Hunter (8 page)

Charly curled back into the warm embrace and safety of the limousine, luxuriating in its splendid comfort, relieved to have successfully run the gauntlet and escaped the paparazzi again. With a confidence that comes from feeling absolutely safe, her smile beamed from the back of the car, reaching out to the faithful sea of strangers still crushed behind the security barriers, all straining to catch a final glimpse.

As usual, cameras flashed and digital images captured it all, every second, every gesture and movement. Thousands of shots taken throughout the brief appearance would already be charging across the internet to newsrooms around the planet. As the big car slowly took its place in the midtown Manhattan traffic amid the galaxy of lights along Seventh Avenue, a black curtain of security men fell upon the scene, bringing the event to a close. For the crowd, she was gone, but there was nowhere on earth Charlotte-Rose could not be found.

"Would you like any music back there, Miss Fleming? I've got your iPod up here ready to go!"

"No thanks, John. It's been a long day. I'd like to enjoy some quiet. Take me straight home, please. And could you call ahead and ask Maria to prepare a bath for me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Charly gave him a warm smile of thanks and closed her eyes as the communicating panel between the front and rear compartments of the car hissed slowly back into place. She rested her elbow against the door and allowed her head to fall comfortably into her open hand, sliding her fingers through her thick red hair. God, she could not wait to get home and get out of everything. She would go straight to her room, drop her gown to the floor, peel herself from her lingerie and lower her tired, naked body straight into the bath. She could already feel the water pulling her down, the bubbles gently caressing her skin as she slowly allowed herself to submerge.

Blissfully away from prying lenses and eyes, and secure in the hands of her trusted and loyal driver, Charly curled a finger through the ankle strap to unbuckle her stilettos.

But the strap wasn't budging. She tried again, and still the strap didn't move. In fact, it seemed much thicker than she'd remembered. What shoes was she wearing? She tried harder but the strap was more like a fat snake coiled tightly around both ankles.

Reality returned like a bolt of lightning and Charly came spiraling back from semiconsciousness to find herself in the middle of her worst nightmare. She was lying on her side on the floor of what felt like an old four-wheel drive, trussed up like a pig, ankles and wrists locked together with heavy-duty tape, wearing nothing but her bikini and sandals. A flimsy bag was pulled over her head, but she could just see through it. With every pothole along the track, Charly was bounced painfully against the rusted metal surface of the rear compartment. Petrol fumes filled the air. A 
pothole caused the vehicle to leave the road and then crash back onto the uneven surface with a thump. Charly was bashed down hard against the floor and let out a gasp.

"Hey, bitch," a deeply accented, vaguely familiar male voice said, somewhere close. "It's OK. We're going to take good care of you."

A rough hand touched her and began caressing slowly, creepily along her thigh and up to the thin line of her bikini.

Charly screamed.

VALLETTA, MALTA

Alex Morgan stepped out onto the balcony of his hotel room at the Grand Hotel Excelsior feeling deeply troubled. The urgency of the mission and the revelation that Charlotte-Rose Fleming was Davenport's goddaughter were clawing at him. While the general's orders were clear - "Get her back, fast" - the amount of information available on her abduction was scant, almost non-existent. The scraps that Intrepid's intelligence section had been able to piece together from police reports, crew statements and the media were light on detail, heavy on speculation. And, as far as Morgan was concerned, there were too many elements that didn't add up.

The Grand Hotel Excelsior sat upon the Great Siege Road of Valletta facing north across the harbor. He preferred to stay in large hotels because they assured him a level of anonymity, a prerequisite of his profession. It was easier to be forgotten among hundreds of guests, rather than being one of just a dozen in some trendy boutique hotel.

With his first strong black coffee of the day and contemplating the imminent future, Morgan could not help but be mesmerized by the breathtaking views across the ancient Marsamxett Harbour. Biblical domes and spires filled the skyline and massive sand-stone walls sat like cliffs in every direction along the length and breadth of the harborside. Gazing across at Fort Manoel, located strategically on Manoel Island to cover the sea entrance to the city, Morgan felt an eerie affinity with the old Knights of Malta, who built the fort in the eighteenth century. The fort had served its purpose nobly for almost 200 years, right up until the Second World War when it had suffered heavy bombardment. Now, instead of warships, the multi-million dollar playthings of the rich and famous, leisure craft and tourist launches dotted the harbor's shoreline. But Morgan hadn't chosen the room for its luxury appeal. It gave him a perfect panorama of the harbor and, most importantly, a clear line of sight to the exclusive marina on the south-western edge of Manoel Island. The very marina where the
Florence
was currently berthed.

The phone on the bedside table rang. "Your harbor taxi is ready, sir."

"Thank you," Morgan replied.

Time to get to work.

*

"Welcome aboard, Mr Hamilton. We received the email from your secretary. It's so very nice to meet you." The captain of the
Florence
met Morgan, operating under the pseudonym of Hamilton, with a slimy grin and a wet-fish handshake. "I apologize, as you can see, we're in the middle of some minor refurbishment, but we'll be ready for sea again soon. You were thinking of something for the end of this month?"

"That's right," Morgan replied. Dressed in a beige lightweight suit, fitted white shirt and brown suede boots, he was the picture of a successful businessman. "I have a number of associates I need to impress." He gave a thin smile. "Want to show them a good time and give them a reason to get their checkbooks out, you know?"

The captain returned a conspiratorial look. "We often look after business investors, Mr Hamilton, with our exclusive service."

Morgan allowed the captain to lead him around the yacht while taking the opportunity to make his own critical observations. He was at times distracted by the sheer opulence of the craft. There was nothing that hadn't been thought of and provided for tenfold in terms of luxury appointments. It was light-years removed from any seafaring vessel he'd ever been on, most of which were navy boats and none of which were built for comfort.

"So," Morgan began as they headed from the staterooms back up to the main deck, "why the refurbishment? She seems to be quite young and in excellent condition."

The captain became cautious.

"Well, Mr Hamilton, unfortunately we had some trouble on board a couple of days ago. You haven't heard?" He shot a skeptical glance straight at Morgan. "It has been reported in the news."

"I recall seeing something about trouble in these waters, but I didn't know this particular boat was involved. Was it a robbery?"

"Something like that." He didn't expand. "Nothing to worry about for your trip, I assure you. We have 
been cooperating with the police, who gave us access back aboard this morning, and I have changed over the crew to give the others some rest. We are also upgrading our security arrangements."

"Giuseppe!" A man called for the captain from the bridge. "Can you come up?"

"OK, OK," the captain cried. "I'm sorry, Mr Hamilton. Would you excuse me for a minute?"

"Of course," said Morgan, relieved to be unsupervised. "Do you mind if I continue to wander around?" "Be my guest. I won't be long."

Alex Morgan walked casually toward the locations from which the security guards had engaged the pirates. He went aft to where the first guard had been shot and killed and, according to the crew statements, his body thrown overboard. There was an area that had borne the brunt of large-caliber automatic rifle fire, defined by the faintest amount of blood splatter residue - not so clearly visible to the uninitiated, despite obvious attempts to clean it all away - and a narrow vertical tract across the upper area of the bow and upon the superstructure where the ammunition had impacted. The man had been somewhere in between, close to where Morgan was currently standing, he surmised. He was disturbed that there were no other signs of a firefight; considering the amount of shooting that had allegedly occurred in both directions, he expected there to have been much more. As discreetly as possible, he lifted a flimsy piece of tape that had been smoothed over a bullet hole and pressed the end of his forefinger firmly against it. The pressure formed a circular indentation upon the fleshy end of his finger. Examining it, he noted the caliber quietly 
to himself - "Seven six two" - and then, replacing the tape, walked back toward the area on the port side where the second man had been.

Up on the bridge, the captain turned from speaking with his number two and noticed Morgan in the area where the guard had been shot. Nervously, he brought his conversation to an end, heading quickly for the decks.

WEST OF SAN LAWRENZ, GOZO, MALTA

Charlotte-Rose Fleming, terrified and wretched, shrank back against the rocks like a child cowering from invisible demons at the foot of her bed.

She cradled her knees, pulling them protectively to her breast. Full of fear and anxiety, her teeth bit down hard into the coarse fabric of the filthy clothes they had finally given her, her only protection from the chilling early evening air. Too weary to attempt movement to stay warm, she endured the cold in grim silence. She was physically and mentally exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. But still her terrified eyes remained wide open, staring blankly out into the sky beyond the entrance to the cave. All she could hear was the ocean.

Her mind played over and over the events of the day - was it two days ago? Three? - when she and Raoul had been taken from the
Florence.
Everything had been so perfect. The yacht. The sea. The sun. It was idyllic. And then hell had descended upon them.

She still had no idea what had happened to Raoul. She knew he'd been with her when they'd been bundled off the yacht and even remembered seeing him firing a gun at the pirates. But wasn't that the job of the security men who'd been traveling with them? How did Raoul know about guns? She had no 
idea about such things. Those were skills she definitely had not inherited from her action-man father. With great longing and sadness, she thought about him for a while.
You'd know what to do, Daddy,
she thought. You
wouldn't have let this happen to me. But I'm your daughter and, by God, I won't let them beat me.

One thing she did know was that she and Raoul had been the only ones taken. The crew had been left behind. Whoever these people were, they'd known she was aboard. But what had become of the crew? She felt a pain in her chest at the idea that the crew had been killed aboard the yacht. She thought again of Raoul: his piercing gray eyes and thick, dark hair. A man she realized she hardly knew, but who she was now inexplicably connected to for what - life? "Oh God!" she whispered.

Charly lay dead still, contemplating her
chances
of survival, looking out to the only scrap of sky that she could see beyond the cave. She had no idea what the time was and her delirium had convinced her that it was already late afternoon: the sun would retreat again soon, and the stars would appear for another night. But it was only late morning. A gentle wind whispered along the cliffs as the waves of the Mediterranean crashed below. Charly was exhausted but strangely serene. She allowed herself to drift away in that moment, far from Malta, to another time, another place, another world.

Charly's thoughts were filled with memories of family and happier times. Images of her beloved parents, Peter and Madeline, floated wistfully upon her subconscious. Among them, her favorite picture - the 
silver-framed portrait so familiar upon her piano at home. There was her father, resplendent in dress uniform, SAS beret and medals, with her mother standing proudly beside him, clutching his arm close to her. So young and in love. Then Charly saw hands, a child's hands, her long slender fingers waltzing upon the keys through "Cavatina", with the warmth and smell of her father sitting beside her. With the memory of his smile beaming down at her as she played it for him, Charly was soon asleep.

"You filthy white whore!" the leader screamed, tearing her from sleep. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and dragged her to her knees. "You tempt my men by showing your body!"

"No! No, I didn't!" she cried desperately, then realized that the flimsy rag of a shirt they had given her had fallen open as she slept. "No, this is not my fault. The shirt is falling apart. It has no buttons!"

Behind the leader, the one the others called only "Boss", the two men who had been guarding Charly were sniggering.

"Slut! You are lucky I don't let them have you." The boss slapped her hard across the face. Charly cried out in pain and despair as his blow landed heavily upon her already swollen cheek.

"Coward! You fucking coward!" Charly accused,-full of sudden venom and fury.

Enraged, he wrenched at her hair, lifted her to her feet and placed the edge of a razor-sharp knife across the soft skin of her neck.

"Next time, bitch," he growled, close to her face, "deal or no deal, I fucking kill you." He threw her back to the ground and stormed out of the cave, calling for the other men.

"What have you done with Raoul?" she screamed. "Where is he? You animals!"

The boss turned back and stormed toward her. Under the intensity of the sunlight behind him, his features were a death mask just inches from her. "You should not hold any hope for your Raoul," he sneered and left the cave.

Charly began to tremble, overwhelmed by a sense that her life would end in this horrible, forgotten place. Hopelessness found her. Her heart screamed for freedom. Somewhere close by there was a shuffle of activity and then the unmistakable sound of a guard laughing and relieving himself in the entrance to the cave.

With nowhere else to turn and no hope of rescue in sight, she clasped her hands tightly and sobbed.