Читать книгу Royal Heir - Alice Sharpe - Страница 6

March 2, north of Seattle, Washington

The call came as he prepared to leave the office. He had to scramble to get the phone himself as his secretary had left for the day and the damn thing was hidden under a sheet of architectural drawings.

The caller’s voice caught him at once, though, her anxiety as loud and clear as her voice was furtive.

“I’ve got compromising photos of your wife and my husband. He’ll kill me if he finds out I hired a private detective to follow him. I’m too scared to use the pictures myself, but the bastard deserves to be humiliated. The pictures are yours if you want them…just be careful. He’s chief of police…”

She’d gone on to name a waterside restaurant across the river. She’d get her sister to drive her there. “Meet me in one hour…”

By now he was living on his boat, a thirty-two-foot cruiser with two powerful gasoline engines, and his mind raced as he plotted a course across the river. Her last murmured, “Make sure you aren’t followed,” trailed him all the way down to the marina as he threw cautious glances in the rearview mirror.

He’d known his wife was seeing someone but the chief of police? Who was the chief of police, anyway?

The big engines started at once and he cast off the dock lines without fanfare, replacing his tailored suit jacket with a heavy wool coat as April was cold this far north. He’d crossed the river many, many times, often after sundown. He kept his gaze on the buoys and distant landmarks. He knew the channel, was comfortable with the strong currents. He was an experienced, methodical boater.

But in his mind, the caller’s frantic voice tangled with the memory of his wife’s. She’d promised to ruin him, to take his child…

Not if he could help it.

Revealing, embarrassing pictures might be enough to get her to back down…it was a chance worth taking.

He heard the other vessel before he saw it, a distant buzz that grew louder even though no lights shone on the water. He turned off his own cockpit light, thinking it might be robbing him of night vision, and then he saw it, a black hull, low freeboard, racing toward him like a SCUD missile.

He blinked his running lights back on and flipped the switches of every other light he could reach until his yacht shone like a Christmas tree. Still the smaller boat raced toward him. Mesmerized, it took him too long to admit he was the target, that if he didn’t do something right now he was going to be blown out of the water.

Climbing up on the stern gunwale, he dove into the black river, taking deep, strong pulls with his arms to move as far away from his own propeller and the impending explosion as possible. The coat weighed him down, slowed him down and he slipped his arms free as he surfaced. At that moment, the two vessels collided, filling the night air with fire and smoke.

Debris rained down, falling close by, scorching his face and hair, sending him back below the surface to the quiet depths of water too cold to keep a man alive for long.