NIGHT WATCH

by Carla Neggers

  He silently cursed Hank Ryan for getting him into this mess, although he knew if he hadn’t been on leave, he wouldn’t have been free to take the crazy case of Rowena Willow and the banker. His leave of absence was his own choice. What else could a man do who blamed himself for his partner and best friend’s death? After almost a year, it still ate at him, day and night. He would never forgive himself, never be the man he was before Matt’s death.

  He couldn’t let anyone else trust him the way Matt Lee had come to trust him. Matt had trusted him with his life, and Joe had failed him. There were no two ways about it. That was the plain, raw truth.

  Joe heard Rowena awkwardly thank Tyhurst, obviously unaccustomed to getting compliments on her appearance. She needed to get out more, he thought. She’d get used to it fast if she did. “I thought the Meridien would be nice tonight,” she said.

  Tyhurst laughed softly. “No, no, I have a special place all picked out.”

  Joe stiffened, placed a hand on the door latch. He shoved thoughts of Matt and the past deep to the back of his mind. He was ready to act.

  “Where?” Rowena asked.

  Good, Joe thought, but he didn’t for a minute think she’d asked on his account, so he would be able to follow. She was asking because she wanted to know.

  But Eliot Tyhurst said, “On the water—you’ll love it.”

  Argue with him, Joe urged silently. Argue with him the way you do with me. She didn’t say a word, and the front door creaked.

  Joe raced across the dark drawing room to the windows. Standing to one side, he carefully pulled back the drapes and peered out at the quiet, pretty street.

  Tyhurst had one hand on Rowena’s elbow. She shook loose, subtly. He was a tall, lean, handsome bastard. His suit alone would set Joe back a month’s rent with Mario. Tyhurst was educated and sophisticated, just the kind of man for Rowena Willow, if he weren’t also a crook.

  Joe saw her glance back toward the drawing room window. Her smile was forced, her face pale and tight in the harsh streetlight. Joe reminded himself that Tyhurst was a white-collar criminal, not the armed-and-dangerous variety Joe dealt with on the streets. It was unlikely Rowena was in any physical danger.

  Then Tyhurst opened the passenger door, and she got in.

  They weren’t going to the Meridien. She wasn’t driving.

  Joe got out the keys to his truck.

  The hell she was on her own.

  Four

  Rowena sat stiffly beside Eliot Tyhurst. He seemed unchanged, at least outwardly, by his prison experience, but she reminded herself he was a newly released convict. She shouldn’t be fooled by the scent of his expensive cologne, by the sleek cut of his suit, by the neatness of his tawny-colored hair. He seemed as pulled together and sophisticated as he had at his trial, before conviction and prison. Rowena was uncertain why she’d climbed into his car, why she’d let him take control of their destination. Impulse? Curiosity? A way of getting back at Joe Scarlatti for doubting her ability to handle herself? She just didn’t know.

  She hardly spoke until they were on the Golden Gate Bridge. “We’re going to Marin?” she asked.

  “Yes, is that all right? I thought it would be quieter, less chance for either of us to be recognized.”

  “It’s fine. I haven’t been out this way in a long time.”

  Tyhurst nodded as if he understood. Other than completely ignoring her wishes for the evening, whether or not he had done so deliberately, he was behaving like a perfect gentleman. Of course, his smooth manner had contributed to his ability to bilk hundreds of people out of their life savings. They had entrusted their money to him with the same blind faith that had led Rowena into his car. Nothing would happen to her, she told herself. She wasn’t afraid of Eliot Tyhurst. At worst he was a conman. A computer criminal. A slick white-collar operator. It wasn’t as if she were trapped in a car with a sociopathic killer.

  And at the time, she had to admit, climbing into his car with him had seemed preferable to crying out to Joe Scarlatti for help. Already she regretted her plaintive look back toward the house. How had he interpreted it? Surely he had been watching from the drawing room window.

  Well, she thought, now you’re on your own.

  Wasn’t that what she wanted? It certainly was what she was accustomed to. What she’d worked for, struggled for. She had learned at a young age to rely on her own wits and abilities.

  Tyhurst wound the small, comfortable car—nothing as ostentatious as what he probably used to drive— into the picturesque village of Sausalito and parked at a restaurant that offered a spectacular view of San Francisco across the bay. Rowena forgot her uneasiness as she got out of the car. She absorbed the beauty of the skyline glittering in the distance, the freshness of the wind in her face, the freedom of being away from her house and computer.

  Eliot Tyhurst materialized beside her. “Stunning, isn’t it?”

  He was, indeed, a handsome man, she thought. Refined, polished. And there was a sadness in his eyes that intrigued her. Yet she felt no rush of sensual heat the way she did with the police sergeant.

  She smiled. “Yes, it is.”

  “I requested a table by the window. Shall we?”

  He put out his arm, and short of being rude, Rowena had little choice but to take it. She was mildly surprised by his obvious strength. Had he taken up pumping iron in prison? She felt self-conscious. All she needed now was an astute news photographer to jump out of the shrubs and snap their picture.

  The restaurant was intimate and elegant, with a small bar and no more than a dozen tables arranged in front of huge floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the bay. Rowena stood back while Tyhurst took over, suave and at ease with himself and his surroundings. He chatted with the maître d’ without any of the awkwardness she might have expected from a man fresh out of prison.

  He pulled out Rowena’s chair for her at their candlelit table. “Thank you for being here,” he whispered in her ear. “Not everyone would have trusted me.”

  Rowena licked her lips as he sat across from her. “I did encounter opposition from one friend who suggested you could be out for revenge.” She’d managed not to trip over her description of Joe Scarlatti as a friend.

  Tyhurst nodded grimly, the sadness drifting from his eyes to his mouth. In the soft light of the restaurant she saw now that lines had formed at the corners of his eyes and etched into his forehead. The cockiness he’d displayed during his trial was gone. Maybe he had changed. “That friend doesn’t understand what you did for me. I’m not a bad person, Rowena. I admit I resented you for a long time. I wanted desperately to believe you and you alone were responsible for my downfall. I kept telling myself that if you hadn’t interfered, nothing would have happened. If you’d just left me alone, I believed I would have been able to keep my clients’ money safe—that in the end everything would have worked out.”

  “Is that what you still believe?”

  “No!” His eyes widened, appalled. “Oh, no. I finally came to understand that I and I alone was responsible for my own downfall. If I’d been left alone, I only would have destroyed more people. I had an inflated view of my ability to make things work out. I refused for a long time to see the true nature of my activities. Arrogance and overconfidence led me to use my clients’ money for my own gain. It was wrong of me not to fully inform them, even if I never really intended them to suffer.”

  “You broke the law,” Rowena reminded him.

  “That, too.”

  “What do you want now?”

  He looked at her. He seemed weary, filled with regrets. His shoulders sagged. “A fresh start.”

  She opened her mouth to answer but a movement near the bar drew her eye.

  Joe Scarlatti had climbed onto a bar stool. The bartender was sliding him a tall glass of what looked like beer. Rowena felt her heart thump wildly in her chest.

  “Is something wrong?” Tyhurst asked, concerned.

  “What? Oh—oh, I’m sorry. No, nothing
’s wrong. I’m just not used to being out in the evening. It’s nothing you said.”

  But she watched as Scarlatti turned in his seat, his back to the black-wood bar. His eyes sought out hers. Deliberately. Overpoweringly. She had to fight to pull her gaze away.

  Why had he followed her?

  How?

  That look she’d given him. He had interpreted it as helpless and frightened. In need of him.

  Tyhurst was frowning. “Rowena?”

  She made herself smile. He didn’t know about her unofficial protector. She had nothing to worry about.

  Except for Joe Scarlatti himself. She had no idea what he would do. None. His actions were completely unpredictable. She didn’t like things—including people—she couldn’t predict.

  Mercifully their waiter intervened, and she ordered a glass of champagne. “To celebrate,” she said, almost as smoothly as Tyhurst himself. And she smiled at him. “To celebrate new beginnings.”

  Relief and pleasure washed over his face, and instead of opting for a second glass, he asked the waiter to bring a bottle of champagne. Their discussion of what vintages were available gave Rowena the opportunity to pull herself together. Scarlatti was going to make an evening of it. He’d sit there all through dinner, an immense distraction.

  Suddenly she wished she had stayed home and played solitaire on her computer.

  She noticed Eliot’s eyes on her and quickly opened her menu. “Have you been here before?” she asked.

  “No, but I understand the menu’s limited but very good—everything’s fresh.”

  And probably will taste terrific after months of prison food. What did she think she was doing out with an ex-con?

  From the look of him, Scarlatti was wondering the same thing. As if she couldn’t be trusted to be out on her own. She knew he thought she was too reclusive, too naive, too weird.

  Tyhurst’s eyes got a faraway look, and as if he had read her thoughts, he said, “But don’t expect me to be a good judge—what I consider acceptable cuisine after my ordeal would surprise you.”

  If not for his easy manner, his almost self-deprecating tone and his soft, warm eyes, Rowena might have winced. Yet his words seemed without edge or self-pity.

  She snuck a peek at Scarlatti. He had turned back to the bar and was engaged in conversation with the bartender. He looked comfortable there. His casual attire didn’t even seem out of place, despite the more formal dress of those who had come for dinner.

  Did he know more about the Eliot Tyhursts of the world than Rowena did?

  He assumed he did. Tyhurst had been to prison. Ergo, Scarlatti knew more about him.

  Their champagne came, and they ordered—Tyhurst the grilled salmon, Rowena a pasta dish—and toasted to knew beginnings. Finally he said, “Tell me about yourself, Rowena. I know so very little.”

  Awkwardness inundated her, and she looked quickly out the window, noting the lights of boats bobbing on the choppy water. She didn’t know what to say. Although introspective by nature, she was not self-absorbed. And she didn’t know how much she wanted Eliot Tyhurst to know about her. What should she tell him?

  “My work is going very well,” she said. “I recently received a complicated assignment from a New England company that looks interesting—”

  Tyhurst stopped her, shaking his head indulgently. “I want to know about you. What makes Rowena Willow tick?”

  Nothing came to her. Absolutely nothing. Was it because Sergeant Scarlatti was just yards away? Had his nearness left her tongue-tied? “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “It’s not that. Mr. Tyhurst—”

  “Eliot. Please call me Eliot.”

  “Eliot—” she tried to smile when she said it”—to be truthful, I don’t know whether I should trust you or not. I don’t know you well enough. You’re making a new beginning for yourself. I wouldn’t presume to judge you. It’s simply not my place.”

  The hurt look vanished from his handsome face. “That’s a start.”

  A start toward what?

  Toward giving him the second chance he needed, she told herself. Nothing more.

  “I’m afraid,” she went on, “that if I can’t talk about my work, I never know what to say when someone asks about me. My Aunt Adelaide—she raised me—taught me not to talk too much about myself, not just because it’s vain but because Willows aren’t always understood. I—well, I come from an eccentric family.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Eliot said gently. “Suppose you just start with the basics and we’ll go from there.”

  She smiled, relaxing. “I have two cats, and I live alone.”

  “You have an interesting house,” he said, almost as if he were coaching her. He sipped his champagne. She did likewise.

  “Oh, yes. My great-grandfather, Cedric Willow, built it. Some people say I’m a lot like him and...” She couldn’t go on, and it had nothing to do with any reluctance to talk about herself. Her stomach was twisted with tension, and it was all because Scarlatti was there at the bar, watching her again, and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. “Excuse me a moment, won’t you?”

  Tyhurst’s face clouded again, but he said smoothly, “Of course.”

  She rushed toward the ladies’ room, right past Scarlatti, stifling an impulse to mutter something to him.

  The ladies’ room was small and scented with potpourri, papered with tiny roses. Rowena patted her face with cold water, careful not to smear her makeup. Her eyes looked huge, her cheeks flushed, her lips full. She was out of her element. Cops and ex-cons—the closest she usually came to them was on a computer game, or reading about them in the papers, or in a book. She didn’t have dinner with them. She didn’t have them spying on her.

  This wasn’t her life. Not tonight.

  What she had to do, she decided, was get through dinner with Eliot Tyhurst and thus show Joe Scarlatti her judgment was sound and she didn’t need him following her around, and in the morning she’d get her life back.

  It was a good, simple, solid plan.

  Resolved to follow it, she swept out of the ladies’ room.

  And almost landed in Joe Scarlatti’s arms.

  He had the receiver of a wall pay phone in one hand. “You’ve been talking a blue streak,” he said to her, his eyes dark, penetrating, angry. “You telling the guy your life story? Eat up and go home.”

  “He’s trying to get me to talk about myself,” she said, “and I am not ‘talking a blue streak.’”

  “What’s he need to know?”

  “He says everything. Maybe he’s just being courteous.”

  Scarlatti slammed the phone down and swung back around at her. “And maybe he’s a crook.”

  She set her jaw, “You can go home now, Sergeant.”

  “Did I ever say I was working for you?”

  “I’ll have you arrested for harassment.”

  He gave a low laugh.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “that’s why you drove and that’s why you’re at the Meridien. Or don’t you know where the hell you are?”

  “If we were anywhere else,” she said through clenched teeth, “I would slap you across the face.”

  He didn’t back off. “You’ll have your chance.”

  “Go home.”

  She started off, but his hand shot out, grabbing her by the wrist, spinning her around to his chest. If Eliot Tyhurst decided to go to the men’s room, he would see them, and yet Rowena’s head spun with the thrill of the risk she was taking, of the masculine smell of the hard cop whose breath she could feel hot on her face.

  “Let me take you out of here,” he said in a low, tight voice. “Now.”

  “I can’t—”

  “I want to kiss you, Rowena.”

  “I know.”

  “And you? Is it what you want, too?”

  “Yes…”

  It was enough. His mouth came down on he
rs with such fierceness Rowena didn’t have a chance to let out a cry of surprise, only to open her lips against their kiss. She felt herself sinking against him, responding to him as an agonizing desire spread through her.

  He pulled away as fiercely as he’d come to her. His gaze swept over her. Then he straightened. He seemed at the very edge of his self-control. “You’d better hit the ladies’ room again before you head back.”

  And he stalked down the short hall and around the corner into the restaurant.

  This time Rowena did as he advised. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, she knew what he’d meant. Her eyes were dusky with pent-up desire, her lipstick smudged. The taste of him was still on her tongue.

  What if she’d asked him to drive her home?

  They would never have got that far. They’d have had to stop somewhere and make love.

  It was that way between them.

  She quickly redid her lipstick and hoped the restaurant’s dim light would prevent her dinner date from noticing any other evidence of what she’d been doing on her trip to the ladies’ room.

  Passing Joe Scarlatti was no mean feat. His smoky gaze settled on her, told her that he wanted her—that he would have her. She felt its searing heat as she wove through the tables, now crowded with diners, back to Eliot Tyhurst.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, fine.”

  Their dinner arrived, and Rowena, grateful for the distraction, raved perhaps more than was necessary. Tyhurst seemed pleased. But before he could resume asking her about herself, she said, “What do you plan to do now that you’ve served your sentence?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’m thinking over my options.” He had, she recalled, declared himself bankrupt three years ago. “I’ll find something to do. Something positive, I hope.”

  Rowena wanted to believe him. Part of her did believe him. “With your talents,” she said, “you have a whole host of positive opportunities to choose from.”