Her headache had faded to a tolerable dull throbbing, she realized when she woke up, her eyes fluttering open and taking time to adjust to the sunlight streaming through the window. The second thing Honor realized was that her shoes were off and she was comfortably covered in a light but very warm feather duvet, and that she was lying in a bed.

She bolted upright, throwing the covers off and staring about her in alarm. She was on a king sized bed in a room with the curtains drawn aside to let in the bright afternoon sun. Her eyes immediately found her bright red suitcase standing up on its small wheels beside her sandals by the brown leather settee on the other side of the room. Her handbag had been neatly placed on top of it.

Which meant that it hadn't been a dream.

Someone had indeed stopped in front of her and said something to her that she couldn't remember answering after she sat down in the airport to wait for her flight back home. Then that person had practically carried her out of the departure hall. Vaguely, she remembered being bundled into a car and then being literally carried in someone's arms through more than one set of doors, including a set that made a chiming bell sound as they slid open. She remembered someone - she realized it was her - fitfully calling out David's name a few times as he - it had definitely been a man - finally put her down somewhere soft and warm - the bed she was in.

Remembering David brought the weight in her chest back. But she pushed aside the familiar image of David and Jillian to concentrate on figuring out where she was. She looked around her, eyes focused and careful. Despite being very frightened at finding herself somewhere so utterly different from where she last clearly remembered herself to be, she couldn't help noting that she was in one of the most tastefully decorated bedrooms she had ever seen.

From the shiny cream floral print wallpaper, the gilt framed watercolor and oil paintings on the walls to the somewhat darker curtains of similar floral print, the room was a testament to interior decorating at its best. Austere brown Persian rugs dotted the brown carpet, perfectly complementing the curtains and walnut brown cupboards and wooden surfaces, the writing table topped with brown glass, the brown leather furniture and the gold-tinted fixtures on the walls.

There was a large flat screen television affixed to the wall in front of the bed, and on one of the bedside tables by the lamp was a brown leather portfolio and remote control. There was a similar portfolio on the writing table with a collection of writing pens in a standing pen holder. There was a small amber bowl full of what turned out, on closer inspection, to be full of some larger than usual brand of breath mint - 'Morning Fresh! - Anti-Sulfur! Sugar Free! No More Morning Breath! Ever!'. All carried a similar symbol repeated in gold and silver lettering, a logo.

She was in a hotel room - and going by the decor it was a very expensive one. Looking out the window told her that she was at least fifteen stories up. She didn't need to see the pagodas in skyline to know that she was still in Thailand.

She let out a moan as her eyes finally focused on the digital clock on the writing table; 12:19. PM. Her flight home took off forty-five minutes ago. Her fingers clenched in a sudden rush of rage, at herself and whoever had brought her here. She wanted to scream, but her calm, rational side swiftly came to the fore - screaming wouldn't help. She just needed to get on the next Aerothai flight out of Bangkok, which meant that she needed to get out of the bed and find her way to the airport so she could make a reservation and pay whatever no-show penalty the airline chose to punish her with.

She threw off the rest of the covers and stumbled off the bed, swaying unsteadily on her feet. The simultaneous pangs of hunger and thirst that accompanied the dizzy spell made her head for the dresser door under the television where a fridge would normally be hidden in a hotel room. She opened it, found the fridge and siezed an ice cold Diet Coke can, a chocolate bar, and a bag of nuts. She sat at the foot of the bed and ate, finishing the contents of the Coke can and opening the fridge again to pick up a Sprite.

She threw the last handful of nuts into her mouth and stood with the can in her hand, going to her handbag. Her passport, cellphone, wallet and what was left of her cash were still there, undisturbed. Her sandals were neatly put together, heel to heel and toe to toe. She slipped her feet into them and tied on the tiny buckles, realizing that the man who had laid her on the bed must have performed the rather intimate act of taking her small feet into his hands to remove them.

She finished the Sprite, picked up her handbag and went to the door at the far end of the room with the standard green fire exit sign over it. She turned the handle slightly and the door immediately swung a quarter open on its own weight on noiseless well-oiled hinges. The first thing she noticed was that the door did not lead to a wide corridor lined with numbered doors on both sides with as she'd half expected, it opened unto a narrow and plain hallway that was much narrower than that of a typical five star hotel's hallways. The second thing she noticed was the sound of voices in conversation, male voices.

Honor froze. There were at least three men on the other side of the door, and one of them was sure to be the man who had taken her from her bench at the airport and brought her to a suite in a sky scraping hotel. The question popped into her head then; 'Why?'

She fought down a sharp upsurge of fear and panic as she carefully closed the door again, her mind churning with answers that turned her mouth dry. What if the answer was something a great deal more malevolent? More prurient?

It wasn't too long before that one of the larger international news networks had infamously aired a hair-raising investigative series about women of every race being snatched off the streets in cities and villages around the world and forced into a life of sexual servitude, not to be heard from for many years, or ever again. White slavery was far from unknown in this part of the Far East - and a large number of the featured victims had been foolish tourists, strangers in a strange land leaving themselves vulnerable to the wrong people.

But then, he could just be a good samaritan, albeit one who'd made her miss her flight home. And, whoever he was, he'd left her door open and her money and passport in her bag. He'd even left her her mobile phone.

Honor brought it out and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing the battery's power bar at a quarter full. Even better, the reception bar was completely full, the network's name prominent in the middle of the screen; 'GlobalSIMNet.' Careful to be quiet now, she went to the portfolio on the writing table, read the address of the hotel and looked at the telephone on the table. The extension number '1615' was clearly printed above the mini-directory displaying the numbers for reception, room service, the laundry and other such standard issue five-star hotel services above the numbered keypad.

She quickly began to type out a text message; 'In suite with extn 1615 @ the Grand Imperial Hotel, Bangkok on Sakorn Street. Call +662344810000 & report KIDNAP if u dnt hear frm me in nxt 5 mins. Rply ASAP if u get this. Honor.' She typed in Sarah's number in the recipient's box, remembering to add the international codes and pressed the green 'Call' button to send the text. She held the phone in nervous shaking hands afterwards, waiting for Sarah to acknowledge receipt of her message. She remembered to quickly switch the message alert tone to silent and was just finished when Sarah's reply came in, the phone's screen lighting up as the phone vibrated.

Sarah's response was to the point with a shorter deadline. 'W8tin now. 3 mins only. Take care. PLEASE'

Honor let out a breath that she didn't know she had been holding and got up, putting her handbag on her shoulder and gathering herself to face who, or what, was on the other side of the door. But before she went to open the door again, she went to the cupboard and found a heavy wooden coat hanger.

Carefully she opened the door again, noting that the voices she had heard just a few minutes earlier were absent and stepped out into the hallway. There was a door to one side, occupying much of the wall which ended the hallway, adjacent to the one which hosted the door to the room she had just come out from. The other side of the hallway extended a few yards before opening up into what she could already see was a living room with the curtains opened wide for the sun's light.

Honor slowly approached the opening to the living room, noting what sounded like theme music for a news program from the television, the hanger held tight in her hand, mindful of Sarah waiting to hear from her in just about two minutes. She entered the living room and immediately her eyes fixed on the back of a man's head as he sat on the white leather sofa in front of a very wide screen television, holding up a sheaf of papers in his hand and reading. There was nobody else in the room.

She swallowed hard in apprehension, put her back to the wall, bracing herself and holding the hanger up like the weapon it was meant to be. Then she asked, voice deliberately loud, "Who are you?"

The man did not so much as flinch from the sudden sound of her voice intruding on him. He just turned his head to look at her.

She lowered the heavy hanger in her hand, her fear receding just a little from recognition without making her any less wary. It dawned on her that she shouldn't be so surprised that it was him. She'd not paid too much attention to his features as he sat beside her during the ride to the airport, even though she'd obviously absorbed enough to be able to recognize him.

Now she paid attention; he did not have an overly handsome face. In fact it was rather ordinary even while not being in any way far from a pleasure to look at; but it was a face that could readily disappear in any multiracial crowd. It said he was just a little over thirty, and it was broad with naturally well arched eyebrows, a middling nose, defined lips stylishly accentuated by the five o'clock shadow around his jaw. His curly hair was as black as her own, and lay close cropped to his head, the eyes behind his rimless glasses were sharp with intelligence, with both the smile and frown lines that suggested that any expression he chose to make left one with no doubt as to what was on his mind.

"You're awake," he observed. He had a broadly European accent, slight enough that it could easily be missed. "That's good. I was starting to get worried." He put the papers he was reading on the coffee table in front of him, still looking at her. An eyebrow arched when he saw the hanger in her hand before his eyes went back to her face. "Are you feeling alright?"

She raised the hanger, her voice coming out in an angry hiss. "You made me miss my flight."

He was silent for a moment. "You wouldn't have made it anyway."

Honor stared at him, "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means exhaustion and what looked like severe emotional trauma wouldn't have let you." His face remained impassive. "It means you were falling unconscious and in no condition to travel."

She'd suspected in the back of her mind that her patchy recollection of being brought to this place was as a result of falling in and out of consciousness, not mere sleep, but his confirming it did nothing to dispel her anger. In fact, it made her even more enraged, mostly at herself, that she had left herself so vulnerable to circumstances that she was in a hotel suite with a man whose name she didn't know - which made him an excellent outlet. "You still had no right to pick me up and bring me here, or anywhere, without my consent!"

"True," he acknowledged after another pause. He inclined his head and said, "I apologize. But that doesn't change the fact that you needed somewhere safe and quiet to rest and get your strength back. That's usually not an airport bench in any part of the world."

He rose up from his seat. He was not too tall, only an inch or less under six feet, she noticed, but he still towered over her and was thickset and broad in a way that did not have much to do with fat or an unhealthy overabundance of muscle. "Are you feeling alright?" he asked, his eyes matter-of-factly travelling from her sandaled feet to her disheveled raven black hair.

The weight in her chest was still there, heavy and painful. And the memory of David kissing another woman floated into her mind's eye from where she had pushed it into the background. And she was still in Bangkok where they were even now probably making love again for the umpteenth time.

"No. I am not," she snarled. "But even so, why didn't you wake me so I could make my flight?" The image of Jillian Blake with her legs wrapped and flexing around David's lower back had made her breathing harsher. She felt tears building behind her eyes but she was determined that she was not going to cry. Not here. Not now.

"I regret you missing your flight," he said, without sounding like he had any regrets at all. But his eyes had narrowed; he'd noted her breathing change. "But considering the circumstances, it was better to let your body decide when to wake up." He looked into her eyes again. "I'm asking again, how are you feeling?"

Just then, a loud knock thundered on the door. The was a short mirror-walled entranceway leading to what was certainly the suite's main door. "Mr. Haydn?" a voice called out. "Mr. Haydn? This is Hotel Security! Please open the door immediately!"

She jumped in startlement, while he only turned a curious pair of eyes to the door.

"Mr. Haydn?" the voice bore the distinct Thai accent in a deep bass of a voice. "Mr. Haydn! This is Hotel Security. I repeat, please open the door or we shall open it ourselves after a count of three! One ...!"

The man opened the door, having smoothly crossed the gap to the entrance and peeked through the peephole before the speaker introduced himself as 'Hotel Security' for the second time. Four men were standing on the balls of their feet outside, anticipating having to force their way in to the room. The hulking man in the lead was in a blazer with the hotel logo on the lapel and holding a walkie-talkie in his hand, the other hand held a cardkey poised to be inserted into its slot to open the door.

The other three men were in typical security personnel uniform, badge and insignia laden shirts, dark cargo pants, boots and wide combat belts with slings and slots for batons and radios.

"I'm Marq Haydn. Is anything wrong?" he said.

"You are Mr. Haydn?"

"Yes, I am. What's going on?"

"I am the head of Hotel Security. We received a call from a woman overseas that there is a woman, her friend, who has been kidnapped being held in this room." He spoke in fast and clipped tones, nervous enough to show that it was the first time he had ever been in such a situation. "Her name is Honor Banet. Is she here, sir?"

'Marq Haydn's' eyebrow had arched at the word 'kidnapped' but he answered calmly, "Yes. She's here." He opened the door wider and stepped back, revealing a very disheveled woman, standing by the hallway to the suite's bedrooms with a wooden hanger in her hand.

The Hotel Security chief blinked, looking from one to the other in some confusion, the thickset man looking relaxed and thoroughly composed, and the rather short but certainly fully grown woman looking a little the worse for wear after a long night. 'Why was she holding a hanger?'

But what he noticed most was that she didn't look like a woman who was being held against her will. She just looked somewhat confused and upset ... but then she was holding a wooden hanger as if it were a weapon. "Excuse me, Madam," he said, decision made. "Could you please come with me?"

Honor looked between the two men, the man whose suite she was in and the hotel's chief of security in a moment of hesitation. Sarah must have called ahead of schedule and let loose with all kinds of threats if they didn't make sure her best friend was alright. Marq? looked at her and inclined his head in a gesture that clearly said she should go with the security chief.

She glared at him; conveying exactly what she thought about him thinking she needed his input on the matter, before she descended the two steps into the living room and went straight for the door, throwing the hanger on the couch as she passed it. It took her a moment to realize that the very dishevelled woman in the hallway's mirror was her as she passed through to the corridor.

The security chief gave orders in Thai to his three uniformed men and politely, but firmly, told the thickset man to stay where he was. He then walked ahead of her down the corridor until they came to a table with an intercom telephone set against the wall in the middle of the wide hallway, which was lined on both sides by doors with numbers, all beginning with the number '16' on them.

"Madam," the security chief said, "Can I first of all see some identification?"

"Yes." Honor put her hand in her handbag and brought out her passport, licking dry lips as she put it into his outstretched hand.

The man opened the small leather bound booklet to the last page with her biographical data and picture. It said she was twenty seven years old, five foot one, brown eyed, black haired with a birthmark at the side of her neck. It was an accurate description, and he could see the mark, a half inch wide dot just above her left collarbone. Satisfied that she was indeed Honor Marina Banet, he handed her back her passport and asked, "Are you alright, Madam?"

It was the fourth or fifth time she'd been asked that question or some variant of it since she got to Bangkok and she was tempted to answer it just as she had done each time, but this time she didn't. "Yes, I am. I'm alright." She was about as alright as she could be, considering that she had passed out in an airport, woken up in hotel suite a stranger had taken her to while she was unconscious, and had missed her flight out of a city she had barely seen but had come to hate with an all-encompassing passion.

And to make matters worse, she could actually see where her fiancee was spending his nights buried inside another woman - the green and white marble walls of the Bangkok Excelsior, along with the huge flourescent 'Excelsior Bangkok' sign on top of the building, were clearly visible through the huge plate glass windows at the end of the corridor.

She was suddenly tempted to tell the security man that yes, the man in Suite 1615 had been holding her against her will ... but she bit her tongue and shook her head in the negative when he asked if that were so.

"Then why did your friend think you were being kidnapped?" the chief of hotel security asked, wondering if this was someone's idea of a joke, and remembering the manager's panic that his hotel would find itself in the news for all the wrong reasons, a panic he had shared in full because he would have been shown the door along with him. Consequently, he was starting to get angry.

Honor hesitated, hating having to lie. "I think it was just a misunderstanding ..."

She was saved by the crackling of the security chief's radio. Rapid Thai was exchanged and the man looked at the phone on the table next to them and read out the extension number. The conversation ended a moment later and he looked at her as he clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt.

"Your friend wants to talk to you."

Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the phone started to ring and he gestured for her to pick it up. Honor picked up the phone and confirmed to the woman at the reception switchboard that she was Honor Banet. The woman told her to hold on for a Miss Sarah Fernandez. The line clicked over.

"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On. Honor?"

Honor felt her spirits lifting from the first syllable out of Sarah's mouth. "I thought I said five minutes?"

"So the bastard can have all the fucking time in the world to fucking kill you?" Sarah shrieked, "What happened?"

Honor decided then to shade the truth a little, "I just got lost and I kind of passed out ..."

"What?!"

Honor hurried past the interruption, "... and when I woke up I didn't know where I was and there was this guy ..."

"Please don't tell me he ..." Sarah sounded like she was either going to scream or start crying.

"No, he didn't hurt me. He kind of rescued me. I didn't know - that's why I asked you to wait. I just woke up and I didn't know where I was. I ... I was scared." Much as she hated to admit it, to admit to leaving herself so helpless, Honor knew that it was true. She could not have made that Aerothai flight back home if she had spent fifteen hours waiting on that bench in the airport - even if she had made it through the night unmolested.

There was a silence at the other end of the line, then Sarah's voice came back again, "Where the fuck was David while all this was happening?"

'Playing with Jillian Blake's small and perfect tits and slamming his dick into her no doubt also small and perfect adulterous cunt.' Honor restrained herself again, biting her lip. "I'm flying in tomorrow, I'll tell you everything then."

Which only made Sarah even more alarmed. "Is he alright?"

Honor decided to shade the truth again. "He isn't even here."

"Oh." Sarah jumped to the right, or, to be more exact, wrong, conclusion - as Honor had hoped.

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay? I love you." Honor said.

Sarah did not sound convinced. "Are you sure you're okay?"

The question again. But Honor decided to tell the plain truth. "No, I'm not okay. I'll tell you all about it when I get home."

"I can imagine. Flying all the way and he's not even there," Sarah said, making Honor feel a twinge of guilt and relief at the same time. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow." Honor confirmed.

Sarah let out an audible sigh of relief. "Give me a number so I can reach you before you get on the plane."

"I don't know it off the top of my head. But my number works. It's forwarding my calls."

"Send it to me, Hon," Sarah warned.

Honor smiled, feeling the weight in her chest lose a little of its mass inside her. Sarah's love and her own fierce way of expressing it had a healing power all its own. "Okay."

"And if that guy really rescued you," Sarah added, "give him a kiss for me. With tongue. And I don't care how old or ugly he is. Or even if he has bad breath."

Honor couldn't find it in herself to laugh, but she giggled for Sarah's benefit. "Bye. I love you."

"I'm calling in an hour. Better answer it or I'm flying over there." Sarah said. "I love you too, Honor. Bye."

The security chief had heard enough, and he had radioed down to the reception while Honor was still on the phone as soon as he'd heard her describe her being in suite 1615 as a 'rescue.' He didn't fully understand it and he was still somewhat angry, but he was a professional. As soon as she dropped the phone back in its cradle, he asked her again if she was sure she was alright. She nodded, and answered that yes, she was.

He nodded and lifted his hand to call his three men to him and they left the door where they had been unobstrusively making sure that Mr. Marq Haydn remained out of Honor's sight, inside his suite. He nodded to her again, curtly, and left for the elevators, his men at his heels.

Honor trudged back to Suite 1615 at the end of the corridor, where her 'rescuer' was standing at the door. She glared at him, letting him know she was still not willing to forgive being picked up and taken anywhere like a child, and he smiled as he moved aside for her to enter.

This time, she saw, with some disquiet, it went all the way up to his eyes.