Buch lesen: «Rescued By The Billionaire Ceo»

Chapter 1

Gagged and blindfolded, her hands bound cruelly behind her back, Alana Richardson huddled on the cot in the tiny bedroom where her kidnappers had left her, trying desperately not to cry. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, and would only make her feel worse, especially since she wouldn’t be able to blow her nose once she got to the blubbering stage.

Since crying was out, that meant she couldn’t let herself fall into despair. Which meant she couldn’t allow even a trace of self-pity to linger in her mind, either...even though her head throbbed where she’d been struck, she felt more than a little queasy from whatever it was they’d made her breathe in—chloroform, she’d bet—and her fingers were going numb from futilely trying to wriggle free from her bonds.

Fierce anger shook her, and a determination that she wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to be a meek victim. She concentrated on remembering as much as she could about every minute detail related to her abduction...and her abductors. Committing what little she knew of them to memory, including those few moments at the beginning when she’d fought them. The men had been masked, but still...she’d drawn blood. She’d hurt one of them. Marked him.

DNA, she thought, her mind racing. Blood and skin under my fingernails?

She needed to remember that, along with everything else. So if—when—she escaped, she might be able to assist in bringing the men to justice. It was a long shot, but it was better than dwelling on the negative. It was better than imagining the worst...which she could all too easily imagine if she let herself.

Alana also had no idea what the men intended to do with her, although she could hazard a guess. She hadn’t been raped, though. Not yet. She would know, even though she’d been unconscious for some unknown amount of time. But she’d come to as she was being carried here...wherever here was. She’d been swathed in something before they’d removed her from the van. A blanket? A rug? Something that had made breathing difficult. But then her captors had dumped her on this cot and unwrapped her.

She hadn’t had an opportunity to make a run for it, though, because almost immediately rough hands had grabbed her, and she’d been gagged so she couldn’t scream for help, tied up so she couldn’t escape, and blindfolded. She wondered about the blindfold. All three men had been masked, so it wasn’t to conceal their identities. Could there be something here they didn’t want seen? Or just that they didn’t want her to know where she was?

But speculating about motives was fruitless at this stage, and a waste of time. Just as there was absolutely no point in second-guessing her decision to travel halfway around the world to Hong Kong for a job her parents had advised against taking...although she couldn’t quite help it.

“Richardsons don’t have to work for a living, darling.” How many times had her mother said that to her? She’d said it again last month as Alana was packing, adding, “But if you insist on working, what was wrong with your job at your father’s company? At least you had a title there. It’s ridiculous for you to work at such a menial job...for an actor, of all people. I don’t care if he is a good friend of Juliana’s.”

And her father had chimed in. “Yes, yes, I know your cousin Juliana vouches for him. But remember, she was an actress...just like her mother.” The supercilious way he’d said just like her mother had rubbed Alana the wrong way. Her aunt had been a renowned Shakespearean actress, and she hated her father talking about Juliana’s mother that way. Implying she hadn’t been good enough to marry into the Richardson family.

Then he’d added, “At least your cousin had the good sense to quit acting when she married the King of Zakhar.” As if Juliana hadn’t risen to the top of her profession by dedication, talent and incredibly hard work. As if she’d just been waiting for her Prince Charming to come along and take her away from all of that. As if Juliana’s marriage to one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men was the only thing she’d managed to accomplish that was worth anything in her father’s eyes—completely ignoring all the professional accolades Juliana had won, including two Academy Awards and a handful of Golden Globes.

“And why Hong Kong of all places?” her mother had thrown in. “With all those people.”

Alana had struggled with herself, then said as levelly as she could, “If you mean the Chinese, Mom, it’s their country.”

“Well I didn’t mean that,” her mother had huffed...but Alana had known she really had. Both her parents, in fact.

She wondered about that now, her mind veering off on a tangent. Her parents had tried to inculcate their values, their beliefs, in her. But she wasn’t—couldn’t be—like them. Maybe her uncle Julian had something to do with it, since she’d spent so much time with him after he retired. Maybe his influence had made the difference in shaping the woman she was. Juliana’s father was a Richardson, too, had been raised to believe Richardsons were a cut above, just like Alana’s own father. But maybe serving as a foreign ambassador for all those years had taught her uncle things about the world and its people her father had never learned.

Or maybe she should stop making excuses for why her parents were insular, narrow-minded and...and prejudiced. Maybe she should just accept it. Just as she had to accept she could fight the rope cutting cruelly into her wrists until they were bruised and bloody...but she wasn’t going to escape.

* * *

Jason Moore double-checked the harness strapped around him, making sure it was securely fastened. He lightly buckled the second one around his waist to keep his hands free and glanced at the two men opposite. Like him, they were dressed in black from head to toe, including paper-thin black latex gloves and soft leather boots. Their faces were smeared with camouflage face paint, just as his was, so as not to stand out in the dark night. And, of course, to disguise their identities. Right Makes Might didn’t want any witnesses able to describe them, even when they weren’t breaking the law.

He tapped his earpiece. “Yat, yee, saam,” he said, speaking Cantonese, and getting affirmation he could be clearly heard through their earpieces by the thumbs-up signal from his men on the roof. Then he switched to English. “Testing, one, two, three.”

“Roger that,” said a voice in his ear from one of the men on the ground.

Jason flashed a smile at the men standing guard over the equipment the three of them had just set up. Slid into place his prohibitively expensive night-vision goggles that had started life as equipment for a US Navy SEAL team. Nodded once. Then stepped backward off the roof of this high-rise apartment building in a seedy neighborhood.

The passive arrestor system on the zip line kicked in immediately. So instead of plummeting to his death, Jason slid slowly down the side of the building. He mentally suppressed the totally-to-be-expected unreasoning fear of falling that sent a dart of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. Then he used his feet to lever himself away from the building so he didn’t scrape against the concrete, counting floors as he went. Right before he reached his destination, he depressed a button on the radio signal control mechanism strapped to his wrist, and he came to a complete halt.

“Three feet to the left,” Jason said quietly. Within seconds, the zip line moved until he could grasp the metal railing around the tiny balcony that was his destination, and lightly vault over it. His feet made no sound as they landed, because his soft-soled boots had been designed for that purpose. And besides, he’d trained for this until he could practically do it in his sleep.

Jason smiled grimly as he grasped the handle on the poorly fitted sliding glass door, and with a sharp jerk popped it right out of its tracks. He and his men had already discussed how lucky they were their victim was imprisoned in this older apartment building, which had been constructed back in the sixties. Newer high-rises had been built to stricter construction codes, but not older buildings like this one. They were a lot easier to break in to.

He silently lifted the door to one side. “Slack,” he uttered in a monotone, and after a few seconds the tension sagged on the wire to which he was connected. He could have unbuckled the harness before entering the room, but then he would waste precious seconds getting back into it. Seconds he might not have on the back end.

The room was shrouded in darkness, but with his night-vision goggles he could clearly see the slight form huddled on a cot in the corner, a few feet away. He headed straight for it.

* * *

Alana hadn’t thought she could possibly sleep, but she must have. Because she woke to a gloved hand over her gagged mouth and a deep male voice with an upper-class British accent whispering in her ear. “Shh. Not a sound, Miss Richardson. I’ll get you out of here, but you must do exactly what I say without question. Nod your head if you can do that.”

Alana nodded. She didn’t know who this was, but she immediately knew he was here to rescue her. His deep voice held even more reassurance than the words themselves, so whatever he told her to do, she would do. Without question.

He moved slightly, and there was an odd sound she couldn’t place—like metal rubbing against leather. Then the gag melted away. The blindfold followed, and now she could see the flash of a knife in the darkness before the binding around her wrists was carefully cut loose. She bit her lip to hold back the moan that wanted to escape when her arms were finally free and she tried to move them. Tears sprang to her eyes as agonizing pain shot through her muscles, but she was proud she managed not to make a sound.

The knife flashed again as he sheathed it. Almost immediately strong hands were massaging her arms, fingers digging into her muscles until she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain. Tears seeped onto her cheeks, but the sob that might have escaped her lips under normal circumstances...didn’t. Then her rescuer was lifting her effortlessly and carrying her to what she now saw was the doorless opening onto a balcony.

He stood her on her feet and quickly unbuckled something from his waist, which he then proceeded to fit around her—a harness of some kind, she realized. A harness that was attached to a slack wire. A slack wire that grew suddenly taut when he said, “Ready.”

Alana could see her rescuer in the faint moonlight. A lithe figure dressed all in black, with some kind of camouflage paint on his face, as well. And high-tech goggles that somehow made him look superhuman. He towered over her, which wasn’t a surprise—she wasn’t much taller than her famous cousin Juliana, who stood only as high as her husband’s heart. Alana didn’t know what made her think of that out of the blue, but then the thought was wiped from her mind when he lifted her up onto the balcony railing and balanced her there. “Hang on.”

She didn’t have time to be afraid before he was on the outside of the railing, maneuvering himself and her as if they weren’t perched precariously high above the street below. “Legs around my hips,” he ordered, and when she did so, he pressed something on his wrist before wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug. “Hold on tight.” Then he pushed away from the balcony.

They swung in the air for a dizzying moment, and Alana could only pray she wouldn’t be sick. But she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t know why, but the strength in the arms that held her so securely made her trust her rescuer implicitly. She felt as safe with him dangling from a wire as she would have been with both feet on the ground.

The cable pulled taut and they descended with a hissing sound of metal on metal. “You okay?” he asked, his lips pressed against her ear, and all Alana could do was nod. Endless seconds later they touched down on solid earth. He didn’t let her go for a moment, and she stared at his face, memorizing what she could see of it. Wishing with all her heart she could see his eyes behind the concealing goggles. Wishing she dared ask him any of the half-dozen questions that suddenly teemed in her brain.

Until she realized her legs were still clasped around his hips. Until she realized just how intimate that was...which his body made known to her in no uncertain terms.

Alana hoped the faint moonlight meant he couldn’t see the blush she could feel creeping into her cheeks as she unwrapped her legs and he lowered her to the ground. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t...” Thinking, she’d intended to say, but her words trailed off.

Then she was free. And a tiny part of her acknowledged she hadn’t wanted to be. She’d wanted to stay in his embrace. Wanted to explore the unmistakable evidence that he was attracted to her as much as she was attracted to him. Which was crazy. Because she’d never...

Two men converged on them, but the staccato patter of Cantonese that flew between her rescuer and one of the men made their conversation unintelligible to Alana. Male hands quickly and impersonally assisted her in unclipping the harness from the cable and unbuckling it. Then they were bundling her into a dark van, tugging a seat belt into place and strapping her in. Doors slammed before she could protest, and the van’s engine roared to life. She had one last vision of her rescuer stripping off his own harness then heading back toward the building they’d just escaped from, as the van sped away.

“Wait,” she choked out to the driver and the man in the left front passenger seat. “What about—”

“The operation’s not finished, Miss Richardson,” the man who wasn’t driving said in clipped British tones. “There’s still the little matter of the men who kidnapped you to take care of. But our job is to get you to safety.”

* * *

“Rendezvous” was all Jason had to say. He knew his men on the roof would meet him on the twenty-second floor with the other equipment RMM had brought along, including lock picks, stun grenades, tear gas and guns. Normally-illegal-in-Hong-Kong guns for which RMM had paid handsomely under the table to obtain special licenses.

But when they arrived at apartment 2211, the door was already standing wide open. They entered cautiously, guns drawn, but it was quickly evident it was empty. Jason cursed under his breath. Someone must have gone to check on their victim and realized she’d been rescued. Then the kidnappers had hightailed it out of there.

There was still a chance the police might recover decent evidence. But before he could give the order, one of his men said, “I’ll call in a tip to the police, Jason. Worth a shot anyway. At the very least, Miss Richardson’s fingerprints should be here somewhere, even if the kidnappers wore gloves the entire time. Her purse is here, too. That will prove she was here. And the bindings in the bedroom will be proof she was being held against her will.”

* * *

As the van wound its way up the mountain road, Alana shook off her semi-stupor and rattled off a string of questions without waiting for answers. “Who are you? How did you know where I was? Do you have any idea why I was—”

The man who’d spoken before answered her last question first. “Prostitution, Miss Richardson, plain and simple. We’ve been after this triad gang for a couple of months. More than two dozen women have been abducted in nearly the same fashion—snatched right off the streets in broad daylight. We don’t know who...not for sure, although we have our suspicions. And the women are being transported to Macau, but we don’t know exactly how...not yet. But we do know why. You’re young, pretty and you were on your own in an area that made you an easy tar—”

He broke off as the van halted suddenly at a gate that was familiar to Alana. The driver rolled down his window. “We have her safe,” he told the person who answered when he buzzed. Then the gate swung open, admitting the van, which drove smoothly through.

Light spilled out of the open front door of the DeWinters’ home, which was Alana’s home in Hong Kong, too. “We have the room,” Dirk DeWinter had told her when she’d arrived to interview for the job as his executive assistant last month. “It’ll be more convenient for all of us, but especially you. Don’t worry—your free time is yours, and you can come and go as you please.”

His wife, the beautiful Mei-li, who had a decidedly British accent, had chimed in with an understanding smile, “We know you want to be independent, Alana. We understand that’s a big part of why you’re here. But this will give you a safe place to live until you find your feet in Hong Kong. We can reassess in six months or so.”

Alana hadn’t needed her beloved cousin Juliana’s sterling reference for her dear friend and former co-star Dirk DeWinter in her decision to take the job and to live in. All she’d needed was to see the way her prospective employer had looked at his wife, as if she was his world. The same way her cousin’s husband looked at her. She’d sighed a little to herself at the time, she remembered now. Envious. Because that was the way she wished to be loved someday. Not the bloodless relationship her parents had. Something passionate. Something heated.

All at once she thought of the man who’d rescued her, and what she’d felt in his arms. Safe...but wanted. Safe...but desired. Triggering a corresponding desire that had taken her by complete surprise, especially under the circumstances.

She dragged her thoughts away from the memory with an effort. You’ll probably never see him again, she chastised herself, unbuckling her seat belt and scrambling out of the van as her employers anxiously approached.

“Alana!” Mei-li reached her first and embraced her. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

Then Dirk was there. He didn’t say anything, just enveloped her in a bear hug that conveyed how worried he’d been, too, and how thankful he was she’d been rescued safe and sound. She knew it had to have brought back nightmares for him—his twin daughters had been kidnapped and held for ransom just over a year ago. That story, and the dramatic rescue, had been splashed across the front pages of newspapers, tabloids and gossip magazines, as well as the internet.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this again. But I wasn’t careless. Honest. Those men came out of nowhere with hundreds of people around, and—”

Dirk held her away from him at arm’s length, a frown marring his handsome features. “Don’t apologize. This wasn’t your fault. I should have warned you. And I should have made sure you knew about the—”

Mei-li put her hand on her husband’s arm, cutting off the flow of words. “Dirk,” she murmured. Just his name, but there appeared to be some sort of unspoken communication between them because his self-recriminations ceased. Then Mei-li smiled her gentle smile. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters. RMM came through for us...again.”

“RMM?” Alana couldn’t help but ask. Then she realized she’d never thanked the men who’d brought her here. She hadn’t thanked her rescuer, either, but at least she could ask these men to convey her heartfelt gratitude to him. She turned, but the van was already pulling away. “Wait!”

She took two steps forward as if she was going to chase after it, but Mei-li was suddenly there, stopping her. “They don’t look for thanks,” she explained softly.

“What do you mean?”

“RMM. They do what they have to do to rescue the innocent, even if it means breaking the law. But they don’t look for thanks. That’s not why they do it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dirk came up on her other side. “RMM stands for Right Makes Might. It’s from a quotation by Abraham Lincoln.” His smile held admiration and something more. Deep gratitude, the kind Alana was feeling right now. “It’s not common knowledge, but they were instrumental in rescuing my daughters when they were kidnapped.”