Cold as Ice

by Anne Stuart

  He rose, wandering over to the window to look out at the shoreline, when he realized the goddamn ship was moving. He let out a scream of rage, slammed open the door and headed out on deck, only to run smack into Peter Jensen.

  “You son of a bitch—” Harry managed to say, before blinding pain exploded in his head. And as he sank into darkness his body climaxed in pure, murderous rage.

  The boat was moving. It wasn’t Genevieve’s paranoid imagination, it wasn’t a remnant from her nightmare. The goddamn boat was moving.

  She scrambled out of bed. She was still wearing the silk slip of a dress she’d worn last night, with her bra and pantyhose in place, if a bit rumpled. She hadn’t been that out of it, had she? She’d had a little too much to drink on top of a three-pill day, but still, she shouldn’t be having blackouts.

  She sank down on the floor beside the platform bed, dropping her head in her hands. She couldn’t remember anything, not since she left Harry Van Dorn’s side and headed for her room. She’d left with the gray ghost, hadn’t she? But she couldn’t remember anything about the walk to her cabin, whether he’d turned down her bed or kissed her good-night.

  Holy shit. She’d been facetious, trying to reconstruct her last conscious moments, but the memory, no longer elusive, came flooding back. The son of a bitch had kissed her.

  At least, she thought he had. Or maybe it was just part of her dreams, an earlier, less nightmarish part. Though if it involved kissing someone like Jensen then she’d almost prefer the nightmares. She’d learned how to fight back with them.

  She rose on unsteady feet. At least she hadn’t slept in her shoes. She walked in what she hoped was the direction of the window, feeling her way, and when she reached the heavy curtains she tugged, trying to open them.

  They stayed put, obviously on some kind of heavyduty curtain rod, but she could push the fabric out of the way enough to have her worst fears confirmed. It was midday, when she should have already landed in Costa Rica, and they were out at sea.

  Harry’s multi-million-dollar yacht ran smoothly and quietly through the waters, but there was no mistaking the feel of the engine beneath her, the sound of the water as the boat cut through the swells. She let the curtain drop again, swearing under her breath. If this was Harry Van Dorn’s idea of a joke then she wasn’t amused.

  Maybe he was taking her to Costa Rica via the yacht; across the open water it wouldn’t be that far, and she hadn’t actually come right out and told him she hated being on a boat. Maybe it was his twisted idea of flirtation—he was so used to women falling at his feet that he assumed anyone would be thrilled by his attention.

  Genevieve was definitely not thrilled. She had every intention of tracking him down and giving him an ultimatum. She hadn’t seen a helicopter landing pad on this floating mansion but she was willing to bet he had one, and she was going to give him an hour to provide her with a flight out of here.

  If he set Jensen to it then it would be there in half an hour. He couldn’t have kissed her, could he? The man seemed totally asexual, and besides, what an absurd thing to do. She already knew how badly she needed this vacation—this paranoid delusion only proved it.

  She took long enough to shower and change back into her business clothes. She’d slept in her contacts—always a mistake—and she felt rumpled and gritty and vulnerable. It took her less than fifteen minutes to put on her business persona once more; she’d become an expert at constructing Genevieve Spenser, Esquire, in record time, even without makeup and fresh underwear and shoes. Her reflection in the mirror wasn’t reassuring. She didn’t look as polished and inviolate as she usually did. It didn’t matter. Her justifiable anger would make up for any lingering vulnerability.

  Except that the door was locked from the outside. At first she couldn’t believe it—it must have been some kind of mistake. But no matter how hard she tugged and twisted the polished brass doorknob, the door wouldn’t move.

  She lost it then. She began pounding on the door, kicking it, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Unlock this door, you son of a bitch, and let me out of here! How dare you do this—it’s kidnapping, and just because my firm represents your goddamn foundation doesn’t mean I won’t sue the daylights out of you, you slimy weasel.” She kept pounding, kicking, yelling, until a sudden slam against the locked door momentarily silenced her.

  “Be quiet!”

  It was a voice she hadn’t heard before, someone with a heavy accent, possibly French.

  “Then unlock the goddamn door and let me out of here,” she snapped.

  “You have a choice, lady. You can sit down and shut up and wait until we’re ready to deal with you, or you can keep making noise and force me to come in and cut your throat. The boss said to leave you alone, but he’s a practical man and knows when you have to cut your losses, whether he likes it or not. I promise you I would have no problem killing you.”

  Genevieve froze. She wanted to laugh at the melodramatic absurdity of that disembodied voice, except that it wasn’t absurd. She believed that flat, unemotional tone.

  “What’s going on? Why are we in the middle of the ocean and why have you locked me in here?” she asked in a deceptively calm voice.

  “You’ll find out when the boss says you need to. In the meantime be quiet and don’t remind me that you’re causing trouble. Not if you want to have any chance of making it back to your expensive lifestyle.”

  She should have kept her mouth shut, but right now she was having a hard time being docile. “Who’s the boss?”

  “No one you want to fuck with, lady.”

  “Is it Harry?”

  The sound of retreating footsteps was her only answer. She was half tempted to call out after him, but wisdom kept her mouth shut. In her short foray into pro bono law she’d met enough sociopaths and career criminals to recognize the sound of one. The man who’d stood on the other side of the door would have no qualms about killing her. And he said his mysterious boss was even worse. Not Harry. Harry was just a harmless good ol’ boy and the logical target of whatever was going on. It had to be someone else.

  She tossed her jacket on the bed and proceeded to prowl around the room. She’d managed to figure out how to work the power-operated curtains, and she could open the window itself a scant ten inches. She might be able to get through it sideways, except that there was nowhere to go. It looked straight over the water, with no railing or deck beneath it, and she didn’t fancy dangling off the side of a fast-moving yacht while she tried to make her way to another level.

  What the hell was going on? The man had said his boss was ready to cut his losses, and it was clear she was one of those losses. The obvious center of whatever was going on had to be Harry Van Dorn and his billions of dollars. Was he being held hostage? If so, she’d be an obvious negotiator. Maybe that was why the unnamed boss had decided to keep her alive.

  And where was Jensen in all this? Probably already dead—he would have been expendable. Unless he was part of whatever was going on. Though someone less like a terrorist or extortionist she couldn’t imagine.

  She had a Swiss Army knife in her makeup bag. No pockets in her silk suit, but she could tuck the weapon in her bra just in case. Most of all, she had to stay calm. She’d learned that, and a great many other things in the months following the attack. Just to ensure it, she found her pill bottle and swallowed two of the yellow pills. Not enough to impair her, but enough to make sure she didn’t overreact. Thank God she had them.

  She grabbed her briefcase, but the contracts she’d brought with her were gone, taken sometime during the night. It was the least of her worries. She pulled out a legal pad of paper with its elegant tooled-leather binding and started making lists, always a way of calming herself. There were any number of possibilities right now. Harry Van Dorn could be playing an absurd practical joke. A comforting idea but unlikely. He was more likely to be the target of whatever was going on. Kidnapping? He’d be worth an unbelievable amount of money. Or was it a polit
ical act by some disgruntled militants? What did they want with Harry? Money? Publicity? His death?

  God, she hoped not. He was harmless enough, despite his faintly annoying flirtatiousness and his crackpot superstitions. He must have an army of bodyguards—anyone with real wealth did—though the only person she’d seen much of had been Jensen, and he would have been useless in a dangerous situation.

  There were countless other possibilities, and her response would be dictated by which one it was. In the meantime she could reasonably assume that she was being held hostage along with Harry Van Dorn.

  She looked out the window. She’d always been a strong swimmer, and she could float for hours, the one advantage of those unwanted fifteen pounds, but she had no idea how far from land they were. If they’d been at sea since she passed out last night, they could be hundreds of miles away from Grand Cayman Island.

  If it was a question of life or death, she could go overboard and take her chances in the water, but at this point she needed to stay calm and not make any unnecessary assumptions.

  She barely had time to scramble to her feet when she heard someone at the door. She could feel the knife tucked safely between her breasts, and she had her full, corporate-lawyer armor on, minus the shoes. The scruffy-looking individual who stood there with a semiautomatic did not look impressed.

  “The boss is ready for you,” he said. She recognized his voice from the other side of the door, and gave an instant, silent prayer that she’d shown enough sense to shut up. Whoever he was, he wasn’t the type to make idle threats.

  “And where’s Mr. Van Dorn?” she demanded in a cool voice, reaching for her briefcase.

  “You can leave that there,” he said. “And if you need to know anything about Harry Van Dorn then someone will tell you. In the meantime shut up and come with me. And don’t cause any trouble. The boss doesn’t want us to be cleaning up bloodstains.”

  “Why bother to clean them?” She was always too mouthy when she was nervous, and the pills weren’t having the desired effect. “If you’re into kidnapping and extortion, then I don’t think you’d care about what condition you left the boat in.”

  The small man blinked, a quick, dangerous movement, like a rattler about to strike, and Genevieve wondered whether she needed to dive for cover, but then the man simply laughed. “Someone will pay good money for it.”

  “It’s a little ostentatious, don’t you think? Whoever buys it can’t expect to get away with it.”

  “I appreciate your concern, lady, but there are places that can strip a boat and change its appearance as quickly as they can with stolen cars. And most of the people who own a ship like this don’t care too much about legal niceties. Now shut up and move.”

  Genevieve shut up and moved. He gestured with the gun, and she preceded him into the narrow passageway. She half expected to see bodies and blood, but it looked the same—spotless, deserted, normal. She kept moving, looking back every now and then to make sure her companion was with her. The gun was trained at the center of her spine, and a tiny shiver washed over her. A gun like that could do a lot of damage to a spinal cord.

  It was colder out on the open water, and the stiff breeze tugged at her neatly coiffed hair. She should have had it cut—she’d intended to wear it in braids while she was in Costa Rica, but it was looking as if it was going to be a long time before she saw that place.

  “Keep moving,” the man behind her snarled. “Up that staircase.”

  She started up, wishing she’d found her missing shoes. They would have done more damage, but she’d simply have to make do without them. He was following close behind her, and she waited until the right moment, when she was at the very top of the metal staircase, and then she kicked backward, hard.

  Her bare foot connected with his face and he tumbled down the steps, cursing. She didn’t wait to see whether the fall had done any permanent damage— she took off. The deck was deserted, with blinding sunlight all around, and there was no place to hide. She grabbed the first doorway, only to be confronted by a utility closet, but she didn’t hesitate, cramming herself inside and pulling it shut just moments before the sound of heavy footsteps made it onto the deck.

  It was pitch-black inside the tiny cubicle, and it smelled like gasoline and cleaning supplies. She was covered with a cold sweat, and her heart was racing, but apart from that she could pride herself on an almost surreal calm. She’d studied hard and well on just what to do if someone ever came after her again. The circumstances hadn’t been quite what she’d practiced, but close enough, and she’d definitely managed to hurt the man with the gun. The question was, if he found her, how would he pay her back?

  One thing was crystal clear in the claustrophobic confines of the closet. She didn’t want to die. And she wasn’t going to go without a fight.

  “Lost something, Renaud?” The voice came from almost directly outside her hiding place, and the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach turned to ice. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, and she’d been listening intently. She didn’t recognize the voice either—it was low, cool, expressionless.

  “That bitch.” Renaud’s voice was muffled.

  “Got the drop on you, did she? Maybe you should go clean up—you’re bleeding all over the deck.”

  “I’ve got a score to settle with that little—”

  “You don’t have any scores to settle, you have a job to do. I’ll take care of Ms. Spenser.”

  “She’s got to be a plant.”

  “Because she managed to get away from you? I doubt it—I think you just underestimated her. Madame Lambert just came through with the best possible intel—she’s simply a high-priced lawyer who stumbled into something unpleasant. Too bad for her, but no particular problem for us. Harry was just as likely to have someone with him when the mission went down.”

  “She’s the one who’s going down,” Renaud snarled.

  “You’ll do what I tell you to do and nothing more.” The voice was cold, cold as ice, and Genevieve could feel the goose bumps form on her arms. She didn’t want to meet the owner of that emotionless voice—the cold water of the open sea would be warmer than the man who was dangerously close to her hiding place.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” Renaud muttered, clearly unhappy.

  “After you get cleaned up why don’t you go to her room and get rid of her stuff. We don’t want any loose ends, do we?”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s a boat, Renaud. There aren’t many places to hide in the middle of the water. I’ll take care of her when the time comes.”

  Genevieve held her breath, half expecting an argument, but Renaud had been thoroughly cowed. “Just promise me you’ll make it hurt,” he said.

  “I’ll do what I need to do to accomplish the mission, Renaud. No more, no less.”

  She listened as Renaud’s footsteps retreated down the deck, then the belated clatter on the metal staircase. There was no other sound, but then, she hadn’t heard the mysterious boss approach. It stood to reason she wouldn’t hear him when he left either.

  She wasn’t about to take any chances. He couldn’t stand there forever—if she counted to five hundred in French then she could probably risk opening the door to make a run for it.

  Where she would run to was still a question. Over the side seemed the safest possibility, if she could find a life vest and a flare gun. A self-inflating raft would be even better—she could wait until the boat was out of sight before she inflated it. But if worse came to worst she’d simply go over the side as is, taking her chance with the cold water rather than the deadly cold voice of the unseen man. She had no idea whether there were sharks out there. She only knew about the human ones on board.

  She counted to five hundred twice, her rusty French slowing her down. She considered trying it in Latin, but it had been too long since her high-school classes with Mrs. Wiesen, and besides, the chances of anyone still being outside the utility closet were almost nil. If they knew she was there
they would have simply opened the door.

  She moved her hands blindly over the door, looking for the inside latch. Her eyes should have become accustomed to the darkness, but the door was sealed shut. If she stayed in that airless, lightless hole much longer she’d probably pass out from the chemical fumes.

  She made no sound as she ran her hands down the inside of the door, her fingers finally reaching the catch. She breathed a tiny sigh of relief—she’d known a moment’s panic that there might be no inside latch. After all, how many people expected to be opening a tiny closet from the inside?

  The door opened with an almost inaudible click, and she pushed it open, closing her eyes against the suddenly blinding glare of the midday sun as it bounced off the waters. She squinted, then opened her eyes fully. To look straight into the impassive eyes of a man she’d never seen before.

  A million emotions raced through her—instant panic, then hope as her eyes focused on the man leaning against the railing, looking at her. He was tall, dressed in loose white clothing, with long dark hair and very blue eyes, and his expression was nothing more than politely curious. She’d never seen him before in her life.

  “I wondered how long you were going to stay in there, Ms. Spenser,” he said in a voice that was both Peter Jensen’s and a stranger’s. “As you heard me tell our bloodthirsty friend Renaud, there aren’t that many places to hide on a boat.”

  She didn’t hesitate. Her only chance was taking him by surprise, and she dived for the side of the boat. She was halfway over the railing before he caught her with insultingly minimal effort, pulling her back onto the deck, against him. His body was warm, hard against her back, which somehow seemed wrong, she thought dizzily. He should feel like a block of ice, not a living, breathing human.

  “Sorry, Ms. Spenser,” he murmured in her ear, a soft, soothing voice. “But we can’t have you complicating our very careful plans, now, can we?”