High over the East River, the sun rose blazing into the morning sky.
T
FLY LIKE AN EAGLE
by
SANDRA MARTON
Copyright 1989, 2012 by Sandra Marton
Prologue
The house was dark and silent, windows and doors locked against intruders.
Against him, Peter Saxon thought grimly.
But there had never been a lock that could stop him and these were no different. He was inside the house in less than a minute, his shadow flowing from room to room like a wolf stalking its prey.
He found her easily enough, Sara the innocent, Sara the treacherous, asleep in her bed, hair spread over her pillow, lashes dark against her cheeks.
His throat tightened.
He had trusted her. He had—he had cared for her.
And she had betrayed him.
She made a soft sound in her sleep. A moan. It reminded him of what had been between them, of her sighs when they’d made love…
Except it hadn’t been love.
It had been a game.
She’d played him for a fool.
And tonight, he would get even.
Slowly, he drew back the duvet that covered her. She wore a nightgown but he knew, God, he knew every curve, every inch of her body.
Like a man in a dream, he brushed his calloused fingers over the smooth column of her throat. Bent to her, brushed his lips over hers.
He slipped his hands into her hair, his fingers tangling in the strands as he drew her head back. He kissed her again, parting her lips with his, and then he groaned and drew back.
He would not let her deceive him again.
"Sara."
She sighed in her sleep.
"Sara." His voice was harsh. So were his hands, clasping her shoulders. "Wake up."
Her lashes fluttered. Her eyes opened. "Peter?" Her voice was soft with sleep, disbelieving. "Peter," she said again, "oh my God, Peter…”
“In the flesh,” he said with a quick, icy smile.
"I can't believe it," she whispered. "How did you—what are you doing here?"
"Did you really think you were safe from me, Sara? You should have known I would find a way to reach you."
"You escaped," she said again, and her eyes lit with alarm. Quickly, she pushed the blankets aside and swung her legs to the floor. "You've got to hurry! They're sure to come here. And when they do…"
"I've been waiting for this moment, Sara. It's what kept me from going insane inside these last few days."
Dark wings of fear fluttered in Sara’s breast. In the eerie, ice-blue wash of moonlight that filled the room, she could see his face clearly. There was a coldness in his eyes she had only seen once before, in the car park outside the motel as the troopers led him away.
"Peter, listen to me. It's not what you think—
"Listen to you? I did listen to you, and look where it got me." His lips drew away from his teeth. "I never had a chance to pay you back for your advice." Again, he smiled that terrible smile. "But I will, Sara. I promise I will… tonight."
CHAPTER ONE
Sara Mitchell looked up from her desk as the outer door to the Brookville police station opened. The pages of the calendar on the wall behind her lifted as the frigid breath of January blew into the already chilly room. Sara shivered dramatically and dipped her head in greeting to the heavy-set man standing in the doorway.
"Good morning, Chief. Welcome to Siberia."
Jim Garrett grunted as he shouldered the door shut. "Don't tell me," he said grumpily. "The heat's gone off again, right?"
Sara sighed as she pushed her chair back and rose from her desk. "No, it's working. I guess the furnace just can't keep up with the cold." Her dark blue eyes lit with amusement as the chief of police began struggling out of his sheepskin jacket.
"You look just like a bear in that thing."
Garrett grinned as he hung the jacket on a rack beside the door. "And it's not police issue. Yeah, I know. But it keeps me warm." He shuddered and rubbed his hands together. "What's the weather forecast for tonight? Do you know?"
Sara nodded. "Yes," she said, reaching for the coffee-pot near her desk. "I caught it on the radio about an hour ago. Believe me, you don't want to hear it."
Her boss groaned softly. "More snow?" he muttered.
She nodded again. "More snow. And freezing temperatures. And sleet. And—"
Garrett shook his head. "Spare me the details, Sara." He smiled gratefully as he reached for the steaming mug of coffee she held out to him. "Thanks," he said, wrapping his meaty hands around it. "The thought of your coffee's the only thing that got me here this morning."
Sara smiled. "I'll bet. I don't suppose Alice's pancakes had a part in it, hmm?"
Her boss grinned. "Well, sure they did. But my wife's only responsible for getting me out the door. My secretary's responsible for getting me through the day." His good-natured smile vanished. "Damn," he said, staring out of the window at the snow falling steadily from a leaden sky. "I wish to hell the Winstead party wasn't tonight."
Sara's eyebrows rose. "Or any other night."
"Yeah,” Garrett said, taking a cautious sip of the hot coffee, "but you can't much blame me, can you? Baby-sitting three million bucks' worth of jewels isn't my idea of police work."
"Five million," Sara said with a teasing smile. "According to today's paper, the Maharanee of Gadjapur's jewels are worth five million dollars. The diamond tiara alone—"
"Spare me the details! I am positively, absolutely overdosed on those damned jewels. I've been listening to Simon Winstead prattle on about them for weeks. Diamond tiaras, emerald necklaces, rubies and pearls and sapphires..." He made a face and held out his empty mug. "Don't look at me like that, Sara. I know one cup's all I'm supposed to have but on a day like this, what does it matter? I'm gonna have an ulcer the size of New York City by the time this damned party's over."
"It's all in a good cause," she said mildly. "The paper says—"
"I know what it says. It says Winstead Jewelers bought the Maharanee of Gadjapur's jewels; it says they're loaning them to the Fine Arts Museum for exhibit; it says that tonight the crème de la crème of New York society will pay a hundred bucks a head to crowd into Winstead's fancy house up on Stone Mountain, so they can stand on each other's toes and gawk at the jewels close up, before the museum gets 'em tomorrow." Jim swallowed a mouthful of coffee. "It's what the paper doesn't say that worries me."
Sara sighed and sat down at her desk. "The house is like a fortress. You said so yourself. An electronic gate. An electronically controlled safe. Private guards. The state police have been notified. And you'll be there—"
"Yeah. Me and Brookville's five other cops." The chief grimaced. "Well, at least the weather's on our side. A thief would have to be out of his mind to try anything when the roads are clogged with snow. Which reminds me--you'd better call Hank and tell him to sand the Stone Mountain road just before this thing's due to start. Half the people coming to this shindig are from the city; New Yorkers don't have the damnedest idea how to drive on ice or snow. Call Tommy, too. Tell him to get his plow out here and—"
"I already have."
"And give Jack Barnes a ring. See if you can talk him into keeping the garage open late. Tell him—"
"I called him a few minutes ago. He says he'll have the tow-truck on stand-by."
Jim Garrett raised his grizzled eyebrows. "You're as good at this job as I am, Sara Mitchell." He smiled as he put down his empty mug. "And you make a mean pot of coffee. What am I going to do if the good people of Brookville find out it's really you who's running this department?"
Sara laughed softly. "We just won't tell them," she said. "Let them go on thinking I'm only your secretary. Which reminds me—I typed up the final guest-list you wanted. It's on your desk."
The chief nodded. "Fine. I'll take a look at it first thing." He started towards his office, then paused and looked at Sara speculatively. "
You sure you don't want to come to this damn fool party tonight? Alice and I would be happy to take you with us."
Sara had a sudden vision of herself in a brightly lit ballroom, surrounded by elegantly gowned women and handsomely dressed men. The thought was as frightening as it was exciting, and she shook her head.
"No, thank you, Jim." She gave him a quick smile. "You can tell me all about it tomorrow."
Her boss sighed as he opened the door to his office. "Right. Well, maybe the bad weather will keep the crowd down." He looked at Sara's raised eyebrows. "You don't think so, hmm?"
She shook her head again. "I wish I could say I did, Chief. But there's been too much publicity about this party—it's turned into the charity event of the season."
"The advertising gimmick of the season, you mean. Our little department's gonna work itself silly providing security so that Winstead can get himself and his store a load of free publicity."
"The ticket proceeds are going to the children's home."
"Yes, yes, that's what Winstead keeps telling me. But that doesn't mean I have to like him or his party. If anything should go wrong—"
Sara nodded, although she was barely listening. Her boss had been making the same speech every day for the past month. She couldn't fault him for worrying—he’d been chief of police in Brookville for as long as she could remember, and he was dedicated to his job. But his department's law-enforcement duties dealt mostly with family disputes, disorderly behavior, and the occasional drunk driver. There’d probably be more than one or two of those to deal with tonight, after the party, but nothing worse. Jim had inspected the Winstead house the week before, and pronounced its electronic security systems a marvel. Even the insurance company...
"OH! I almost forgot. General Casualty called a while ago. They said to tell you they're sending someone to represent them tonight."
The chief frowned. "Terrific. What's the guy going to do? Sell insurance to Winstead's society pals?"
Sara grinned. "He's some kind of security expert. They said he was their consultant when the electronic devices were installed."
"Just what I need. Some four-eyed whiz-kid underfoot tonight. All right, what's the guy's name?"
"I wrote it down right—here it is. Saxon. Peter Saxon. They said he'll be here sometime this afternoon."
Garrett's forehead creased. "Saxon, hmm? Hell, that name sounds familiar..." He sighed and shook his head. "Let me know when he gets here, Sara, but I don't want to see him until I've finished going through that guest-list one last time."
Sara nodded solemnly. "No one gets past me, Chief," she said, and she flashed him a quick smile. "I'll guard the door to the sanctum sanctorum with my life."
Her boss grinned as he closed the door to his private office behind him. Silence settled over the main room, broken only by the hiss of the overworked radiator and the occasional wail of the wind outside.
Sara turned on her computer. She had half a dozen e-mails to get out, mostly reminders to local merchants that they had agreed to a temporary no-parking zone along Main Street. Then there were a couple of bulletins to hang on the wall behind her desk, photos and descriptions of criminals that had been waiting in the fax machine this morning.
She always put them up. This was, after all, a police station, even though Brookville, which lay just north of New York City, was a quiet, peaceful town, home to what she always thought of as ‘regular’ people as well as the dozen or so rich New Yorkers who had built homes here, drawn to Brookville by its quiet charm.
The Winstead party, Sara thought glumly, was going to put that quiet charm to the test.
The famous jeweler's home stood on a mountain overlooking the town, an object of conjecture ever since it had risen above the valley a few months ago. And when Winstead had announced that his world-famous Fifth Avenue shop had bought the Gadjapur's jewels and would show them at his home on this night, an almost palpable excitement had gripped everybody.
People had jockeyed for ways to attend. Except for the Garretts, no one Sara knew had been invited. But there were other ways to get through the door—the caterer had recruited servers and cooks, maids and cleaners. Everyone wanted to see the Winstead house, the fabulous jewels and the "select few" invited to the party.
Sara smiled to herself as she sent out the last e-mail.
The "select few" was, apparently, going to number in the hundreds.
"Everyone who's anyone," Alice Garrett had said happily when she'd tried to convince Sara to come to the party. "You'd have such a wonderful time, Sara. Haven't you ever dreamed of going to a ball?"
Sara had. She had dreamed of lots of things—of leaving the town where she'd spent her life, of doing something more exciting than sitting at an out-of-date computer day after day…
Of meeting a man who would see beyond her quiet exterior to the woman trapped within.
But that had been long ago, before she learned that dreams were just flimsy creations of the imagination that collapsed when you tried to live them.
Sara had been a shy child; her mother, a widow, had talked about her father in such bitter tones, it was almost as if his early death had been a deliberate plot to get back at his young wife and daughter. She had raised Sara with a fierce protectiveness that had locked out the rest of the world.
And she'd been right to do so. Sara had learned that the hard way.
"Go on, make a fool of yourself," Beverly Mitchell had said, when a wistful Sara decided to go to her high-school graduation party.
No one had asked her to go, of course. She'd never had a date in her life—her mother didn’t approve of any of the boys who’d asked her out and after a while, boys had stopped asking.
But the prom was different. Sara was determined not to miss it. Some girls were going alone and Sara had taken her courage in hand and decided she would, too.
The party was years behind her but the agony of standing alone beside the dance-floor, a painful smile pasted to her lips while she waited for someone—anyone—to ask her to dance, was still as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
Sara had only tried to live one dream after that and the memory of where it had led was still almost more than she could bear. The day after high-school graduation, she'd told her mother that she wanted to look for a job and an apartment in New York City. Beverly Mitchell had been appalled.
"Leave me, Sara? Leave your home? Are you crazy?"
Sara had stood up to her mother. She’d sensed that if she didn’t start to live her own life now, she’d lose the chance forever. She had risen early each morning and caught the train into Manhattan, trying not to let her mother's tight-lipped silences erode her determination. And then—then there had been the day she'd come home, all excited about a job offer. She had been in the midst of telling a white-faced Beverly Mitchell about it when her mother had swayed and fallen to the floor.
The doctors had insisted that the terrible, wasting illness that had struck was something that her mother had been incubating for a long time.
"It has nothing to do with you, Sara," old Dr. Harris had said impatiently.
Sara told herself he was right. But it didn't matter. By the time she had nursed her mother through the horrible years preceding her death, all her dreams had faded until they were like the corsage she'd bought herself the day of that long-ago high-school prom—pale and brittle, and only a faint reminder of what might have been.
Until the last few days. For some unknown reason, she had begun to feel a strange restlessness. She found herself awakening during the night, unable to recall the dreams that had made her twist in her narrow bed, knowing only that they left her with a strange feeling of discomfort, of something half-finished or, perhaps, not yet begun...
The outer door banged open and a sudden blast of frigid air swept into the room. Sara looked up in surprise.
A man stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against the leaden sky. He was tall and lithe, dressed in faded jeans, well-worn but obviously expensiv
e boots, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. Flakes of snow glittered in his dark, thick hair and, as she watched, he raised his hand and ran long, tapered fingers through it. He had dark eyes, a straight nose and a wide, firm mouth.
He looked as if he’d stepped out of a movie, Sara thought crazily, a movie about a sexy outlaw.
Somehow, she managed a polite smile. "Good morning. May I—"
He slammed the door shut, cutting her off in mid-sentence. His glance fell on her, then swept past her with insolent ease. She felt the quick rise of color to her cheeks. He’d dismissed her as readily as if she were a piece of furniture.
"Yes," he said, moving towards her, "you may. Tell the chief that I'm here."
His voice was low-pitched, its tone as arrogant as the expression on his face. Sara drew in her breath.
"Do you have an appointment?" she asked coolly.
A brilliant question, Sara. Of course he hasn't; you make all the appointments here. What in heaven's name is wrong with you? And why—why does this man look so familiar?
A cool smile curved across his lips. "I don't need one," he said carelessly. "Just tell him—"
Sara's eyes narrowed. "I hate to disappoint you, but you do, indeed, need an appointment. Chief Garrett is very busy. He—"
The man laughed. His teeth, Sara noticed, were very white against his tanned skin.
"Look, sweetheart—"
"My name is Miss Mitchell," Sara said, even more coldly. "I'm the chief's secretary."
His eyes lit with amusement. "And a formidable one you are, Miss Mitchell," he said, as his gaze moved slowly over her.
For an instant, Sara saw herself as she knew he must—the pale hair neatly clasped at the nape of her neck, the shapeless wool sweater, the tweed skirt. She felt the heat rushing to her cheeks again, and anger flooded through her.
"What is it you want, Mr....?"
The man grinned. "Do you always guard your boss's door with such determination, Miss Mitchell?"
Sara's blush deepened. I'll guard your door with my life, she'd told Jim. Why was it that, when she had said the words, they had sounded like a joke, but when this... this stranger said something similar, it sounded almost pathetic?
Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set Page 33