The Boat Builder's Bed (28 page)

Laurel pulled Rafiq’s note from her jeans pocket and smoothed it out. Would this be the woman she was supposed to give it to? She held it forward.

The impassive dark face lit up. The gate swung open. The little woman whisked the note from her fingers and became extremely animated, urging her in and rattling away with great enthusiasm.

“Laurel,” Laurel said, tapping her chest with a finger.

“Yasmina,” the woman replied, thumping her own.

“Yasmina,” Laurel tried. This brought nods and smiles.

“Rafiq?” she asked. More nods and smiles, but also an unmistakable gesture of ‘not here now’.

Oh darn.

Yasmina re-read the note with close attention, all the while chattering in her own language, and drew Laurel along the path and in through the doorway of a turreted old house with thick stone walls. The blinding light outside made the interior seem dim and restful, and the relative coolness washed over her skin like a blessing.

After progressing through a long hallway, they arrived in a high-ceilinged bedroom. Yasmina threw open a further door, and Laurel stood amazed as the servant started water gushing into a marble bath from an ornate gold spout. She must look desperately hot and dirty if this was how she was welcomed!

The little woman emerged—smiling and gesturing that Laurel was to treat the room as her own. She trotted off, and Laurel sank down on the bed before her legs gave way under her. What on earth would happen next?

The bath looked blissful once she managed to rise to her weary feet again. Yasmina had thrown a handful of fresh rose-petals into it. Laurel assumed she’d been tidying up full-blown blooms as they proceeded up the path together, but plainly the flowers had been intended for this. Fragrant foam grew ever deeper in the water as the bath filled. A selection of French soaps spilled from a basket at one end of the huge tub. It all seemed way over the top for a semi-deserted relic so far from civilization.

She stripped and bathed, shampooing the gritty sand from her long fair hair and letting the delicious warm scented water soothe away her aches. When she returned to the bedroom she found all her clothes had disappeared and a gauzy mauve robe had been laid on the bed. She slipped it on, admired its bands of amazing gold embroidery, stretched out on the bed to consider the strange turn her life had taken, and plummeted into an exhausted asleep.

At once the nightmare hit again. The wind from the desert moaned eerily. Palm-fronds clattered, but otherwise very little moved as the small seaside resort of Kalal drowsed in the afternoon heat.

A solitary vehicle coasted to a halt just behind her.

Laurel half-turned when she heard the door creak open, but she had only a split second to register the fast-moving dark shape of a man before brutal hands dragged a bag down over her face. As fast as that, she’d been trapped.

A scalding cascade of horrendous possibilities flooded her brain. Terrified, she screamed at top volume, dropped her sketching pad, and kicked backwards with every ounce of her considerable determination. The heel of her shoe connected with what she hoped was her captor’s shin.

It caused a guttural male voice to let loose a vicious curse in the local language and she enjoyed a fleeting flash of triumph. But then an iron-hard hand closed over her face, pressing her lips painfully back against her teeth. And a steely arm wrapped around her waist and heaved her forward and face-down.

Her scrabbling fingers told her she’d landed on a slab of foam rubber on a hard floor.

Doors banged, a motor revved, and she jerked backward as the vehicle took off at high speed.

Shudders of panic took over then. Huge fluttery tremors ran up and down her spine.
 

She was blind. Cruel hands had yanked a drawstring tightly around her neck so the bag was closed, and cut off any vestige of light...any hope of seeing where she was being taken.

She struggled and kicked in the swaying vehicle, and suffered the further insult of a warm weight moving to pin her down to the no-doubt filthy mattress.

“Be still!” a man’s deep voice growled close against her ear.

She was so astounded to hear accented but obvious English she momentarily froze before resuming her frenzied bucking and struggling. But she had no hope of escaping from under his strong body.

Hard hands grabbed her wrists, and she heard the snick of handcuffs and felt the smooth hard metal against her skin. Her whirling brain registered she was now one step more helpless.

Fingers trailed from her wrists to her elbows and back to her useless hands. It was almost a caress. Her heart thudded even more rapidly as the implication sank in.

“Be still,” he muttered again. “We do not mean to hurt you as long as you cooperate.”

With her shoulders flattened down under his chest, Laurel’s breasts were squashed against the floor. The man’s hips were exactly above hers. His bony pelvis ground against her bottom as the vehicle swayed and braked. A long hard thigh clamped either side of her own, pinning her down, holding her captive.

And between those impressive thighs the firm masculine bulge felt all too obvious. Desolation engulfed her then.

“Lie still and it will go easier for you,” he growled, lifting his upper torso off her which at least gave her poor breasts some relief.

But the shift in weight drove his hips even more firmly into hers, and there was no escaping the intimate press of his body. She willed her legs to weld together as shattering images exploded across her brain.

What did they want from her? One minute she’d been wandering happily in the sun, thinking of the children she was caring for, and inventing a family of her own. In an instant, future imaginings had been ripped away and replaced with the desperate danger of the present moment, and this cruel man, and not nearly enough air.

Blind and half-deaf, she used the senses she had left to get some sort of fix on her situation. There was him—who was strong and muscular because he now had her firmly confined. There was the driver. And there seemed to be another hoarse voice in the front seat, too. Presumably that was the man who’d grabbed her in the street and pushed her in to be held down by this one?

So three of them at least. Awful odds. She didn’t stand a chance.

Absolute terror engulfed her as she tried to drag big gulps of dead air into her laboring lungs.

“I can’t breathe,” she shrieked in a panic—almost more scared now of suffocating than of any other eventual fate.

Hands slid around her neck, probing until they located the drawstring holding the bag fastened. She shuddered to feel callused fingers on her exposed nape...on the tender skin under her jaw. Her heart thudded with a fast panicked beat.

“Not another sound,” the man grated. But at least he’d loosened the drawstring and let in a little light and some much fresher air.

Laurel lay there gasping like a stranded fish, gulping in oxygen—oxygen laced with the oily smell of the vehicle and a soft spiciness from the man who pinned her down on the mattress.

She heard a hoarse and somehow dirty comment from the front seat. Her captor chuckled above her. The vibrations from his body travelled down into hers, setting her nerves even further on edge if that was possible.

“What?” she snapped, with little hope of a translation.

“He says I have the best job,” came the unexpected reply in that deep husky voice. “But only as long as you remain sensible. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you struggle I may have to.”

To her horror a terrified moan escaped from her throat, and a cackle of laughter erupted from the man in the front.

The vehicle—some sort of van, she assumed—continued to career along, swaying from side to side, bumping into hollows, grinding up slopes and tipping down again. They’d left the dusty level streets of Kalal miles behind, and must be out in the desert country by now.

The endless empty inhospitable desert country—where it would be very hard to find her.

The man eased his weight away to one side, which provided a small increase in comfort.

“Thank-you,” she muttered. For surely she should co-operate as fully as possible to ensure her eventual safety?

“My pleasure,” his voice murmured right beside her ear.

His pleasure to move to a more comfortable position for himself? Or to have enjoyed the proximity of her body to his?

Pig!
she thought.
Utter pig. Disgusting criminal kidnapping terrorist pig.

She tensed as his hands slipped around her neck again, sliding in under her jaw and up over her mouth. The temptation to bite his hateful fingers was almost beyond her conscious control.

But somehow she held still and was rewarded by her suffocating blindfold being eased upward until the air flooded in and her face was in daylight at last. Her red cap—or rather
Maddie’s
red cap—had been knocked askew when the bag was forced down over her head. Finally she nudged it back up into position so the stiffened peak no longer rasped at her nose.
 

She turned and glared at her captor.

He was so close it was difficult to focus, and she wrenched her face away again—but not before she’d registered a pair of very dark eyes under determined straight black brows, and tobacco-brown skin stretched over high cheekbones.

A cruel imperious face—ancient, proud, and unyielding. It could have been carved from stone for all the softness it showed.

Laurel’s heart shrank. It truly seemed to shrivel inside her ribs. There was no compassion evident on his harsh features...no hint she was in anything but the most dire danger.

And then his hand started stroking her hair, and she shuddered.

“So pale,” he growled. “Not like the women of my country.” He tugged gently at the long blonde tail she’d threaded through the gap at the back of the cap to keep the heat off her neck.

“Leave it!” she snapped, pushed to her limit by his unwelcome attention. Sudden tears spilled down her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes closed and burrowed her face down into the mattress to hide her fear.

The mattress, she noticed in her few seconds of proper vision, appeared to be perfectly clean—probably brand new and bought for the job. At least that was better than being held helpless on something filthy and vermin-ridden. She felt almost willing to be grateful for such a small mercy. But oh, she didn’t want to cry and let him know how terrified she was.

His hand continued to move over her hair as if it might soothe her, and Laurel had no fight left to repel him.

Would she ever see Mrs Daniels and the children again? Ever walk once more on New Zealand’s green grass under tall trees? Or would this be the end of her life—in a strange dry foreign land, far away from everything she’d grown up with?

She trembled and shivered as the three men began a rapid conversation in a language she couldn’t hope to comprehend. The faint spicy fragrance continued to waft past her nose, just discernible over the oily smell of the vehicle. At least her captor was civilized enough to use soap or cologne.

After what seemed like forever the vehicle changed to a lower gear, ground up a slope, slowed and braked. The engine coughed and died.

“We’re here. It’s time to get out.”

Laurel’s heart increased its frantic hammering. Where was ‘here’? And what were they planning to do to her? She raised her head and gazed around, knowing her eyes must be wide with fear.

The van looked hard-used, the backs of the seats scuffed and pocked. The mattress only partly covered a bare metal floor. And the windows were heavily tinted, giving the sky an odd greenish tinge.

She heard a rattle and a clunk. Behind her, the van’s doors swung open on squealing hinges.

“Out,” her jailer repeated, rearing above her and clamping his hands around her waist. He lifted her without apparent effort, and twisted to set her down with her feet dangling only inches above the sand.

And the blinding desert stretched for miles. She saw nothing but pale rocks and golden sand under harsh sunlight, all the way to the hazy horizon. Undulating dunes and higher hillocks rose up occasionally, but no signs of civilization at all.

Laurel scrunched up her eyes and stared aghast at the short thick-set man who’d opened the doors. Roughly-dressed, he cradled a huge black automatic weapon in his arms. Fabric swathed his face to hide his features. Only his keen cruel eyes were visible. Presumably he was the street-grabber? She hoped his shin ached like fury.

He jabbed the black monstrosity viciously higher as a signal she needed to stand.

Laurel shrank back against the man who had, until now, been so terrifying. His whipcord body and husky voice were infinitely preferable to the alternative outside.

He grasped her elbows and pushed her up and out.

“Careful,” he snapped, releasing her. She stepped unsteadily away, and turned to survey the rest of her surroundings. Nothing apart from the white van and the animal with the gun. What in the world were they planning? They could do anything to her in this unobserved place.

The driver’s door swung open and the other occupant slid out, also dressed as roughly as the gunman—coarse-spun trousers tucked into heavy boots, the long shirt/coat garment all the local men wore, and a head-dress arranged to hide most of his features. This third man threw a few amused words in her direction and earned what sounded like a sharp rebuke from the one who’d pinned her down for the terrifying ride.

A hand grasped her long tail of hair to prevent her moving further away and yanked her head back so she almost lost her balance. Another hand fastened about her upper arm and she was turned, very much against her will, to stand nearer to mattress-man.

“Stay close,” he insisted, fixing her with intense black eyes.

She managed a hopeless grim half-smile. “To you?”

“Yes, if you value your life.”

“You’ve made me feel really safe so far.” Tough if she offended him. How much worse could her situation possibly be?

“I’m a better bet than the others.” His voice sank softly into her ear, and his warm breath stirred the tiny hairs on her neck. “Watch,” he added.