Last night, they’d drugged her, and she was pretty sure the water they’d given her that morning had contained a sedative because she’d slept for most of the day.
Sounds of birds chirping pierced the quiet, along with the occasional distant drone of a car, suggesting the house was set back a ways from the road. Too far away for anyone to hear her scream, except for the men who’d taken her in the first place.
She hunched over, a shiver working over the bare skin of her arms and down her spine.
She wished she hadn’t gone after the men yesterday and yet someone had had to try to stop them taking Kristen. Everyone around them had scattered like roaches. Cowards. If all of them had attacked the men and tried to free Kristen, they might have rescued her and run away.
Or they might have all been shot dead in the street.
Irene gnawed her lip. She didn’t want to die.
Her parents would be freaking out.
Dammit.
She clenched her jaw together, trying to hold back tears, knowing how badly they’d be dealing with this. Her mother was always stressed out trying to raise three daughters when they had to relocate every five years because her dad’s company was always moving him around. Her mom had stopped trying to make friends outside her dad’s work. She struggled with depression. Sometimes she used the contents of a bottle to cope. Irene didn’t blame her, but she wanted both her parents to recognize they had issues to deal with.
And now this.
It would tear them apart.
Irene was used to moving around, but she was ready to go to college and make her own decisions about where she lived from now on. She liked Argentina but wanted to go back to the UK to study. At least she had, until yesterday. Now…now she wasn’t so sure. She simply wanted to go home to her family and let them keep her safe.
The sharp metal edge of handcuffs pressed against the thin skin of her wrists. The red marks somehow made this whole thing seem more real. Irene’s throat went tight.
She didn’t want to die.
But it was a distinct possibility.
Her life circumstances had done a complete one eighty. She’d gone from looking forward to Christmas to wondering if she was going to be raped and murdered overnight.
She closed her eyes. According to what she’d overheard, one man wanted to rape and then kill her and dump her body in a completely different part of the country to draw suspicion away from where they were holding Kristen—as Kristen was the one they’d actually wanted. Another man argued that led to another potential trail of evidence if someone spotted the vehicle or if the police discovered trace evidence on her body.
On. Her. Body.
She shuddered. They were arguing about her like she wasn’t even human. One man said the police never needed to find her body. Another argued she could be worth something too.
She latched onto that. Her dad’s company had kidnap insurance. She knew they’d paid ransoms in other countries in the past. It happened all the time.
The idea gave her a small sliver of hope. She had value—if only in the form of what they could get for her.
Slow, steady footsteps scraped along the hallway outside the door. She pulled the hood lower and threw the strings over her shoulder. The door opened, and she bowed her head. Subservience might not come naturally to her, but she would learn it quick if it could keep her alive.
The footsteps came closer. A tap of a foot against her knee made her jolt.
“Aquí. Comida.” Here. Food. Then the sound of something touching the floor. “¿Qué? ¿No habla español?”
He asked her if she spoke Spanish which she did, thanks to Ms. Mair at school. Irene had an affinity for it, unlike German which felt like trying to talk with a cactus stuck in her mouth. He didn’t need to know that.
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you are saying, señor.”
Hands tugged at the ties behind her neck. The man seemed unconcerned by the fact they were already loose.
“I’ll tell you what I told the other one.” He spoke in English with a heavy accent and weary tone.
He didn’t seem to like what he was doing to her. Maybe she could persuade him to let her go?
“You can remove your hood when you are alone. But if you see my face or any of my comrades’ faces, I will poke out your eyes with the tip of my knife without hesitation. I will not risk being identified. I will not risk going to prison because some girl was defiant enough to disobey my instructions. You were not part of the plan. Your death will mean little to anyone here.”
Blood drained from Irene’s head, and she felt dizzy. The good news was that Kristen must still be alive and possibly somewhere close by. The bad news was a man had threatened to blind her and considered her nothing more than an inconvenience. She refrained from pointing out that she would have been happy not to have been kidnapped.
She shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep the hood on.”
He grunted like he didn’t believe her.
“My father’s work has kidnap insurance on all its employees and their families. I bet they’ll pay for me. They won’t involve the authorities.”
He laughed. His voice gruff though not unkind. “The Americans already know, and they’re who concern me, not the British. Also, if a captive tells the kidnappers they have kidnap insurance, sometimes that breaks the rules and means the insurance is null and void, mi hija.”
Irene flinched at the endearment. It was something her father called her on the rare occasions he was home.
“Best not to mention it to anyone else that you told me, si? Now, I expect you need to use the toilet?” he said as if that were something normal to discuss between a stranger and a teenage girl.
She cringed but nodded. Thank god she didn’t have her period, but what happened when she did? Her mouth went dry, and her insides clenched. What if she was here for that long? She’d read stories of people being kept for months, years even. Some kept as hostages but also as sex slaves.
The idea made her gag. She put it out of her mind. She needed to take it one thing at a time. She needed the bathroom. She couldn’t hold it any longer, and she did not want the added humiliation of peeing her pants. That’s all she needed to think about right now.
He unlocked the padlock that secured the handcuffs to the thick, heavy chain. She rubbed her wrists even though they were still cuffed together. He helped her to her feet and walked her toward the second door in the room. He went inside, and she could smell the stale odor of an unused bathroom.
He walked her all the way to the toilet.
“I will stand outside the open door. I will not look unless I think you are going to try anything foolish.”
“I won’t do anything foolish.” She heard him walk away.
“You already did.”
The words stung.
“If you try to escape, I will take away all your clothes and let the men downstairs do what they want to you. After that, you’ll be lucky if you can walk at all.”
Irene took a huge, shuddering breath. “I won’t try to escape. I promise.”
“Do what you need to do. Do it quickly while my patience lasts.”
She eased the hood away from her chest enough to look down at her feet and see the toilet seat. The toilet bowl was stained a rusty color with disuse. There was no cistern visible. If she had to guess, it would be above her head and there would be an old-fashioned pull chain off to one side, used to flush. Her grandparents had had a similar one in their old house. The memory made her chest ache. She pushed the thoughts away.
It seemed clean though. She quickly did what she needed to do and washed her hands and dried them on her jeans. She flailed around until she hit the pull chain and tugged on the ancient plumbing.
“Why did you do it?” the man asked from the other room. “Come after your friend that way?”
Irene swallowed. What would happen if she said the wrong thing? Did it matter? “She’s my friend. She’s a good person. No
one deserves to be grabbed off the street that way.” A sob caught at the back of her throat, but she pushed it down and made sure the hood fully covered her face as she walked gingerly toward the man with her cuffed hands outstretched in front of her. “Is she okay? Could we be kept together, do you think? Might be easier to look after us if we were together.”
He didn’t answer, and she knew better than to push.
“My father is the director of operations for South America. His company has offices all over the world. He’s an important man.” She might not be the daughter of an ambassador, but she was worth something, surely?
The man grabbed her elbow and led her back across the wooden floor and forced her to sit down beside the radiator where he reconnected the chain to the handcuffs, making sure the cuffs were tight around her wrists. So much for her dreams of slipping free of their metal grasp.
He held on to her hands. “Someone will take you to the bathroom again later this evening. They may even feed you.”
Who? Who would take her if not this man? She shivered. What else would they do to her?
“Drink the water I brought you. Keep quiet. Don’t make any trouble, and you might survive this. If you try to escape or disobey…” His pause was dramatic. “I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”
He let her go, and she immediately felt bereft. Was this sudden attachment to him Stockholm syndrome?
“What about Kristen?” she whispered fiercely. “Couldn’t she be in here with me? Wouldn’t it be easier to keep us together?”
The man walked away.
And Irene would have given everything she owned to have not tried to save Kristen yesterday. To have not been abducted with her friend. Hot tears welled up and rolled down her face.
It proved that, despite her pissy attitude, she was as big a coward as Gemma. Worse, she was also stupid. So stupid she’d been kidnapped even though she hadn’t been the target. So stupid she was now chained to a radiator while strangers discussed how best to dispose of her body after they’d assaulted her so badly, she wouldn’t be able to walk. Irene leaned back against the unbreakable radiator and let the tears fall.
She needed to figure out a way out of this mess but, right now, all she could do was despair.
* * *
Lucy was hot, sweaty, and grouchy as she headed back to her desk. Her muscles ached from her rough and tumble in La Boca. Worse than that, spending time with Max Hawthorne had left her feeling exhilarated and had reminded her of the good old days. Of living life to the fullest and enjoying every minute.
God, she missed that life. She’d been so naive. So arrogant and untouchable.
She felt different today. Lighter. Confident. Free. Her hair was pulled off her face, along with it, a heavy weight. She wasn’t wearing her fake reading glasses. She could feel the rigid steel infusing her spine and the way her shoulders were pulled back, and her chin lifted as she strode along.
Damn, this was all wrong.
This was not who she was anymore. Lucy had spent months being a mouse, and she wasn’t about to waste all that effort and thankless humility simply because a good-looking guy had arrived on the scene and treated her like an equal.
Max Hawthorne wasn’t even interested in her romantically. Even the offer of a drink was only a way of unwinding after a long day.
And that was fine.
Before this posting, she had vast amounts of experience dealing with people coming on to her. Today, even the brief notion had surprised the shit out of her. She no longer felt attractive. She no longer felt worthy of anyone’s attention. She frowned into space because that was messed up and, yet, here she was, suppressing her sexuality and her innate desires and doing her best to imitate a female eunuch.
None of that mattered right now.
She sank into her cubicle chair and slumped forward on her desk, holding her face in her hands. Her desk was innocuous and impersonal. No family photographs. No pictures of pets. Not even a dying plant. The only splash of color was a blue ID tag from a conference she’d attended with the ambassador that hung off the edge of her computer monitor.
Her hand found the band holding up her hair, and she released the heavy mass, and it fell around her face with the weight of shackles. It smothered her features and made her look unkempt like Argentina Lucy usually was.
Not that anyone was around to care.
If only Kristen hadn’t been kidnapped.
But there were a lot of things over the last fifteen months that she wished hadn’t happened and wishing hadn’t changed a damn thing.
She released a sigh and fished her glasses out of her bag, slipping them on. Her gaze caught on a sealed manilla envelope in her in-tray that hadn’t been there earlier. She frowned, picked it up, and flipped it over. It had her name typed on the outside. She opened it and pulled out a large eight-by-eleven-inch photograph.
Blood drained from her head, and a wave of vertigo slammed into her so hard she swayed in her seat. Her fingers shook, and she tried to swallow the bile that crawled up her throat.
The image was black and white. A woman crawling over a man who lay naked on the bed, her fingers curled around his erection, her lips wrapped around the head. Her facial features were largely hidden by her long blonde hair.
The man was gorgeous. Every inch of his glorious, ripped body on show. And he’d known it.
Sergio Raminsky.
Fucker.
She laughed like a maniac and smothered the sound with her fist.
He was literally a fucker.
She hadn’t known his identity when she’d bumped into him in a bookstore in DC. He’d claimed to be a tourist, and she’d foolishly believed him. Looking back, she’d been an easy mark. He’d charmed her, fucked her, and then dumped her, as soon as he had enough incriminating photographs to satisfy his Kremlin masters.
The photograph brought back a sea of unwanted memories. It was one thing to know the images were probably in existence and another to be confronted by the reality.
How many people had seen these? How many more images existed where she could be easily identified? Boris Yahontov’s face swam into her mind. He’d definitely seen something recently, hence his comments at the party. How many others? Had he sent this? Why? And why now?
She really would need a drink later.
This was supposed to be a reminder that they owned her. That they knew about her disastrous liaison with Raminsky and intended to use that krompromat to control her every move. It wasn’t the first time they’d contacted her. She’d given them everything they’d asked for so far, so why this new, overt threat?
There was no way anything she’d given them would have aided in Kristen’s and Irene’s kidnapping, but still, doubt found a way to creep in. She wouldn’t breathe easy until the girls were both home safe.
Footsteps sounded off the parquet flooring in the corridor outside. Miranda. Lucy recognized the pin-hammer tap of the woman’s gorgeous but impractical heels. Lucy slid the photograph into the envelope as Miranda came into the room.
“Oh, good. You’re back.” Her boss smiled at her. “Did you collate the information on Kristen’s friends for the FBI negotiator like the ambassador requested?”
Lucy stretched her neck to the side to ease out a kink. “Not yet. I only just returned from ferrying him to La Boca.”
“This is important,” Miranda explained with excruciating patience. “The FBI wants to interview all Kristen’s friends in case they have any clues in regard to the abduction.”
Lucy almost snapped that she understood that. She wasn’t an idiot. Then she jolted. The excitement of having outrun an armed gang followed by receiving the photograph had thrown her off her game, and she needed to regain her balance. “I’m so sorry, Miranda. I’ll gather all the information we have on hand, and I’ll get that to SSA Hawthorne in the next half hour. From what he said, I doubt he plans to talk to them tonight.” She checked her watch, surprised to see it was already after eight. Where had the day
gone?
Miranda came closer. “Are you okay?” Her blue eyes were wide with sympathy.
Lucy blinked. She must look worse than she felt. “I’m fine. Really. I forgot to eat today with everything going on.”
“Well,” the woman huffed out a quiet laugh, “it’s not like both of us couldn’t afford to lose a few pounds.”
Hurt sliced through Lucy, but she was careful not to show it. Miranda was pencil-thin. No one in their right mind would ever accuse her of being overweight.
Her boss’s gaze ran over Lucy’s form. Miranda frowned. “Although you look as if you just worked out.” Her voice revealed confusion.
“The negotiator asked me to change as he wanted to blend in with the tourists downtown and—”
“Oh, now I understand.” Miranda laughed. “One of these days I’m going to take you shopping to some of my favorite boutiques. Men are going to fall at your feet.”
Lucy had to look at the desk to hide her expression. Miranda didn’t mean to be offensive or condescending, but she did consider herself far superior to Lucy when it came to style and fashion. Lucy’s clothes were two sizes too big to hide her figure and avoid attention. And, while she might not be twig thin like Miranda, Lucy was fit and strong, and she liked her body.
She glanced at the envelope holding the black and white print of her giving a Russian operative a blowjob.
At least, she had liked her body until she’d realized how many people were likely to see it without her permission, and that realization still made her want to puke.
“Well.” Miranda crinkled her nose. “Get those details to the FBI agent and go home and get some food and sleep. Be back here early in the morning in case there’s any new developments in the case. I plan to sleep in the spare room of the ambassador’s suite until Kristen is recovered so I’ll be here overnight if Catherine needs anything.”
“Okay, thanks.” Lucy forced away her earlier hurt. Miranda wasn’t to know why Lucy behaved the way she did. Her boss had always been kind and helpful even if she was demanding. Lucy didn’t mind demanding. She liked to be busy and involved and could do most of her assignments with one hand tied behind her back. “I’ll do that. Call me if you need anything else.”
Cold Cruel Kiss: A heart-stopping and addictive romantic thriller Page 10