Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  When Lisa spoke, her voice was quiet but firm. “I want to talk about it. I need to. I need to talk about it with you.”

  AFTERWARD, MATT DALEY WOULD STRUGGLE TO remember every detail of that night. Lisa pouring her heart out about the rape. Nervously at first, her voice halting and awkward, but becoming surer as her fear turned to anger. She told him how the man had punched her and choked her, forcing her to perform hideous, perverted acts while Miles watched. How she had tried to detach, to separate her psyche from the vicious assaults on her body. How she knew all along that the man would hurt Miles, but yet how shocked, how terrified she was when she saw the gun.

  Her words speeded up, a snowball of pain gathering speed and bulk as she hurtled through the whole, awful story. Then suddenly, bang, the snowball exploded, her anger spent, and the tears began to flow.

  She sobbed in Matt’s arms. “He shouldn’t have done it. He knew I didn’t want him to do it. I told him to stop, I begged him! But what could I do? What power did I have? What power have I ever had?”

  She was rambling, her words a complex mixture of emotions, part sorrow, part anger and part guilt. It was the last part that tortured Matt the most, although he knew it was common for rape victims to feel guilty, as if they were somehow to blame for what had happened to them. The last thing Lisa needed was Inspector Liu or Danny McGuire trying to implicate her with their half-baked theories. He had to protect her from that.

  She cried for what felt like hours. Matt cried too—for her, for himself, for the violent, twisted world that allowed this sort of horror to happen to an innocent, beautiful woman like Lisa. Somewhere during that long, tearful embrace, the last barriers between them fell, the last shards of restraint gave way.

  Matt couldn’t remember who had undressed whom or who had initiated the first kiss. All he remembered was giving himself to Lisa body and soul, surrendering in a way he had never surrendered to a woman before. And Lisa gave herself to him just as fully, her need and longing every bit as great as his own. Their lovemaking was beautiful. She was beautiful, silken and warm and all-consuming. They made love under the stars on the deck by the pool, then in the water. Then Matt dried her like a child and carried her to the bedroom and she begged him to do it again, and again and again. That was the most wonderful thing of all. Lisa’s desire, her hunger, was a glorious surprise after so many long weeks of diffidence and uncertainty. It was as if Matt had unlocked a door and another woman entirely had taken control of Lisa’s body: a sexual, wanton, completely uninhibited woman.

  Matt moaned with pleasure as she took him in her mouth, then straddled him, bucking and gasping as she exploded into yet another orgasm. When she climaxed she dug her nails into his back, pulling him inside her as if she wanted to consume him, to possess him. Matt joyously submitted, losing himself in the moment. The funny, reserved, thoughtful woman he’d come to know these past few weeks was gone, replaced by this magnificent creature, this animal, ravenous, desperate and wild.

  Matt lost count of the hours they spent exploring each other’s bodies. All he knew was that they were still awake, wrapped in each other’s arms, when the first rays of dawn crept through the shutters. And that sometime shortly afterward he sank into a deep, delicious, utterly sated sleep.

  When he woke, bright sunlight stung his eyes like acid. Protectively pulling the bedclothes up around Lisa, Matt raised his forearm to shield himself from the glare. Mrs. Harcourt must have opened the blinds, her way of saying that she needed to make up the room.

  “Karen, would you mind closing those please?” Matt rasped. “We, er…we had a late night.”

  A brusque male voice shouted something in Indonesian and it suddenly hit Matt: That’s not the housekeeper. Before he could say or do anything, six armed police had surrounded the bed, guns drawn.

  “Lisa Baring?”

  Lisa stirred.

  Then opened her eyes.

  Then screamed.

  “Lisa Baring. We have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “On what charge?” demanded Matt.

  The Chinese officer looked at him and smiled. Then he smashed his gun into the side of Matt’s face. The world faded to black.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LISA BARING LOOKED INTENTLY AT THE man sitting opposite her. The last time she’d seen Inspector Liu was in her hospital room at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. On that occasion she’d paid little attention to him, a grave mistake, as it turned out. She remembered Liu only as short, physically nondescript and deferential. Despite his frustration about her refusing police protection, he had treated her with the respect due to a patient, a rape victim, and the widow of an important and powerful man.

  Today, he looked different. Transformed. As he sat behind a Formica-topped desk in this plain white interview suite in Hong Kong’s Central District, his round face, glossy black hair and small, neatly manicured hands remained the same as she remembered, as did his cheap suit and thin polyester tie. But his manner had changed utterly. His formerly placid features seemed suddenly to have come alive, his mouth animated, his eyes glinting with something that Lisa couldn’t quite place. Excitement? Cruelty? His body language was aggressive, legs apart, hands spread wide on the table, torso and head thrust forward. He thinks he’s in control, and he likes it.

  “I’ll ask you again, Mrs. Baring. How long have you and the man you were arrested with this morning been lovers?”

  “And I’ll answer you again, Inspector. His name is Matthew Daley. And it’s none of your goddamn business.”

  She knew she was provoking him, probably not the smartest thing to do under the circumstances, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. He was so arrogant, so rude. And the things he was suggesting about Matt were just preposterous.

  It was strange how confident she felt, under the circumstances. When she’d awoken this morning in her bedroom at Mirage to find six men training guns on her head, the flashbacks to Miles’s murder were so strong she honestly thought she would pass out. If Matt hadn’t been there to calm her down, she probably would have. Darling Matt. How could anyone think he was mixed up in any of this? She wondered where he was now, and prayed he wasn’t being mistreated. She’d had no time to process what had happened between them last night, what with being frog-marched onto a plane, bundled into a squad car and dumped unceremoniously into this bleak interview room in a squat building in Central with the obnoxious Inspector Liu firing questions at her like poison darts.

  Closing her eyes, Lisa could feel Matt Daley’s hard, passionate body pressed against hers. The rush of desire was so strong, she blushed. But it was mingled with other emotions. Fear. Guilt. It was so hard to untangle anything of what she was feeling with the awful Liu breathing down her neck. Still, she was not as afraid as she thought she would be.

  Because I’m not alone anymore. I have Matt now. Matt will save me.

  The door opened.

  “Lisa, darling. I got here as fast as I could.”

  Not Matt Daley, but a salvation of sorts. John Crowley, Lisa’s attorney, was the managing partner at Crowley & Rowe, one of Hong Kong’s leading law firms. In his midfifties, tall, dark and distinguished-looking, John Crowley positively radiated authority. He wore monogrammed cuff links and a bespoke suit that cost more than Inspector Liu earned in a year, and smelled of Floris aftershave and self-assurance. Lisa noticed the way Liu visibly shrank in his presence.

  “John! How did you know where to find me? They wouldn’t let me call.”

  “I know,” said Crowley, taking a seat without being asked. “Just one of Inspector Liu’s many breaches of protocol. I was contacted by a friend of yours, a Mr. Daley.”

  Lisa’s eyes widened. “They’ve released Matt already?”

  “Naturally. Once he produced his passport, it became clear he wasn’t even in the country on the night of Miles’s murder. Any suggestion of his involvement is pure fantasy. As is any suggestion of yours.” John Crowley looked at his vintage Cartier watch impatiently. “I
nspector Liu, on what grounds are you detaining my client?”

  “We have the necessary authority.” Liu handed over a stack of papers, apparently warrants, all in Chinese. John Crowley glanced at them as if he were contemplating using them to blow his nose, then tossed them imperiously aside.

  “Has Mrs. Baring been charged?”

  “Not yet. She’s here to answer some questions. There are discrepancies, serious discrepancies, between Mrs. Baring’s account of what happened on the night in question and her staff’s.”

  John Crowley turned to Lisa. “When were you arrested? What time?”

  “This morning. Around ten o’clock, I think. I’m not sure, I was asleep when they broke in.”

  Crowley looked again at his watch. “That was nine hours ago. Which means that Inspector Liu has a maximum of three additional hours in which to finish his questions. If he doesn’t charge you by then, you’re free to go.”

  Inspector Liu glowered at the lawyer. He suspected that Danny McGuire from Interpol was involved in this somehow. That instead of returning his, Liu’s, call, McGuire had taken matters into his own hands and contacted the U.S. embassy, preferring to deal with expats than with the local Chinese police. Interpol was supposed to be impartial, but McGuire, Crowley, Lisa Baring, and Matt Daley were all American. Americans had a way of sticking together.

  “As you rightly say, Mr. Crowley, time is limited. So I’d appreciate it if you stopped wasting it. Mrs. Baring…” Liu turned on Lisa. “At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital you told me that your husband had no living relatives that you knew of that we needed to contact. In fact, as you well knew, Miles Baring had a daughter by his first marriage. Alice.”

  “That’s true. But Miles had no contact with her, nor she with him. After his divorce his ex-wife moved back to Europe and he lost all contact with her and the child.”

  “A man of your husband’s means could easily have taken steps to trace them, or could have instructed his estate to do so after his death. Indeed, Mr. Baring had made such arrangements, had he not, before he met you?”

  “I…I’ve no idea,” Lisa stammered.

  “It was you who convinced him not only to marry you but to leave his entire fortune to you upon his death. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Baring?”

  Lisa opened her mouth to speak, but John Crowley stepped in. “She’s already told you, she knew nothing of the provisions in Miles’s will before he met her. It’s not unusual for men to change their wills in favor of their wives after marriage.”

  “What is unusual, Mr. Crowley, is for bereaved widows to lie repeatedly to the police who are attempting to apprehend their husband’s killer,” Liu shot back. “Mrs. Baring, you made a sworn statement that you did not know how to disable the security system at Prospect Road. Yet your maid, Joyce Chan, asserts that Mr. Baring explained it to you on numerous occasions.”

  “I…he might have tried. I’m not very good with technical things.”

  “Why did you instruct the servants not to enter the upper floors of the property the night your husband was killed.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Was it so that you could admit your lover?”

  “No!”

  “Do you deny you had a lover?”

  “Yes, I deny it. Of course I deny it.”

  John Crowley did his best to deflect and obstruct, but Liu kept hammering away, insisting that this lover existed, that Lisa had helped him into the house, and demanding over and over again to know his name. Were there so many that she couldn’t remember? How many men had she slept with before Miles? And during the marriage? How many men had she slept with since Miles’s death, when she was supposedly grieving? Or was Matthew Daley the only one? How did she know Mr. Daley? She must have invited him to join her in Bali, which implies she knew him from before.

  By the time the three hours were up and Inspector Liu released her, on condition that she not leave the island and “cooperate fully” with his investigation, Lisa was emotionally and physically exhausted. But she’d managed not to tell Liu anything about Matt’s past. At the end of the day, Matt was a victim too. If he wanted to talk about his father’s murder, or his interest in the other crimes, that was up to him.

  John Crowley took Lisa’s arm as they left the building. The poor thing was still shaking. “You did very well. Try not to worry about it too much. I highly doubt they’re going to charge you with anything.”

  Lisa shook her head. “He looked at me with such hatred. Like I wanted this to happen. Like I wanted Miles to die. I didn’t want any of this. It just happened. Maybe it had to happen, I don’t know. But there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

  John Crowley looked at her strangely. It seemed a bizarre choice of words, to say the least. Why on earth would Miles’s murder have “had to happen”? Then again, after the grilling Liu had just put Lisa through, perhaps it was a miracle she could string a sentence together at all.

  “You must rest. Can I drive you home?”

  Lisa looked at him blankly. Home? Where was that? Certainly not the house on Prospect Road. “You said Matt Daley was the one who called you about me. Do you know where he is staying?”

  “I’m right here.”

  Matt’s sweet, tired, good-natured face emerged from the sea of Asian faces still crowding the sidewalks even at this time of night. Lisa didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see another person in her life. She fell into his arms.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, hugging her tightly. “Did they hurt you?”

  “No. I’m fine.” She kissed him, making no attempt to hide her affection in front of John Crowley. The lawyer suppressed an irrational wave of jealousy. He didn’t have many clients as attractive as Mrs. Baring, and he’d enjoyed playing her white knight this afternoon.

  Matt said, “You must be Mr. Crowley. Thanks for showing up so quickly.”

  “Not at all. Thank you for contacting me.” The two men shook hands. “Everything went well today. I think Liu’s grasping at straws. But make sure you don’t hand him any ammunition,” he added to Lisa. “Stay in Hong Kong, lay low and keep in touch. If the police contact you again, let me know immediately.”

  “Of course.”

  Matt watched John Crowley jump into a cab. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He’s damn good-looking for a lawyer.”

  Lisa laughed. Wrapping her arms around Matt’s neck, she pressed her lips lightly to his. “Are you jealous?”

  “Horribly.”

  They kissed again, and Lisa marveled at how happy she felt, how safe. She’d experienced more than her fair share of male jealousy in the past, and up till now that had only meant pain. But with Matt Daley it was different. Safe in Matt’s arms, she could look back and see that most of her life had been spent under a dark cloud of fear, waiting for a man’s jealousy to explode in rage and violence, waiting to be hurt. She’d accepted it because it was all she knew. And because of the secret, the secret that had destroyed not only her life but the lives of so many others. The secret to which only one man had the key, and that Matt must never, ever know.

  Matt took her face in his hands. “You look so troubled. Is it Inspector Liu?”

  “Yes,” she lied. “He’s out to get me.”

  “Well, he won’t succeed,” Matt assured her. “Not while I’m around. Listen, Lisa, I know it’s not really the time. And I know last night was unexpected, for both of us. But I have to tell you. I’ve never felt like this before. I—”

  Lisa put a finger to his lips. “Not here. Liu and his men will probably coming scuttling out of that door any moment.”

  She was right. A busy street outside of a police station was no place to declare his undying love. Matt stretched out his arm. A cab stopped instantly.

  “The Peninsula.”

  Lisa raised an eyebrow. The Peninsula was the grandest hotel in Hong Kong. They could afford it, now that the authorities had unfrozen Miles’s accounts and allowed Lisa access to his money. But it was hardly
lying low.

  “I figured if we’re going to be kept here under virtual house arrest, we might as well make our cage a gilded one,” said Matt. “I want you to be happy.”

  Lisa knew all about gilded cages. “I’ll be happy anywhere,” she told him truthfully, “as long as I’m with you.”

  If only I could stay with him forever.

  If only I could tell him the truth.

  But she knew she never would.

  THEIR SUITE WAS GENEROUS. THERE WAS a small, exquisitely furnished living room and two full-size marble baths adjoining a grand double bedroom with spectacular harbor views. After a hot shower and a room-service club sandwich, Lisa felt revived enough to talk to Matt about her interview with Inspector Liu.

  “He had new information. He must have spoken to Joyce Chan. Frightened her into speaking out.”

  “Who’s Joyce Chan?”

  “Our housekeeper at Prospect Road. She’s the only one who could have put the idea into Liu’s head that I was having an affair.”

  So that’s where the rumor started, thought Matt, remembering his heated conversation with Danny McGuire. Malicious servant’s gossip.

  “Spiteful bitch.”

  “Oh no!” Lisa looked horrified. “No, no, Mrs. Chan’s lovely. She would never knowingly try to hurt me.”

  “Then why on earth would she say such a thing?”

  “Because she was frightened,” said Lisa. “And because it’s true.”

  “I HAVEN’T BEEN FULLY HONEST WITH you.”

  It was twenty minutes later and the two of them were in bed. Naked, wrapped in each other’s arms…it felt like the right time to share confidences.

  “I wanted to. But I didn’t know where to start.”

  “That’s okay.” Matt stroked her hair soothingly. The truth was, he hadn’t been fully honest with Lisa either. She still knew nothing about his connection with Interpol and Danny McGuire. All this time she’d been sharing her home, and now her bed, with a police mole. If that wasn’t a betrayal, he didn’t know what was.