Cold as Ice by Anne Stuart Page A

other things in the months following the attack. Just to ensure it, she found her pill bottle and swallowed two of the yellow pills. Not enough to impair her, but enough to make sure she didn't overreact. Thank God she had them.
    She grabbed her briefcase, but the contracts she'd brought with her were gone, taken sometime during the night. It was the least of her worries. She pulled out a legal pad of paper with its elegant tooled-leather binding and started making lists, always a way of calming herself. There were any number of possibilities right now. Harry Van Dorn could be playing an absurd practical joke. A comforting idea but unlikely. He was more likely to be the target of whatever was going on. Kidnapping? He'd be worth an unbelievable amount of money. Or was it a political act by some disgruntled militants? What did they want with Harry? Money? Publicity? His death?
    God, she hoped not. He was harmless enough, despite his faintly annoying flirtatiousness and his crackpot superstitions. He must have an army of bodyguards—anyone with real wealth did—though the only person she'd seen much of had been Jensen, and he would have been useless in a dangerous situation.
    There were countless other possibilities, and her response would be dictated by which one it was. In the meantime she could reasonably assume that she was being held hostage along with Harry Van Dorn.
    She looked out the window. She'd always been a strong swimmer, and she could float for hours, the one advantage of those unwanted fifteen pounds, but she had no idea how far from land they were. If they'd been at sea since she passed out last night, they could be hundreds of miles away from Grand Cayman Island.
    If it was a question of life or death, she could go overboard and take her chances in the water, but at this point she needed to stay calm and not make any unnecessary assumptions.
    She barely had time to scramble to her feet when she heard someone at the door. She could feel the knife tucked safely between her breasts, and she had her full, corporate-lawyer armor on, minus the shoes. The scruffy-looking individual who stood there with a semiautomatic did not look impressed.
    "The boss is ready for you," he said. She recognized his voice from the other side of the door, and gave an instant, silent prayer that she'd shown enough sense to shut up. Whoever he was, he wasn't the type to make idle threats.
    "And where's Mr. Van Dorn?" she demanded in a cool voice, reaching for her briefcase.
    "You can leave that there," he said. "And if you need to know anything about Harry Van Dorn then someone will tell you. In the meantime shut up and come with me. And don't cause any trouble. The boss doesn't want us to be cleaning up bloodstains."
    "Why bother to clean them?" She was always too mouthy when she was nervous, and the pills weren't having the desired effect. "If you're into kidnapping and extortion, then I don't think you'd care about what condition you left the boat in."
    The small man blinked, a quick, dangerous movement, like a rattler about to strike, and Genevieve wondered whether she needed to dive for cover, but then the man simply laughed. "Someone will pay good money for it."
    "It's a little ostentatious, don't you think? Whoever buys it can't expect to get away with it."
    "I appreciate your concern, lady, but there are places that can strip à boat and change its appearance as quickly as they can with stolen cars. And most of the people who own a ship like this don't care too much about legal niceties. Now shut up and move."
    Genevieve shut up and moved. He gestured with the gun, and she preceded him into the narrow passageway. She half expected to see bodies and blood, but it looked the same—spotless, deserted, normal. She kept moving, looking back every now and then to make sure her companion was with her. The gun was trained at the center of her spine, and a tiny shiver washed over her. A gun like that could do a lot of damage to a spinal