Cold as Ice - Anne Stuart [74]
But then he was gone, and she was alone, and since she wasn’t dead yet she might as well go back to sleep. So she did.
15
It was midnight, though she wasn’t certain how she knew. There were no clocks in her luxurious bedroom, and her Patek Philippe watch had disappeared along with the clothes she was wearing. And the enigmatic note Peter had left her.
It shouldn’t bother her. It was just a hastily scrawled note, with no signature, no tender words. But it was part of him, all she had, and she wanted it.
She sat up in bed, strangely alert. The drugged tea had worn off, leaving her with only a little fuzziness. She slid out of bed and stood, a little weak but steady enough.
She glanced down at her clothing. More of the lacy clothing Harry seemed to provide for all his guests, willing or unwilling. If she went to the drawers she’d probably find the same absurd collection of thongs and demi bras designed to turn an A cup to a C cup. Since she was already a firm C, the idea of such infrastructure was alarming.
She crossed the darkened room slowly, but with each step she felt a little stronger moving toward the bank of windows she hadn’t noticed before. The house was on a bluff overlooking the ocean, but which ocean was a mystery. There were boats, but without glasses she couldn’t even begin to guess their size, much less their nationality, and she turned away, frustrated. She could feel a burning, knotting feeling in her stomach, and for a moment she was afraid the drugs in her system were reemerging in a particularly unpleasant fashion.
And then she realized she was hungry. Starving, in fact. She couldn’t remember how long it’d been since she’d eaten. Harry had said she’d been in an induced coma for some thirteen days, which meant her sole sustenance had been given intravenously. She reached up and touched her hair. It was clean, as was the rest of her body, and she wondered if the impassive Takashi was responsible for that. He’d be as efficient and impersonal as anyone, but she didn’t like the idea of any male messing with her while she was naked and unconscious. She was a little picky about such things.
No mirrors, not even in the adjoining marble bathroom. Clearly this was no place for the model-perfect women Harry usually entertained.
It didn’t matter—as long as she was clean she could manage just about anything.
She heard someone approaching, and she dived back into bed, pulling the covers up around her again and closing her eyes. She knew instinctively that it wasn’t Harry; even without looking she could feel the miasma of evil that emanated from the man she’d been determined to save. The sick creep who’d ordered her death.
Why the hell did everyone want to kill her? First the attack in upstate New York, then Peter Jensen, then Renaud. At least with Peter it had been nothing personal, more a matter of simple expediency, the polite son of a bitch. And in the end he hadn’t done it, no matter how practical and simple it was.
And now good old Harry Van Dorn wanted her dead, and his henchman would doubtless be ready to carry out his orders at once because…
Why? Was she a victim of bad timing over and over again? Or maybe it was the fact that she never took the smart or easy way out, throwing her lot in with Harry Van Dorn. She knew there was something dodgy about him—her instincts had screamed it while her brain was trying to reason with her. And yet she’d gone blundering ahead.
And no one deserved to be executed by a vigilante Committee, no matter how bad they were. Or so she thought, rescuer that she was.
Big mistake. Was he coming to kill her now? If so, she could, and would, put up a hell of a fight, even though she hadn’t even the slightest chance of winning. She’d never been the kind to give up, even when it was the smart thing to do.
She recognized the voices—Takashi O’Brien and Anh conducting a muted conversation in a language she couldn’t begin to understand. And then O’Brien spoke to her.
“Ms. Spenser?