Season of Storm Read online

  Three

  In the greying darkness of early dawn a full moon hung distant and cool above the ocean in the western sky. In the east, behind the city and the mountains, the pink and gold clouds catching the first of the sun's rays seemed almost to be part of another sky, another world. A sky in which night and day were perfectly balanced, each with its own territory, Smith thought, and wondered dryly if there was significance in the fact that she had her back to the sun and was walking into night.

  No one noticed the casually strolling couple that made their way along the dock past the schooners, catamarans, sloops and launches berthed on the edge of the bay. Perhaps there was no one to notice, at this hour. In the long walk from the van she saw no one, heard nothing except the gentle slap-slap of water against the hulls, the intermittent comforting squeak of wood against plastic fenders, the familiar overhead cry of gulls.

  Anyone who saw the two would have to look very closely to catch anything amiss, in any case. A barefoot woman in a long cotton skirt might be thought a little foolhardy at this hour, but would cause nothing more serious than a raised eyebrow. Especially as she was wrapped up so warmly in her boyfriend's thick jersey. From a distance no one would see that her arms were not in the sleeves of the sweater, nor that the casually loving arm her boyfriend had flung around her was in fact a grip of steel. Nor would they notice, except at very close quarters against the backlighting of the sunrise, that the woman's magnificent, tangled red hair disguised a gag that was going to drive her insane if it was not soon removed.

  Nevertheless, Smith prayed as fervently as she had ever done in her life that someone—preferably large and burly, but anyone would do—would step out of one of the moored boats as they passed and hear the choked moan that was the only cry she could make behind the gag.

  No one came. Not a soul breathed; not one human noise fell on her ears. She was surrounded by examples of God's most incredible handiwork—ocean, mountain, moonset and sunrise—and yet her prayers could not conjure up one insignificant human being in a city of a million!

  Perhaps behind them. Perhaps someone had been slow to respond to the inexplicable urge to begin the day early, had come too late to his afterdeck and was now gazing incuriously after the two figures moving along the wooden dock between the rows of boats. Smith did not try to turn her head to see: she was too filled with despair even to hope.

  She felt sick—sick with pain and fright and useless anger at herself. Why had she pulled off the man's mask? From now until doomsday she would be able to identify him, and he knew it. Even if her father or the company paid a ransom for her, how could he let her go? The few kidnap victims who did survive never saw their captors' faces, she knew that. It was only common sense. Kidnappers got the money whether the victim lived or died.

  Would no one really come? There was not one light in any of the boats around her—hadn't anyone slept aboard last night?

  Smith let out a strangled moan that threatened to become a sob, and her dark companion bent his head with concern. Whether it was concern that she might be weeping or concern lest she be trying to make a cry for help she couldn't tell, but she calmed instantly under the searching gaze and willed her stinging eyes to dry. He might kill her, but he would not make her cry. She was damned if he would see her cry!

  She couldn't guess whether he meant to drown her immediately off the end of the dock or whether he would take her on a boat. If he was going to drown her she hoped he would take the gag off so that she could beg him to knock her unconscious first. Smith closed her eyes. The thought of drowning terrified her: fighting for air while something pulled you down and down....

  When she was a child her nightmares of death were always of quicksand and drowning. She had never seen quicksand so far as she knew, but she had been haunted by it ever since she had read of it in a cowboy comic book. The day the Cisco Kid had been thrown into quicksand had been a bad day for Shulamith. The whole idea of it had terrified her nine-year-old mind. With horrifying immediacy she had envisioned the foul smell, the slime, the horrid sucking noises as the innocent-looking sand pulled you slowly under until you choked. One day at breakfast, watching her father read what she was sure must be less mail than usual, she had asked him what a person should do if she fell into quicksand.

  That was in the early days, in the first year after they had moved to Vancouver. Shulamith hadn't yet fully absorbed the enormous, terrible change that had taken place in her father: he was the man who for eight years had been her protector, her utter security, someone whose love was unquestionable. Sometimes she did not remember, or would not, that now he had no time for her….

  No doubt she had been hoping he would say there was no such thing as quicksand, or that it only existed in the state of Nevada (so far away!) and she need never go there. Or he might have said that if she fell into quicksand he would be there to pull her out, and the nightmare would have lost its power.

  Her father had not had time or patience for her question that morning, however. Shulamith didn't remember now what he had said, but afterwards she read up on how to save yourself if you fell into quicksand, because that day she had known she was on her own. Her father would not be there to save her if she fell into quicksand. She could never count on her father again.

  She had also read about how to save yourself from drowning, she remembered. The first rule had been to learn to swim. Shulamith could swim now; she swam like a dolphin, but she doubted if that would save her if she was thrown into deep water bound and gagged.

  "Here we are," the deeply resonant voice said in her ear, and when she opened her eyes she was looking not into the blue depths at the end of the dock, but at a large white sailing yacht of sleek, powerful lines whose name, navy on white, was Outcast.

  Were it not for the gag, Smith would have laughed aloud. The sudden relief was overwhelming. If he was going to put her aboard this, he must intend at least to keep her alive. In this he could sail around the islands indefinitely until the ransom money was paid, without fear of discovery. Smith's heart soared.

  And then sank. Where on earth did he get a boat like this? Where did anyone who was kidnapping someone for ransom get such a boat? She looked at her captor in a new and frightening confusion. She didn't understand anything at all.

  ***

  Smith felt the engines start up only a minute or two after the aft cabin door closed on the tall figure of her abductor. The powerful engines were close; their throbbing pulsed through her body where she sat on the bed, making her head throb, too. He had tied her bound hands to a small handgrip at the head of the bed. Her jaw ached unbearably. The gag that held her mouth open was still tightly bound behind her neck. Smith would have given a million dollars at that moment for the privilege of being able to close her mouth.

  Her eyes had pleaded with him again, as he tied the rope, to remove the gag, silently promising utter docility if he gave in, but the dark man had shaken his head and said again,

  "You think you wouldn't, but you would. As soon as I was out the door you'd be screaming loud enough to wake them in Whistler."

  She wondered if he was speaking from experience gained in previous crimes or from an estimate of her character. When she thought of it, of course she would have to be a fool not to try to attract some attention while they were still in port. No doubt he was right. A promise given to a kidnapper would not have bound her. She would have screamed if he had removed the gag.

  She would scream right now, while they were still in the harbour, if only she could get the gag off. He had given her a little leeway: the rope tying her to the small handgrip was about eighteen inches long. She could move her hands from her lap to about shoulder level. But she couldn't reach the knot of the gag with both hands at once, and she couldn't work the gag down over her lower jaw. It hurt so much to try she felt sick.

  What she might be able to do, she discovered, was slide the gag around, to bring the knot within reach of both hands. It burned her skin and hurt her mouth, bu
t worst of all was that fact that the knot incorporated a lock of her hair. Which would have to be pulled out by the roots if she was going to get the knot within reach of her fingers.

  It was more achingly painful than she could have dreamed of in a hundred nightmares. And a short, sudden jerk was impossible: she had to settle for a sustained pressure, a slow tearing that made her head ache and a scream rise like bile in her throat.

  The cabin door opened suddenly, and her tear-filled eyes swept up and locked with the piercing gaze of her black-clad abductor. He took in everything with a look, and then with a muttered curse he stepped to where she half sat, half lay on the bed.

  For the second time in that awful night Smith was suddenly aware of the thinness of the nightdress that covered her body. Her breasts were outlined by the twisted bodice now, and in her struggle with the gag the skirt had ridden up around her thighs, revealing all the length of her slim pale legs.

  She shrank away from him as he approached. Then he stood for a moment looking down at the red wrists that had strained against the bonds, at the twisted gag wet with her saliva, at the damp red hair on her forehead and cheeks.

  "Damn," he said apologetically, and not without admiration. "What were you going to do? Climb out of the hatch and swim home? And I nearly took that gag off, even against my better judgment." He paused. "Maybe it would have been better all round if you had escaped," he said.

  She couldn't make sense of that and didn't try. He took a small knife out of his pocket, and that drove every other thought out of her head, because surely, surely he was going to cut her free?

  He cut her hands free first, put the knife away in a pocket and lifted her heavy hair to find the knot of the gag. Involuntarily Smith winced as the motion pulled the hair knotted into it.

  Her captor opened his eyes in surprise, but in the next instant they were angry slits as he caught sight of the lock of hair, and the telltale angry red of her scalp and neck under it.

  He swore violently, so that she jumped. But he bit back further comment, and with a gentleness that startled her in a man so tensely powerful, he bent to undo the knot. But it was stubborn, and for Smith these last few minutes of near freedom were the worst, impatience on top of everything else driving her closer than she had yet been to the edge of madness.

  "Almost there," he said in a deeply soothing voice, and she was reminded of the way people talk to wild animals, calming them with speech. "Almost there," he said again, his deep voice drawing out the vowels almost musically, and she caught her breath in a tiny sob, feeling as though a gentle knowing hand stroked her nerves.

  The voice continued as he sank onto the bed beside her, but she no longer heard the words. She was hearing only the deep resonance of a voice that touched her deepest self, that spoke without language to a part of her that understood without language, that had never needed language.

  When the gag was finally unknotted he removed it gently from her face, and then his hands soothingly massaged her aching jaw, and the dark eyes smiled down at her.

  In the most extraordinary, unbelievable way she suddenly wanted him to kiss her. Her breath caught, and her sore lips parted under the thumbs that stroked her cheeks, her neck, and her eyes locked with his, and she needed his lips on her.

  "Christ!" he whispered as he saw the look, and she felt the shock of comprehension—and something else—jolt through his body to the hands still upon her throat.

  She was someone else, she was not herself. She had neither volition nor conscious thought, only need and the memory of his voice in the pit of her stomach. Hypnotized, she lifted her face to him, and did not know her name.

  She saw that he wanted to resist the compulsion that was now between them like a physical thing, and dimly she wondered why. She saw him battle against it and lose. Then his dark head bent, and his lips covered hers.

  She gave herself up to solace with a long sigh, relaxing against his body like an animal that has learned to trust implicitly. Never in her life could she remember such comfort. The strong hands at her throat slid into her hair and encircled her head, so that she felt weightless, as though she need do nothing, not think, not breathe, ever again....

  Afterward she would try to believe that she came to her senses herself, that it was her own reason and not the fact that he lifted his lips and drew his head away that caused her brain to kick into action, caused her suddenly to push and struggle and jerk so violently away from his kiss that she cracked her skull against the bulkhead.

  She stared at him, her breath coming in shallow gasps as though she were about to have a hysterical fit.

  "Don't touch me!" she commanded with a catlike hiss. She could not control her voice. "Don't ever touch me again!"

  He stood up, looking at her for a long, considering moment, his own breathing unsteady. "Try to get some sleep," he said, and left her.

  Four

  Smith heard him lock the door. Maybe he assumed she had little experience of boats, because there was a hatch above the bed that almost certainly was locked only on the inside. But then, there was probably no point in trying to escape, anyway. She scrambled up and looked out the porthole. Nothing to see except water and sky. In the near distance a couple of tankers lay at anchor. Beyond, she could just see the winking skyline of Vancouver, and mountains silhouetted against a pink sunrise.

  She was an excellent swimmer, but she knew from long experience that the water of Georgia Strait was very cold. Stressed as she was, she wouldn't be able to swim any distance without hyperthermia setting in.

  Smith sighed, turned exhaustedly away from the view and sat down on the bed again. Then she stopped abruptly as she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror on the wall.

  Her face was filthy, grimed with dirt and tears and sweat. On one of her cheekbones a long graze was lightly crusted with blood. Her eyes seemed sunken and bruised, a haunted look that reminded her of pictures of herself at the unhappy age of nine. On both sides of her mouth a raw redness that the gag had caused stained her skin, and across her finely tapered chin was a black smear of grease. Her hair clung in damp tendrils to her forehead, ears, cheeks and neck, and fell over her breasts and down her back past her waist in thick rat's-tail tangles. The white eyelet lace of her bodice was torn, and the soft green cotton of the skirt was stained and dirty.

  She looked awful, and her mirrored image was a sharp and brutal reminder of what had happened tonight and of what might yet happen. Her father—where was he now? A hollow sob rose from deep within her, and Smith pressed a fist against her mouth to hold it back.

  He had kissed her. After doing this to her, he had kissed her! She wanted to be sick, or scream. She wanted to claw his eyes out, to beat him with her fists, to pour out this overwhelming anger and hatred on his head. Whirling with a force that made the cloth of her nightdress whip around her legs, Smith ran to wrench at the door handle.

  Locked. No surprises there. But she already knew her abductor had slipped up. She leapt onto the bed and dragged at the hatch levers. She made no sound as she carefully lifted the hatch and stood up into the morning.

  He was at the wheel, his right hand on the wheel, his left stretching out to adjust the genoa sheet. Above her the sails billowed out on two sides like wings: a following wind. Now the man turned his head toward the noise she made, but she was on him like a wildcat before he could react.

  "What the...?" he exploded in surprise, while Smith, half on his back, half on his arm, clutched his hair and dragged him back. Immediately he loosed the wheel and grabbed at her.

  She saw her chance. Letting go with one hand she reached out and jerked the wheel hard to starboard. The moaning thwack of the boom sweeping over announced its instant response to its changing angle to the wind, while under her, her captor lost his balance.

  They fell together with an awkward force that nearly threw her overboard. Smith caught herself on the lifeline and scrambled back to the cockpit. Hoping her abductor was unconscious, but not wasting time
to find out, she stepped over his body to the wheel.

  He was not unconscious. Catching her ankle, he brought her down on the seat and flung himself on her.

  "You bloody fool!" he shouted in her ear. "Do you want to get yourself killed?" His body was heavy on her, and she was winded by her fall; she didn't answer. In another moment the dark man was on his feet and jerking her up after him. With a grip so strong his muscles were quivering he held her against him, one arm behind her back, and grasped the wheel.

  The sails were luffing badly; she hoped they would tear. But with another shuddering whack the mainsail moved to catch the wind again, and the yacht was no longer at the mercy of the battering waves but running before the wind.

  His angry eyes were on her as he took his arm away from her body, but he kept the merciless grip on her wrist behind her back.

  "Get below," he said through his teeth. "Any more tricks like this one and I'll tie you to the goddamn mast."

  The genny was still luffing, and he eyed it impatiently. "Get below," he repeated sharply.

  Suddenly Smith knew, as clearly as if he had told her, that the situation was not at all to this man's liking. Whatever his plans had been, she was not part of them. She looked at him over her shoulder as he held her arm, an idea taking shape in her brain.

  "You're stuck with me," she said slowly. "You don't want me. You wanted my father, and you're sorry you took me instead."

  He said nothing. He was watching the genny, unable to adjust it as long as he held her. Smith bit her lip, eyeing him. "If you take me back no one will know. I'll jump over half a mile out. I could swim half a mile, I'm a good swimmer. You don't have to worry about me." Her voice was softly persuasive, as persuasive as she knew how to make it. "You could tell the others I got away from you."