The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [225]
The four men stared at him in silence. They knew what he really meant was “before she is killed.”
Guisen glanced inquiringly at the police chief. He nodded and said quietly, “You have my permission to do whatever is necessary.”
Michael and Refika watched as the men filed from the room and then they looked at each other. “Well?” he asked.
She nodded, “It is as you said. If their plan does not work you must take matters into your own hands.”
Genie opened her eyes. At least she thought she had opened them, but it was just as dark as when they were shut. She blinked but it made no difference. She twisted from side to side searching for light, but there was nothing. Pain rippled through her head and she groaned, struggling through the layers of fog swirling in her brain to understand why she could not put her hands up to touch it. But it was no good, her brain just didn’t seem to be working.
It was hot and airless and the darkness pressed against her eyeballs. Her spine crawled as she remembered all the old horror stories about nuns buried alive behind stone convent walls and of people suffering from a rare form of paralysis, unable to scream as they were placed in their coffins and the lids nailed down….
Her screams sounded small in the blackness, thin with terror, but no one came running to help her. There was no one to hear her. Sobbing with fear, she tried to sit up, but her hands were stuck behind her and her feet joined at the ankles in a most peculiar way…. And then it dawned on her: She was tied up.
She lay back exhausted, searching for a breath of fresh air in the fetid darkness, but it was like breathing cotton. Tears pricked her eyes as she struggled to remember what had happened. At first all she could recall was getting off the British Airways flight from Heathrow; then, as her head began to clear a little, she slowly unscrambled the sequence of events.
She had arrived at her decision to tell the truth about the “Lady” on television because she knew it had all gone too far. People were being killed, and she was afraid not only for her own life but for Missie. She also desperately wanted to keep her promise to Cal, her promise to help her country. But before she did anything she needed to see the Kazahns personally to warn them what to expect and also to ask Michael’s advice about the little matter of the several billion dollars inheritance in the Swiss banks. She had thought about the money a lot since she discovered its existence. She knew what she wanted to do with it, and Michael would know how to go about it. And besides, she had known she would be safe with them. Her family would look after her. But her plan had gone all wrong and now she was a prisoner.
She still didn’t know how it had happened. She thought she had thrown everyone off the scent by skipping onto the London flight instead of going back to her apartment, but somehow they had caught up with her. All she remembered was the men in dark glasses crowding her at the airport and then nothing else until she woke up here. Wherever here was.
She frowned, puzzled. Something strange seemed to be happening to the floor—it was rocking slightly, a familiar movement, something she remembered from holidays on the Kazahns’ yacht and in sailboats off Rhode Island…. Of course, she wasn’t buried alive—she was on board a ship! She strained her ears into the silence, listening for the sound of engines, but there was nothing—not even the slap of waves against the hull, and she guessed they were at anchor. But where? Was she in Istanbul? Or Russia?
She concentrated on her surroundings, feeling the floor with her hands and discovering bare wooden boards. She rolled over, biting her lip as the ropes cut painfully into her flesh, coming to a stop against a wall. It felt cold under her touch, like metal … steel….
She jumped as a footstep sounded close by. Someone was coming down a ladder. Frozen with fear, she stared