Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [32]
“I don’t,” she said, but her voice was soft, breathless, as he came closer. Maybe he was going to kiss her again, and maybe this time she could use it to her advantage, knock him off balance, slam him across the throat. Or maybe she could just lie back and let him kiss her.
His mouth hovered just over hers. “What are you thinking?” he whispered.
“I thought you could read my mind.”
“Not when it really counts,” he said, and he let his mouth touch hers for just a brief second. And then to her shock he rolled off her, scrambling to his feet without a backward glance, leaving her lying on the floor feeling exposed and vulnerable.
He went to the door but didn’t unlock it. “What do you want, Renaud?”
She hadn’t even heard him knock. She sat up, feeling bruised and foolish, but Peter didn’t even glance her way.
“The launch is ready. What about the girl? Do we take her with us or get rid of her now?”
He turned to look at her in the shadowy room, and there was no reading the expression on his face. Even if she’d had her glasses on, she doubted it would have helped. “We’ll take her with us,” he said.
“Makes more sense to finish her off here. Just give me ten minutes with her and I’ll take care of things.”
“I know how you hate to rush things,” Peter drawled. “I think you can safely leave her to me. I’ll do what needs to be done when the time comes.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Renaud didn’t sound pleased, and a stray shiver ran down Genevieve’s back, remembering the small, cruel eyes. Anything would be better than Renaud.
By the time Peter moved away from the door, she’d gotten to her feet. “The launch?” she said. “Where are we going?”
“We’ve reached our destination. Didn’t you notice we haven’t been moving?”
So that explained her initial feeling of well-being when she woke up. No wonder she hadn’t felt the same claustrophobic panic. “I’ve been distracted,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Little Fox Island. Harry’s private escape from all his onerous duties as a billionaire. It’s as good a place as any.”
“As good a place as any for what?”
“For Harry Van Dorn to die, Ms. Spenser. I’m afraid poor old Harry’s time has run out.”
“And mine? Has my time run out as well?”
He didn’t answer. Which was the worst answer of all.
He couldn’t move. Whatever they’d used on him was damn strong; he was so doped up he couldn’t even open his eyes, he could just lie on his own bed, zoned out, listening.
It wasn’t a bad way to spend his time, Harry thought. He had an infinite appetite for any sort of drug, and he was enjoying the rush, perfectly at peace for the time being. Sooner or later he’d have to make an effort, find someone he could turn, but in the meantime he could just lie there and listen to the ratbastard Jensen mess around with his girlfriend.
The term amused him. He liked to think of all his sexual partners, willing and unwilling, male and female, child and adult, as girlfriends. Genevieve Spenser wouldn’t know what hit her.
She’d have to be disciplined, of course. She was trapped in a room with him and all she could see was Jensen. She should have been busy begging for his life, not wrestling with his enemy.
But there’d be time enough to deal with that once he bought himself an ally. They had some kind of complicated plan—he could sense that much though he was so stoned he couldn’t bring himself to care. There was a reason they hadn’t killed him yet, and whatever that reason was, he knew the truth.
He wasn’t meant to die. He was too powerful, and his vision was too strong. The Rule of Seven was about to come into being, and no force on this earth would stop it, or him, no matter how dire things were looking.
It was all so simple, so beautiful. Seven disasters, one following the other, that would send the world into a financial uproar, the kind of chaos only a prepared man could take advantage of.
And it was so well planned that he doubted even the people who’d kidnapped him had any idea what it involved, the scope of his genius, because he’d been very careful