Shackled by Diamonds

‘Marking you would lower the price we’d get for you—but there are other ways to make you tell us what we want to know. Pain that will not scar…’

The pit of Anna’s stomach dissolved.

‘I don’t know any more than I’ve told you,’ she whispered. Her eyes were blind with fear.

Then, in the mindless terror that possessed her, she heard something. A faint roaring sound in the distance, over and above the noise of the engine of the boat she was on.

Coming closer.

The man with the knife swore, throwing more words at the man holding Anna, and then strode out onto the open rear deck of the motor yacht she’d been taken aboard by her captors.

Then another sound penetrated her stricken brain.

The steady thud-thud-thud of helicopter rotors.

The man on the stern deck jerked his head upwards, staring around to locate the source. Then his eyes went back out to sea.

Anna fought to try and make her eyes focus, but she couldn’t make her muscles work. She couldn’t make anything work. Terror was eating at her, taking over her body, shutting out everything else.

The man on the stern deck turned and shouted something to the man holding Anna. The noise of a powerboat engine came closer, and so did the thudding of the helicopter rotors. Anna felt the cruiser they were on start to rock more as the approaching helicopter started its descent, whipping up the waves.

The man with the knife spoke to Anna sneeringly.

‘Don’t get your hopes up, whore. No one can touch us. Not if they want you alive, that is.’ His face changed, become a mask of hatred. ‘We’ll put you to work in a brothel, where you belong!’ He strode up to her, and with a sudden violent movement his hand closed over the material of her dress at the bodice and tore it down, exposing her completely. He gave an ugly laugh.

Then suddenly an amplified voice was booming down over the yacht. Anna could not hear the words. Even if she had not been half-dead from fear and pain, she could not have made them out.

The man with the knife strode back to the stern deck and threw his head up, yelled something up at the hovering helicopter.

Out beyond the cruiser’s wake, Anna could see another boat approaching. Was that the power boat she had heard? It was closing fast, curving out and round, on an intercepting course to head off her abductors. It was coming closer now. Her eyes twisted to the wide windows lining the side of the cabin. She could see what could only be uniformed police aboard, and then the boat was forcing the yacht to shift to port. She felt their speed slow, jolting her sideways, and the jerking movement on her pinioned arms sent new waves of black pain through her.

Their boat stopped, its churning wake at the rear subsiding to a mere idling. The noise of the rotors increased proportionately, but not enough to drown the amplified voice directed at them—not from the helicopter now, but from the police craft hovering threateningly across the cruiser’s starboard bow.

The man on the stern deck shouted something harshly to the man holding her. Anna was jerked forward, forced to go towards the open stern deck.

As she emerged into the brightness she suddenly felt something hard and cold jammed under her ear.

It was the barrel of a gun.

This far out to sea the water was cold as Leo slipped silently into its depths. He ignored it. Blocked out everything except the icy purpose that filled him. Had filled him ever since his blood had run cold when the villa’s security head had told him that three gunmen had been holding the house staff at gunpoint, threatening to kill them, and that Anna had been abducted the moment he’d driven off, leaving her at the villa.

The hour that had passed since then had been a living nightmare. The police had been scrambled, but Leo had refused to stay ashore. He and two of his security people had piled into the fastest motor boat he possessed, and headed off in pursuit. A car had been abandoned at the jetty in the next village along the coast, and the villagers there had reported seeing three men drag a young white woman aboard a gleaming cruiser moored, untypically, at the fishermen’s jetty. It had left in a roaring wake, heading south.

Cold had drenched through him. This island was one of the safest in the Caribbean—the government extremely protective of its citizens and tourists—especially their very rich ones. So Leo had allowed his personal security at the villa to be minimal.

Too minimal.

Christos—just who the hell had Anna got herself involved with? Who had taken her? And why? The gunmen had been Middle Eastern. That was all his staff had been able to tell him. They had spoken only English. The boat they were using, however, was registered to a South American country.

Drugs? Was that what Anna was involved with? God, he’d known she was a criminal, but stealing priceless jewellery was a world away from drug-running.