AGENTS IN HARM’S WAY

Excerpt

The heavy doors closed behind her, and she found herself in a spacious cabin. Ornately furnished and well-lit, it spanned the entire width of the boat. Video cameras were mounted in strategic positions to scan the room. A circular bed dominated the far end; fluted white columns running from floor to ceiling, formed a semi-circle before it. Full-length

mirrors adorned the walls. And in those mirrors, repeated to infinity, one could see the reflected forms of two girls who had been hung from the ceiling, suspended by their wrists from a latticework of sturdy crossbars.

Mallory was stunned to find her young partner, her hands strung up high over her head. The position forced Kip up on the tiptoes of her sneakers, her lithe body stretched so that a considerable gap had opened between the bottom of the little tank top, and the shorts that rode low on her slight hips -- a gap that revealed her elongated midriff and

tautly stretched belly. A hard rubber ballgag had been jammed between Kip's teeth; over the gag, the big brown eyes that met Mallory's were wide with fear.

A few feet away hung a beautiful girl, whose white blond hair tumbled in a mass of pale soft curls to lightly caress her bare shoulders. Her slender body was lushly tanned, with fulsome breasts the same gorgeous tan except for the ghostly curving triangles of white flesh centered on those mounds, the lasting imprint of the skimpy bikini worn daily on some California beach. From the waist up, all she had on was a thin choker, a strip of black velvet banding her throat, with a small tag attached. From her hips hung a pleated mini-skirt, made of some sort of

satiny fabric, lace-edged, like a short half-slip. The hem rode at mid-thigh, revealing most of the splendid lengths of a pair of gorgeous, shapely legs sheathed in black stockings. The blonde's stockinged feet were strapped into a pair of high heeled sandals, which gave her just

enough extra height so that she could stand with arms bent a little, and was thus able to relieve the strain. Still, the demanding position must have taken its toll, for she moaned once again -- it was the same moan they had heard in the hallway.

She twisted around to regard Mallory with an imploring look in her anxious eyes. While her pretty features were distorted by the gag, Mallory recognized the well-built blonde immediately: they had found Meghan Dillon!