‘What about your education?’
She smiled. ‘I started that at thirteen.’
‘It must have been an appalling life.’ Rico frowned at her, his consternation palpable.
‘I didn’t know anything else. Sometimes it was fun.’ But her expressive eyes shadowed. She was thinking of the hunger and the cold and the wet, the lack of hygiene and privacy, the raw hostility of their reception everywhere they went. travellers were not welcome visitors in any locality.
‘Time I bashed the poker,’ she announced abruptly, suddenly bewildered and alarmed by the extent to which she had allowed him to draw her out. She never told people about that old life if she could help it, and could not understand why she had revealed so much to him. It was none of his business.
She strode down to the container doors and lifted the poker. She had only struck the metal a few times when another sound broke through in startling, shattering response—a series of sharp, zinging thuds. The poker fell from her nerveless fingers. She spun round, heard Rico behind her, then they were suddenly plunged into darkness and he was dragging her down on the bed. ‘Keep quiet,’ he urged in a raw breath of warning.
‘But—’ Had he gone crazy? Someone was out there—someone who could open those doors and set them free!
‘Those were bullets.’ Rico’s hands framed her cheekbones in the darkness and she fell back, sick and weak with terror.
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE was a loud thud up on the roof. Bella shivered violently as she heard the unmistakable sound of feet walking up and down above them. Nausea filled her stomach. Somebody laughed. There was a roaring in her eardrums. Her heart threatened to burst from her ribcage. For just a little while she had managed to close out the fear but now it was back with a vengeance.
Rico rolled over, pinning her body almost protectively beneath his. She could feel the splintering tension coursing through him and abruptly she closed her arms around him, needing that reassuring contact with every fibre of her being. She felt so small, so frighteningly powerless. They were caught like rats in a trap, wholly at the mercy of their captors.
Her breath rasped in her aching throat as there was another thud, then nothing. The silence dragged past on leaden feet until it seemed to thunder in her straining ears.
‘He’s gone,’ Rico grated.
‘How do you know? He could be standing out th-there just waiting for us to make more noise… and then he might come in!’ she gasped strickenly.
‘I doubt it. I suspect he was only checking on us…but for the moment we keep quiet.’
‘Bastard,’ Bella mumbled, still shaking like a leaf in a high wind, her face buried in the hollow between his shoulder and his throat. Her nostrils flared on the warm, musky scent of him, already so reassuringly familiar. ‘You imagine you’re coping and then… then they take that away and remind you how it really is!’
‘The ransom will be paid, no questions asked—’
‘But maybe the police won’t allow that!’
‘The police are unlikely to be actively involved at this stage.’
‘What?’ In the darkness her dazed eyes flew wide. Rico shifted and switched on the light where it sat on the chair by the bed. ‘My bank will pay up. The police will stand back at this early stage. That is standard procedure. Publicity could be our death warrant. Scared kidnappers get more dangerous…’
Bella met his shimmering gold eyes, absorbed the wry, apologetic curve of his mouth as he released her from his weight and coiled back from her. He had allowed her to believe that the police were out there searching for them because that had appeared to keep up her spirits. ‘Oh, God…’ she whispered shakily as reality sank in.
‘Lo siento, gatita…I’m sorry.’
‘I guess if that’s the best approach…’
‘At the highest level the police will certainly have been informed of the kidnapping,’ Rico asserted. ‘But I would imagine that at this point they are merely waiting to see how the situation develops.’
‘And if what you euphemistically call “the situation” develops into tragedy, then they’ll be more actively involved!’ Bella could not resist saying.
His jaw-line clenched. ‘Don’t talk like that!’
‘You want me to maintain a positive outlook when we’re stuck here like sitting ducks inside a metal tomb with some maniac taking pot-shots at us for fun?’ A shrill, hysterical edge had entered her voice.
‘Every occurrence increases our knowledge of the environment outside,’ Rico intoned, staring her down with icy night-dark eyes.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said incredulously.
‘We’re wasting time and energy with that poker,’ he imparted with grim emphasis. ‘He would not have fired that gun at this hour of the day had there been the remotest chance of anyone hearing the gunshots.’