Forster, Suzanne (2 page)

"I have an ap-appointment, " she whispered hopelessly.

His arm roped her midriff and she was hauled up against a wall of solid muscle. A hot jet of air burned the back of her neck. "You don't get it, do you, " he grated. "Your appointment's been canceled. I'm taking you on a little trip. "

Gus could feel the act of violence still humming through the man's body, and the raw, animalistic power of it startled her into silence. He was hot and vibrant, breathing with brute force. She'd never experienced anything quite like it, but she had no doubt that he could snap her in two with a flex of his arm if he wanted to. To her profound dismay, she began to tremble. Her own body's natural reaction to the threat of violence was to go limp and shivery. It made her think of the dominance rituals in animals, beta yielding to alpha's superior show of strength. But this wasn't the jungle, and she had to keep her wits about her, or the months of planning that had gone into this kidnapping scheme would be lost.
Everything would be lost.

She'd always believed that people were too quick to confuse destiny with bad management, and as far as she was concerned, this mess was just one more example of the latter. Clearly there were certain contingencies she and Rob hadn't planned for, like the brute behind her, but what choice did she have other than to cooperate and get the ordeal over with? Once the kidnapper had taken her to the prearranged destination, it would only require a day or so to accomplish what she wanted and then she'd be free. It was the only sensible option.

"How little's this trip?" she wanted to know. "If we're going to be gone overnight, I'd like to pack a bag. "

"Don't make me kill you, " he warned in an evil whisper. "I'd like that. "

"Of course you would, " she said under her breath. "Killing women is probably your favorite hobby, after molesting small boys. "

He pressed closer, crowding her backside with the heat of his groin. "Killing women
is
my favorite hobby. The only thing I like better is having sex with them once they're dead. "

Gus quelled a sound of disgust. He was trying to frighten her! He wasn't going to kill her. He couldn't, not if he wanted to be paid for his trouble. But even so, he was dangerously caught up in this kidnapping thing.
Dangerously.
If only she could tell him that this was a ploy rather than an actual operation, simply a means to an end.

A flash of light from behind brought her head up. It was a moment before she realized what was happening, and then she saw the guard's reflection in the glass of the terrace doors. The man had reared to his feet, a glinting object in his hand.

"He's got a knife!" she cried, stumbling forward. Her wrists strained against the electrician's tape as she fought to keep her balance. The kidnapper had released her, but by the time she got herself turned around, she saw that it was already too late. There was no way to stop the nightmare that was unfolding before her eyes.

The guard lurched toward the kidnapper, brandishing a pair of pruning sheers. "You're dead!" he snarled.

"I don't think so," the other man said softly.

Gus held her breath, expecting the kidnapper to spring into action. Instead, with the icy deliberation of an assassin, he drew a gun from the cargo pocket of his jumpsuit, released what looked like a safety and took deadly aim.

"Not today, anyway, " he breathed. His hand kicked slightly up as the gun fired.

"No!" Gus sank to the ground in a huddle. "Oh, God, no!"

The guard reeled backward in shock, caught his hand to his chest, and dropped. He crumpled to the ground in a heap, still clutching the shears.

Gus closed her eyes and began to rock, unable to help herself.
This couldn't 't be happening. It couldn't 't be. She had only meant to jolt the family trust officer out of his blind devotion to the status quo, to force Ward McHenry's hand, not that anyone would be hurt. Never that.

She heard the kidnapper telling her to get up, but she couldn't. The horror that gripped her had robbed her of all control. Her disbelief was so great she forced herself to open her eyes and look at what she'd seen, certain she must have hallucinated it. But she hadn't. The guard was sprawled on his side not twenty feet from her. The shears lay next to his hand.

"You k-killed him, " she whispered, unable to tear her gaze from the fallen man. "He's dead!"

The kidnapper stowed the gun in the pocket of his jumpsuit and came for her. "He'll get over it. "

"Get over being
d-dead?"
She stared up at him, horrified, and saw something change in his expression. For a second, unless she was so desperate she imagined it, she saw a flicker of humanity in his eyes, a whisper of something alive. Hope surged in her throat and a terrible weakness enveloped her.

"Please, " she implored him, "don't do this. Please—"

"Come on. "

He reached for her, but she shrank away. "No!"

"Come on, " he repeated, something husky breathing into his tone, perhaps even a trace of concern. He lifted her to her feet, but with far less force then he'd used before. Gus wondered if he might actually be trying to reassure her, and her heart squeezed painfully. But the wild hope that had risen within her died as he turned her away from him.

A blindfold dropped over her eyes.

"What are you
doing?"
she whispered.

Her answer was two powerful arms. He hooked one under her knees, scooped her up like an accident victim, and began to carry her toward the gated entrance of the pool area. Screaming was a distant thought, but it would have taken far more concentration than she possessed. She was vibrating uncontrollably, all through her being, like a quaking, terrified newborn. She felt as if she'd been reduced to that, embryonic terror. By the time he'd settled her on the ground, she'd lost her bearings altogether.

Ignoring her muffled cries, he began to roll her up bodily in something. A rug, she realized. He was rolling her up in an area rug! No, this
couldn't
be happening! She was caught between laughter and sobs, on the ragged edges of hysteria, and that one line kept playing through her mind, a frantic attempt to deny the insanity that seemed to have overtaken her.

This can't be happening.

She felt herself being hoisted high into the air and draped over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. She was on her way to the dry cleaners apparently. Or at least that's how it would look to the neighbors! A gasp burned in her throat, and suddenly in the midst of all the chaos that was short-circuiting her mental processes, one thing made perfect sense. His jumpsuit. It was the uniform of the service industries.

She fought the urge to dissolve in laughter, a chorus of thin, hysterical sobs. She was losing it, and she had to find something to cling to, some thread of reality, no matter how slender. At least she wasn't claustrophobic. She could be thankful for that much, though it didn't make it any easier to breathe as he loaded her into the back of a vehicle she imagined was some kind of van. The weight of the carpet had rendered her completely immobile, and the summer heat made it suffocatingly hot in her mummified state. Apparently he didn't care if she smothered. She didn't even want to think about what condition her still-wet toenails were in.

Hysteria bubbled anew as she imagined the tabloids: "Fashion model found dead in bizarre sexual asphyxiation ritual. Carpet fuzz adhered to her body with shocking-pink nail polish. "

She forced her thoughts to the route the van was taking as it roared away from the Featherstone enclave. They were supposed to be going east toward the freeway that would take them into the San Gabriel Mountains, but it seemed as if the kidnapper had turned the other way. She assumed it was him driving because she could hear him speaking on what must have been a car phone. He was telling someone that he didn't like the feel of things.

"Something's gone wrong, " he said. "I'm not going to take the rug to the cleaners as planned. I'll be in touch. "

The rug? That had to be her. Apparently he'd changed his mind about taking her to the cabin that was supposed to be their destination. He
was
on his way somewhere else. If that was the case, her fiancé might never find them! And what had he meant by that first reference:
Something's gone wrong.

Gus fought to draw some air into her lungs, but a cold, crushing weight was pressing against her chest. The kidnapping had seemed like a brilliant idea when she'd thought of it, the perfect way to get control of what should have been rightfully hers in any event—the substantial trust fund her stepfather had left her. It wasn't the money that mattered, it had never been that. It was what she planned to do with it.

But now a man was dead or wounded, she didn't know which, and she could barely conceive of either possibility. A shudder swept her, bringing another even more immediate concern. She was going to pass out. The white dots dancing behind her eyelids and the dizzying sickness that washed over her told her she would soon be unable to defend herself in any way. Within moments she would be in the most vulnerable state possible and at the mercy of a man capable of killing without conscience,

If there was any emotion Gus loathed more than fear, it was that one, vulnerability. Her stepchild status in the Featherstone family had exposed her to some terrifying and very inventive abuse by her stepbrother and stepsister. She'd had to armor herself emotionally to survive. She hadn't been able to fight her older siblings, so she'd fought instead to get control of her crippling fears. When she finally triumphed, she'd felt the first startled animal awareness of her own power, the first glimmer of what life could be like for the unafraid. Now it felt as if she were about to be stripped of that vital control, stripped of everything.

Panic squeezed the last breath out of her. It sucked her deeper into the purple waves that were crashing over her. As the undercurrent tugged her down into its infernal funnel, her oxygen-deprived brain betrayed her totally, jumping from one grotesque image to another. Her stepbrother and stepsister were standing over her open grave, and her five-year-old stepniece was sobbing. Bridget! Gus had told the child she would be away for a few days on a photo shoot, knowing the family would shield her from news of the kidnapping. But she could hardly bear to think what would happen to the little girl if she died, the neglect, the emotional isolation. They would probably send her away to school to get her out from under foot.

Gus tried to cry out, but she didn't have the strength.

Her last thought as she went under was of him, the executioner in the black jumpsuit. If he truly was a necrophiliac, if he liked having sex with dead women, what would he do to her while she was unconscious?

Chapter 2

Gus stirred awake to the low whine of a powerful engine and the silken glide of tires on what seemed to be a highway paved with glass. The purring motion was hypnotic. It lulled her for a moment, but when she opened her eyes to total darkness, the shock of it brought her hurtling back to consciousness. A deep breath kept panic at bay long enough for her to clear her thought processes and assess her situation.

She was still blindfolded and restrained with tape, her feet now as well as her hands, but she was no longer in the back of the van or rolled up in a rug. She'd been propped up on the seat of the cab, and something heavy had been thrown over her. The blindfold forced her to rely on other senses, but from what she could tell, the heaviness was covering all of her, including her head, and it had the feel of a canvas tarpauline.

Her shoulder joints throbbed from the pressure of having been forced into an unnatural position, and her wrists burned. An icy draft swirled around her bare feet, and with so many signals flooding her, she nearly missed the most important one. Another kind of pain was radiating up the inside of her wrist, a tiny arrow of distress, sharp yet persistent. It was different than the burning, more like a needle prick. She squeezed her fist and felt a stabbing sensation that made her gasp. The manicure scissors! She was still clutching them.

It was slow, painstaking work, but within moments, laboring under the concealment of the tarp, she had cut through one band of tape and was working on another. Her progress was hampered by the fear of giving herself away. If the kidnapper was concentrating on the road, perhaps he wouldn't notice the tarp moving. Please let him be on automatic pilot, she thought, wishing upon him that altered state of highway hypnosis that often overtakes drivers on straightaways.

Her incantation held out long enough for her to cut through the second band and discover a third. A moan welled hotly in her throat. She'd thought she was done! Worse, if she didn't hurry she'd be in a heap on the floor of the cab before she could get her wrists free. Her bound limbs had robbed her of leverage, and she was inching down the slick leatherette seat with every little scooch of movement.

She continued doggedly, electrician's tape the scourge of her very existence. He couldn't have used rope? No, he had to be cute. Exploding guns, area rugs, duct tape? This wasn't just a quest for freedom on her part, not anymore, it was a vendetta against modern criminal science. She was going to cut herself loose or die trying.

The scissors jabbed her inner wrist as the van veered to the right. Swallowing a cry of pain, she swayed toward the kidnapper, then toppled to her side as they came to a tire-shredding stop. He must have pulled onto the shoulder, she realized. She could feel the vehicle quivering beneath her and smell the stench of burnt rubber, but they weren't moving and he was strangely silent.

"When you get your hands free, " he said finally, his voice low and weary. "Would you let me know?"

"Why?"

"So I can knock you cold to make sure you don't escape. "

She let out a sigh that was wild with frustration and then heaved herself upward, trying to get back into some reasonable facsimile of a sitting position. Nothing worked, including pushing off from the floorboards, and finally he put a stop to her thrashing. He gripped her by the shoulders and pushed her upright, much as he would have a fallen telephone pole.