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“No pills,” he said. “But I?
?ll see if Hans can find your glasses. In the meantime there’s a pile of clothes on the table—find something that fits you. Armani doesn’t really work for being a hostage at sea.”
Naturally he knew it was Armani, the son of a bitch. She scooped up the clothes and went back into the bathroom, reaching for the lock. It didn’t work, of course. She bit back a snarl as she stripped off her ruined suit. She didn’t even want to think about how much it had cost her. She had more important things on her mind than the loss of her wardrobe.
She pulled on a baggy pair of khakis and a loose white T-shirt. The pants hung down around her hips, and even with her long legs they were trailing on the floor, so she rolled them up several times. She didn’t bother looking at her reflection in the mirror—her eyesight was problematic without the contacts or the glasses and besides, what she looked like was of no importance in the current scheme of things. She opened the door and nearly tripped over the hem of the pants as one leg came untucked.
He looked up, but she couldn’t read the expression on his face. Not that her glasses would have made any difference—he was an expert at shielding his reactions. “Your pants are too long,” he said.
“News flash—I’m not as tall as Harry,” she said. She sat down on the sofa where he’d initially dumped her; she hadn’t given up on the notion of trying to disable him and making another run for it, but she couldn’t do it if she couldn’t see.
“Here,” he said, tossing something at her. “Cut them off.”
She caught it, by sheer luck, realizing with astonishment that he’d given her the Swiss Army knife. She looked up at him, but it didn’t need twenty-twenty to see his cool smile. “If you managed to hurt me with that little thing I’d deserve it,” he said.
“You do deserve it,” she muttered, leaning over and beginning to saw away at the heavy khaki at her ankle.
“I’d cut them higher if I were you. You’ll have a better chance of landing a successful kick if your legs are bare. You’ll be able to run faster, too.”
It made sense, though why she should accept his help was a mystery. As well as why he should offer it.
She stabbed the short blade of the knife through the khaki halfway up her thigh, sawing and ripping, then followed suit with the other side. The legs were uneven, and she took another couple of inches off the first one, only to look up and find Peter watching her with great interest. She waited, expecting him to make some kind of insulting joke, but he merely nodded and returned to his book.
She folded up the knife and tucked it in her pocket, waiting to see if he remembered he’d given it to her and demand it back. “I want my tranquilizers,” she said again.
“’Fraid I can’t help you there. Hans has never met a drug he didn’t like, and he’s already taken them.”
“All of them? It would kill him!”
“Not Hans. Anyway, those pills of yours are pretty pathetic. Just mother’s little helpers designed to get high-strung females through the day.”
“I’m not particularly high-strung,” she said. “And even you have to admit being kidnapped is stressful.”
He glanced at her. “You’ll survive.”
“Will I? Survive, that is? I thought I was toast.”
He hesitated, frowning. “I don’t like collateral damage. It’s inevitable if you don’t do your job well, but I tend to do my job very well indeed.”
“So if you’re as good as you say, I won’t have to die?” she asked brightly.
He didn’t answer, which was somehow not encouraging. The silence lasted for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then he looked up again. “Better not let the others know you have the knife,” he said calmly, dispelling her hope that he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t think you’d manage to do much harm with it, but you can never underestimate the element of surprise. If you hadn’t made it so clear you were going to try to fight, you might have stood a better chance against me.”
“You mean I could have escaped?” she demanded.
“No. I mean it wouldn’t have been as insultingly easy for me to stop you. Next time, don’t go for the obvious target. Even better, look at a part you’re not planning on touching. If you’re going to go for a man’s eyes, look at his groin. If you’re going to try a chop across the front of the throat then act like you’re going to kick. That’s one of your best targets, by the way. Landed properly, it can crush a larynx and a man can suffocate in his own blood.”
“That’s gross,” she said automatically.
His smile was totally devoid of humor. “Death tends to be gross, Ms. Spenser. It’s not neat, Hollywood-style fadeaways. It’s a messy, smelly business.”
“Is it? A business, I mean?”
“Sometimes.”
“For you?”
“Sometimes.”
