Читать книгу Stalker in the Shadows - Camy Tang - Страница 11

THREE

The O’Neills stayed for dinner, although the conversation and atmosphere were a bit subdued after the events of the afternoon. Evita, the Grants’ housekeeper and cook, whipped up a cheese soufflé which was apparently the Grant sisters’ favorite dish, but it left Shaun feeling a bit unfulfilled. He didn’t say anything since his father enjoyed the airy concoction.

After dinner, Patrick O’Neill and Augustus Grant headed into the library for further discussions about the spa hotel, and Monica caught Shaun’s eye. She motioned toward the kitchen with her head.

Evita had gone home right after serving the dessert, a rich chocolate cake. Monica went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of tortillas. “Chicken quesadilla?” she asked him.

“Are you still hungry?”

“No, but I know you are.”

Shaun’s cheeks burned. “Uh… Thanks.”

She turned on the heat under a cast-iron skillet on the stove. “So are you still going to apply to the Sonoma Police Department?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that, then decided to be honest. “Not yet.” Then he fired back at her, “Are you going to abandon your plans for the clinic?”

She hesitated before dropping a thin stream of oil on the cast-iron skillet, and her chin firmed. “No.”

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was safer for her if she stopped her plans so that the stalker wouldn’t hurt her. On the other hand, her continuing her plans for the clinic would keep the stalker in Sonoma, would keep him near her. Would enable Shaun to catch the psycho.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I’ve thought it over.” She lay a tortilla on the hot skillet. “I won’t back down and be a victim. I won’t let him think he can make some threats and people will obey him. This clinic is important.”

“How does your family feel about that?”

“They’re not happy. Dad’s still trying to get me to stop.” She shredded some cooked chicken breast onto the tortilla, then topped it with cheese and another tortilla.

“It’s dangerous.” He didn’t want her putting herself in danger and he couldn’t get himself to encourage her to make herself a target just so he could catch the stalker.

She gave him a significant glance. “That’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“Since you haven’t applied to the Sonoma PD yet, how about working for me as a bodyguard?”

Shaun stared hard at her. “You want me?”

“You can’t do it?”

“Of course I can do it.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He hesitated, then finally said, “Following you day after day will take me away from my investigation into the stalker.”

“I figured you’d be doing your own investigation,” she said.

Shaun didn’t admit that another problem would be being near Monica day after day. She made him feel both comfortable to be around her, bantering like this, and yet on edge because he was so attracted to her. He didn’t want that attraction distracting him. He didn’t want any romance in his life, he didn’t want any women in his life.

Monica flipped the quesadilla with a spatula, and it sizzled on the skillet. “Did you consider that since I’m the target, you being with me would draw the stalker out?”

“You being a target isn’t something to take lightly.”

“I’m not, but I also trust you to be able to protect me.”

Her words kicked him in the gut, and he turned away from her to look out the kitchen window at the side yard.

Why did she trust him when he didn’t even trust himself? He had failed to protect his sister. He’d failed the people who died at the coyote’s hands in that accident down at the border—no, he couldn’t think about it. If he thought about it, the guilt would burn in his stomach and he’d see their faces in front of his eyes. “I can’t protect you,” he said.

Her brow wrinkled. “Why not? You’re a cop.”

“I’m—I was border patrol. I’m not anything right now.” He couldn’t take on a job of protecting someone.

Monica’s shoulders settled, but then she straightened. “Well, I guess I’ll find someone else to help me catch him.”

“What do you mean, catch him?” Shaun took a step closer.

“I don’t intend to sit around and wait for him to hurt me.” She slid the crispy quesadilla onto a plate. “I’m the perfect bait. If not you, then I’ll just find someone else to keep me safe.”

“How do you know you can trust me? What if I was a terrible cop?”

She smiled at him. “A terrible cop? You? You’re a born protector—it practically oozes out of you. It’s in the way you stand, the way you walk, the things you say. It probably runs in your family, since you were all so overprotective of Clare.”

He felt like she’d ripped away a shield. She had sharper insight into him than anyone else he’d known.

She continued, “I think you and I could find this stalker a lot faster than the overworked Sonoma PD could. We’ve both got a lot at stake—my clinic, your sister’s murder.” She paused, then added, “I’m not going to be a victim.”

There was that word again. He’d quit the border patrol because he’d seen too many victims he couldn’t save.

But Shaun couldn’t stand by and let Monica be bait. He understood how she didn’t want to be a doormat and give in to this creep, and if she was going to try to stop the stalker, he wanted to help her. “Okay, I’ll be your bodyguard.”

She smiled and held out her hand. “Great.”

He shook her hand, but the point of contact between their palms made a strange sort of energized languor move up his arm, then his shoulder, then through his torso. He felt relaxed and yet tense at the same time. He abruptly dropped her hand when he realized he’d held it for too long.

Monica blinked rapidly, as if waking up from a dream, then handed him the quesadilla. “You should eat this before it gets too cold.”

She cut herself another small slice of chocolate cake before joining him at the kitchen breakfast table under the window.

“Let’s talk about what we’re going to do,” she said. “My business proposal is almost completed and my accountant is finalizing the clinic’s financial plan.” She glanced out the window into the dark and then suddenly froze.

His skin prickled. “What is it?”

Her face had become pasty. “I…I don’t know. I thought I saw something move.”

He whipped his hand out and yanked the cord to drop the blinds. He twisted the plastic rod to lever the slats closed, then shot out of his chair and snapped the lights off.

Her face looked ghostly in the dark. He stood close behind her and peered out through the slit where the blinds didn’t quite cover the edge of the window.

He had to wait for his eyes to adjust. He saw low azalea bushes. Was one bush a bit oddly shaped or was it just his imagination?

And then the bush moved.

He hesitated a split second that seemed like forever. He hadn’t chased the stalker earlier because he hadn’t been sure if the man had a gun or not. He still didn’t know.

But the frustration of not being able to capture his sister’s killer burned in Shaun’s gut. The stalker was so close—Shaun wasn’t going to let this person get away again.

“Stay here,” he ordered Monica, and he raced for the sliding glass door at the other end of the kitchen that opened into the backyard.

He didn’t bother being quiet—he flicked the latch open and hauled the door open, leaping out onto the dark back porch and jumping down the steps before turning and heading for the side of the house.

He caught a flicker of movement to the left of his head and he flinched. Something hard and heavy struck him in the cheekbone and jaw.

He didn’t remember falling to the ground. Pain spidered out from his cheekbone, aching and throbbing through his jaw while lights flashed in and out of his vision.

Then a voice, low and male, whispered, “You’ll never catch me.”

He heard a rustle like a leather jacket, and then a shadow passed before his eyes. He tried to make his hands grope for the man as he walked away, but his limbs weren’t responding. The side gate creaked on its hinges as the stalker calmly walked away.

“Shaun!” Monica’s voice was worried.

He rolled to the side, but it made the pain in his head pool to his right side and throb behind his eyes. His hands gripped the earth under him, his nails digging into the dirt. His arms were shaking but he managed to push and sit up. The world tilted and then he saw Monica’s anxious face, blurry and beautiful.

“I told you to stay in the house,” he growled.

“The house alarm is on,” she said. “When you opened the door, I had to turn off the alarm before it started blaring. Then I heard something thud. Looks like it was your face.”

“He could have still been here,” Shaun said.

“I heard the gate close, so I knew he wasn’t here,” Monica said impatiently, trying to get a closer look at Shaun’s face. “Can you see okay? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Three.” He tried to haul himself to his feet, but the pain in his head jumped a magnitude and he had to pause a moment on his knees, breathing hard, before the throbbing slowly lessened.

“Let’s get you inside.” Monica took his arm and helped him stagger into the kitchen.

He sat heavily in a chair at the table and let the room spin around him. When Monica turned on the lights, he squinted and covered his eyes with his hand.

“Sorry,” she said, “but I need light to look at your face.” She pulled his hand away and he felt her soft, cool fingers gently stroking his brow, his cheek.

“You’ll have a giant bruise,” she said, “but I think you’ll be okay. No stitches, anyway.”

Just a giant headache.

Her amber eyes clouded to mahogany. “Did you see anything?”

“Nothing. I ran out and he hit me.”

“I saw a shovel lying near you.”

“He stopped to speak to me.” The words came out hard through his teeth as he said, “‘You’ll never catch me.’ That’s what he said.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s arrogant of him.”

“It means he’s more likely to make a mistake. This isn’t the first time he’s done this.”

“This is the third time he’s come after me in two days.” Monica got a towel and wet it with cold water. “How often did your sister get letters from him?”

“Every day or every other day.”

“I don’t see a guy like this waiting too long to start harassing me, do you?”

“No.”

“So that means I can pinpoint when I might have met him.”

“What do you mean?” Shaun winced as she pressed the towel to his throbbing cheek.

“The only people I’ve talked to about my free children’s clinic are my family, whom I’ve told not to say anything, the potential investors, my hospital director friend who’s helping me draft the business plan and the accountant I’ve hired. I’m thinking the stalker is one of the potential investors I talked to in the past few weeks.”

“Do you remember who you’ve talked to?”

“I attended three large parties in the past two weeks to meet people and talk about the clinic. Before those parties, the last investor I talked to was over two months ago. So I think the stalker could be someone I spoke to at any of those three parties.”

“What parties?”

“The Zoe International charity banquet last week—your dad was there. The annual Tosca bottle unveiling banquet a few days before that, and then two weeks ago, the Sonoma Businessmen’s Association dinner.”

“You went to all those?”

“I went in Dad’s place. He doesn’t like going to those things, but I use them as opportunities to keep up relationships with other businesses and the Joy Luck Life Spa, and recently I’ve been sending out feelers for investors for my clinic.”

“So your stalker might be someone you met at one of those events,” Shaun said. He reached up to grab her hand and stop her ministrations to his face. Her skin felt silky under his rough fingers, and he didn’t immediately let go, instead rubbing his thumb over a smooth knuckle.

What was he doing? He didn’t need complications in his life. He dropped her hand and cleared his throat. “Do you think you can come up with a list of people you spoke to about the clinic?”

She was staring at her hand. She dropped the towel onto the kitchen table. “I think so.”

“You can leave off anyone who already knew about your clinic before two weeks ago. I don’t think this guy would have waited longer than two weeks to start following you.”

“Did you ever investigate how he might have met your sister?”

“I tried, but none of us knew when she’d started receiving the letters, and since I’d been down in San Diego at the time, it was hard to find out where she’d gone and where she could have met her stalker.”

“There’s a chance he’d try to meet me face-to-face again, without me knowing he’s my stalker. Do you think that’s something he’d enjoy doing?”

“Definitely.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her face, which had a calculating look. “What are you planning?”

“For the past several weeks, I’d been planning to give a party for about forty people. Some of them are already investors for the clinic, but some need a little more information before they commit.”

“So you’re thinking you’ll go through with planning the party? And you can invite some of the people you might have met in the past two weeks.”

“I can’t invite everyone I talked to, but I can certainly invite many of them.”

“If the stalker keeps coming after you, we can figure out more clues about him and narrow down who he might be. I remember he wore a leather jacket or leather coat tonight. I could hear the leather rustling.”

“That’s a start.”

“Where do you need to go this next week?” He may as well figure out a plan for protecting her even with her schedule.

“I have—” she began, but they were interrupted when his father entered the kitchen.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Shaun…” His voice trailed away at the sight of him. “What happened to your face?”

“The stalker was here tonight,” Monica said quickly. “He attacked Shaun.”

“What?” Augustus Grant wheeled into the kitchen. His face was drawn with both worry and anger.

“We were just about to call Detective Carter,” Monica said, giving Shaun a meaningful look.

He interpreted it easily—Let’s talk later.

Yes, and in the meantime, he’d plan what he needed to do to keep her safe. Maybe he’d find this stalker and somehow find redemption for how he’d failed his only sister.

“Is this absolutely necessary?” Monica followed Shaun into the gym at the Rubart Towers Hotel in Sonoma, a hotel that used to belong to Shaun’s father before he sold it to the Rubart hotel conglomerate.

“I would think you’d want to learn some self-defense moves.” Shaun led her into a general purpose room at the back of the workout room, a large area with mirrors all around and soft mats on the floor.

“I took a self-defense class.” She removed her sweatshirt, leaving her only in a T-shirt and workout capris that made her shiver in the air-conditioning.

“I’m going to teach you some jiujitsu moves that will help you in close quarters.”

“Aren’t you supposed to keep me from getting into that situation in the first place?”

She meant it as a joke, but to her surprise, he turned away from her. In the reflection from the mirrors, his expression was almost anguished.

Then he turned back to her and he was back to normal, his face serious and intense. “Let’s get started.”

He taught her a few types of arm bars, which she felt comfortable with since they didn’t require extraordinary strength or quickness on her part. Then he moved to a guillotine hold, and she felt guilty causing him pain as she practiced the move over and over.

But more than the moves themselves, Shaun showed her that she wasn’t a weakling. He gave her confidence in her ability to fight someone rather than just giving in. If the stalker attacked her, she wouldn’t feel quite so vulnerable.

“This last move is a triangle choke hold,” Shaun said. He explained the jiujitsu move, which involved her performing a choke hold with a triangle formed with her legs. “Now lay on your back and visualize to yourself that I’m the stalker, I’m trying to hurt you.”

When she did, he angled himself on his hands and knees on top of her, and a rush of feeling passed through her to see his blue eyes so close, staring down at her.

A long moment passed where he simply looked at her. She couldn’t look away, she was drowning in that cerulean sea.

She couldn’t get herself to visualize the stalker, because this was so obviously Shaun. His strength and capability made her feel protected and secure, even in this vulnerable position on the ground. He gave off the aura of protectiveness that made her believe he would never hurt her, he would never abandon her, he’d do anything to keep her safe.

Something about his blue gaze became less businesslike and more intense. Her breathing quickened, and she could smell his musk, the scent of a pine forest after the rain. His eyes flickered to her mouth, staring for a long moment, and then he lowered his head and kissed her.

His lips were softer than she would have expected from such a tough, masculine guy. His hand stroked the hair wisping out from her temple, his touch gentle. He kissed her with a kind of wonder and carefulness, as if he were holding a butterfly in his cupped hands. She felt cherished and honored.

Reason filtered through her mind slowly, but when it made itself known, she remembered that she couldn’t be doing this. Shaun was a lawman. He’d always be in careers where he could protect people, putting himself in harm’s way to save them, like he was doing with her.

She couldn’t bear loving a man and sending him out to danger every single day, wondering if today was the day he wouldn’t come home. She’d seen those women in the Emergency Room, she’d comforted them and been devastated by just the thought of their pain. She had vowed she wouldn’t be one of them.

She planted her feet and thrust up hard with her entire torso, bucking him off her so she could roll away and jump to her feet. He had tumbled to his side with a look of surprise on his face, but now he took his time standing up, and he didn’t look at her.

She had a hard time looking at him, too, although she tried to adopt a businesslike demeanor. “Not a triangle choke hold, but it’ll get me away from the stalker so I can run for help.”

“That’s good,” he said gruffly. He turned his back to her and walked to the corner of the room, where a basket of clean towels stood. He tossed one to her.

“Thanks.” She dabbed at the sweat on her neck.

When he turned back to her, he was again stalwart and confident, but not as aggressive in his stance as he usually was. A haunted look floated in the back of his eyes, something that went deep. What was it? Did it have to do with his sister? No, he’d had that look even before finding out about the stalker and telling her about his sister. He hadn’t had that look when she’d met him ten years ago, but it had been clouding his eyes ever since he had returned to Sonoma after quitting the border patrol. Did that have something to do with it? It made her want to help him heal from whatever had gripped his heart.

No. She couldn’t get involved with him.

She gave him a false smile. “We’re good, right?”

“What?”

“The k-kiss—” she had a hard time saying the word “—wasn’t a big deal. Just the heat of the moment.”

He seemed startled at first, then a look like relief relaxed his brow line. “Yeah. We’re good.”

The relief should have comforted her, but perversely, it created a buzz of irritation in her head. “Good.” She turned away from him and headed out of the room.

As she picked up her purse from the gym locker, her cell phone rang. She answered it as she exited the women’s locker room to meet Shaun near the gym entrance. “Hello?”

“Hi, Monica, it’s Phillip Bromley. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“Not at all. I’m at the gym at the Rubart Hotel.”

“One of Patrick O’Neill’s hotels, right? Before he sold it to the Rubart hotel conglomerate?”

“Yes, have you been here?”

“Last year. It’s fantastic. Anyway, I’m calling to ask if we can reschedule our meeting.”

“Sure.” They decided on lunch the next day at Lorianne’s Café again.

As they were talking, she reached the gym entrance, and when Shaun saw she was on the phone, he moved a short distance away so she could finish her conversation. When she hung up, he asked, “You have a lunch appointment tomorrow?”

“At Lorianne’s Café. You’ll come with me?”

“Yes. Who are you meeting?”

She hesitated before admitting, “Phillip Bromley.”

His brow flattened. “I warned you to stay away from him.”

“Why? What do you have against him?”

“It’s complicated.”

“So you want me to offend a potential investor for the clinic, and the only reason you’re giving is, ‘because I say so?’ That’s not going to cut it.”

He glanced around. The main area of the hotel gym housed the treadmills and elliptical exercise machines, and they were almost all filled with people exercising since it was close to noon. He pulled her a little to the side.

He stared at the floor for a moment, his expression fierce. Then he said, “I think Phillip Bromley is the stalker.”