2 The Dante Connection (31 page)

“I don’t like change,” I said after some time.

“Sometimes change is good.”

“It’s always good. It forces us to develop, to grow. The growth and development I like. The change? Not at all.”

“At least some things stay the same.” He turned his head again to look at me. “I’m still here. Vinnie, Francine and Millard next door. Vinnie will cook and bicker with Francine and Millard will be his annoying self. The same as always.”

I knew this wasn’t true. Too much had changed between all of us in the last week.

The Braque Connection

Third
in the Genevieve Lenard series

Forged masterpieces. Hidden messages. A desperate swan song.

World-renowned nonverbal communication expert Doctor Genevieve Lenard wakes up drugged in an unknown location after being kidnapped. As someone with high-functioning autism, this pushes the limits of her coping skills.

For the last year, Russian philanthropist and psychopath Tomasz Kubanov has been studying Genevieve just as she and her team have been studying him. Now forged paintings and mysterious murders are surfacing around her team, with evidence pointing to one of them as the killer.

Genevieve knows Kubanov is behind these senseless acts of violence. What she doesn’t understand are the inconsistencies between his actions and the cryptic messages he sends. Something has triggered his unpredictable behaviour, something that might result in many more deaths, including those she cares for. Because this time, Kubanov has nothing to lose.

.

The Braque Connection
is available as paperback and ebook.

The
Braque Connection

Third
in the Genevieve Lenard series

.

Excerpt

Chapter ONE

“Jenny, wake up.” A warm hand was rubbing my shoulder a bit too vigorously. “Wake up, honey-buns.”

I bristled at the term of endearment. I had heard it used recently and it had offended me deeply. I considered such saccharine terms disparaging, something I couldn’t associate with the voice calling me. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids would not respond to the message sent by my neurotransmitters. My cognitive function appeared to be impaired. Not even a frown formed on my brow as I attempted to ascertain where I was. It was disconcerting that I couldn’t place the voice calling me, even though it sounded familiar.

A slow panic started to creep through me. Why could I not move? Why could I not remember things? I swallowed and tried to call up Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat Major. Mentally writing any of Mozart’s compositions always calmed me. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t recall one single concerto, étude, sonata or opera. Dread settled heavily on my mind. Forcing my thoughts away from not being able to move or remember, I focussed on what I could feel.

Pain. Intense, overwhelming pain. My head felt like it was twice its size and filled with wet wool. Had I been imbibing? I had not been drunk before, thus my knowledge was purely academic. What I was experiencing would seem to fit the symptoms of veisalgia, or in layman’s terms, a hangover.

I continued my self-examination, ignoring the incessant voice calling me. Had my muscles not been so unresponsive, I would have been much more tense as my situation revealed itself in disturbing fragments. I was naked. Naked, on a bed and curled up against another naked body. My heart rate increased exponentially with this awareness. I had no recollection of how I had come to be here. My head was on a man’s shoulder, my right hand resting trustingly over his heart. He was lying on his back, his right arm holding me against him, still rubbing my shoulder. I was on my side with my one leg thrown over his. I was cuddling. I never cuddled.

“Jenny, please wake up.” Concern strained the familiar male voice.

I groaned. The deep voice vibrating against my ear increased the pain throbbing against my cranium.

“Honey-buns, wake up.”

“Don’t call me that.” Forcing all my annoyance into my vocal cords resulted merely in a hoarse whisper. The chest under my head heaved with a deep breath.

“Oh, thank God.” His chest shuddered. “How’re you feeling?”

Darkness pulled at me and in my weakness I surrendered to its lure. The insistent shoulder-rubbing and irritating voice dragged me back to painful, paralysed consciousness. After a few seconds I realised I was keening. I swallowed the next monotone sound, but couldn’t stop the groan. My head was pounding.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He drew in a sharp breath and slowly released it. “I’m your sugar-bunny.”

Without the headache and worrying weakness in my limbs, I might have punched the chest I was resting on. As it was, it took immense effort to merely open my eyes. Pain that I had only read about stabbed at my eyes. I breathed through the nausea and looked beyond the naked chest under my hand.

We were in a bedroom, the bed comfortable yet firm under me. I was facing a wall, mostly taken up by a large window with the curtains drawn open. In front of the windows were two wingback chairs separated by an antique-looking coffee table. Elegant. The glass panes behind the leather chairs did not quite reach the floor or ceiling, but were large enough to afford me a full view of our surroundings. The pastoral landscape outside in the waning light of day was in sharp contrast to the turmoil in my mind. And it did not look familiar. In fact, it didn’t look like anything I had seen in France. Where were we? Who was I with?

“Honey-buns, you need to get up.”

I gritted my teeth and pushed myself up on shaking arms. I only managed a few inches, hoping it was enough to find out who was insulting me with such endearments. My eyes travelled from my hand to the muscular chest, neck and higher. Above the strong jaw with a few days’ worth of stubble was a familiar mouth with uncommon depressed angles. I studied the depressor anguli oris muscles by his mouth for a few moments to determine whether the corners of his mouth were downturned in pain or distress. It was distress.

“Jenny?”

I raised my eyes and recognition slammed into my throbbing brain. I was naked in bed with Colin, the thief and art forger everyone called my boyfriend. His slow blinking and the elevation of his medial eyebrows evidenced deep concern.

“I am not your honey-buns.” With great strain I moved my fingers, managing only a light pinch to his pectoral muscle. “And you are not my sugar-bunny.”

His expression relaxed slightly. “We are naked in a strange place and that is what you want to argue about?”

“Colin.” I collapsed back onto his chest when he smiled his relief at hearing his name in my still-hoarse voice. “Where are we?”

“Um, England?”

“Why are you questioning your own answer?” I wished I had the strength to look at his face. My expertise was in nonverbal communication, a skill I had learned out of necessity. Reading and interpreting body language did not come naturally to me. I relied heavily on my training to understand people’s communication beyond their words. Being as weak as I was now, I only had Colin’s words. “Why do you think we are in England?”

He sighed. “We’re in my cottage in England.”

I had not expected that answer. There were a few important questions I knew I had to ask, but couldn’t reach them in my mind. My neocortex seemed capable of only the simplest of reasoning. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Can you sit up?” He shifted under me. “We need to move. It might help.”

I lifted my hand. Ten centimetres above Colin’s chest, it fell back. I had limited control over my muscles. Dark fear entered my peripheral vision.

“Jenny, you have to try and stay with me.” He turned, and I rolled away from him onto my back. My breathing was erratic, my heart racing. Colin leaned over me. “Come on, Jenny. Stay with me. We have to get you moving. Maybe it will get this crap out of your system. We have to be ready to go. I don’t know what kind of danger we are in.”

The moment I heard the word ‘danger’, the darkness swallowed me.

The Braque Connection
is available as paperback and ebook.

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