Postcards From Rio: Master of Her Innocence / To Play with Fire / A Taste of Desire

The man with the gun seemed to be transfixed by her habit and veil. He glanced at the briefcase. ‘You have the money?’ When she nodded, he held out his hand for her to give him the case.

‘I want to see Becky first.’ Clare could feel her heart thumping painfully hard in her chest. She had never thought of herself as particularly brave. But her bravery had never been tested when she had lived an ordinary, unexciting life in a leafy north London suburb, she acknowledged. She pictured her father, waiting desperately for news of his daughters, and her fragile mother who was struggling to regain her health after suffering a stroke. Her parents would be devastated if Becky did not return home and Clare knew she was the only person who could secure her sister’s release.

She curled her fingers tightly around the handle of the briefcase and stared unflinchingly at the kidnapper when he pointed the gun at her. For some reason she remembered Diego’s admiration when she had ignored her exhaustion and helped him dig the Jeep’s wheels out of the mud on the road to Torrente. He had made her feel like she was stronger and capable of achieving more than she’d ever realised. Her heart lurched as she wondered where he was and prayed he was safe.

It took all her will power to prevent her hand from shaking as she reached out and calmly pushed the gun away so that it was no longer aimed at her. ‘Would you really shoot a nun?’

To her surprise and relief, the kidnapper lowered the weapon to his side and a dull flush mottled his face. ‘My apologies, Sister. I was sent here to collect a ransom. I did not realise I would be meeting uma noiva de Cristo.’

Clare silently thanked the Mother Superior, who had persuaded her to dress as a nun for her protection. ‘I will pay the ransom when my sister is released and transport has been arranged for us to return to England.’

The man shrugged. ‘You must come with us,’ he said, pointing through the trees to a four-by-four with blacked-out windows parked near the road. He looked at Clare and made the sign of a cross. ‘I am sorry, Sister, I just do my job.’

* * *

Torrente looked as deprived and rundown as Diego had described it. The main road was busy with street traders selling their goods from the back of carts, and barefoot children played in the piles of rubbish heaped in the gutters. There was an air of despair about the place, and Clare noticed several young women—some did not look much older than girls—dressed in revealing dresses and towering heels, trying to attract the attention of men who were willing to pay for sex.

The kidnapper who Clare had overheard his companions call Enzo drove through the town and turned up a winding road leading to a huge villa that stood on top of a hill. Whoever lived here was certainly not poor, she thought, as electric gates opened to allow the four-by-four to pass through and closed with an ominous clang behind them. The lush, beautifully manicured grounds were patrolled by armed security guards, and the guards at the front door looked at her closely as she followed Enzo inside.

She had a vague impression of gleaming white marble walls and flashy gold decor, but her heart was beating so fast with fear that she was finding it hard to breathe. They walked along what seemed like miles of corridors before Enzo stopped and opened a door, indicating for Clare to enter the room. She stepped inside and her legs almost buckled with relief when a familiar figure jumped up from a chair and ran towards her.

‘Becky!’ Clare flew across the room and flung her arms around her sister. ‘Are you all right? They haven’t harmed you?’ Another wave of relief surged through her when she saw that Becky’s ears, revealed where her long ash-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, were perfectly fine. Clare wondered briefly who the severed piece of ear she had been sent by the kidnappers belonged to. But, thankfully, her sister seemed to be unhurt, and in fact looked as beautiful and elegant as she always did, despite having been held captive for a week.

Compared to Becky, Clare knew she must look like a grubby urchin from a Dickensian novel in her crumpled, mud-stained clothes. She realised that her sister was staring at her veil.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Becky pulled the veil from Clare’s head and watched her hair tumble around her shoulders. ‘Thank goodness you haven’t cut your hair short. It’s your best feature.’

‘It was a disguise. I was helped by some nuns in Manaus and the Mother Superior suggested that I should wear a habit and veil as protection from the criminals in Torrente who are apparently God-fearing, although they don’t fear the police.’

Becky gave a shaky laugh. ‘I thought for a minute you had actually joined the church. Wearing the veil makes you look like a very realistic nun.’ She glanced across the sitting room to a door which led into an adjoining room. ‘Don’t you think so, Diego?’

Shock robbed Clare of the ability to speak as she spun round and stared at Diego leaning against the door frame, his arms folded across his broad chest and his lips curved into a familiar cynical smile that was not reflected in his hard as steel eyes. ‘You certainly convinced me, Sister Clare,’ he drawled.

CHAPTER SIX (#u1b601c10-3384-59a0-b683-cc59244c9b7a)

‘I WAS GOING to tell you, but I didn’t get an opportunity to explain,’ Clare muttered. She and Diego were walking along a corridor, following the gang member Enzo, who had ordered them to go with him. Clare hadn’t had a chance to replace her veil, and she felt vulnerable now that her guise of a nun had been blown. The way Enzo’s eyes had insolently roamed over her made her skin crawl.

She wondered if the person called Rigo, who they were being taken to, was the leader of the kidnappers. She was worried that she’d had to leave Becky in the room where they had briefly been reunited. But hopefully this Rigo would accept the ransom money and allow her and Becky, and Diego, to go free, she told herself.

Diego shot her a scathing glance. ‘We had sex, and it wasn’t a quickie, over in a couple of minutes. How much more of an opportunity did you need to mention that you were only pretending to be a nun?’

He swore with muted savagery, aware that their captor walking just ahead of them could overhear. ‘Do you know what a bad time my conscience gave me when I discovered you were...a virgin?’ he said harshly.

He was furious with her for making him feel a fool, although her air of innocence hadn’t all been an act, he brooded, remembering how she had gasped at the moment of penetration, making him realise, too late, that it was her first time.

‘Is that why you had disappeared when I woke up this morning? You felt guilty, so you cleared off.’ Clare’s initial feeling of relief that Diego had gone from the cave when the kidnappers arrived had gradually turned to anger that he hadn’t even woken her to say thanks for their one-night stand, which, of course, was all he had wanted from her.

‘I didn’t clear off. I was on my way to the waterfall to take a shower when I was ambushed and knocked unconscious.’ Diego removed his hat that he’d been wearing with the brim pulled low over his eyes, and Clare made a choked sound when she saw a purple lump on his temple.

‘I’m sorry you’ve been involved. A week ago my sister was snatched while she was on a modelling assignment in Rio, and the kidnappers demanded a ransom for her release. I was instructed to take the money to a cave by a waterfall near to Torrente and was warned that if I went to the police or asked anyone for help Becky would be killed.’

‘You should have told me what you were doing.’

‘I didn’t know if I could trust you.’

‘If you didn’t trust me, why did you give yourself to me?’

Clare told herself she had imagined a faint note of hurt in Diego’s voice. ‘It was just sex. It wasn’t as if it meant anything to either of us.’ She assured herself that her emotions had not been involved, and she was certain it hadn’t meant anything to Diego. ‘What happened after you were brought here?’

‘I must have been knocked out cold and when I came round I was lying on a bed and a beautiful woman, who I’ve just learned is your sister, was leaning over me.’ He grinned. ‘For a couple of minutes I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’

‘I doubt you would be allowed in,’ Clare muttered, feeling a hot surge of jealousy because Diego thought Becky was beautiful.

‘Becky told me she had been kidnapped, but I didn’t make the connection between the two of you because I believed your story that you were a nun going to teach at a Sunday school.’ His expression hardened. ‘You don’t look at all like your sister.’

‘Which explains why Becky is one of the most photographed models in the world and I’m an accountant,’ she muttered.

Enzo halted outside a door and knocked. He looked nervous, and Clare’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘I wonder who Rigo is,’ she whispered.

‘His name is Rodrigo Hernandez and he heads the biggest drugs cartel in western Brazil, with smuggling routes across the borders into Colombia and Peru,’ Diego explained in a low voice. ‘He also operates a huge prostitution racket, has been linked to several high-profile kidnappings and has a reputation for extreme violence.’

‘Quiet,’ Enzo growled, before he opened the door. ‘Rigo will see you now.’

Clare was aware that her life and Becky’s depended on the outcome of her meeting with the dangerous man inside the room. She felt sick with fear and her feet seemed to be rooted to the floor so that she could not move. A hand grasped hers and she jerked her eyes to Diego’s.

‘All right?’ he asked softly. He squeezed her fingers when she nodded. ‘That’s my girl.’

As they walked into Rigo’s office, Clare gained an impression of walnut-panelled walls, a richly patterned carpet and heavy velvet curtains that were drawn across the windows and blocked out the daylight. The stark white light from a lamp illuminated the spirals of smoke that rose up from the tip of the cigar that the man sitting behind the desk held clamped between his lips.

Rodrigo Hernandez was dressed in a sober grey suit and tie and looked more like a well-to-do lawyer than a violent drugs lord who was one of the most wanted men in South America. But his black eyes were pitiless, Clare thought, and his cold smile sent a shiver through her.

‘Miss Marchant. I see you have brought a friend with you. Take a seat, both of you.’

‘Diego agreed to drive me to Torrente, but I didn’t tell him the real reason for my trip. He’s not involved in any of this and you should let him go.’

‘Should is not a word I am familiar with,’ Rigo said in a pleasant voice that was somehow utterly terrifying. Clare looked into the black holes of his eyes and sat down abruptly before her legs gave way.

‘I have the money you asked me to bring.’ She put the briefcase on the desk and, at a nod from Rigo, one of his henchmen opened it and took out a number of prayer books. ‘Oh.’ She had forgotten about the books and blushed at the reminder of how she had deliberately misled Diego into believing she was a nun. She avoided looking at him. ‘I meant to deliver them to the Sunday school.’ She picked up the book of Keats’s poems that she had put into the case for safekeeping and slid it on to her lap.

‘Five hundred thousand pounds,’ Rigo’s assistant confirmed when he finished counting the money.

‘Now you know that all the money is there, will you allow my sister to go free as...as was agreed?’ Clare’s voice faltered when Rigo stood up and walked around the desk. She held her breath as he touched her hair and wound a long auburn curl around his fingers.

‘Such a beautiful colour,’ he murmured. ‘I sense, Miss Marchant, that you have a fiery temperament to match your hair. Men will pay a lot of money to bed a woman with spirit and passion. Your sister is free to leave, but I have decided that you will stay here and work for me.’ He tightened his fingers on her shoulder and laughed when she could not repress a shudder. ‘I may even decide to keep you for my own pleasure.’

* * *

Diego clenched his hand until his knuckles whitened. Rage burned inside him, but he knew he could not slam his fist into the slimeball Rigo’s face and force him to take his hands off Clare. In order to protect her he must show no reaction. Act cool—that was what he had learned in prison. He couldn’t allow Rigo to know how much he wanted to grab Clare and keep her safe. His only chance of saving her from being forced into prostitution, or forced to become Rigo’s mistress, was to offer the drugs lord the thing he prized more than anything else. Money.