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But the voices told her otherwise. It was Harry Van Dorn’s familiar voice, but the words were strange.
“She screwed him,” he said. “I can see the stink of him on her. Get rid of her. I’m no longer interested.”
“As you wish.” It was his assistant’s soft voice. Takashi—who’d warned her about the tea.
“On second thought,” the voice that was and wasn’t Harry said, “maybe there’s some fun to be had. I don’t get to play with a white woman very often—too many people ask questions when they disappear. But she’s already been declared dead—I can do anything I want, take as long as I want, and I don’t need to worry about repercussions. Why don’t you keep her like this until I get back.”
“Of course,” Takashi O’Brien said, ever the obedient servant. “If you have no problem with Madsen’s leavings.”
Madsen? Who was Madsen, Genevieve thought uneasily. And then she remembered. She should open her eyes, tell them she could hear them, but someone had sewn her eyelids shut and put one-hundredpound weights on them.
They were standing over her as she lay on the bed—she could tell that much even without being able to see. Harry made a sound of disgust. “You’re right, Jack,” he said. “You always are. I certainly don’t want sloppy seconds, even if there is no trace of him.
“What would I do without you, Jack? You protect me from my mistakes. If it weren’t for you, I imagine I would have stopped having fun long ago.”
She didn’t have to see to know that Takashi O’Brien was giving an obsequious bow, but Harry’s laugh confirmed it. “That’s what I like about you Japs,” he said. “Always bowing and scraping, and you understand loyalty. You know who’s master, and you’ll die to protect me.”
“Certainly.”
“So you take care of the bitch. You can have a bit of fun with her, if you’re not picky, but just make sure you get rid of the body so that it’s never found. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now and I can’t have anything get in the way. There’s a lot of money riding on my current project, and she’s endangering it. One false move and the entire thing would come tumbling down, and I’m out billions of dollars. And I like money, Jack.”
“Yes, sir.”
Genevieve would have given anything to open her eyes and see his face. But the fog was still surrounding her, and she decided she didn’t really give a shit. If Jack/Takashi was going to kill her there wasn’t a whole lot she could do about it—not at this point. If he waited long enough, maybe she’d be able to roll out of bed and hide underneath it. But at that point she couldn’t even manage to summon the energy to open her goddamn eyes.
Someone leaned over her, and gentle hands patted the covers that imprisoned her useless body. “I told you not to drink the tea,” he said, his soft voice a welcome change from Harry’s drawl.
But then he was gone, and she was alone, and since she wasn’t dead yet she might as well go back to sleep. So she did.
15
It was midnight, though she wasn’t certain how she knew. There were no clocks in her luxurious bedroom, and her Patek Philippe watch had disappeared along with the clothes she was wearing. And the enigmatic note Peter had left her.
It shouldn’t bother her. It was just a hastily scrawled note, with no signature, no tender words. But it was part of him, all she had, and she wanted it.
She sat up in bed, strangely alert. The drugged tea had worn off, leaving her with only a little fuzziness. She slid out of bed and stood, a little weak but steady enough.
She glanced down at her clothing. More of the lacy clothing Harry seemed to provide for all his guests, willing or unwilling. If she went to the drawers she’d probably find the same absurd collection of thongs and demi bras designed to turn an A cup to a C cup. Since she was already a firm C, the idea of such infrastructure was alarming.
She crossed the darkened room slowly, but with each step she felt a little stronger moving toward the bank of windows she hadn’t noticed before. The house was on a bluff overlooking the ocean, but which ocean was a mystery. There were boats, but without glasses she couldn’t even begin to guess their size, much less their nationality, and she turned away, frustrated. She could feel a burning, knotting feeling in her stomach, and for a moment she was afraid the drugs in her system were reemerging in a particularly unpleasant fashion.
And then she realized she was hungry. Starving, in fact. She couldn’t remember how long it’d been since she’d eaten. Harry had said she’d been in an induced coma for some thirteen days, which meant her sole sustenance had been given intravenously. She reached up and touched her hair. It was clean, as was the rest of her body, and she wondered if the impassive Takashi was responsible for that. He’d be as efficient and impersonal as anyone, but she didn’t like the idea of any male messing with her while she was naked and unconscious. She was a little picky about such things.
No mirrors, not even in the adjoining marble bathroom. Clearly this was no place for the model-perfect women Harry usually entertained.
It didn’t matter—as long as she was clean she could manage just about anything.
She heard someone approaching, and she dived back into bed, pulling the covers up around her again and closing her eyes. She knew instincti
vely that it wasn’t Harry; even without looking she could feel the miasma of evil that emanated from the man she’d been determined to save. The sick creep who’d ordered her death.
Why the hell did everyone want to kill her? First the attack in upstate New York, then Peter Jensen, then Renaud. At least with Peter it had been nothing personal, more a matter of simple expediency, the polite son of a bitch. And in the end he hadn’t done it, no matter how practical and simple it was.
And now good old Harry Van Dorn wanted her dead, and his henchman would doubtless be ready to carry out his orders at once because…
Why? Was she a victim of bad timing over and over again? Or maybe it was the fact that she never took the smart or easy way out, throwing her lot in with Harry Van Dorn. She knew there was something dodgy about him—her instincts had screamed it while her brain was trying to reason with her. And yet she’d gone blundering ahead.
And no one deserved to be executed by a vigilante Committee, no matter how bad they were. Or so she thought, rescuer that she was.
