Robyn Donald - Prince Of Lies

And now, after an unknown number of days, someone else had returned to the crypt. Her jaw still ached, but that was the least of her worries.

Shuddering, she bent her attention to the person in her dungeon. It was a man; was he the man who had forced her to dramatise her own misery so that her brother Saul would know she was alive?

She lay still, trying to pick up with subliminal receptors some indication of his identity. Strangely, she felt, with a hidden, atavistic shrinking, a strong impression of power and intensity, and beneath that a controlled menace that made her shiver with terror.

The muffled sound of his voice again, low, oddly compelling even through the planks of her prison and the earplugs, sent quick panic flooding through her, humiliating, loathsome, unmanageable. She tried to breathe carefully, counting the seconds, but it didn’t help.

He spoke once more; although the words were somewhat louder they were still distorted by the physical response of her body. Her first reaction had been to will him to go away, but she suddenly wondered whether he was a passer-by who had merely stumbled on her prison. If that was so, he wouldn’t know she was in the box on the floor. He might be her only chance to get out of here.

Nevertheless, it took a real effort of will to move, and when she did she moaned soundlessly at the pain in her cramped muscles. Clenching her teeth, she lifted her hands and hit the manacles sharply against the top of the box, hoping that the noise would be enough to attract his attention.

Strung taut by fear and foreboding, she screamed into the gag as the lid came up silently, yet with a rush of air that hurt her skin and proclaimed a violent energy in the man who stood above her. Ever since she had been locked in this coffin she had been desperately trying to get free, rubbing her wrists raw against the unyielding metal of the handcuffs, yet now she shrank back because the impact of the stranger’s personality—intense, lethal, forceful—hit her like a blow.

Danger, her instincts drummed; this man is dangerous! Some primal, buried intuition warned her that he was infinitely more of a threat to her than either of the men who had kidnapped her. She sensed an icy, implacable authority, a concentrated will that beat harshly down on her.

But when he spoke his voice was level, almost impersonal. ‘Just lie still for a few seconds, Stephanie,’ he said, his voice pitched to pierce the earplugs.

So he was no casual passer-by.

Stephanie made herself stay quiescent as the gag was removed. This man knew exactly what he was doing, and did it as though he’d been wrenching off gags all his life. Life pulsed through him, an intensity of vigour, of purpose, a sheer, consuming energy that bathed her in white-hot fire.

Get a grip on yourself, she commanded. He still might come from the kidnappers. She said rustily, ‘Who are you?’ and strained to hear his answer.

‘I’ve come to take you out of this. How do you feel?’

Relief was a slow, reluctant warming. ‘I’m all right. Just numb all over.’

‘You’ll hurt like hell when the feeling starts to come back,’ he said.

Her kidnappers had left nothing to chance; they hadn’t intended her to escape. When he felt the steel manacles on her wrists and ankles the unknown man cursed roughly, but his hands on her body were warm and deft and gentle, and after a bit of manipulation the steel fell loose.

Nevertheless, it seemed an aeon before she was out of her coffin. Her legs wouldn’t support her, so her rescuer held her with an arm around her waist and then all she could think of was that she was filthy and naked and that she must smell and look disgusting. She put up a fleshless, quivering hand to remove the plugs from her ears.

‘I’ll do that,’ he said. In a moment the echo of her pulses that had been her sole companion for so many anguished hours was replaced by a rush of silence.

She didn’t have time to appreciate it, for the numbness that held her body in thrall was overwhelmed by an agony so intense, she thought she might faint from it. Biting her lips to hold back mortifying whimpers, she clung convulsively to his broad shoulders as returning sensation surged through her with accelerating agony.

‘How long have I been here?’ she mumbled, trying to keep her mind off the torment.

‘Three days.’

Free from distortion, his voice was deep and infinitely disturbing, detached, yet threaded by an equivocal undertone. English, she noted automatically, although there was something else, some hint of another country’s speech; not an accent, more an intonation, a slight inflexion...

He sounded as though he could have spent enough time in New Zealand or Australia to be affected by their special and particular way of speaking.

Giving it up as too hard, she set her jaw and forced her shaking legs to straighten, her knees to lock so that she could stand upright. Sweat stood out along her brow, settled with clammy persistence into her palms. When the torture receded a little she managed to mutter, ‘I tried to get free, but I couldn’t.’

‘It’s almost over, princess.’ His arm around her shoulders tightened. For several minutes he continued to support her trembling body, until at last he asked brusquely, ‘Can you walk? Here, you’d better get rid of this—’ Hands touched the blindfold.

Jerking her head away, she said, ‘No,’ because it gave her some sort of protection from his gaze. Not even when she had been stripped naked to the lewd sound of one of the kidnapper’s comments had she felt so exposed, so helpless.

‘Yes,’ he said relentlessly. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet—literally. I don’t think the men who snatched you will come back today, but if they do while we’re still here you need to be able to see, and this half-darkness will give your eyes time to get accustomed to the light.’

Ignoring her panted objections, he stripped the blindfold from her shaggy head. Obstinately, Stephanie kept her eyes closed. ‘Have you got any water?’ she asked, running her dry tongue around an even drier mouth. ‘I’m so thirsty.’

‘Don’t drink too much. It will make you sick.’

A metal flask pressed against her lips, and the blessed cool thinness of water seeped across her tongue. She gulped greedily, making a quick, involuntary protest when he took it away.

‘No,’ he said laconically, ‘you can have some more later.’ At her small sound of displeasure he went on, ‘If you have any more now you’ll be retching before you’ve gone fifty yards. Trust me, I know.’

An odd note in his voice coaxed her eyes slightly open. The torchlight barely reached the dank stone walls of her prison, but in its golden glow she saw a big man, tall and well-built, with a dark, angular, forceful face.

Shock hit her like a blow, followed by a strange, compelling recognition, as though she had always known he was out there, waiting. She would never forget him, she thought dazedly. He had rescued her from hell, and until the day she died she’d remember his warrior’s countenance, stark in the earthy dampness of her prison, as well as his curt, understated consideration.

‘That’s better,’ he said bluntly. ‘Put these on.’

He had brought clothes—jeans and a shirt in muted camouflage colours. Gratefully, she struggled a few moments with limp hands and weak wrists, before saying on a half-choked note of despair, ‘I can’t.’

Without impatience, he said, ‘All right, stand still.’

Competent hands pulled the clothes on to her thin body; he even managed to fit a pair of black trainers on her feet. Although the garments felt amazingly good after the soaked blanket she’d been lying on, she knew that she wouldn’t feel clean until she had washed herself free of this place.