Prince Of Lies

As she struggled out he said, ‘I think it should be safe enough to carry you,’ and in spite of her automatic recoil he picked her up and set off.

Keeping her face rigidly turned away, she wondered why liberty didn’t taste as good as she’d imagined it would in those nightmare days of imprisonment. She should have been ecstatic, because she’d expected death, and now there was a future waiting for her. At the very least she should have been relieved. Instead, an icy chill eddied through her, robbing her of everything but a detached recognition that she had been imprisoned and was now free.

Freedom was easy to say, she thought with a scepticism that hurt. Common sense told her that her body would mend quickly enough, yet as she lay there in the powerful arms of the man who had released her she wondered whether some part of her mind would be incarcerated in that box for the rest of her life.

‘My car’s not too far away. When we get there I’m going to have to put you in the boot,’ her rescuer told her, his voice reassuring but firm enough to forestall any protest. He still spoke as though they could be overheard. ‘It will be bloody uncomfortable, but it’s necessary, and I’ve put a mattress in there to make it a bit easier. I’m almost certain no one’s been watching me, but we’ll be going through several villages and the last thing we want is someone remembering that I had a passenger. So you’ll have to stay hidden.’

Although her skin crawled at the thought of further confinement, Stephanie understood the need for caution. Mastering the flash of panic, she said, ‘Yes, all right.’ She thought his words over before asking slowly, ‘Will S—will my brother be there?’

‘No.’ He paused before explaining, ‘He’s busy dealing with the men who did this to you. You and I will have to lie low for a while until it’s over. I can’t even get a doctor for you in case they have a local contact, but I have some experience in this sort of thing.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said automatically, wondering where he’d gained this experience. First-aid training? A book on how to look after kidnappees?

Being rescued, she decided, closing her eyes, must have addled her brain.

He climbed for what seemed ages. Mostly Stephanie lay in a kind of stupor, accepting without thought the novelty of being carried, the controlled, purposeful toughness of the man. It did occur to her that he must be immensely strong, for he moved without any visible signs of exhaustion. And although he might not think there was anyone watching she could feel his alertness, a fierce concentration on every signal sent by the world around them. Several times he stopped and listened.

Whenever that happened she made herself still and quiet, trying to slow her heartbeat, calm her racing pulses and the rattle of air in her lungs, the interminable thud and throb of her headache. Although she too listened hard she could hear nothing but the sounds of the forest—an occasional bird, the soft rustling of a breeze in the trees.

Once she roused herself to whisper, ‘Are we there?’

‘Not quite.’ When he went to put her down she surprised herself by clinging. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gently. ‘I’m just going to scout around and make sure no one is about.’

‘Don’t leave me.’ Although she despised the note of panic in her voice, she couldn’t control it.

‘I’ll be keeping a good eye on you.’

A small, childish noise escaped her lips.

‘That’s enough,’ he said sternly, bending to thrust her into a cleft beneath a rock that broke through the bushes. ‘I haven’t gone to all this trouble to lose you now. Just sit there, princess, and I’ll be here again before you’ve had time to get lonely.’ He stepped behind a tree and disappeared, far too silently for a man of his size.

Disgusted by her feebleness, Stephanie waited, wishing she could point her ears like an animal to get a better fix on his whereabouts. A tangle of summer-green leaves hid her from any stray passer-by, but not, she knew, from a determined searcher. Her rescuer’s familiarity with this mountain slope surely meant that he had spent some time reconnoitring.

Fighting exhaustion, she peered past the leaves, trying to identify a glimmering patch of white that danced in the sun beyond a belt of trees. At first she thought it was a waterfall, but by narrowing her eyes she could see that it was too regular for that. Slowly, it coalesced into stone, a waterfall of stone—no, columns of stone.

There, some hundreds of yards away through the trees, was what looked to be a temple, chastely, classically Greek. Her eyes blurred; she blinked to clear them, but a cloud had passed over the sun, and the tantalising streak of white was gone.

Perhaps it had been a hallucination.

His return startled her. It was uncanny; he seemed to rise out of the ground like a primeval huntsman, so at one with his surroundings that the trees sheltered him in their embrace.

‘Not a soul in sight,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

His arms around her were intensely comforting, like coming home. Sighing, Stephanie leaned her head against his shoulder. He smelt slightly sweaty, so it wasn’t as easy carrying her as he made it seem. Another scent teased her nostrils, faint but ever present, evocative, with a hint of salt and musk. Masculinity, she decided dreamily.

She knew that she must smell hideous, reek with the stale odour of confinement. A pursuer, she thought with a wry twist of her lips, wouldn’t need to search for her; all he’d have to do was follow his nose to find her.

She was still wondering why this seemed so especially unbearable when he said, ‘Right, here we are.’

However, he didn’t go immediately to the car that waited in the heavy shade of a conifer. It wasn’t hidden, but few people would notice it, for it was painted a green that blended with the long needles of the trees.

Just inside the confines of the wood he put her against the trunk of a tree, and stood blocking her from anyone who might be watching, his whole being concentrated on a hawk-eyed, icily patient scrutiny of every tree, every blade of grass, and the big, dark car.

When at last he did move it was with a speed that shocked her. Within seconds she was deposited on the mattress in the boot, choking back a moan as he firmly closed the lid.

The engine sprang into life; with no delay the car drew away from the picnic spot and turned down the road.

Even on the mattress Stephanie was soon profoundly uncomfortable. Her bones seemed to have no fleshy covering to protect them; she ached all over, and she was shivering. She was also worrying. So great had her initial relief been that suspicion hadn’t had room to take hold. Now, cramped like a parcel, trying to ignore the thumping of her head and the tremors that racked her, she began to recall things she had noticed but not questioned. Whoever her rescuer was, he had keys not only to the crypt and the coffin, but also to the handcuffs that had manacled her in the coffin.

Saul, her brother, had an excellent security department, but it was highly unlikely that even the most skilled operative would have been able to get those keys. So unlikely that she had better stop believing that the man driving the BMW had anything to do with Saul.

Her quick, instinctive stab of revulsion warned her that she was halfway into the Stockholm syndrome—falling in with the wishes of her captor.

Think, she adjured her pounding brain. Think, damn it!

There had been no indication that she was a target; if her intensely protective brother had heard the slightest hint that she was in danger, he wouldn’t have let her come to Switzerland without a bodyguard. Or with one, for that matter. The close relatives of billionaires were sometimes at risk; she had long ago accepted the constraints of her world, and co-operated, so Saul had no reason to keep her in ignorance.

If Saul didn’t know, if he hadn’t been warned, then none of his agents would have been alerted. According to her rescuer, she’d been imprisoned for three days. She had no way of checking the accuracy of this, but if it was true, was that time enough for one of Saul’s men to discover who the kidnappers were and get close enough to them to be able to copy the keys?

It didn’t seem likely, unless the kidnappers had left clues the size of houses. And somehow she doubted that; they had been frighteningly efficient.

It seemed important to know exactly how many keys there were. Even understanding that it was a mechanism to push the truth away didn’t stop her from counting them: the keys to the box, then to the handcuffs, keys to both doors. Four sets of keys. And he had them all.

She dragged a deep breath into her lungs. All right, don’t panic! What sort of person was he, this man who had walked into her life?

Although she hadn’t looked at him carefully, so she couldn’t recall the colour of his eyes or even his colouring beyond the fact that he was dark, that first swift glance had seared his features into her brain: a blade of a nose, high, arrogant cheekbones, eyes that had something strange about them. Did he look like a criminal?

Not, she thought bitterly, that looks were any indication. The man whose face she had seen under his torn Balaclava hadn’t looked like a criminal. If he’d been any type at all, it was a small-time shopkeeper.

Whatever, until she knew for certain, it would be much safer to work on the assumption that either her rescuer was one of the kidnappers who wanted all of the ransom, not merely a share of it, or an associate who knew what they had done, was trusted by them, and had decided to cut himself a piece of the pie. That would explain why he was being so careful not to be seen by the original kidnappers.

It sounds, she thought feverishly, like the instructions in an Elizabethan play: Enter first kidnapper with gag, blindfold and coffin, exit first kidnapper. Almost immediately enter second kidnapper, a large, athletic man with keys and strong arms.

If that was so, she was in just as much danger as before. He could quite easily plan to keep her safe as long as Saul demanded reassurance that she was alive, then kill her when the money had been paid over.

Her heart skittered into a rapid cacophony while her brain veered off towards the messy heights of hysteria.

Calm down. Panic isn’t going to get you anywhere.

With an effort of will that made her teeth chatter she began to breathe slowly, regularly, forcing herself to count the seconds. Eventually the churning flood of fear in her stomach subsided, and with it her inability to think.

Paradoxically, the only thing that comforted her was that he’d used the keys quite openly. If she’d been less of a cynic she might take that to mean he was legitimate.

Of course, he could well be devious enough to use them deliberately so that she’d be confused into accepting him as completely above-board. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had imagined that because her brother was one of the richest men in the world Stephanie Jerrard was incapable of logical thought, with nothing but clothes and jewellery and gossip in her mind.

He could have fallen into that trap. However, in the few moments she had spent talking to him she had gained the impression of a keen, razor-sharp intelligence, the sort of mind that didn’t make obvious mistakes. Apart from the keys, what else was there to base suspicion on?

The tension clamping her muscles began to ebb as she realised how little there was. He’d been evasive when she’d asked about Saul. Or had he?