Those in Peril (Unlocked) Read Online Free PDF

rose. She was also speaking French now, but a more rudimentary form of the language. He grinned infuriatingly.
    ‘You can’t order me to do anything. You are not the captain of this ship.’ He was fastening the brass buttons of the white jacket of his steward’s uniform.
    Captain Franklin was right. Cayla didn’t give a damn for the French Impressionists, or, for that matter, any other Impressionists. It had been at her mother’s insistence that she had gone to the Université des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her mother was besotted with paintings of water lilies or of half-naked Tahitian girls, just like the one hanging on the bulkhead facing her bed, painted by a syphilitic, drug-blowing, alcoholic Frenchman. She had a crazy idea of setting Cayla up as an art dealer once she had graduated, when the only thing that Cayla really cared about was horses, but there was no point in arguing with Mummy, because Mummy always got her way.
    ‘You belong to me,’ she told Rogier. ‘You will do what I say.’ With her Black Amex card she had paid for his first-class ticket from London to Cape Town, and she had arranged his job as a ship’s steward, greasing Georgie Porgie with a peck on the cheek and a sheaf of green bills. She owned Rogier just as she owned her Bugatti Veyron sports car and her string of show-jumping horses, the true loves of her life.
    ‘I’ll come tomorrow night at the same time.’ He gave her that infuriating grin again and slipped out of the cabin, closing the door softly behind him.
    ‘You will find the bloody door locked!’ she screamed after him, and scooping up the telephone from the deck she hurled it with all her strength at the glowing Gauguin nude. The telephone receiver bounced off the taut canvas and slithered across the deck. Cayla threw herself back on the bed and sobbed into the pillow with fury and frustration. When Rogier refused to obey her was when she wanted him most.

    R ogier checked the stock in the cocktail bar in the main salon. Georgie Porgie trusted him to do this. He retrieved his knife from where he had hidden it under the counter before going to his assignation with Cayla. The blade was of Damask steel made by Kia, the same Japanese firm who had once crafted Samurai swords. It was as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. Rogier lifted the cuff of his trouser leg and strapped the sheath to his calf. His life was dangerous and the weapon gave him security. He locked up the bar for the night, and then ran lightly down the companionway to the working deck. Before he reached the crew’s mess he smelt the roasting pork. The greasy odour sickened him. He might have to go hungry tonight, unless he could work his charms on the chef. The chef was as gay as a lark on a spring morning, and Rogier was beautiful with thick dark crinkly hair and smouldering eyes. His smile matched his outwardly sunny personality. He took his seat at the crew’s long dining table and waited until the chef looked through the hatch from his kitchen. Rogier smiled at him then gestured at the thick slice of pork on the plate of the stoker beside him and rolled his eyes in an eloquent gesture of disgust. The chef smiled back at him and five minutes later he sent a thick middle cut of kingklip through the hatch to him. One of the finest eating fish in the seas, it was cooked to flaking white perfection and slathered with the chef’s famous sauce. It had been destined for the captain’s table before it was diverted.
    The stoker glanced at Rogier’s plate and muttered, ‘Bloody bum boy!’
    Rogier kept smiling but he leaned forward and lifted the cuff of his trouser leg. The thin stiletto blade appeared in his hand below the table top.
    ‘You really should not say that again,’ Rogier advised him and the stoker glanced down. The point of the stiletto was aimed at his crotch. The colour drained from his face and he stood up hastily, abandoned his pork cutlet and hurried out of the mess. Rogier ate his fish with genteel