Scar frantically looked around, and then suddenly, his eyes lit up when he spotted the woman's purse.
That meddling troublemaker had left with Janet, but he had forgotten her purse, which was now lying under a barstool.
He picked it up, unzipped it, and poured out its contents. Among all the other items was a leather wallet, which was bulging.
He flipped it open and saw a row of credit cards, all colored black, from several major banks. He didn't care about these; he couldn't make use of them without her PIN, and he didn't know what the black color meant, anyway.
The onlookers were stunned by the wealth displayed there. Very few people could qualify for these prestigious cards.
Scar only wanted cash, so he took out the black cards and threw them on the floor. Then he opened the inner layer of the wallet and found a thick stack of bank notes. The one on top was a hundred-dollar bill.
He didn't take the time to count the cash. He pulled out the stack and waved it in front of Blondie. "We've got the money, so let's go to the hospital."
He helped Blondie up, and then they made their way through the crowd and out of the bar.
Moments after they left, a middle-aged man with a cigar in his mouth came through the door. He bent down and picked up the purse and wallet, and then he squinted at the ID card. The name he saw on it spurred him into motion.
He quickly picked up all the black credit cards from the floor and set them on the bar.
"What happened?" he demanded of the bartender.
The bartender explained what he had seen, and the man told him, "Go after those two bastards. I'll call the family."
"Yes, sir!" The bartender threw down his cleaning rag and gathered some of the waiters, and then they dashed out of the bar.
The middle-aged man put Janet's purse, cards, and wallet into a cabinet and locked it. Then he took out his phone and made a call.
It rang numerous times, and the middle-aged man grew more and more anxious as he waited.
The arrogant voice that finally answered sounded very angry. "Kyle Larsen, if you don't have a good reason for disturbing me in the middle of the night, then I will tear your head off and use it as a chamber pot."
"Mr. Rimmer," Kyle said nervously. "Miss Janet came to my bar. She drank too much and was taken away by a man."
"Who? Janet?" Jerry Rimmer said. "Where is she, you imbecile? What do you mean, someone took her? Why didn't you stop him?"
"She was already gone when I got here," Kyle said, unwilling to take the blame for what had happened. "I walked in and saw two hoodlums throwing a purse on the ground. I picked it up and found Janet's wallet and her ID."
"Hoodlums?" Jerry repeated. "Wallet? What the hell? Where are you?"
A few swear words and some running footsteps followed, and then Kyle heard the sound of a car engine.
"I'm in my bar," Kyle replied. "I've already sent my men to catch those two thugs."
"I'll be right there," Jerry said. "Find those idiots. You'd better have answers for me when I get there."
Then he ended the call.
**
The unlucky Blondie and Scar had made it a few hundred yards when they were stopped by the bartender and his men. Then they were dragged to a warehouse behind the bar.
The wound on Blondie's leg had stopped bleeding, but the knife was still in it, and the men dragging him didn't care whether the knife handle bumped into things. Blondie screamed until his captors stuffed his mouth with some rags they had found in a garbage can.
Neither Blondie nor Scar understood why the bar staff were going to all this effort. All they had done was try to take advantage of a drunken woman.
When they saw Kyle Larsen walking in with a young man in a pink shirt, they knew that they were in serious trouble.
Kyle was known throughout the city, and he had a net worth of over ten million dollars.
He was following respectfully behind the pink-shirted man, who appeared to be in his twenties, and they had the feeling that the man belonged to a very powerful family.
So when the young man started asking questions, Blondie and his partner trembled with fear.
They were too frightened to try to lie, so they answered all the stranger's questions, talking over each other in their haste.
A strange smile appeared on the man's face. When his phone rang, he made a gesture to Kyle and stepped outside the warehouse to take the call. Then he got into his car and drove away in a hurry.
Kyle looked at the prisoners, met his bartender's eyes, and made the same gesture. Then he also left.
Blondie and Scar died quickly and quietly.
Alex knew nothing of their fate, or of the attention that Janet's disappearance was getting. He was busy helping her walk to the entrance of a five-star hotel. He asked for the presidential suite, took her up to it, and laid her on the bed. Then he sat on the spacious balcony and watched the twinkling lights of the city.
Alex had just entered a meditative state when a rustling came from behind him. Janet got up from the bed in a daze and rushed into the bathroom. Moments later, he heard the sound of vomiting.
When that ended, he heard the shower come on.
A little later, Janet walked out with a towel wrapped around her. She was beginning to emerge from her daze, and she looked around at the unfamiliar room and realized that she wasn't alone. When she noticed someone sitting out on the balcony, she approached him quietly. She soon recognized him as the cute young man she had been drinking with and walked up behind him. Just as she was about to reach out and touch him, the door of the presidential suite flew open, and a man charged in.
"Janet!"
Jerry looked around the room, shouting Janet's name. After a moment of panic, he spotted the two people on the balcony.
One of them was sitting on the floor, and the other one was standing behind him, wearing only a towel. Jerry immediately concluded that he had interrupted Janet and the stranger in a very compromising activity.