part of me wanted to move immediately. The image of Richard being half carried out of that hall by Colton had been burning behind my eyes since the moment I saw it and the wrong direction Colton had sent me in on the phone had only confirmed what my gut had already been screaming.

He was in this room. I felt it before I had any evidence of it.

Lauren touched my arm briefly. “Ready?”

I slid the key card into the lock and pushed the door open.

The room was dim, only the bedside lamp burning low. The smell hit me first, something sweet and chemical beneath the normal hotel air, the kind of scent that didn’t belong. Then I saw them.

Gina and Kelvin lay side by side on the floor near the foot of the bed, completely unconscious, their bodies slack, their drinks spilled in a dark stain on the carpet between them.

And Richard was on the bed.

His shirt was open, his tie loosened, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in slow even breaths but his face was slightly flushed and his hands lay open at his sides in the boneless way of someone who had lost all voluntary control of their body.

Something inside me split open.

I crossed the room in four steps and climbed onto the bed beside him, pressing my face against his chest, my fingers curling into his open shirt. The tears came without any decision on my part, quiet and hot, soaking into the fabric above his heartbeat.

He was alive. He was breathing. He was here.

“Jocelyn.” Wade’s voice came from behind me, low and careful. “I need a moment before you move him.”

I straightened and wiped my face quickly. Wade had already produced his phone and was moving around the room methodically, capturing the scene from multiple angles. The two figures on the floor. The spilled drinks. Richard on the bed. The careful and deliberate arrangement of it all.

“Every detail,” he said, more to himself than to us. “We document everything and we say nothing until the right moment.”

Lauren was already beside him, her eyes moving across the room with the kind of focused attention that told me she had done this kind of careful observation before. She was calmer than I expected for someone who had only been pulled into this situation hours ago. There was a quiet efficiency about her that I found steadying.

“Agreed,” I said, pressing the back of my hand briefly to Richard’s forehead. “Nothing until we decide how and when.”

Wade lowered his phone and looked at Lauren. “We need to move these two out before he wakes up.”

Lauren nodded and crouched beside Kelvin, assessing the situation practically. “He’s heavier than he looks,” she said.

“I’ll take him,” Wade said and moved to Kelvin’s side.

Their hands reached for the same point at the same moment and their fingers brushed. Neither of them moved away immediately. Wade looked up and Lauren looked down at the same time and there was a half second where the air between them did something that had nothing to do with the task in front of them. Lauren cleared her throat quietly and adjusted her grip. Wade kept his expression professionally neutral but something in the set of his jaw shifted slightly.

“On three,” he said.

“On three,” she agreed.

They carried Kelvin out first, returning for Gina without much conversation but moving with a coordination that came more naturally than it should have for two people who had only just met. In the corridor outside I caught the brief moment where Wade held the door and Lauren passed close enough that their arms touched and neither of them stepped aside to create more distance.

Then they were gone and the room was quiet again.

I turned back to Richard and sat beside him, drawing my knees up, watching his face. He looked younger in unconsciousness, the lines of tension he carried in his jaw and brow dissolved entirely. I reached out and buttoned two of the buttons on his shirt slowly, my fingers trembling slightly.

“What did they do to you,” I whispered, not as a question.

I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough for the corridor outside to go completely silent. Long enough for the ache in my chest to settle from sharp to something duller and more enduring.

Then a knock at the door.

I stiffened immediately.

I stood, straightened my dress, pressed my palms flat against my thighs once and walked to the door.

I opened it.

Colton and Kylie stood in the corridor.

The shock on their faces was instantaneous and genuine. Colton’s expression cycled through at least three things in the space of two seconds, confusion, alarm and the scrambling beginning of damage control. Kylie recovered faster, her face settling into something more neutral but her eyes were wide and her hands were not quite still at her sides.

Colton opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He tried again and produced something that was almost a sentence before it dissolved into a stutter.

I looked at him steadily. “Colton.” I kept my voice pleasant and completely unreadable. “What a coincidence.”

“Jocelyn, I—” He stopped again. Started. “I was just—”

“I told you the east wing terrace,” he finally managed. “Fourth floor. I’m surprised you’re here.”

“People change direction,” I replied simply.

He nodded slowly, clearly still working through how this had happened.

I turned my attention to Kylie. “Lauren was with you earlier when I called. How did you two end up together?”

Kylie didn’t miss a beat. “I ran into him just now in the hallway. Pure coincidence. This floor all looks the same at night, doesn’t it?” She gave a small relaxed smile that almost reached her eyes.

I looked between the two of them. “So you knocked on this door by mistake.”

“Wrong room,” Kylie said smoothly.

“Coincidence then,” I replied. I let the word sit there for just a moment longer than necessary. “Goodnight.”

I held the door at a partial angle and watched them go. Colton walked quickly, his hands deep in his pockets, his shoulders carrying the specific tension of someone swallowing a very large amount of frustration. Kylie matched his pace, her chin slightly lifted, performing a calm she did not fully possess.

They turned the corner and disappeared.

I closed the door and stood with my back against it for a moment.

Then I walked back to Richard.

He was stirring.

It started in his hands, his fingers curling slightly, then a slow movement of his head against the pillow. I sat beside him and reached for his hand and then I noticed it.

The flush across his face had deepened. His breathing had changed, faster now and shallow in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. A thin sheen of perspiration had broken across his forehead and his jaw was tight with something that looked like effort.

Then it registered.

The scent in the room. The way Gina and Kelvin had been positioned around him. The deliberate setup of all of it.

They hadn’t just sedated him.

“Richard.” I pressed my hand to his cheek and the heat radiating from his skin confirmed it immediately. Whatever they had given him was not only a sedative.

The door opened quietly and Wade stepped back in with Lauren behind him.

Wade took one look at Richard and crossed the room immediately, pressing the back of his hand to Richard’s neck and then his forehead with the quick assessment of someone who knew what he was looking for.

“Aphrodisiac,” he said, straightforward and without drama. “A strong one mixed with the sedative. That’s why they had Gina and Kelvin in here.” He stood and began moving methodically around the room, running his eyes along the walls, the shelves, the fixtures above the bed.

Lauren stood near the door watching him work.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

Wade didn’t answer immediately. He moved to the smoke detector above the headboard and looked at it from below, then shifted his attention to the small decorative panel on the wall beside the mirror.

Then he reached up and pulled something free from behind the panel.

He held it up between two fingers.

A small camera. Barely larger than a coin, with a tiny lens catching the light.

Lauren’s breath came out sharply. “He documented everything.”

“He planned to,” Wade corrected. He set the device on the floor and brought his heel down on it once, cleanly and completely. The pieces scattered across the hardwood.

He looked at me. “Whatever happened in this room tonight stays in this room. We have what we need from our own documentation. They have nothing now.”

Lauren touched his arm briefly as she passed him toward the door, the lightest contact, and he looked down at her hand for just a moment before she withdrew it.

“We’ll be right outside,” she said to me.

The door closed softly behind them.

I turned back to Richard. His eyes were half open now, unfocused and glassy, his body moving with a restless heat that told me he was caught somewhere between consciousness and the drug pulling at him from the inside.

“Jocelyn,” he said, barely above a breath. 

“I’m here,” I said. “I’m right here.”

I reached for his hand and held it firmly. Then I made the decision that the moment required, quietly and without hesitation.