CHAPTER ONE

      NICK MENENDEZ irritably drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the Jeep he had picked up at the airport. He had expected to be in Lanzarote by nine at the latest. He’d arrived in his own plane and he was still late because there’d been no landing slot. Heads would roll… He was a man who got what he wanted when he wanted it, and he did not appreciate being frustrated by anything or anyone! But he should have guessed, he thought, his mouth tightening angrily. Any damn thing connected to Liza Summers, a blonde, blue-eyed siren, had always caused him frustration of one kind or another…

      A wry smile twisted his firm lips. No, if he was being honest, his frustration was not really Liza’s fault. They had been good friends years ago until he had caught her kissing a young man, and overreacted. With hindsight he could admit it; he had been jealous as hell, he had wanted to be Liza’s first lover, but, as he was engaged to someone else at the time, he had been in no position to do anything about it.

      Then, last night at his home in Malaga, he had been reading the latest report from one of his companies, a security firm that was doing some work for a pal of his, when her name had leapt off the page.

      Last month Carl Dalk, a friend from his university days whose family owned a diamond mine in South Africa, had contacted him and asked for his help and he had immediately agreed. As students they had been white-water rafting together when Nick was thrown from the raft and knocked unconscious. It was Carl who had dragged him from the raging torrent; he owed the man his life. And though they saw each other infrequently, they’d remained good friends.

      Nick had joined his father in the family firm straight after university, a small but one of the most prestigious merchant banks in Spain. Over the years Nick had expanded and diversified the business into the vast international corporation it was today. Carl was one of the few people who knew that one of Nick’s holdings was a very discreet security agency. It was an agency that had assisted in many sensitive investigations, both corporate and criminal, worldwide, and liaised on a regular basis with the Spanish government on matters of security.

      Carl had called on Nick’s security firm because twice in the past year diamonds had been stolen from the mine. The clever part was after the thieves had ascertained the value of the diamonds they had been offered back to Carl’s insurers at roughly half their worth.

      With the consent of the police, and in the hope of catching the thieves red-handed, the insurance company had arranged