CHAPTER THREE

      BELLA was cold and sore. Her head was aching. Something was banging. It sounded like metal on metal—a brutal, crashing noise. Maybe it was inside her head. She had a horrible taste in her mouth and her throat hurt. Her arm was throbbing as well. She felt every sensation separately. Her brain was shrouded in a fog of disorientation. Thinking was an unbearable effort, but she willed her eyes to open.

      Her dilated, still semi-drugged gaze fell on a blank wall. She moved her head and moaned with discomfort. She was lying on a bed—a hard, narrow bed. The unbearable banging stopped, but her ears were still so full of it that it was a while before she could actually hear. And then she heard footsteps.

      ‘I was hoping you’d stay comatose. Then I wouldn’t be tempted to kill you...’

      The tangle of glorious hair moved and she turned over ‘Rico?’ she said thickly.

      ‘Why didn’t I call Security? Why didn’t I just ring the police?’ Rico da Silva breathed in a driven undertone as he stared furiously down at her. ‘Shall I tell you why? I let lust come between me and my wits. Dios mío...the one time in my life I stray off the straight and narrow I land the gypsy’s curse and nearly get myself killed. If I come out of this alive I’m still going to take you to that police station! And, if there is any justice in the British legal system, you’ll be locked up for ever!’

      Her lashes fluttered during this invigorating speech. Then, slowly, jerkily, she pulled herself up onto her knees. ‘What happened?’ she mumbled weakly.

      ‘I’ve been kidnapped.’

      ‘Oh.’ Incredibly it didn’t mean anything to her until she remembered those final few minutes in the car park. The men, the guns, the violence. A wave of sick dizziness assailed her. ‘Oh, dear God...’ she said shakily.

      Rico da Silva already looked so different. His jacket and tie had been discarded. His shirt was smeared with grime. His black hair was astonishingly curly, tousled out of its sleek, smooth style. ‘No hysteria!’ he warned with lethal brevity.

      ‘You said...you have been kidnapped. But I’m here too.’ Bella swung her legs down and slid slowly off the bed.

      ‘I begged them to leave you behind. I told them you were so thick that you wouldn’t be capable of assisting the police. I told them you were worthless...’

      She thought about it. “Thanks...I suppose you did your best.’

      ‘Do you have a single, living brain cell?’ Rico slashed at her without warning. ‘Am I condemned to spend what may well be my last hours on this earth with a halfwit?’

      Bella stiffened as though she had been struck. She was far from halfwitted. Indeed, she had an IQ rating which put her into the top two per cent of the population, but that was a fact she never shared. It tended either to intimidate or antagonise people.

      Rico da Silva wanted an argument, she sensed. She understood that. He needed to hit out and she was the nearest quarry. Forgivingly she ignored him and concentrated on exploring their immediate environment and its peculiarities. She touched the wall. ‘It’s metal.’

      ‘Be gtateful. At least they gave us airholes.’

      She wasn’t listening. She scanned the bed, the single chair, the lit battery lamp. It was the only source of light. And she was used to the kind of light that came from paraffin, gas and batteries. She had grown up with it, sat in darkness when there was no money for replenishment. There was no window. She brushed past him to pass through the incongruous beaded curtain covering a doorway which his bulk had been obscuring.

      In the dim light beyond she saw a gas-powered fridge, a small table, another chair, an old cupboard, and what looked like a tiny, old-fashioned stove heater connected by a flue to the metal roof. And then she glimpsed the door. She grabbed at the handle, suddenly frantic to see daylight, and was denied. The wooden partition concealed only a toilet and a sink. No windows—no windows anywhere. Her throat closed. She rammed down her panic and drew in a sustaining breath.

      ‘What are we in?’ she demanded starkly.

      ‘A steel transport container. Most ingenious,’ Rico explained without any emotion at all. ‘I hope you’re not claustrophobic.’

      She never had been until now. Automatically she felt the cold metal walls, stood on tiptoe to touch the roof, felt the airholes he had mentioned, and a long, cold shudder of fear took her in its hold. ‘It’s like a metal tomb.’

      ‘What time is it? My watch was smashed.’

      Somehow that casual enquiry helped her to get a grip on herself. Moving back through the curtain into the other section, she peered down at her watch. ‘Ten past seven.’

      ‘Time to eat.’

      ‘Eat?’ Bella echoed shrilly. ‘We’ve just been kidnapped and you want to eat? I want to get out of here!’

      ‘And you think I don’t?’ Lean fingers gripped her taut shoulders as he yanked her forward. Grim dark eyes held hers. ‘I’ve been conscious for two hours longer than you. I have been over every centimetre of every surface of this metal cell. But for the airholes it’s solid steel. We have nothing here capable of cutting through solid steel,’ he spelt out with cool, flat emphasis. ‘Have you ever looked at the bolts on container doors? That is the only other option...’

      She glanced past him to see the doors which were so closely shut that they were almost indistinguishable from the other walls. ‘We’ll never get through those either,’ she mumbled sickly. ‘People have died in these containers... suffocated, starved—’