‘Stop,’ she begged. ‘Please, please, stop!’
‘Nah—not till we’ve had our fun.’ She didn’t know who spoke. Through the ringing in her ears she thought she heard a belt buckle being unclasped.
‘You heard her.’ A new voice. ‘Stop.’
Lori was thrown to the floor. Through red panic a splinter of blue appeared, like water poured on flames. A hot current travelled down her spine, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling, thousands of needlepoints, each tip like fire. She became aware of her breathing, low and shallow, and her frantic heart.
Diego spoke. ‘This ain’t nothin’ t’do with you, man. Back away.’
The stranger moved. She heard the clean smack of his step as he approached. Smart, controlled, precise. ‘Wrong. Let her go.’
Lori raised her head, taking the newcomer in in pieces—the oil-black shoes, the expensively tailored suit pants, the way a strip of crisp white shirt emerged from each sleeve of his jacket. His suit was the sharp, thousand-dollar sort she had seen on models in magazines and on businessmen who dealt in money and gambling and sex with their secretaries. He was tall. One of his hands was visible. Strong knuckles. His hair, the colour of sand after the tide’s been in; his precise profile and square-sharp jaw; his mouth. In his right earlobe he wore a flat black stud, which was ill-matched with the attire and spoke of something exotic.
The man regarded her directly and with a gaze that was bluer than the colour itself, light blue of a kind that seemed artificial. She saw his top lip was scarred, a jagged groove that ran like lightning, almost ugly, through his philtrum.
‘You got no business comin’ round here,’ warned one of
Diego’s gang. They were hesitant with the stranger—they outnumbered him and yet they did not make a move. ‘Walk away now an’ no one gets hurt.’
The man reached down to Lori and held out his hand. With the gesture, his sleeve lifted a fraction and she saw a thin band of leather encircling his wrist.
‘Get up,’ he told her.
Diego was quick but the stranger was quicker, bringing Lori to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all. Smoothly, swiftly, he positioned his body in front of hers, simultaneously catching Diego’s punch in one of his fists.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’
Diego’s eyes flashed a caution. One of his guys freed a gun. The weapon was raised.
‘We ain’t gonna tell you again,’ growled Diego.
‘Walk away. ’
One of the crew lunged but the man seized the strike, twisting the elbow back at such an angle that the body crumpled to the floor.
‘My arm!’ the guy howled. ‘My fuckin’ arm, you’ve broken it, you sonofabitch!’
A second swing; the audible rush of swiped air as he evaded the blow, landing his own fist squarely in the throat of his assailant, who performed a sickening pirouette and was slammed back against the wall with a force that made something crack.
The next she knew, they had the gun. The last of Diego’s crew still standing was making a run for it. ‘Fuckin’ get outta here, man!’ he urged his chief. ‘Fuckin’ let’s go!’
Diego stared down his own weapon. ‘You don’t know who I am,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
The gun didn’t waver.
Lori saw Diego hesitate, a ripple of fear behind his eyes.
‘Take your men away from here,’ the stranger said, in an accent she could not place. ‘And don’t ever come back. If you come back, you will disappear. Nobody will know what happened to you. Your wives will not know. Your friends will not know. Your brothers will not know. Your children will not know. Your lovers will wait for you in a cold room in a cold bed but you will never come. Do not doubt this will happen. If you come here again, it will happen to every last one of you.’
And in a rush that felt like flying, the stranger had taken her hand, she was with him, next to him, and they were moving, out of the door and into the blazing sun. She saw his car, a gleaming, purring Mercedes, black and silver, opened to an interior of plush, heavy-scented leather, a secret world. She hadn’t time to question her actions. They were inside, the door slammed shut; he was pushing a button and giving instructions to someone up front, concealed behind a screen of dark glass, to drive. He turned to her, eyes so blue, so blue.
‘I won’t let you go until I know it is over. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe with me.’
She found her voice, only it sounded like someone else’s. ‘Do I know you?’
‘No.’
The car was moving at speed. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am no one.’
Lori wanted to touch him. She wanted to touch him in a way she had never before encountered—raw, necessary, primal. The stranger was facing away, his profile still, his mouth set in a line of grim determination, as though he were trying to resist unseen temptation.
And then, she didn’t know how it happened, they were kissing each other, their bodies apart one second and together the next. His lips, his tongue, that scar she had noticed that felt, beneath her mouth, like danger. The smell of leather and the smell of him: his neck, his skin, the softness of his mouth and eyelashes. His hands held her face, one thumb on her chin where it was cut, the fingers behind her jaw, beneath her earlobes. She had never been kissed like that. She could kiss him for ever. She could kiss him till her mouth bled.
Not once did his hands move lower, though she ached for them to. She wanted him to touch her in all the places she had refused her boyfriend: all the emotions she was meant to feel with Rico but hadn’t, imagining something must be the matter with her. His fingers reached round and pressed the very top of her spine, his touch so deft, electricity, the heat of his body and the soft insistency of his mouth, and she felt the blood rush like fever, trembling, to between her legs. For the first time in her life, Lori experienced desire. Prolonged, exquisite, concentrated desire that entered her like a knife and twisted her heart, sliding its smooth blade down her stomach, opening her up to that place whose existence she had always denied.
The car stopped. The man pulled away, his expression closed, but angry, like an argument happening behind a shut door.
The only sound was their breathing, painfully intimate in the silence.
Lori sensed the certainty of their parting and grasped for more, abandoning restraint because that was what he had done to her.
‘I have to find a way to thank you—’
Sunlight flooded in, hurting her eyes. They were back outside
Tres Hermanas
. His driver stood on the sidewalk.
The man took her hand. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her, in that soft, strange accent. ‘I’ll make sure of it. I always will.’
Lori was helped on to the street, the light blinding: a new world. She was shaking.
His arm reached to close the door.
‘Wait! Will I see you again? What’s your name? You have to tell me. I have to know.’
The man lifted his mouth slightly, the corners, not much, like a cat that wakes from a deep sleep and raises his head once to look around before settling again. It wasn’t a smile. It didn’t come close to the eyes, whose look of benevolence had hardened like a frozen lake.
‘It does not matter who I am.’
And with a last, lingering stare, as quick as he’d come, he was gone.
14
Present Day
Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean
Four hours to departure
Reuben van der Meyde was a self-made industrial entrepreneur with tens of billions in the bank. He had come from nothing: orphaned as a baby, he had grown up with a lukewarm, uninterested foster family in the South African city of Johannesburg. At thirteen, after being expelled from school for bad behaviour, he had started his own trade on the streets, selling stolen cut-price jewellery to travelling businessmen. One such businessman, an unhappily married tycoon who had recently lost a son Reuben’s age, took him under his wing, trained him and served up a job in one of his fledgling telecommunications companies. With the Soweto sprawl in the seventies came massive investment in the suburbs—Reuben was in the thick of it and, as each year passed, his flair for business grew. Aged twenty, he launched VDM Communications. Soon he was rivalling
the man who had taught him everything and, as his business swelled, so did his fortune, his reputation, and his ambition. Today, VDM was the most lucrative company in the world.
Reuben van der Meyde was not a man prepared to be taken down.
He paced the terrace, pausing occasionally to put his hands on the balustrade and glare darkly at the water. He checked his chunky silver watch, grimaced when the links caught the reddish hairs on his arms. Four hours. It wasn’t enough.
‘I’m telling you, JB, the damn thing’s got me in a sweat. I’m like a pig in shitting heat.’ He removed his cap and swiped at a persistent fly.
Jean-Baptiste Moreau loosened the knot on his tie and didn’t respond. He was facing the ocean, concentrated on calmer waters. Emerald palms rustled in the salty breeze.
‘I hope to fuck you’re coming up with a solution,’ said Reuben. ‘Because it’s not just me being threatened, boy, it’s you as well.’
JB remained where he was, on one of the high-backed wicker chairs that peppered the rugged veranda of his white-stone villa. Despite the sun, he did not perspire. His dark-blond hair was immaculate, neat at the neck, and his expression still. The only betrayal that he was deep in thought was the slight twitch to the scar across his top lip, a giveaway since he was a boy.
‘Shit!’ Reuben slammed down his fist. ‘After all the work I’ve put into this—’
‘It might not be what you think.’
‘What else could it be, hey? A fucking strip-o-gram birthday cake?’
Finally JB turned. The strength of his gaze compelled an already struggling Reuben to sit down. His eyes really were extraordinary, an untarnished blue with flecks of silver, uncannily light.
‘Nothing in that message suggests this person knows anything about what we’re trying to protect,’ JB told him. ‘Keep it together.’
Reuben laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t think
I’m one of them
has a certain ring to it?’ He ground his teeth. ‘I spent all night trying to look at it a different way. Bottom line is I’ve got a bad feeling. This person got into my private mail. When was the last time that happened?’ JB didn’t answer. Reuben sprang to his feet. ‘Let me tell you.
Never
.’
The Frenchman’s gaze slid back to the ocean. ‘You worry too much. We’re in control.’
‘It’s OK for you, isn’t it?’ Reuben blasted. ‘Swanning around Hollywood, scouting for pretty girls, while one of us is trying to run a business!’ JB didn’t react. ‘Damn! It’s my reputation on the line here, not yours.’
‘Are you insinuating I don’t have my own problems to deal with?’
Reuben caught the menace in his words. ‘It’s not my fault you’re hard up for the Spanish broad,’ he said. ‘I knew that girl was trouble from the start. Ones like her always are. Too wild for what we had in mind. Young, dumb and desperate—remember?’
‘You know nothing about her.’
Reuben grimaced. ‘I know she was meant to be a job, for Crissakes. Try tying your dick in a knot next time—it helps.’
JB stood. Instantly the shorter man, despite his wealth and power, took a step back. He’d regretted the words as
soon as he’d said them. Moreau was not a man he wanted to piss off.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he said quietly. ‘Rebecca is inside. And stop cowering like a dog. Fear achieves nothing.’
Reuben matched the younger man’s glare until eventually he was forced to look away. ‘I’ll assume you’re right.’
‘I’m always right.’
One of JB’s assistants emerged from the villa. Reuben was about to explode at her for interrupting a private conversation but stopped when it became clear JB was expecting her.
‘The caterers have arrived, Mr Moreau,’ she said, smoothing her skirt down, chosen because she’d been told it made her ass look good. Ridiculous. One night was all it had been. She knew JB Moreau took women to bed like he ate hot meals, and didn’t know whether to curse herself for having allowed it or to thank everything good in the world for those hours.
‘Thank you, Sara.’
‘What do you want to know about the caterers for?’ Reuben frowned once she’d gone.
‘I’ve requested updates on all arrivals.’
‘Yeah, but I got people looking after that.’
JB ran a hand across his jaw. ‘Let’s stick to business, shall we?’
Reuben leaned in. ‘Fine,’ he said impatiently, ‘but I’ve got enough else to think about without this …
inconvenience
. The organisers are climbing up my arse and the captain hasn’t bloody showed up yet. It’s all very well decking the place out like a pair of frilly knickers but if the thing doesn’t sail I might as well have a floating turd out
there, hey! What am I going to do, give them a swimming lesson?’ He scowled. ‘Believe me: soon as I find out who sent that message I swear I’ll rip their fucking throat out.’
JB had neither the time nor inclincation to watch Reuben fall spectacularly to pieces. He headed inside. ‘I have to make a phone call.’
‘Make it quick. We’ll rendezvous in an hour. This party’s going to be one hell of a stunt to pull, my friend.’
The Frenchman turned at the open door. ‘As long as it’s the only stunt getting pulled, I’ll be happy.’
Margaret Jensen did not like other people being in her kitchen. She worked in this place three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and yet, on these occasions, it counted for nothing. It was like allowing strangers into her home and letting them touch things, move them, put them back in the wrong places. She found it easier to stand apart and let the caterers get on with it. The company hired for tonight’s event ran with a military precision that rivalled even her own.
Hovering at the threshold, she observed the food being prepared. The fastidious detail of the champagne caviar, the pink lobster mousse, the gold-leaf mint and basil tarts, the seven-tiered miniature cakes, belied the chaos: white-aproned staff running back and forth, wanting to get everything perfect. It would never be enough. Mr V would find something to complain about, whatever the standard.