Season of Storm Page 2

  The short burst of a distant siren broke sharply on the air. Four of the men started toward the door again, while the fifth, White Mask, stayed looking down at her.

  Then Shulamith St. John was very stupid indeed.

  "Who are you?" she demanded suddenly. "I want to know who you are!" And without any thought of the consequences, before he could have any idea of her intention, she reached up and dragged the mask from his head.

  Two

  Only when she saw his face did she understand what she had done.

  "Oh, my God!" Shulamith whispered in dismay, staring at him. Now the silence of the room, threaded through with the nightmarish ululation of the oncoming siren, was electric with danger.

  The man was dark, the firm skin of his hawk-like face smoked bronze, his black eyes narrowed as he stared into hers. His hair was black, too, wavy and thick, falling to his ears in two wings from a central parting. He had a high-bridged nose, and his wide mouth was grim as, his gaze fixed on her, he called something to his masked accomplices. Then he reached for her.

  Smith jumped back from him too late. His tall, black-clothed frame had already moved, imprisoning her against a muscled chest between arms of steel.

  She reacted like a wildcat, spitting, clawing, cursing, but she was slim and light and he had the advantage of height and strength. She fought anyway—twisting and clawing desperately till her long red hair tore free from its braid and tangled around his head and her own, the lace of her nightgown hung loose, and his black sweater gaped at two places—fought with all her strength, and then some.

  It was not enough. The hawk-faced man overpowered her at last, pressing her head back into his shoulder with a hand held over her face so that she could neither breathe nor scream. Then he carried her swiftly and noiselessly through the house, and, as the ambulance men burst through the front door with a clattering stretcher in tow, he moved out the back patio door into the damp, chlorine-scented air.

  "Upstairs—the room where the light is," she heard a male voice call.

  Her heart was labouring from lack of oxygen, and Shulamith stopped her frantic backward kicks at her abductor's legs and tried with her free hand to pull the long, strong fingers away from her nose.

  His voice said very softly into her ear, "I will let you breathe if you do not fight me. Otherwise I will force you into unconsciousness." Not waiting for her agreement, he eased his hand down away from her nose, still maintaining his sure grip over her mouth.

  Shulamith dragged in a breath, her heartbeats slowing. With an effort of will she calmed her thoughts, resolutely pushing away anger, hatred and most of all fear, and concentrated on her situation.

  Her abductor was strong and tall. Her toes barely brushed the ground. Her head was being pressed into the hollow of his shoulder with one hand, while his other arm, wrapped tightly across her, held her arms immobile against her own body. It would be pointless to kick, he need move his hand only slightly to deprive her of air again. His body warmed her against the damp chill of the night air, and mentally she rejected his heat. She wanted nothing from him.

  The man's attention was not entirely on her, she sensed, though his grip did not relax. She felt a perfect stillness about him, as though even his blood had ceased to flow; the rise and fall of his hard chest had become almost imperceptible against her back, while her own breathing was still thin and rapid.

  He was listening. He had not closed the door behind them, and now he listened to the noises coming from the house as though his ears let him see what was happening inside. Shulamith listened, too, picking up almost nothing until, after what seemed an age, there was the unmistakable sound of footsteps and a stretcher coming down the stairs and moving out the front door. Then ambulance doors slammed, and the sound of an engine roared away down the curving drive.

  There was no sound of the siren, and Shulamith sucked in a shuddering breath. He was dead. Her father was dead, or they would be using the siren.

  "No traffic in these streets," said the deep voice in her ear, and Shulamith was surprised by her response to the understanding tone: she wanted to cry. "They'll use the siren again when they reach the main streets."

  She listened intently for a long moment, not knowing whether to believe or not. Then, from down the mountain, a short burst of the siren's shriek made her sag against his body with relief. Her father was alive.

  He moved then, back through the patio door and across carpet and oak, through the front hall and then out into the night. At the top of the stone steps he whistled softly and waited, his hold on her not relaxing even to shift his grip or ease his muscles.

  Below them, behind the black shadow of the forest, the glint of ocean-going vessels beckoned to her, as always, with the promise of distant shores. Beyond, the lights of the city centre sparkled in the black surround of the ocean. The scene before her was so familiar that she could scarcely believe all this was really happening. Shulamith closed her eyes tightly: either the familiar beauty of Vancouver at night or her attacker would disappear, she was certain. This was a dream.

  But the man's grip on her body remained real, and when she opened her eyes, so did the city.

  After a moment her ears picked up the quiet sound of an engine, and through the trees along the circular drive a small van crept, without benefit of lights, and stopped beside them just as her abductor, moving down the broad steps, reached the ground.

  Panic filled her with a renewed force, and, tasting it, Shulamith realized that she had lain quiescent in the stranger's hold for critical minutes, as though his silent strength had unconsciously stilled her wild fear. She cursed herself for a fool. If she had had little chance against one man in the past few minutes, she now had no chance at all against the additional four who were in the van. As the driver door opened she erupted, twisting and kicking with all her might, clawing behind her for any vulnerable area within reach.

  The man swore, dropping his hand from her mouth to grasp her twisting body, her flailing arm. Immediately she screamed. Immediately his hand clamped her face again.

  "Get a rope!" the dark man ordered the other, still masked, who had climbed out of the driver's seat and was now running around the front of the van to them.

  Shulamith let fly the hardest kick she had delivered since her days in the high school gym, and the second man grunted and went down like a hewn tree. She waited in terror for the man holding her to take revenge somehow, but he was not cruel as he caught her arms in against her body.

  The man she had kicked was cursing steadily and painfully. Slowly he got up off the ground. Turquoise Mask, she thought.

  "Rope," suggested the man who held her, and the other limped to the back of the van, opened the doors and, the soft stream of his curses mingling oddly with the scraping noises in the night air, rummaged for a few moments, then stepped back with a small bundle of binder twine in his hand.

  It looked wispy, like angel hair, but its roughness cut her skin, and Turquoise Mask tied her wrists tightly and cruelly in the darkness, so that the twine bit into her flesh.

  Every new assault took her terror one notch higher. Being tied filled her with such panic-stricken horror she felt as though she hung on to reason only by a tiny thread.

  The dark man hoisted her into the passenger seat, his hand still clamped on her mouth, the open door blocked with his body; and in the faint light coming from the house she saw that Turquoise Mask held a long strip of coarse, dirty fabric. Her eyes widened in horror, and she moaned a plea and shook her head.

  The hawk face, which she saw again for the first time since that moment in her father's room—it seemed an hour ago, though it could have been only minutes—looked consideringly at her for a moment.

  "Sorry," he said, as though he meant it. "Even if you gave me your word not to scream, you are too much of a fighter to keep it."

  She moaned again behind his palm, her eyes pleading and promising. A white smile lighted the shadowed planes of his strong, bronzed face; strangely
, it was a smile of admiration.

  "Not even for your solemn oath," he said, his eyes glinting at her. "Even if you meant to keep your word, you would not do so. That is the way of fighters. Now, if you breathe deeply and slowly and calm your panic, this will not be so bad."

  She was briefly thrown into confusion by his kindness. It was a ploy calculated to put her off her guard, she realized. It was not going to work. Shulamith took the deep calming breath, but stared stonily at the man while he drew the gag across her open mouth and tied it under her hair. He spoke a few quiet words to Turquoise Mask then, closed the door softly, and turned back up the steps and into the house while Turquoise Mask stood guard over her. With the shock of sudden memory, Shulamith thought of the other three men. Were they still in the house or were they waiting somewhere out of sight? Were they silent in the back of the van? She suppressed a shudder. She wished she hadn't remembered them.

  The end of the rope that tied her hands had been closed into the door so that she could hardly move, but if she could reach the van's horn with her foot….Shulamith shrank back, afraid to try. In the absence of the big man, how would the others treat her if she made the attempt? Somehow, in spite of everything, he seemed to be her protector.

  But that was crazy! Of course he wasn't her protector. Where had that insane thought come from? She was losing her grip faster than she would ever have believed.

  He returned quickly, flicking off lights as he came and locking the door. His moonshadow stretched ahead of him as he moved down to the van. He had an animal grace that it gave her a curious pleasure to watch, a leanness of hip that was strangely compelling, and his face had a grave nobility in the moonlight. She heard his low voice in conversation with his still-masked accomplice. Then the door beside her opened again.

  "You will ride in the back of the van," said the dark man, while Turquoise Mask climbed up into the driver's seat beside her. She smelled his sweat, the acrid smell of fear. She wondered if they smelled her fear.

  Wordlessly she slid off her seat, felt the cold pavement under her chilled feet, and stepped through the sliding door. She stumbled into the darkness, banged her toe painfully on a metal strut, then felt carpet under her feet. The hawk-eyed man followed her.

  "I am not going to hurt you," he said, and now she could sense that there was no one else in the van. "Please sit down."

  He guided her down to the floor behind the driver's seat, her back resting against the side of the van, then dropped lightly down beside her. She discovered she was sitting on her hair. With the gag forcing her mouth open, her body was twisted and uncomfortable. But she would not complain to him, or ask again for relief.

  "Go," he said, and the driver pulled off his balaclava, started the van's engine and let out the clutch.

  Very soon Smith lost track of location, except that she knew they were going down. All she saw of the passing landscape were treetops or street lamps, and after a very few minutes she gave up the attempt to judge the turns.

  Her companion was watching her in the flickering light, and Smith caught his gaze and looked away. Wriggling, she lifted her bound hands to her neck and pulled her hair from under her. He reached and lifted a lock of it from where it fell over her arm.

  "Your hair is very long," he said, in a tone of wondering admiration she was used to. Not many women could sit on their own hair these days; it often aroused comment. She stared fixedly into the darkness, ignoring him as though she hadn't heard.

  "'Her hair was the colour of foxes'," the man recited softly to himself, "'or of fire.'" She wondered what he was quoting; she didn't remember ever hearing it before. But of course she would not ask.

  The intent look in the man's dark eyes, which were in light and shadow, light and shadow as the van rhythmically progressed past street lamps, made her think of an animal or a bird of prey. She shivered, half in fear, half with cold in the light cotton nightdress that she was wearing. Her mouth ached. The gag was choking, claustrophobic, and smelled of engine oil. Behind it, there was a bitter taste in her mouth. But that was fear.

  She raised her bound hands again to try to ease the cloth, though she had already learned it would not loosen. The dark man lifted a hand to forestall her.

  "Close your eyes," he said, "and breathe slowly and deeply."

  As she obeyed, Smith wondered distantly how many kidnap victims he had calmed with just these words. She was amazed that someone she feared so deeply could simultaneously exert a calming influence on her. Like a lamb going to the slaughter, she thought, and a small self-deprecatory snort escaped her.

  It was hard for her to judge time as they drove; the wild emotions that she had experienced did not seem to be measurable in any recognizable time frame. The van needed new shock absorbers, but if she swayed with its motion she found a kind of rhythm.

  She gave in to her own sense of helplessness, not fighting the gag or the rope any longer, but somehow adjusting to them, allowing them to become part of her. She discovered that the bonds were not impossible to bear and gave herself over to examining her captor.

  He was an Indian, she realized belatedly. That was a little like saying someone was European, but Smith was not familiar even with the various West Coast tribes. The bone structure of his face was strong and sharply planed, with high cheekbones, a strong, well-shaped nose and a beautifully carved mouth. His eyes were deep-set, dark and intelligent. He reminded her of a portrait of some warrior chieftain she had seen somewhere.

  She wondered if it was the proud nobility of his face that made her lower her guard with him, instinctively made her want to trust him—against all the evidence, all reason. But faces could lie. Everyone knew that. Or con artists would not exist. She would have to be doubly on her guard here, because men who kidnapped for ransom did not fall into the category 'trustworthy'.

  And these men must be particularly desperate, because clearly they had planned to kidnap her father, and had only taken her as a last resort, unwilling to let their plan fail. If she had not woken—would they have left empty-handed? Shulamith shuddered at the thought of what might be in store for her. But whatever they planned for her, she was better off than if they had taken her father. Not knowing what was happening to him for days or weeks, wondering if his heart would hold out, would have killed her.

  No one had known that Cord St. John had a bad heart until a few weeks ago, when he'd had his first attack. Smith remembered her shock and disbelief on the day her father's executive assistant had phoned her at a client's office in Brussels to tell her that her father was in the cardiac ward of the Royal Georgia Hospital. Cordwainer St. John was young, still in his early fifties. He was a strong, healthy-looking man with hair greying attractively at the temples—a solidly built, handsome man who exuded power. He was not a man who could be felled by the most determined business rival, and no one would have thought that his health was going to give him trouble for another twenty-five years.

  Certainly not his daughter. For sixteen years, her father had been the most energetic, hard-working person she knew. For sixteen years he had been devoted to work—devoted to building his company and to making money.

  Sixteen years ago, at the age of thirty-six, late for such a dramatic career change, Cord St. John had bought up a small "gypo" operation, which he had immediately renamed St. John Logging. If at first the name had seemed more impressive than the company, it had not remained so for long. Cordwainer St. John had been tough and ruthless in what was already a pretty ruthless industry. Three years later he was making enough profit from his logging operation to buy up a medium-sized sawmill. He had modernized it overnight with a computer sawing system that had made two-thirds of the workers redundant and paid for itself in less than a year. After St. John Lumber had followed St. John Pulp and Paper, St. John Trucking and many others. Together, these companies were now known as St. John Forest Products. Within the trade it was nicknamed "St. John's Wood," though not with affection.

  "Oh, is there a St. John's Wood i
n British Columbia?" a visiting English businessman had asked once, thinking of the area of London known by that name, and had caused a table of lumbermen to burst into laughter. "You've got it wrong," one of them told him. "What you mean is, is there a British Columbia in St. John's Wood?"

  After the small warning heart attack, Cord St. John had been told in plain, almost brutal terms that he must slow down. A long holiday and then a four-day, instead of seven-day work week, his doctor advised, not without irony.

  "Paris!" Smith had said immediately. "You haven't been to Paris for years." In fact, it was sixteen years since Cord St. John had seen Paris. "Why don't you visit Paris, Daddy?"

  He had let her plan. But as soon as he'd regained some strength, he had gone back to work, six or seven days a week; ten, sometimes twelve hours a day....She had begged, had reasoned, had argued, but her father had gone on working, like a man driven, or a man courting death.

  Smith's gaze focussed again on the darkly intelligent face of her abductor, the would-be abductor of her father. When Cord St. John had made it legally impossible, a few years ago, for his company or his daughter to pay any ransom if he was kidnapped, the fact had been well publicized. Naturally, since it was meant to act as a deterrent to any potential kidnappers. All executives of St. John Forest Products had been informed that in the case of their kidnapping, too, no ransom would be paid. Out of curiosity once Smith had asked her father if that ban extended to her. She was not exactly an executive yet. But her father hadn't answered her.

  Well, no doubt she would find out soon enough. Smith closed her eyes against a brief spasm of pain. If her father had been kidnapped tonight in accordance with this dark man's plans, she would have moved heaven and earth to circumvent that ruling and pay the ransom. If there was only the smallest chance of his coming back alive. No matter how angry it would have made him.

  She opened her eyes and eyed her abductor speculatively. Would her father pay him money for the promise of her life? He looked like a man who usually got what he wanted, but then so was her father. And her father would not want to pay a ransom demand. Of that she was suddenly certain. A mirthless laugh rose in her throat then, and if she could have spoken she would have told her dark abductor, you miscalculated when you took me in place of my father. My father wouldn't pay a counterfeit nickel to have me returned alive. My father couldn't care less if I was alive or dead.