Belle Barton was learning the true meaning of terror. She was learning that it brought cold sour sweat to your body and hot burning bile to your throat, bile you had to choke back because you couldn’t, you didn’t dare, show how frightened you were. Because he’d love that. He would feed on that. He was watching her, that mocking half-smile on his face. She wanted to lunge at him, to damage him, to make him pay, but she couldn’t. Two big men were holding her still, one on either side of her. She knew them. Had even grown up with one of them. Now, they were her enemies. They were Harlan Stone’s boys, his puppets, his creatures, and they would do exactly what he said. She had no power here. None at all.
‘I bet you’re thinking, round about now, that you wish you’d been nicer to me,’ said Harlan.
Belle stared at him with hatred in her eyes. Sweat trickled into them, making them sting. Outside, thunder rolled. Rain battered the roof. Inside, it was a jungle, wet ferns brushing her legs, humidifiers roaring, the heat crushing and damp, the trickle of small waterfalls a constant noise. Charlie Stone’s reptile house was kitted out with no expense spared. There was a large pond, black, brackish. Things moved in there, but she wasn’t going to think about that.
Water torture.
Yes, that was what this was. Belle’s legs were trembling. Her brain was in a panic, like a rat caught in a trap. There had to be a way out of this.
But there was no way.
I’m going to die.
The thought popped into her brain like gas rising out of a bog, bringing a fresh surge of terror with it. She was perched on the edge of the pond, standing on big ornamental rocks, the men holding her there. Water from the domed roof dripped, ran down her face. So wet and hot in here. Hot as hell. Stifling. She thought of her parents then, and pain roared up through her stomach, up into her throat. She was going to be sick.
‘Pretty little Belle,’ said Harlan, shaking his head. ‘Bet you wish you’d played ball now, eh? Been nice? But you never were. Were you.’
Belle glared at him, standing there so elegant; so handsome and calm and in control, with his neatly brushed honey-coloured hair, his pale emotionless grey eyes. While she was barefoot, wearing a tattered rag of a dress, soaked in sweat, her blonde hair plastered to her head. She was scratched and bloody from where they’d dragged her in here. If the men hadn’t been holding her up, she would have collapsed to her knees.
‘So go on,’ he said.
Belle gulped and stared at him. What?
‘Go on,’ he said again. ‘Beg me.’
She said nothing.
‘Beg me for your life,’ he said.
Belle looked down at the water. There were things moving in there. Something long slipping in from the opposite side. Eyes, she could see eyes. Reptilian and cold. The powerful swish of a tail. Her mother’s words came back to her then.
‘Keeping bloody snakes and lizards and caimans! Only weirdos do that.’
Caimans.
Belle knew that Charlie had fed them on whole dead chickens. A caiman was like a crocodile, it could take a pig. They were plenty big enough to do that. They could also take a human being. No bother at all. You needed a licence under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act to keep them, which Charlie had acquired without any difficulty.
Friends in high places.
Low places, too.
Oh Christ help me . . .
‘Waiting,’ said Harlan. ‘What do you say, Belle?’ He was smiling.
‘I know what you did,’ said Belle.
‘Did?’ He frowned. ‘About what?’
‘You know very bloody well,’ she said. ‘Beezer. Jake. And the business. The manor. I know what it is.’
The smile dropped from his face, leaving it blank.
‘Throw her in,’ he said.