Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (15 page)

Only, where the hell are we? And where do we
head next to find it?

The motorboat putters and slows down. I can
see two dark figures in it. It goes around the bend of the cliff
and disappears.

“Damn,” I mutter. “Come on, let’s observe
them.”

We creep through the tangle of forest towards
where the boat disappeared. Just over the end, where the ground
slopes steeply down to a stretch of beach, we can see and hear the
motorboat sputtering and its engine dying down. One of the men
inside the boat jump out into the water to drag the boat to
shore.

We hide behind some leafy bushes to observe
them. From where we are, the beach is only twenty feet or so down.
We have to be very careful not to be seen.

“Look,” whispers Rebecca. “They are unloading
something.”

Indeed, the men are starting to haul some
crates off the motorboat and onto the beach. I hold my breath as
two other men come into sight from where they were initially hidden
on the beach. How many people are there on this island?

Instead of feeling relieved that we finally
can be found, I am treading more cautiously here than ever. There
is something sinister about these men and what they are doing. OK,
hauling crates off a motorboat isn’t all that sinister in itself.
But it’s the surreptitious way they are doing it – so orderly and
precise.

And why are they loading crates onto a remote
island anyway? There isn’t a township here to support industry.
What exactly are those crates filled with?

“So what do we do now?” says Rebecca beside
me. She is wearing an oversized shirt and a pair of shorts from the
dead guy’s backpack. She must finally be glad to be free of that
restrictive green dress.

Um, I’m not sure exactly what to do now.

“We watch them,” I say.

“And then what?”

Good question. We watch them. They leave. And
then what? We are stranded her again for goodness knows how
long.

But what about the men on the beach? Where
did they come from? Have they been here all this while or have they
just arrived, like the others, on motorboat?

“Lookee what we find here,” says a voice
behind us. “A white boy and white girl.”

I whirl around.

A black man stands there, pointing a rifle at
us.

Oh fuck.

The fact that this doesn’t look good is an
understatement.

REBECCA

The man grins, showing white teeth as he
points the black barrel of the rifle at us. He is flanked by
another black man, his companion, also holding another rifle.

Oh shit.

We are sprawled on our tummies, and we slowly
rise to our feet. My heart is palpitating at a hundred and forty
beats a second. Kurt raises his hands and I follow suit. It seems
like the only wise course of action.

The other man barks something in another
language to the first man, and he replies.

“You.” The first man gestures with the butt
of his rifle to Kurt. “How you get here?”

His accent is Jamaican, I think. But I can’t
be sure. The people who live around these islands may speak in the
same patois.

“We were lost,” Kurt says carefully. He has
shaven, and his beautiful auburn hair flows wild and free over his
shoulders. He is now clad in the dead man’s khaki clothes and
resembles a romance book cover version of a Great White Explorer.
“We fell off our ship in a freak accident and we were swept here to
this island.”

The two men contemplate this by inspecting us
as if we are insects. The first man’s eyes roam up and down my
body, sending little shivers through my spine. I don’t like the way
he is looking at me, as if I’m something edible to be savored.

Kurt sees this and tenses.

Stay your ground, Kurt,
I beg him.
Don’t do anything stupid
.

The knife is in the backpack, which is
strapped behind Kurt’s back. I know he is thinking about it, but
there’s no way a knife can take down two rifles.

The first man jerks his rifle. “Come with us.
Go this way. Now.”

Great. Now we are prisoners. So much for
finding civilization.

With our arms held up in the universal
gesture of surrender, we slowly make our trek downwards to the
beach. There, the other men are waiting for us. They are all black,
all probably local. Crates are stacked on the shore. They watch us
like predatory hawks, as if we are goods to be bartered.

Our captors prod our backs with the butts of
the rifle.

“On your knees! Now!”

We sink down to our knees, hands behind our
scalps. I am really scared now. Somehow, this is all going wrong,
wrong, wrong. I remember the dead man up on the promontory, knife
embedded in the back of his neck and body placed so that he was
staring into the sea like a sentinel. Or as a warning to those who
would chance this island.

“Let me do all the talking, please,” Kurt
murmurs to me.

I don’t say anything.

A man comes forward. He is tall and very
commanding, with a black bristly beard and with his head in a
skullcap. Our captors brief him in patois on the details of our
capture.

“What are your names?” he asks.

“I’m Kurt,” Kurt says, “and this is Rebecca.
Please don’t hurt us. We mean you no harm. We don’t know where we
are and we just want to go home.”

“Kurt,” says the man. He strokes his short
beard. “Missing off a ship, you say?”

“Yes.”

His eyes narrow. “Kurt Taylor? The famous
singer? The newspapers are all over with news of you.”

OK. Now we are getting somewhere, but I’m not
sure if it’s in the right direction.

Kurt visibly swallows. I can see his Adam’s
apple moving down his throat.

He decides to go for broke. “Yes, I am Kurt
Taylor.”

I cringe. I’m not sure where this will lead
us, but with men like these, I can tell from the sudden gleam in
their eyes that there would be money involved. Major money.

Kurt rushes on, “If you see my companion and
myself safely to the nearest town where we can find passage back to
America, I will see that you are paid handsomely. Very handsomely
indeed.”

A broad smile spreads across the man’s
face.

“I am Jai,” he says. “Perhaps we can come to
a negotiation then.”

KURT

You see, I always had this stinking suspicion
that this island we are on holds a lot more secrets than water. We
are still Jai’s prisoners, as evidenced by the way they make us
march down the stretch of beach with our hands clasped behind our
heads.

There, around the bend, is a wooden house on
stilts. An honest to goodness wooden house. It has several
sections, from what I can see of it, and it is sturdily made. The
bottom halves of the stilts are dark with moss and seawater, and it
is apparent why the house needs to be elevated. The tides must wash
in a lot here.

“Get in there,” Jai says.

The narrow steps to the entrance creak as we
ascend into the interior. My pulse is pounding against my neck –
tic tic tic
. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten us into, but I
sure as hell am ninety percent sure Jai wouldn’t order us killed
now.

The other ten percent is for bad
behavior.

Inside, there is a spartan sitting room with
a surprisingly clean sofa set and a table and some shelves with
audiovisual equipment. There’s a TV, a laptop computer, several
cellphones which I am sure are hooked up to satellite connections
and several guns and bullet cases. More crates line the walls. One
of them is split open at the top, and I can see some packets of
white powder being stacked inside.

Shit.

We have literally walked into a drug runners’
den. Unless they are pirates, of course, in these pirate-infested
waters. Or smugglers. Or white collar criminals evading tax.

“Sit.” Jai gestures to the floor.

OK, we don’t merit any chairs.

Two men approach us. They seize our arms and
tie our wrists behind our backs with tight ropes. Only then are we
allowed to sit on the floor, right in the middle, without any
support. Rebecca is quaking. I can tell she’s very scared.

To be honest, I’m scared for her as well. The
men – ten, eleven of them – are all staring at her face and breasts
and bare legs. Rebecca has lost a lot of weight, and she would not
be considered plus-sized anymore, though she was perfectly
delectable when she was bigger as well.

Jai pulls a chair and seats himself in front
of us, like a warlord.

“So how much compensation are we talking
about here?” he asks.

I actually don’t know my net worth. I left it
all to my accountants to handle, and I suspect it’s increasing by
the minute. One of our albums has just gone platinum.

I say, “Uh, how much are you looking at?”

Jai smiles. “That would depend. I need some
time to confer with my partners.”

I nod. “OK.”

What else can I say? He has partners in this
line? Whatever floats his boat, in a manner of speaking.

Jai leans forward. His eyebrows are
ferociously bushy and he smells of tobacco. At least it’s only
tobacco and not the weed he is obviously smuggling.

He smiles again. His teeth are perfectly
white against his dark face.

“You must be hungry. Perhaps you would like
to eat and change out of those clothes.”

Perhaps it’s the way he says it, but there is
an air of menace around his words. A prickle of unease makes the
hair on the back of my neck rise.

“Uh, thank you. When do you think you can
arrange for our transfer back to mainland?” I ask.

“When we are good and ready. And when we have
gotten the money you promised us.”

A thought strikes me. I would give him the
money, he would bank it into the Cayman Islands or somewhere, and
he’d still opt not to release us.

It is a very distinct possibility.

Jai claps his hands. “Fetch them some food,
drink and new clothes. Then get me Faora. She would want to see
these folks for herself.”

Faora. I wonder who that is. I dart a glance
at Rebecca. She has calmed down a lot, and she does not say
anything – to her credit.

Two of the men seize us both up by the arms
and march us to another section of the house.

REBECCA

“You know, I don’t trust them an inch,” I say
to Kurt.

We are locked in a small room with a table
and two chairs and little else. There is one window that looks out
to the jungle side of the island but it is fortified by rusted iron
bars. I can’t help staring outside it. I’m not sure if we have
exchanged one sort of nightmare for another.

Sometime during the hours we spend in there,
idle – not daring to make love or show too much affection with each
other because we don’t know who might be watching – we hear the
sounds of motorboats out on the coast. Plenty of activity going on
out there.

At least they have untied our wrists so that
we can eat.

“I don’t either,” Kurt says.

We have been fed a meal of rice and beans and
some sort of mystery meat. Although it is very far from burgers and
fries, we fell onto it like rabid hyenas.

“Most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted,” I
declare, wiping my mouth. Our plates are scraped clean.

“I know.” He stares at his shiny empty plate
longingly. “Since we’ll be paying through our nose, I wonder if we
can ask for seconds.”

I reach out to take his forearm across the
table. “Hey, you don’t have to do all the paying. I’m involved here
too. I will pay you half of it back.”

He shakes his head. “We’re talking ransom
money here.”

I know. The thought of it makes me rueful. We
may be talking millions and millions of dollars. I’m not sure what
Kurt is worth, but this is going to cripple him badly.

The bolt outside our door shoots open. We
tense and look up. I quickly take my hand off Kurt’s forearm.

The man who very first stumbled upon us in
the jungle stands there with his rifle.

“Jai wants you,” he says abruptly.

*

What Jai wants, Jai gets. We are ushered to
the living room again. This time, in addition to the same motley
crew, a tall black woman awaits us. She is seated on an armchair,
and she has an imperious air about her. Her hair is done up in a
carefully wrapped scarf, and she wears a long, flowing caftan. She
seems, for all purposes, a Caribbean queen.

I take it that this must be the infamous
Faora.

Jai is there as well, arms folded, grinning
like a cat who has just snuck into the creamery.

“Faora, meet Kurt Taylor and Rebecca Hall,”
he announces. He turns to us. “This is my sister, Faora.”

Faora’s eyes light up as soon as she sees
Kurt. Me – not so much.

“So this is the famous Kurt Taylor,” she
says. She has a musical lilt. “I must confess to be a fan.”

A fan. Great. This is what we need.

“Uh, pleased to meet your acquaintance,” Kurt
says. I suspect he must be feeling as much at a loss as I do.

Faora turns her gimlet gaze to me. “And are
you his girlfriend?”

I glance at Kurt. He licks his lips, not
knowing what to say. We are damned if we confess to one thing and
damned if we don’t, I suppose.

“Yes,” Kurt says.

I don’t know why, but my heart soars to hear
that. And to hear his declaration for the first time in such dire
circumstances.

Still, Kurt Taylor has openly declared that
I am his girlfriend!

Inside me, something joyous squeaks and
explodes.

I don’t know who has the upper hand – Jai or
Faora – but he seems to be deferring to his sister here.

Jai says, “We have discussed it, my sister
and I. And we have come to an agreement.”

Oh good, we’re getting somewhere. I cringe.
I’m not that attractive, but I have seen Jai and the guys eyeing me
as though I were a piece of juicy horseflesh. I hope my putting out
doesn’t come as part of the ransom deal. I like being desired as
much as the next female, but by guys like Kurt, thank you very
much. It isn’t as exciting as it sounds to be a drug smuggler’s
object of desire.