Chapter Four
CASSIE STARED ACROSS the cabin at Antaeus, his words replaying inside her head as her heart thudded unevenly against her ribs. ‘Please tell me this is your twisted idea of a joke.’
‘Am I laughing?’
He wasn’t, although there was something relaxed about him now that hadn’t been there before. As if he had finally found the solution to a particularly vexing problem.
‘This is not happening.’
‘It already has.’
He sounded calm as if everything was going according to plan. All her frustration and fear and fury of the last two weeks didn’t just reawaken—it doubled, quadrupled. He was mad, crazy, even more deranged than she had thought.
‘You better land this thing now—’
‘No.’
‘Now.’ Her voice rose. Shock and disbelief were surging through her in a tsunami wave train, one after another, over and over, each one lifting her off her feet.
‘Not happening.’ His profile was as hard and impenetrable as the rock surrounding the Krokos facility.
‘No, this is not happening. We had an agreement—’
‘Which is now null and void.’
‘Well, I’m not agreeing to this.’
‘Then it’s fortunate that I don’t require your agreement,’ he said, and she stared at him, her stomach churning in response both to his words and to the cool complacency in his voice.
‘What are you talking about? You can’t just take me somewhere against my will.’
He looked over and met her gaze, and he had the unbelievable gall to smile. ‘I’m flying this helicopter, so I can do what I want.’
The satisfaction in his voice made her want to scream. ‘So you’re abducting me?’
‘If that’s what you want to call it.’ He sounded unfazed. Like her father, he didn’t have that urge to deny or defend himself. Or perish the thought, change his behaviour. He simply regrouped and let his power and charm and money and, of course, the juggernaut scale of his selfishness do the rest.
‘You can’t do this, Antaeus.’
It was the first time she had used his name, and his eyes snapped to hers, drilling into her face. ‘Oh, but I can, Cassie, and I am.’
Edging back against her seat, she breathed out shakily. ‘You’re unhinged, and what you’re doing is illegal.’
‘I’m inviting a business colleague to stay at my home. How is that illegal?’
‘You didn’t invite me.’ He had sent for her, snapping his fingers like he had in her office, and she had come running. How he must have laughed when he saw her get out of that Mercedes at the airport.
‘You tricked me into coming here. But I swear if you don’t land this thing right now and let me out, I’m calling the police.’
He didn’t reply. Instead, he shifted the sticks between and to the right of his leg, and the helicopter accelerated.
She pulled out her phone and hesitated. What was the number for the police in Greece?
‘You dial 100. Or 112 if you feel that you might need other emergency services,’ he said in that same maddeningly calm way as before. ‘What exactly are you planning to say? Would you like my help translating it into Greek?’
‘I don’t need your help. I need you to stop playing games.’
‘You think I’m playing games?’
‘Yeah, I do. Because that’s what children do, and you’re acting like a child.’
‘If I’m acting like a child, it’s because my childhood was cut short. By your father.’
‘How is that my fault? I had nothing to do with any of that.’
‘And yet you’re still benefiting from it.
That business was a partnership. My dad was a co-founder, but he lost everything because your father lied to save his own skin.
And your father used that betrayal as proof of his probity so that he could set himself up for life.
That’s what’s been keeping you in tiaras. ’
He was so unfair, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘There was a trial. And evidence. Lots and lots of evidence that had nothing to do with my dad’s testimony. That’s why your father was found guilty.’
‘He was set up. By your father.’ His voice was all hard consonants and serrated edges.
Cassie stared at him. Was that true?
Henry was many things. He had inherited the first of several trust funds at the age of twenty-one and worked his way through it in a year.
That pattern had continued until his death.
Thanks to his blond movie star looks, people liked him, trusted him and wanted him to like them.
He found it easy to convince them to invest in his schemes.
Easier still to persuade women into his bed.
So, yes, her dad had a darker side. But setting his business partner up to go to prison?
Henry was impulsive and thoughtless. As an unhappy witness to his actions, she knew that if he wanted money or a mistress, most times a suitable benefactor didn’t just fall, they leapt into his lap.
He was not a strategist but an opportunist. Faced with some hard choices, he would have taken the easy way out.
‘I know he did a deal, and yes, that was a betrayal, but—are you listening to me?’ Cassie said stiffly. ‘Antaeus—’ Her voice faltered. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes narrowed. She turned to look through the window of the cockpit—
And froze.
Her spine felt as though it had turned to ice.
When they left the storage facility, the sun was starting to dip down towards the horizon, but there was still plenty of light.
Now the soft blue sky of earlier had splintered like a mirror.
In its place was a sweep of black that seemed to stretch in every direction.
A flickering light briefly illuminated it, and she saw that it was not still but churning at the core as if it was being stirred from above.
‘What is that?’ she said hoarsely.
‘It’s a storm.’ His voice was steady, but there was a tension around his jaw that had nothing to do with their argument. ‘It happens sometimes near the mountains. They have their own microclimate.’
She was about to ask, ‘Can we turn round?’ but as she opened her mouth to speak, she breathed in sharply instead as the helicopter swerved violently to the left. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The storm’s pushing the air down. It’s making crosswinds.’
Her pulse twitched in a different way as Antaeus reached over, and his hand brushed against her breast as he checked her seat belt.
‘Is that lightning?’ Her voice sounded tinny, not at all like her normal voice.
He nodded. ‘It is. But the frame is made of carbon fibre and aluminum, and there are static wicks to help dissipate electricity.’
She was not a nervous flyer. Quite often she managed to sleep through turbulence that sent other passengers reaching for the complimentary sick bags.
But approximately three seconds later, she realised that this was not that kind of turbulence.
As the engine whined and changed key, she grabbed the edge of her seat.
First the helicopter reared upwards like a startled horse.
Then it was slammed sideways by some huge invisible hand.
Now it was raining. Only rain didn’t do justice to the torrents of water sheeting down over the cabin.
This was a deluge, she thought as they were swallowed into the darkness.
The world outside was a black smear visible only between the frenetic arc of the wipers when the twisting beams from the helicopter crisscrossed with the lightning.
The noise was deafening. The raindrops, if that’s what they could be called, were drumming against the exterior of the helicopter with such force that they sounded solid, not liquid.
For what was probably a few minutes at most but felt like a lifetime, they were buffeted violently in every direction just as if they were riding a giant mechanical bull.
There was no logic, no pattern. One minute she was being slammed back against her seat.
The next she was thrown against the door.
Beside her, Antaeus’s body was silhouetted against the sky, the muscles in his arms and shoulders taut, knuckles white around the controls as he tried to hold the helicopter steady.
But it was like trying to tame an unseen angry beast. With every sudden drop or sickening lurch, she was growing more aware that there was nothing but a thin layer of glass and metal separating them from the chaos outside.
And what chance could a body made of bone and blood have against the savage force of the elements?
The thought of Antaeus lying mangled in the wreckage made her fingers bite into the armrest, and she stifled a cry as the helicopter tilted almost vertically.
Warning lights were flashing on the console.
Alongside the pounding of her heart, she could hear an overlapping cacophony of alarms and an automated voice warning about altitude loss.
‘I’m going to have to take her down.’ Antaeus’s voice cut through the noise in and outside of her head, and she glanced down at the darkness beneath them, her pulse swelling inside her chest. Was there anywhere down there to land on?
And what if there wasn’t? She pictured her mom’s face. Who would take care of her? How would she cope on her own?
‘But you can’t see anything.’
‘Those dials there are the altimeters. The baro one is screwed, but I can use the radar to estimate the terrain.’ Antaeus glanced over, his face set.
‘It’ll be a bit lively, but we’ll be fine.
I promise.’ She could barely hear him above the sounds of the storm and the struggling machine.
‘Just don’t shut your eyes. Find something steady to look at and focus on it. ’
As the shrieks of the rotors and the thundering rain filled her head, she stared wildly round the cabin at the juddering glass and flashing dials. Everything was in turmoil.
Not everything, she thought a moment later as her gaze fixed on Antaeus’s profile.
The sky turned blindingly white, and she felt a scream building in her chest as lightning cracked, not in the distance but close up as if it was right outside the cockpit.
And she couldn’t stop her hand from reaching out to grab his thigh as they plunged down like an injured bird.
Then the landing skids scraped against something solid, and quite suddenly it was over.