by Gayle Wilson
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It seems that we’ll have to postpone our dinner. A rather urgent matter has come up. I hope you’ll forgive the change in plans.”
“Do I have an option?” she asked, smiling, still listening carefully to his tone, trying to understand whatever was contained in the calm apology. It was so frustrating to have to judge everything that was going on only by his voice. She had never before realized how much she depended on being able to read motivation in someone’s face, in his eyes. In her present situation it was vital to know what he was thinking, and she knew nothing at all. Only that something unexpected had happened, and she didn’t have a clue what.
“Diego will take you back to your room. He’ll bring you a tray while I attend to this. Forgive me, querida. I had looked forward to tonight. Perhaps…”
She waited, but he didn’t finish. Then she felt Diego’s fingers on her arm. She rose and let him guide her again to the elevator, and on the short ride she deliberately forced her mind away from the man downstairs.
After Diego had left her alone at last, having first brought the promised tray and then returned to carry it below, she lay in the darkness, forcing herself to think about escape, about anything she’d learned during her captivity.
The most promising realization was that there must be someone in this vast house besides Diego and his master. Someone had cooked the elegant dinner Diego had brought up tonight and her breakfast this morning. Servants. If she could somehow make contact with whoever ran the place for them…Why had the one with the silken voice changed his mind about dinner? What urgent business had interrupted his plans for her? In the midst of all those questions and possibilities, she found herself remembering that he had called her querida again, and that there had been, quite clearly revealed in the calm politeness of his dismissal, real regret.
Chapter Five
Finally she slept, exhausted by her failure to find a solution and by her despair over her initial stupidity of allowing herself to be taken. She had no idea how long she had been asleep when she was roughly shaken awake by Diego’s hand on her shoulder.
“Wake up,” he commanded. “He wants to see you.”
“Let me go to the bathroom, brush my teeth,” she said, stalling, and trying to guess what time it was. There was no light silvering the heavy shade. It must be the middle of the night. If so, why was he waking her up? Whatever his reasons, none of the explanations that flitted like shadows through her mind were pleasant, so she kept on stalling, trying to decide what to do. “Whatever his highness wants can wait five minutes.”
Instead, Diego roughly grasped her elbow, gripping hard enough to bruise, and jerked her off the bed. Where he was concerned; the kid gloves had come off, and her building fear threatened to stop her breath.
He roughly tied the blindfold over her eyes, too tightly, and then almost dragged her, still protesting, down the hall to the elevator they had used earlier. Diego was angry, furious as he hadn’t been even when she’d attacked him, but he wouldn’t answer any of her questions. Because she knew he was only a reflection of his master, she felt fear twisting in her stomach like an animal caught in a trap.
Her captor had only been playing with her earlier, lulling her into a false sense of security, trying to make her believe what she had believed—that he was attracted to her and that his attraction offered protection.
She concentrated on stilling the tremor in her hands, but when she stood outside the door as Diego knocked, her knees, exposed below the hem of the long T-shirt she wore as a nightgown, were shaking so hard she wondered if she would be able to stand upright before him, much less defy him.
Diego opened the door and pushed her inside, no longer offering guidance. In her blindness, she stumbled forward, her foot catching on the edge of the Oriental carpet. She fell hard and lay stunned a moment against the roughness of the wool, her knees and the heels of her hands having taken the brunt of the fall.
“Get up,” Diego’s master said, and from the coldness in the dark voice she knew all her fears had been justified.
She used her hands to push up onto her knees. She knelt there for a moment, trying to find some fragment of self-control before she had to deal with him, but he spoke again, apparently mocking her pain and fear.
“I told you to get up. Do it now. I assure you I am entirely unsympathetic.”
She climbed shakily to her feet and hoped that she was at least facing him. Diego pulled her down into a straight chair, and when he began to tie her hands behind her back, she was almost sick with terror. He had promised, she thought childishly, clinging to the idea that he was attracted to her. He wouldn’t do this to her. He wouldn’t really hurt her.
When Diego moved away, she could only wait for whatever came next, but what occurred was totally unexpected. Diego’s master threaded long, hard fingers through her hair, moving them slowly upward from the back of her neck, caressing her scalp as a lover might after a night of passion, and then gently combing down through the tangles Diego had not given her time to brush out. The hypnotic pull of his fingers was relaxing, and finally she took a deep breath, feeling some of the fear ease. He still found her attractive. He still wanted…
The sudden clenching of those caressing fingers in her hair jerked her mind away from that pleasant fantasy.
“You bitch.” The dark voice was soft and very close to her ear. “Damn you to hell for the lying, betraying bitch you are.”
“I don’t know what you—” she began, but his fingers tightened against the hair he held, and she gasped, feeling the pressure at the roots.
She tried to regather her pride, her determination. He’s only pulled your hair, she thought desperately, willing herself to courage. He’s not pulling out your fingernails. The image of dungeon and inquisitor standing over his victim was too real.
“Don’t,” he said, the silk dangerously back. “Don’t lie to me or you’ll be even sorrier than you are now. Just listen. Franklin Holcomb was with you at headquarters that night, is that right? He was not a member of the team who went to the warehouse? He couldn’t have been because he was with you at headquarters and later in Virginia?”
She nodded carefully against the grip of his fingers. Either she had gotten used to the slight pain, or he had eased his hold. She took a deep breath and slowly released it, waiting for whatever he would ask next.
“I have tonight received confirmation that that information is incorrect. Holcomb was one of the two people Hardesty originally assigned to the warehouse that night, and that team must have known the name of the man they were to meet.”
Trying to think where this might be heading, she swallowed to ease the tightness of her throat before she answered cautiously, “That can’t be true. Besides, Frank’s dead, so even if…Whatever information he had, died with him.”
“Is he dead?”
“He disappeared. You killed him or someone controlled by you did.”
“Then why am I questioning you so anxiously about his whereabouts that night?” he asked sardonically. “Perhaps Holcomb’s not dead. You disappeared, and you are, unfortunately, still alive. Still lying and plotting. Why don’t you convince me otherwise? Tell me why Holcomb couldn’t have been a member of the pickup team.”
“He was at headquarters,” she began, trying desperately to think what she could tell him, what wouldn’t endanger other members of the task force. She could feel his tension, clearly conveyed through those long fingers still entwined in her hair. “He came for me. Hardesty sent him to get me.”
“Did you see him before that?”
She tried to remember if she had, and if so, what the implication of that information might be, but she knew Frank was dead. Paul had told her that. What could it matter what she said about Frank now? She settled for the truth.
“I saw him at the coffeemaker about an hour before he came to get me. We talked about the cold and the possibility of ice on the roads.”
“Are you sure of t
he time and location of that fascinating discussion of the weather?” The soft question came against her ear, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath.
“Yes,” she said, trying to decide if he were attempting to trick her. “About an hour. No longer than that. Maybe less.”
“Then he couldn’t have been, to your certain knowledge, at the warehouse?”
“No,” she agreed, calculating. “Not given the time frame. We hurried to the house in Virginia. The courier was dying. Dying…very painfully,” she whispered, again feeling the cold horror of that dark bedroom, seeing the ghostly light of the screen. “Hardesty wouldn’t let the doctor give him anything but locals. Frank couldn’t have—”
The reactive tightening against her hair seemed involuntary, an automatic response to what she had said, but the pain it produced was sudden and unexpected, so that against her will she voiced a small wordless whimper of protest.
“You lying bitch,” his voice grated beside her ear. “I have his picture. And yours. Together that night outside the warehouse where the courier was tortured. You were Holcomb’s partner at the house in Virginia. You were his partner at the warehouse. And earlier, it seems, when the two of you made arrangements for the cartel to be there first.”
“No,” she whispered, shocked he could believe she would have had anything to do with that. She didn’t even think about the implications for her safety in what he had said. She only wanted to deny that she could be capable of that betrayal. “God, you can’t think that I—”
“Did you enjoy the sounds he made?” he broke into her denial, and the sickness created by his suggestion climbed into her throat.
“Stop it. I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t—”
“Did you watch?” he continued softly, ignoring her plea.
“No,” she said again, his words reviving the nightmares that had haunted her sleep so long ago. “No,” she repeated, moving her head in negation and with that involuntary movement, painfully became aware once more of the hard fingers that were still threaded too tightly through her hair.
Perhaps he, too, became aware when she moved that his fingers were locked in the disordered strands. He loosened their hold suddenly, pushing her head away as if no longer able to stand being in contact with her. With his release her chin fell to rest against her heaving chest.
“God,” he said softly, “how can you be so beautiful and so ugly, so damned ugly inside, where it matters what a woman is? So treacherous. You deserve whatever happens to you. I should have let—”
“No,” she whispered in protest. A protest still as much against his accusation as against the threat. But she had heard that, too. Whatever happens to you. Despite his intimidation, she was determined not to beg and not to reveal how frightened she was.
There was a silence, her dread of whatever would come next growing, but she was not left in doubt for long. The heels of his hands were suddenly on either side of her temples, pressing, his fingertips on the top of her scalp. She knew he was sitting slightly to her left, almost directly behind her, from the position of his fingers as he forced her head up. Then Diego turned back the blindfold, and she was held so she could see only directly in front of her.
The grainy black-and-white photograph wavered before her eyes. It had been so greatly enlarged that the quality was awful. She automatically recognized one blur as herself, not from the indistinct features so much as from shape and intuition. She then tried to focus on the figure standing beside her, hidden in the shadows of a dark street lined with equally dark buildings. Warehouses, she knew, only because he’d told her.
It wasn’t Franklin Holcomb, she was sure. The body was wrong. Not middle-aged enough. She had liked Frank, she thought irrelevantly, and she knew that the man in this photograph wasn’t him.
“That’s not Frank—” she began and felt the strong hands tighten against her temples. She closed her eyes against the increased pressure.
“Don’t,” he said softly, in warning. From the tension in his voice it was obvious that he was at the end of his own rigid control. “Don’t lie to me again. Be very careful.”
“I didn’t lie. That’s not Franklin Holcomb,” she said carefully, trying to obey the harsh command and to convey her surety at the same time.
“My sources are very certain of the information they provide. They have learned I don’t like liars.”
“It can’t be the warehouse. I wasn’t there,” she began, and then she knew. “Kyle Peters.” She blurted the realization aloud, unthinkingly speaking the name as soon as the recognition flashed into her head, because the identification should prove that this couldn’t be what he had said. “But this had nothing to do with the operation. That’s Kyle and me the night—” She broke the thought. Dear God, what had she just done?
The hands eased their pressure, and then the blindfold was again pulled down securely over her eyes. Her head was released, and the quiet voice spoke very close against her ear.
“Thank you, Ms. Phillips,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She had given him a name he hadn’t had. She had told him a name, the name of someone who hadn’t even been involved that night.
“You bastard. You stinking Colombian slimeball—”
“Shut up,” he ordered sharply. “I’ve heard all the ethnic insults from someone like you I can stomach. At least I don’t betray to their enemies people who are trying to give me information. At least I don’t arrange for the torture of-”
“I wasn’t at the warehouse,” she interrupted, furious again about what he was accusing her of. “If that is the warehouse, then the picture’s been chopped, doctored, by someone trying to make you believe I was the one. I don’t know who betrayed the courier, but it wasn’t me.“ She stopped suddenly, wondering why she was attempting to justify herself to this…She couldn’t think of a strong enough name to call him.
“Diego.”
She heard his command and the heavy footsteps and then the closing of the door. They were alone, she realized suddenly, but a lot of good that did her with her hands tied behind her back.
“Tell me about your relationship to Kyle Peters,” he suggested softly.
Don’t talk to him, her mind commanded. You’ve already given him a name he didn’t have. A friend’s name. Information he needed. She tightened her lips and waited.
“Is he your lover? Does he touch you like this?” He slid callused palms over her upper arms, moving them slowly down to cup her elbows briefly, the tips of his fingers again touching the sensitive skin inside them. “So smooth,” he whispered against her hair. “So soft. Like the finest silk under my hands. How can you be so beautiful and so damned treacherous?”
She felt her nipples tighten as his tongue teased around the outer edge of her ear and then slipped inside, his breath warm over the moisture it left. She shivered when his hands moved to span her waist and then lifted to rest briefly over her rib cage, one on each side. She began to breathe more deeply, in long, shuddering breaths.
Feeling that reaction, he allowed his hands to move until they rested in the hollows beneath her high breasts.
“So beautiful,” he whispered again. “Do you like his hands on your breasts, my beautiful traitor?”
She shook her head in denial and felt the swing of her hair brush his face. He was so close she was surrounded by the seductive, haunting fragrance of his body.
“Do they respond to him as they are responding now to me?” he murmured.
She felt his thumbs brush over the hardened nipples that pushed under the thin cotton of her T-shirt, aching for him.
“Do your breasts peak for him like this, querida? Does he kiss you there?” he asked, his mouth now caressing her neck. “This eagerness makes me wonder how you would respond to my touching you in more intimate ways. I wanted you when I believed you are what you pretend to be—a good cop,” he said mockingly, his tongue gliding over her skin just like the warm, smooth silk of his voice. His thumbs te
ased again over the pearled nipples. “Now that I know you’re not—that you are, instead, something else, something despicable, as deadly as a black widow—why shouldn’t I let myself enjoy touching you, holding this beautiful, betraying body I’ve dreamed about? You called me filth, querida,” he whispered. She could feel his lips, which were still touching her skin, lift and the small breath of his laughter against her throat at that memory, his amusement at her insults. “As I touch you, I wonder that I can still feel this hunger for the filth I now know you are.”
“No,” she denied again, but she waited, hypnotized like a cobra’s victim, trembling; and finally his mouth moved through the strands of her hair to find the small hollow where her collarbone met the slim column of her neck. His lips were tender and his tongue moved so knowingly.
She shivered and felt, against all sanity, her body becoming aroused—the rush of moisture, the sweet ache of desire. What was happening to her? All she had been taught about hostage psychology didn’t offer an explanation for the fact that she wanted what he was doing. She didn’t want him angry, didn’t want him to believe she could have betrayed the courier. In her fear and confusion, it was comforting to know that he still desired her. As he’d just confessed, in spite of what he thought she had done, he couldn’t keep his hands off her.
When they closed over her breasts and he caught the engorged nipples to roll them between hard fingers, the pleasure of that gentle pressure after his anger and her fear made her moan deep in her throat. She leaned her cheek against his. She could feel the slight masculine roughness of his face, the texture of his hair and the scent of his body around her, so that she only wanted to rest there, safe, she knew, in his arms.
“Do you moan for him, querida?” he asked, breaking the spell he had woven. She wanted to cry out when he abruptly removed his hands and allowed his body to shift back, away from any contact with hers.
