Cold as Ice (Ice 2)

Genevieve came awake very slowly, letting the strange sensations wash over her. She was conscious of an odd sense of relief, quickly washed away by an unshakeable sense of entrapment. She was lying in a bed next to someone—she could hear his steady breathing, feel the weight of his body next to hers— and her panic increased. The room was shadowed, the only light at the far end, and she blinked, trying to focus, trying to get her brain to work.

She was lying next to Harry Van Dorn, and her immediate reaction was fury. Until she noticed he wasn’t sleeping, he was drugged. And her hands, ankles and mouth were wrapped in duct tape.

She struggled to sit up, making a muffled noise behind her makeshift gag. There was someone at the far end of the cavernous room, reading, but she couldn’t see him clearly, and he didn’t look up when she struggled to a sitting position, didn’t pay attention to the noises she was trying to make.

She reached her bound hands up to try to tear away the gag, but the tape ran around the back of her neck, and her fingers couldn’t gain purchase on the slippery stuff. She made another angry sound, and the man in the shadows looked up for a moment, clearly noting that she was awake, and then went back to his book.

It had been a very difficult few days, to put it mildly, and Genevieve had no intention of simply lying back down and being ignored. She swung her legs over to the side of the bed, but it was higher up than she’d thought, and she went sprawling onto the floor.

The hands that pulled her up were strong and impersonal. She’d already figured out who it would be before she saw him, and she glared into Peter Jensen’s cool eyes, putting as much emotion and fury into her expression as the duct tape would allow.

His faint smile didn’t help her temper. “It must be hell to be a lawyer and not be able to talk,” he said mildly. Her ankles were bound so close together that she could barely stand, and it was only with his help that she remained upright. She yanked herself away, and he let her go, not moving as she collapsed at his feet. If her mouth was free she would have bit his ankles, she thought in a red haze of fury, trying to get to her feet again.

He pulled her up once more. “Don’t be tiresome, Ms. Spenser,” he said. “Behave yourself and this will all be a lot easier on you.”

She wasn’t in the mood to believe him. For a moment she thought he was going to put her back on the bed, but instead he half dragged her across the room to where he’d been sitting and dropped her down on the small sofa. She reached up and clawed at the gag again, and he made a long-suffering noise. “You won’t like it if I take it off,” he said. “It’s going to hurt.”

She kept pulling. So he pushed her bound hands down, into her lap, reached for the duct tape and yanked.

She thought her scream would have filled the cabin and even woken her drugged client, but the only sound that came out was a choked gasp as the duct tape was ripped from her face, taking a few strands of loose hair with it.

He tossed it in her lap. “Sorry,” he said, sitting across from her and picking up his book.

“Sorry?” she echoed in a hoarse voice. “Sorry for what? For kidnapping me, for drugging me, for wrapping me in duct tape, you son of a bitch!”

“I have another roll of tape and I’m not afraid to use it,” he said lightly. “Behave yourself, Ms. Spenser.”

“You think this is funny?” Her voice was getting stronger now. “You have a pretty sick sense of humor.”

His faint smile wasn’t reassuring. “So I’ve been told. I’ll leave the gag off if you sit there and be quiet. I have work to do.”

“You’re an idiot.”

That got his attention, though it failed to ruffle him. In the dim light his eyes looked very dark, almost empty, but she’d managed to catch his attention, and he put the book down. “I am?”

Her brain was going very fast. “I know you didn’t expect to

have me on board when you carried out your nasty little scheme—you tried hard enough to get rid of me. But now that I’m here, don’t you think you ought to make use of me?”

He leaned back against the chair, watching her. “And how would I do that? Are you offering to join our merry band?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Any fool can see what your plan is.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You’ve kidnapped one of the world’s richest men. Clearly you did it for the money—you don’t have the look of a wild-eyed terrorist. Therefore you need to negotiate the terms of the ransom, and I’m your woman.”

“Are you, indeed?” he murmured. “And why don’t you think I’m a wild-eyed terrorist bent on some bloody political crusade?”

“You dress too well.”

He laughed. It seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised her. He sounded as if he didn’t laugh very often, which was no surprise. She wouldn’t have expected extortionists to be a humorous bunch.

“So whose side are you going to be on, Ms. Spenser? Mine or Harry’s?”

“You want money, I want Harry safe. I imagine I can find a solution that will work for both of you. Now, why don’t you take the rest of this duct tape off me and we can negotiate. You already know I’m no physical threat to you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he drawled, but he rose anyway, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a small knife. He leaned down to cut through the tape around her ankles, and she brought her bound hands down hard on the top of his head.