Because I'm Watching

by Christina Dodd

  For a mere second, conversation faltered.

  One of the middle-aged females scooted over. “We are all friends. Sit next to me.” She placed her hand on her husband’s arm. “We’re Juan Carlos and Carmen Mendoza, wine merchants from Barcelona … and you are Benedict Howard.”

  Apparently he wasn’t the only one who had studied the roster. “That’s right, from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. I buy and sell things.”

  “On a grand scale,” Juan Carlos said drily. “The Howard family is known for its business … acumen.”

  A nice way to say ruthlessness. “Yes.” Benedict looked toward the opposite end of the long table. “But I interrupted the conversation. Please, continue while I sit here and absorb the bonhomie.” In fact, he had interrupted Helen Brassard, who had been animated and flushed as she recounted some story by signing while Nauplius Brassard translated in his faintly accented voice.

  Cool and calm, she sipped her champagne and looked him in the eyes. She nodded. She put down her champagne, lifted her hands, and signed, “Of course. I was telling this illustrious company about the surprise party my husband threw for me for my twenty-seventh birthday.”

  “Fascinating,” he murmured.

  With a turn of the head, she dismissed Benedict and spoke to the assemblage. “On the banks of the Loire in the month of June … he scheduled the Osiris String Quartet to play chamber music and had a catered picnic flown in from Vienna and laid on blankets on the grass. He hired a film crew to record each precious moment and he surprised me with a custom-made gift of polished amber stones set in a magnificent gold setting.”

  Benedict had trouble knowing who to look at—Helen, who was speaking, or Nauplius, who was interpreting. He glanced around and saw that the others at the table seemed similarly stricken by uncertainty, and he wondered if they also found it odd to hear Nauplius Brassard praise himself so effusively … in her words. Certainly Brassard looked smug as he spoke.

  But Helen gazed at her husband as if she adored him, placed one palm flat on her chest, and with the other spelled, “The memory is engraved on my heart.”

  The wide-bellied, rumpled academic nodded and, in an accomplishment Benedict appreciated, at the same time sneered. Dawkins Cipre didn’t want to offend Nauplius Brassard, a generous donor to European universities. Yet as a professor of literature he could hardly approve such a romantic gesture; it might reflect badly on his pretentiousness.

  Elsa Cipre, the academic’s thin, nervous, carefully unmade-up wife and a professor in her own right, said, “Nauplius has studied the inner workings of a woman’s heart.”

  One of the school teachers rolled her eyes. Another said, “Bless his heart.” Apparently the self-important academics had not impressed anyone.

  Then Elsa said, “Dawkins is an expert on classic medieval French romance literature. Perhaps, Helen, for your twenty-eighth birthday he could consult with Nauplius and bring the full weight of French literature to bear.”

  Faintly Benedict heard Carmen Mendoza moan under her breath.

  Dawkins took the opportunity to launch into a college-level literature lecture in which he cited his years at Oxford and the Sorbonne. His pontificating encouraged low buzzing conversations to start and swell, and Nauplius Brassard flushed with irritation—he did not enjoy losing his place in the spotlight or being told what to do—and tried to interrupt.

  Dawkins rambled on, oblivious.

  Without asking, the bar staff delivered another round of stiff drinks.

  The band came in; the musician played guitar and keyboard, the singer was thin, young, attractive, and handled the microphone with an expertise that spoke of long experience. They began the first set.

  Dawkins rattled on until his wife touched his hand and they left to find the dessert buffet.

  With a pretty smile, Helen pushed Brassard’s drink toward him.

  Brassard folded his arms over his chest, transferring his irritation to her.

  She tried to sign to her husband, to cajole him into a better mood.

  He turned his head away.

  When she persisted, he whipped around to face her, caught her wrists, and effectively rendered her mute.

  At once she stopped her attempt, and when he released her, she contemplated the champagne in her flute and drank.

  An interesting scene, Benedict thought. Helen was Brassard’s whipping boy. What kind of greed made a woman put up with that kind of abuse?

  Carmen Mendoza began to hum and then to sing in a warm contralto, and in five minutes she had kicked off her shoes and stood before the band, dancing. Before another minute had passed Juan Carlos had taken the female high school teachers onto the floor and the male high school teachers had joined them on the fringes, gyrating sheepishly.

  Reginald Bardzecki, the eighty-year-old corporate lawyer, stood and offered his hand to Helen. She glanced at the still fuming Brassard, smiled defiantly, kicked off her shoes, and joined Reginald.

  Unlike anyone else on the floor, they danced like experts. He led, she followed, the two of them staging a series of ballroom moves that only two people who loved the music could perform.

  The musicians played. The staff and dancers stopped and watched.

  Benedict leaned back in his chair and appreciated the sight. Then instinct led him to glance toward the other end of the table.

  Nauplius Brassard sat glaring at the elderly man who spun his youthful, smiling wife across the floor.

  And Benedict remembered what Abigail had said about Nauplius Brassard: He is dangerous. We take care never to displease him … Benedict thought Helen would suffer for her insubordination.

  The song ended. The dancers came back to the table, flushed and laughing. They ordered drinks and complimented Reginald and Helen on their skill.

  Helen seated herself next to her husband, keeping a few careful inches away from his simmering resentment.

  The next song started. Carmen pulled Benedict to the dance floor and taught him flamenco. When he felt he’d made a fool of himself for long enough, Benedict started back toward the table.

  The Brassards were gone.

  The next morning, a helicopter arrived and lifted Nauplius Brassard and his wife off the ship.

  * * *

  Thirteen months later, Nauplius Brassard died of a brain aneurysm.

  His children, all in their forties, moved swiftly to eject his young wife, Helen, from the Brassard Paris home.

  They discovered her designer wardrobe, her jewels, and all the furnishings intact. But the fortune Brassard had set aside in her name had vanished—and so had she.

  * * *

  Less than forty-eight hours later, one of Nauplius Brassard’s legal team was found murdered during working hours, slashed to death in her office.

  The police feared a copycat killer, one imitating the serial killer who, two years before, had died in a Canadian prison.

  To their relief, no further murders followed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the mountains on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula

  Officer Rupert Moen steered the speeding patrol car around sharp corners, up steep rises, and through washouts caused by spring rains. Sweat stained his shirt, ruddy blotches lit his cheeks and the middle of his forehead. He was young, a member of the sheriff’s department for only a couple of years, shy, and never the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

  But damn, put that kid behind the wheel and he could drive.

  Sheriff Kateri Kwinault’s only jobs were to lean with the curves and to keep him calm. In the soothing voice she had perfected during her time as the regional Coast Guard commander, she said, “Four wheels on the ground. All you have to do is keep ’em in sight. We’ve got a helicopter on its way and every law enforcement officer on the Peninsula moving into position.”

  Like a Celtic warrior, Moen was all wild red hair and savage grins. “This road is a real bitch, isn’t it?”

  “It’s … interesting.” Kateri kept her gaze away the almost vert
ical plunge on her side of the car, away from the equally vertical rise on the other side.

  “Goddamn interesting.” Moen harried the black Dodge SRT Hellcat with flashing lights and a blast of the electronic air horn. “This time we’d better catch those bastards.”

  “Yes.” The Terrances, father and son, were bastards and worse: drug dealers, meth cookers, jail escapees, drive-by shooters … and murderers.

  Kateri corrected herself. Attempted murderers. “I hope the roadblock stopped any nonofficial vehicles. We don’t want to meet someone in a head-on.”

  “Not much traffic up here this spring. Too much runoff. Good thing, considering.”

  Considering the width of the road, considering the speed, considering no civilian wanted to encounter John Senior and John Junior.

  All the things that made the Olympic Peninsula a hiker’s and boater’s paradise also made it an ideal hiding place for two fugitives. For three intensive days, the hunt had pulled in county, city, and state police to patrol the roads, and the Coast Guard to cruise the Pacific Ocean and the coastal inlets. After Pauline Nitz had spotted the black Dodge SRT Hellcat speeding along one of the narrow forest roads and called in the report, the chase was on.

  Now, spitting gravel and raising dust, Kateri and Moen led the Virtue Falls Police Department in hot pursuit.

  Moen’s white knuckles gripped the wheel. “Hold on.” He steered them over a series of washboards that rattled everything in the car and made Kateri moan and press her hand to her side. He glanced at her. “Sorry, Sheriff.”

  “Not your fault,” she said. Four days ago, while Kateri sat in the window of the Oceanview Café celebrating her surprise election to the exalted office of sheriff, the Terrances had sprayed bullets through the windows. Their bullet had skipped off her ribs like a flat stone off the rippled surface of a river, leaving her broken and bloody but not seriously wounded.

  Instead, they’d put two bullets into Virtue Falls’s beloved waitress, busybody, and local wise woman, Rainbow Breezewing, and now she lay in the hospital in a coma, hooked to ventilators and drips. The doctors told Kateri that Rainbow didn’t have a chance. They said Rainbow was dying. Dying …

  “They’re slowing down.” Moen moved closer to the Hellcat’s bumper.

  “Maybe they’re out of gas.” That would be too wonderful—and too lucky, since as far as Kateri could tell, the Terrances had stashed fuel and food in hiding places in the mountains and up and down the coast. “But I don’t believe it. Back off.”

  Moen sighed but did as he was told.

  She leaned forward, watching, trying to figure out what they were up to. “Be care—”

  John Terrance, Junior or Senior, goosed the black Dodge SRT and threw it into a skid that sent the car sideways, passenger side toward the pursuers.

  “Don’t T-bone him!” Kateri shouted.

  Moen slipped it into second gear, eased off the gas, and in the excessively patient tone of the very young for the very old (Kateri was thirty-four), he said, “I know what I’m doing, Sheriff.”

  The SRT’s passenger door flew open. Something tumbled out.

  Someone tumbled out.

  Moen screamed, “Shit son of a bitch!”

  Kateri yelled, “Don’t hit him. Don’t run over him!”

  Moen mashed on his brakes, skidded.

  No way to avoid the collision.

  The left tire caught the body. The front of the car went airborne.

  “The tree!” Moen shouted.

  They rammed it, a giant Douglas fir, square on.

  The air bags exploded.

  Kateri was slammed against the back of her seat. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She was drowning.

  No. Not drowning. Not again.

  She fought the hot white plastic out of her face. The air bag was already deflating … She tore off the sunglasses. White dust covered them, covered the interior of the car. The siren blared. She needed to catch her breath—

  Moen looked in the rearview mirror and yelled, “They can’t stop. They’re going to nail us!”

  “Who?”

  “Cops!”

  Another collision rammed the right rear fender. Metal scraped. Fir needles rained down. The impact pushed the patrol car sideways, wrenched the stitches over Kateri’s ribs. The wound opened, one torn stitch at a time. Icy-hot pain slithered up her nerves. Warm blood trickled down her side.

  Moen opened his door.

  Kateri heard sirens. The roar of an engine. Was another vehicle going to hit them? Or worse—had John Senior escaped?

  Moen unbuckled his seat belt. “You okay, Sheriff?”

  “Yes.” She pressed the pad of her bandage. “Go.”

  He leaped out and ran toward the unmoving body in the middle of the road.

  Had they inadvertently killed a hostage?

  Someone yanked open her door. “Sorry, Sheriff, when you fishtailed, we couldn’t stop.” A moment, then a face thrust into hers. “You okay, Sheriff?”

  Kateri blinked at the star-pattern of pain before her eyes.

  The face belonged to Deputy Sheriff Gunder Bergen. Good guy. Good law officer. Second-in-command. He knew stuff.

  “Who did we hit?” she asked. “Did we kill him?”

  “Moen’s coming.”

  Moen stuck his head in the driver’s door. He leaned a hand on the steering wheel and one on the seat and spoke to her. “The body was John Junior. He was already dead. Like … there was rigor mortis, so a few days ago, right?”

  Bergen inched farther in, leaned a hand on the dashboard. “We’re getting the coroner out here, but yeah. What killed him?”

  Moen switched his attention to Bergen. “Gunshot wound.”

  “Close range? His father shot him?” Bergen asked.

  The two men were talking over the top of her. Which was as annoying as hell. “He shot his son so he could use the body as a diversion?” Kateri clicked her seat belt and let go.

  The buckle smacked Bergen on the thigh.

  He jumped back, bumped his head on the roof, looked surprised as the dog who ate the bumblebee.

  “No. I mean, maybe, but the shot was long range, entered the right side at about the liver. He bled out.” Moen looked hard at Kateri and did a double take. “Sheriff, you don’t look much better than the corpse.”

  Bergen nodded. “Ambulance just pulled up. We’ll send her to the hospital.”

  Kateri said the obvious. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine.”

  “You sound just like my wife right before she collapsed with a ruptured appendix,” Bergen said.

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Did we get John Senior?”

  Moen clearly didn’t want to give this report. “The diversion worked. He gunned it. No one could get past us. He’s gone.”

  ALSO BY CHRISTINA DODD

  Obsession Falls

  Virtue Falls

  Love Never Dies

  The Relatives

  The Listener

  Candle in the Wind

  Treasure of the Sun

  Castles in the Air

  Priceless

  Greatest Lover in All England

  Move Heaven and Earth

  Once a Knight

  Outrageous

  A Knight to Remember

  That Scandalous Evening

  The Runaway Princess

  Someday My Prince

  Rules of Surrender

  Rules of Engagement

  Rules of Attraction

  In My Wildest Dreams

  Lost in Your Arms

  A Well Pleasured Lady

  My Favorite Bride

  Scandalous Again

  Just the Way You Are

  One Kiss from You

  Almost Like Being in Love

  A Well Favored Gentleman

  Some Enchanted Evening

  Close to You

  The Barefoot Princess

  Dangerous Ladies

  Trouble in High Heels

  The Prin
ce Kidnaps a Bride

  Tongue in Chic

  My Fair Temptress

  Scent of Darkness

  Touch of Darkness

  Thigh High

  Into the Shadow

  Into the Flame

  Danger in a Red Dress

  Storm of Visions

  Storm of Shadows

  In Bed with the Duke

  Chains of Ice

  Chains of Fire

  Taken by the Prince

  Secrets at Bella Terra

  Revenge at Bella Terra

  Betrayal

  The Smuggler’s Captive Bride

  Last Night

  Kidnapped

  Wilder

  Wild Texas Rose

  Stone Angel

  Lady in Black

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  New York Times bestselling author CHRISTINA DODD builds worlds filled with suspense and adventure, and creates the most distinctive characters in fiction today. Her fifty-six novels have been translated into twenty-five languages, featured by the Doubleday Book Club, recorded on Books on Tape for the blind, and been called the year’s best by Library Journal. Dodd herself has been a clue in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle. With more than fifteen million copies of her books in print, her legions of fans always know that when they pick up a Christina Dodd book, they’ve found, as Karen Robards writes, “an absolute thrill ride of a book!”

  Enter Christina’s worlds and join her free mailing list for news, exclusive excerpts, and book sales at her Web site, www.christinadodd.com. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six