Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  It was a long wait. Finally the regular rise and fall of her chest let him know it was safe to move. He slipped out of bed and down the hotel corridor. Outside it was pitch-dark, but he knew where he was going. Behind the main building, past the tennis courts to the low-built employees’ residence.

  Two knocks. The door opened.

  “I’d almost given up on you.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t get away.”

  He kissed the almond-eyed barman passionately on the mouth. “Let’s go to bed.”

  THE BARINGS’ VILLA, MIRAGE, ON THE north side of the island, was idyllic and as secluded as anyone could have wished. The perfect marriage of luxury and simplicity, with its Infinity pool, whitewashed walls and colonial dark wood floors, Villa Mirage was surrounded by thick jungle on one side and shimmering ocean on the other. Even so, Lisa had taken extra precautions, installing round-the-clock details of security men to circle the perimeter and two armed bodyguards inside the property, in addition to the housekeeper, handyman and butler who lived at the villa year-round. Not for a moment did she believe Inspector Liu’s warnings about her attacker returning to kidnap or harm her. That was preposterous. But the media attention was another matter. In the absence of any information, or a viable suspect on whom to focus their anger, the Chinese press had chosen to vilify Miles Baring’s much-younger American wife. Overnight, it seemed, Lisa had gone from innocent victim to calculating gold digger in the minds of most ordinary Hong Kong citizens. She knew from bitter experience that the paparazzi would stop at nothing to steal a picture of her, which the newspapers would no doubt twist to make it look as if she were living it up in Bali. As if she weren’t grieving Miles. Lisa wasn’t about to let that happen.

  It was late when she arrived at the villa and she was tired.

  “I think I’ll go straight to bed if you don’t mind, Mrs. Harcourt.”

  “Of course, ma’am. I’ll have Ling bring you up some warm milk.”

  Karen Harcourt, Villa Mirage’s housekeeper, was short and round and motherly. She wore her gray hair in tight curls and had always reminded Lisa of the sweet old grandmother from the Tweety Pie cartoons.

  If only I’d had a mother like that, my life might have been so different. If only I’d had a mother at all.

  “Thank you.”

  Upstairs, Lisa’s bedroom had been prepared for her arrival. The mahogany four-poster bed had been turned down and draped with fine-mesh mosquito nets. Diptyque candles cast a warm glow over the room and filled it with the soothing scent of gardenia. The doors to the balcony were open, allowing Lisa to hear the soft lapping of the waves against the shore below. The only jarring note was the silver-framed pictures of her and Miles that were still propped up on her teak dressing table. Mrs. Harcourt probably thought I’d want to see them. To hold on to the memories. Lisa slipped them into a drawer and sighed.

  Turning around, she froze. There was a man by the door, lurking in the shadows. Lisa couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. He was a man. A stranger. In her bedroom. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Help! Guards! Help me!”

  The man stepped into the light. “Please, stop screaming. I’m not here to hurt you.”

  Lisa’s voice got louder. “INTRUDER! HEEEEELLP!”

  He walked toward her. “Really, I didn’t mean to scare you. I only want to talk. I—”

  He slumped, lifeless, to the floor. Behind him, Lisa’s housekeeper, Mrs. Harcourt, stood shaking like a leaf. Lisa stared at the heavy, blood-smeared frying pan in her hand and promptly fainted.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE MAN ON THE FLOOR WAS quite still. Blood poured from a wound in the back of his head where the housekeeper had hit him. Belatedly the two security guards burst into the room, just as Lisa began to come around.

  One said, “I’ll call the police.”

  “No.” Lisa was surprised by how firm her own voice sounded. “No police. Is he dead?”

  One of the guards knelt low over the body. “No, ma’am. He’s breathing.”

  The man on her bedroom floor was pale and blond. He was not the man who’d killed Miles. His voice alone could have told her that. But who was he, and what was he doing here?

  “How badly is he injured? Does he need a doctor?”

  The guard felt the man’s wrist. “He’s got a strong pulse. But he ought to see someone, just in case. Concussions can be tricky things.”

  Lisa nodded. “I’ll call Frank.”

  Dr. Francis McGee was on old friend of Miles’s with a villa just across the bay. Frank was retired, but his mind was still sharp. More importantly, he could be relied on to maintain absolute discretion.

  Mrs. Harcourt bustled forward. “We need to stop the bleeding right away. I can bandage him, but I’ll need help getting him upright.”

  When Frank McGee arrived forty minutes later, the man was propped up on pillows in one of Mirage’s guest suites. The wound on his head had been cleaned and tightly bandaged. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, two guards stood at the door, intently watching his every move.

  “He wasn’t armed,” Lisa told the doctor. “But I didn’t know that at the time. He just appeared in my bedroom and I screamed. Mrs. Harcourt only meant to disable him.”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, my dear. Housebreakers deserve everything they get in my book. Mrs. Harcourt did the right thing.” Dr. McGee unwound the bandages and looked at the wound. Then he pulled open the man’s eyelids and shone various lights in his eyes. The doctor’s hands were liver-spotted and crisscrossed with thick, gnarled veins, but Lisa noticed how still and sure they were when he worked. “He’ll live. I’ll put in some stitches eventually, but for now he needs rest. Someone must keep an eye on him throughout the night, though. If he starts vomiting or bleeding out of the nose, call me immediately. You’re quite sure you don’t want to call the police?”

  “Quite sure. He owes me some answers before I hand him over to anyone else.”

  Only after Frank McGee left did Lisa realize how truly exhausted she was. Was it really only that morning that she’d left the hospital in Hong Kong, walking out on the enraged Inspector Liu? It felt like weeks ago. She longed to go to bed, but she was determined to be at her would-be attacker’s bedside when he woke up. Curling up on an armchair in the corner of the room, under the watchful eye of the security guards, she pulled a cashmere blanket over herself and fell instantly to sleep.

  “JESUS. MY HEAD.”

  The blond man was awake. Groggily, Lisa checked her watch. It was five A.M. Morning.

  “What did you hit me with? An anvil?”

  He was American. For some reason Lisa hadn’t registered that last night.

  “A frying pan. And I didn’t hit you. It was my housekeeper.”

  The man reached up and touched his bandages. “Your housekeeper’s got quite a swing on her. I feel like I’ve done ten rounds with Andre Ward.”

  “I’ve no idea who that is,” said Lisa briskly. “But what you actually did was one round with a seventy-two-year-old grandmother.”

  The man smiled sheepishly. “That’s kind of embarrassing.”

  “I’d say embarrassment is the least of your worries.” A cold edge had crept into Lisa’s voice. “Who are you? And what the hell were you doing breaking into my home?”

  The man extended a hand. “Matt Daley. Pleased to meet you.”

  “I’m not going to shake your hand! You were trying to rob me”—Lisa shivered—“or worse. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t have you arrested and thrown into jail this instant.”

  Matt couldn’t help but admire the way her full breasts rose indignantly out of her low-cut Chloé blouse and her cheeks flushed when she was agitated. She’s beautiful. Just like the others.

  “Because you’re in grave danger,” he said solemnly. “And not from me. Mrs. Baring, I know you have no reason to trust me. But the man who killed your husband, the man who hurt you, has killed befo
re. And the wives of his victims have a disconcerting tendency to go missing—”

  “Yes, I know, I know.” Lisa waved her hand dismissively. “Inspector Liu told me. He wants to keep me under lock and key until they catch this guy. But as the police in…four countries is it now?…seem to have singularly failed to catch this man for the past decade, the idea of hanging around was not exactly appealing.”

  Matt smiled. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected of Lisa Baring. If he was honest, he thought she’d be some sort of meek and mindless trophy wife, the kind that rich old men usually went for. But she was nothing like that at all. She was feisty and fiery and sharp-tongued. If there was a soft center underneath, she did a good job of hiding it. He liked her.

  Lisa looked at him suspiciously. “You still haven’t answered my first question. Who are you? And what interest do you have in me and my safety? Are you a reporter?”

  “No, absolutely not. I’m a victim, of sorts. Like you. The man who killed your husband also killed my father.”

  The blood drained from Lisa Baring’s face. Was it possible?

  “Who was your father?”

  “A man named Andrew Jakes.” Matt closed his eyes. A wave of nausea and dizziness washed over him. He slumped back onto the pillows. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Lisa summoned one of the maids for a glass of water. She handed it to Matt. “Drink this.”

  Matt sipped the water slowly and began to revive. Lisa, on the other hand, still seemed to be reeling with shock.

  Eventually she asked him, “How did you know I’d be here? In Bali.”

  “I didn’t,” Matt said. “I thought you were still in the hospital in Hong Kong. But no one would let me near you there, and I knew you and your husband had a place in Bali, so I came out looking for clues.”

  “What sort of clues?”

  “Anything that might link you or Miles to the other victims. I hoped you might come here, eventually. To get away from the media circus. But I wasn’t expecting you to be in the villa last night. That’s the truth.”

  There was no earthly reason for Lisa to believe him. Yet she found that she did. There was an honesty in his face, an openness that invited trust. It was an emotion Lisa Baring had almost forgotten she was capable of.

  “And did you find any?”

  Matt looked puzzled.

  “Clues?”

  “Well, no.” He rubbed his head ruefully. “Some old lady whacked me over the head with a frying pan before I got the chance.”

  “Do the police know you’re here? Interpol?”

  Matt was taken aback. He hadn’t expected her to ask him such a direct, specific question. He didn’t want to lie to her, it felt wrong, but Danny McGuire had made him swear up and down not to mention their connection, and a promise was a promise.

  “No.”

  “All right, Mr. Daley.” Lisa Baring stood up. “Try and get some rest. We’ve both had a long night. I’ll have Mrs. Harcourt bring you some food later. If you’re up to it, perhaps we can discuss this further at dinner this evening.”

  Matt’s eyes widened. “You’re letting me stay here?”

  “For now.”

  Lisa turned to the guards at the door. “If he needs to use the bathroom, or anything else, one of you is to go with him. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  MATT HELD TIGHTLY TO THE BANISTER as he came downstairs. His head felt a lot better, but he was still unsteady on his feet. The villa radiated peace and tranquillity, like the Aman hotel in Morocco he and Raquel had stayed in on their honeymoon. Since arriving in Asia, Matt realized guiltily, he’d barely thought about Raquel or the divorce at all. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism. Denial. Why worry about things you can’t change? That sort of thing. He knew he’d have to go home and face the music eventually. But here in this magical, idyllic, otherworldly spot, his domestic problems barely seemed real.

  “Feeling better?”

  Matt swallowed hard. Lisa had changed into a simple white cotton sundress. She wore plain, twisted-rope sandals, and her hair was piled up into a messy crown of dark curls on top of her head. The effect was at once innocent and knowing, pure and alluring. Raquel was a great-looking woman, but hers was a brash sexuality, a take-no-prisoners, in-your-face, va-va-voom appeal that required short skirts and a lot of makeup to achieve its full effect. Lisa Baring was the opposite. It was an overused phrase, but Lisa fit it perfectly: she was a natural beauty.

  “Much better, thank you,” said Matt.

  Lisa took a seat at one end of a simple oak dining table, laden with a buffet of fresh local produce: squid sautéed in garlic; fresh, sliced papaya; warm, baked roti gambang, a delicious, seeded Indonesian bread. She gestured for Matt to sit. “Are you hungry?”

  “I am now,” said Matt. “This looks incredible.”

  “Help yourself.”

  She was being friendly, welcoming even, but there was still a wariness there. Probably inevitable, under the circumstances, but Matt did his best to dispel it. “I don’t blame you for doubting my motives,” he said, heaping his plate with bread and delicious-smelling seafood. “I’d be cautious too in your position. But I promise you, I only want what you want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “To know the truth, presumably. And to catch this bastard, whoever he is.”

  Lisa poured two glasses from a carafe of red wine on the table and handed one to Matt.

  “I’m not sure I believe in ‘the truth.’ As if there’s only one. Everybody’s truth is different, isn’t it?”

  The wine was excellent, full-bodied and fruity. Matt swirled it around in his mouth thoughtfully, enjoying the array of different tastes on his palate before answering.

  “I disagree. I think the truth is the truth. People lie to themselves, that’s all. They see what they want to see.”

  “And what do you see?” Lisa asked archly.

  I see an intelligent, gorgeous, desirable woman I’d like to take to bed this instant. It was clear she was avoiding the subject of her husband’s murder. Maybe it was still too early for her to talk about it. Too painful. “I see someone who acts tough but feels terrified inside.”

  This seemed to amuse her. “That’s quite some X-ray vision you have, Mr. Daley. But I’m afraid it’s off the mark. I’m neither tough nor afraid. I’m just putting one foot in front of the other, trying to get from one day to the next.”

  “And what is next for you, after all this?” Matt asked. “You can’t hole up in Bali forever.”

  Lisa looked wistful. “No. I suppose not. But I don’t like thinking about the future, Mr. Daley.”

  “Please, call me Matt.”

  “Things happen, Matt, things that you can’t control. Bad things. None of us controls our own destiny. I’ve learned the hard way that that’s just an illusion. Why make beautiful plans only to see them collapse into pain and death and dust?”

  Watching her sad brown eyes, Matt felt an overwhelming urge to protect her, to comfort her, to make everything all right. Danny McGuire had admitted to feeling something similar for Angela Jakes after his father’s murder, but it had distracted him from pinning Angela down, from unraveling the truth before she took off for Europe and slipped forever from his grasp. Matt Daley wasn’t about to make the same mistake with Lisa Baring.

  “How much did Inspector Liu tell you about the other murders?”

  Lisa frowned. “Must we talk about that?”

  “It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Why you let me stay. Deep down you want to know the truth.”

  Lisa didn’t respond to this. It was unnerving being psychoanalyzed by this attractive blond stranger, especially when he was right. Instead she answered Matt’s first question. “Liu didn’t tell me much. Just that similar crimes had been committed before, that Interpol thought it possible we were dealing with a serial killer, and that my own life might be in danger. He didn’t get into specifics.”

  “Fine. I will.” Over the course of the next hour, Ma
tt told her all he knew about his father’s murder and the killings of Sir Piers Henley and Didier Anjou. He and Lisa finished the first carafe of wine and she called for a second. Lisa listened calmly throughout his narrative, showing little or no emotion.

  When Matt finally finished, she said: “I’m not sure it’s the same man.”

  “What do you mean? Of course it’s the same man.”

  “It may have been the same man for the earlier attacks. But I’m not sure the person you’re describing is the man who killed Miles.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Lisa tore off a chunk of bread and dipped it pensively in her wine. “Little things. Like the giving-the-money-to-charity part. Miles didn’t leave a penny to charity, and I haven’t even begun to think about what I’m going to do with my inheritance. But more importantly, the whole thing smacks a little too much of some kind of Robin Hood complex, don’t you think? Taking from the rich to give to the poor?”

  Bizarrely, this idea had not occurred to Matt. It seemed so obvious when Lisa said it now. “Possibly, yes.”

  “Well, I know nothing about the man who raped me. But I can tell you this: he was no Robin Hood.”

  At the mention of the word rape, a heavy silence settled over the table, an almost visible cloud of shame. Matt found himself wishing that he knew this woman better, well enough to take her in his arms and comfort her, to assure her that none of this was her fault. As it was, he changed the subject.

  “Tell me about Miles. About your marriage.”

  Lisa smiled, but it was a sad smile. “You mean tell you whether I married a man thirty years older than myself for love or for his money? What do you think?”

  Matt blushed. That was what he meant, but he didn’t realize he’d been so obvious.