rapped lightly at the door. ‘Herr Mueller?’ When she got no answer she rapped again. The door swung slowly open. ‘Hello? Is anyone here? Herr Mueller? It’s me. It’s Miranda Stuart.’
Her voice seemed to echo in the mid-afternoon stillness. The room was obviously empty. Her spirits lifted. She could leave now, secure in the knowledge that she’d kept her part of the bargain…
As if on cue, her empty stomach growled. ‘All right,’ she said, sighing, ‘I get the message.’
The door slammed shut behind her as she moved cautiously forward. The faint, sweet smell of marijuana hung in the air, and Miranda wrinkled her nose with displeasure. The light in the room was excellent, good enough so that she could see every inch of litter and dust. Mueller wasn’t terribly fastidious, but she wasn’t here to judge him on his housekeeping. She moved another step forward. The room was huge, most of it taken up by canvases except for the far wall, which was dominated by a large, unmade brass bed.
Her heart tripped against her ribs. The easel. Look at the easel. Yes, of course. She was here to pose. That was all Mueller wanted of her. She walked towards the easel slowly, concentrating all her attention on it and on the paintings that lay scattered around the room. They were oils, most of them, some originals, others copies of their more famous counterparts that hung in the Rijksmuseum. Mina was right, Miranda thought grudgingly, the man was good.
If only she could stop thinking of the way he’d looked at her the first time he’d asked her to pose for him, the way his beady little eyes had slipped over her body, the way they’d paused at her breasts…
‘Stop it!’
Miranda’s words hissed into the silence. She took a deep breath as she walked the last few feet to the easel. There was a note pinned to it; her brows lifted when she saw her name scrawled across it in charcoal.
Miranda, forgive me, I’ve been called away. Be back in a jiffy. Please make yourself comfortable. Ernst.
Miranda and Ernst. How cosy it sounded. Her heart thudded. There was still time, still time…
Stupid. She was being stupid. Quickly she marched to the screen in the corner, placed there, she knew, for the convenience and privacy of the model, and put down her bag. Would it be easier to get undressed and into her robe before he returned? Yes. Oh, yes. The thought of taking off her clothes while Mueller sat in the same room, watching the screen, made her skin crawl.
She unbuttoned her coat, working swiftly before she could change her mind, and tossed it over the high-backed stool that stood beside her with an artist’s smock, clean but stained with paint, draped across its back. The coat was followed swiftly by her black turtleneck sweater. Her hands trembled a little as she unzipped her skirt.
‘You’re being an ass,’ she mumbled, and the skirt and her panties slithered to the floor.
She was completely undressed now, except for her silver jewellery and boots. The jewellery could wait, but the boots—she frowned. The floor looked dirty. More than dirty. It looked as if centuries’ worth of filth had been ground into it.
It had been foolish not to have brought slippers. Next time she’d—she’d…
Miranda drew a sobbing breath. Oh, God! There wouldn’t be a next time. Who was she kidding? There wouldn’t even be a first time. She couldn’t go through with it, not even if it meant going hungry, not even if it meant throwing herself on Mevrouw De Vries’s mercy. She’d phone the Harrington Institute right away. They had to do something. Her situation was desperate.
Someone pounded on the door.
‘Mueller!’
Miranda’s hand flew to her throat. The voice was male—loud and very, very angry. The pounding noise came again, the sound of that heavy fist more than a match for the fury in the disembodied voice. Her heart began to race. She had to get out of here. She—
‘Mueller!’
The door slammed against the wall as it flew open, and she fell back into the corner. God, she thought wildly, oh, God, what had she walked into?
‘Where are you, you bastard? Do you really think you can hide from me forever?’
Footsteps, heavy footsteps, marched across the room, then paused. What to do? What to do? Miranda reached down into her bag for her robe. Where was it? Dammit, where was that stupid robe?
‘Mueller?’ The voice quietened, almost purred with menace. ‘Come out from behind the screen.’ There was a silence, and then the voice barked again. ‘If I have to come after you…’
Miranda looked down at herself. Quickly, she thought while her heart raced to burst free of her chest, quickly! Do something.
‘All right.’ The voice was grim with determination. ‘If that’s how you want to play it…’
Her eyes flew wildly across the clothing piled on the stool beside her. She could never get dressed in time. Never.
‘Mueller!’
With a sob of desperation she snatched up the smock that lay draped across the back of the stool and stuffed first one arm into a sleeve and then the other. Her fingers shook as she started to do up the buttons, but it was too late. She screamed as the screen was ripped away and a man—a tall, bulky man—grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her forward.
‘There you are,’ he said through his teeth, ‘you—you…’ He fell silent, his eyes widening, then narrowing, as they focused on Miranda. ‘What the hell…?’
Dark colour swept into her cheeks and she snatched at the lapels of the smock and pulled them together.
‘I’ll—I’ll scream,’ she said. Her voice was breathless, as if she’d just run up the long, steep stairs to Mueller’s room.
The man’s mouth curved downward. ‘You already did,’ he said. ‘You damned near punctured my eardrums.’
Miranda swallowed. ‘I’m not—’ Her throat closed. ‘I’m not Ernst Mueller.’
The man stared at her a second or two, and then he laughed. It was a soft laugh, one that said everything it needed to say, and her face flooded with colour again.
‘No, you aren’t.’ He stepped back a little, his hands still clasping her shoulders in an iron grasp, and looked at her, his eyes moving slowly, deliberately, over her body, from the tips of her black leather boots up the long length of bare leg, skimming over the smock that hung only to mid-thigh and across the swift rise and fall of her breasts. By the time that slow, assessing gaze reached her face she had turned crimson. ‘No,’ he repeated softly, ‘you’re definitely not Mueller.’
Her heart was still galloping. From the frying-pan into the fire, she thought crazily. Suddenly, posing in the nude for Mueller seemed easy. What she had to worry about now was this—this lunatic, this behemoth of a man who’d burst into this room bellowing Mueller’s name, looking for blood and instead finding a half-naked woman cowering in a corner…
Although he didn’t look like a lunatic, or even like a behemoth, the part of Miranda’s mind that was still functioning sanely whispered. He was angry, yes, but not at her. At Mueller. Very angry. She could see it in the cold grey eyes, the
