Buch lesen: «Stalker in the Shadows»

ONE

Someone was watching her.

Monica Grant glanced around the bustling central plaza in downtown Sonoma, California, and rubbed the back of her neck, but the ugly, prickly feeling wouldn’t go away. She remembered the well-worn phrase from her Nancy Drew books—“the hair stood up on the back of her neck”—but she’d never realized how true it was. Until now.

She couldn’t actually see anyone looking at her—there were tourists strolling around Sonoma City Hall and the fountain, cars driving slowly around the square, shoppers stepping in and out of the quaint shops. A few locals across the street noticed her looking at them and waved hello. She waved back with a smile, recognizing them as staff from a nearby restaurant. The Grant family’s successful day spa, Joy Luck Life, had helped bring even more activity to the small tourist town, and all of her family was acquainted with most of the local business owners and staff.

But as she continued walking along the line of shops and historical buildings, the creepy feeling crawled up her shoulder blades. She whirled around suddenly, but didn’t catch anyone in the act of staring at her, or ducking into a shop doorway to escape her notice.

It had been a silly thought, anyway. She wasn’t a spy. She was probably imagining things.

She turned to enter Lorianne’s Café, a popular new restaurant owned by one of her high school classmates, which served California fusion cuisine made exclusively with local produce. She thought the feeling of being watched would go away as soon as she entered the building, but an uncomfortable shaft of prickling shot down her spine. She turned to look out the restaurant’s glass front doors, toward the green park area around Sonoma City Hall, but couldn’t see anyone except a few tourists walking by.

“Monica Grant, are you stalking me?”

The voice, still betraying the slight Irish lilt of his homeland, made her turn. “Mr. O’Neill! I should say, you’re stalking me.”

Patrick O’Neill’s light blue eyes creased deeply at the corners. “Seeing you at the Zoe International charity banquet last week wasn’t enough. I had to get in more of your lovely company.” He enfolded her in a hug that made her cheek rasp against his usual Hawaiian-print, button-down shirt. Quite a contrast to the tuxedo he’d worn at the annual dinner that Zoe International, an anti-human-slavery organization, had hosted to thank its donors.

“Are you here in Sonoma just for the day?” Monica asked. “Or are you staying overnight before you head back down to Marin?”

“I’m here for a few days, spending time with my new grandson.”

“That’s right, I heard about the new baby yesterday from Aunt Becca.” At first Monica had been shocked because she’d thought the new baby was Shaun’s son, but quickly realized her mistake—it was Brady’s son, Shaun’s nephew. She hoped Aunt Becca hadn’t noticed her initial stunned reaction.

“What have you been up to in the seven whole days since I’ve seen you?” He tugged at a silver lock of hair on his wide forehead. It brought back an image of Shaun doing the same gesture.

She forced her mind away from his eldest son. “I’m still taking care of Dad since he had his stroke.”

“He’s doing better? Last week, we were interrupted before I could ask you about him.”

“He still needs a live-in nurse, but I’m also taking him to physical therapy several times a week, and he’s gaining mobility back. He doesn’t need me quite as much, which is good, because my sister Naomi announced her engagement six weeks ago. She’s planning her wedding, so sometimes when she has to take off work at the spa, I fill in as manager for her.”

“Will she still be manager when she marries?”

“No, she’s going to start her own private massage therapy business in the city, closer to her future husband’s office. We’re trying to hire someone to take over when she leaves, but until then…” She had to stifle a small sigh. Because she still took care of her dad, filling in for Naomi stole precious free time that she didn’t have. The spa needed to hire someone soon.

“From nurse to manager.” His blue eyes were more piercing than his son’s. “It doesn’t sit with you well?”

His insight startled her. “I loved being an Emergency Room nurse,” she said, “but I have to admit I don’t regret quitting my job at Good Samaritan Hospital when Dad needed me. What I’d really like to do is run a free children’s clinic for Sonoma and Napa counties.”

Unlike Monica’s father, Mr. O’Neill didn’t roll his eyes at her. Instead, he nodded gravely. “Then you should do it, my girl. You only have one life to love.”

His phrasing touched her on a deeper level, stirred up things she had left collecting on the bottom. She shifted uncomfortably, then changed gears, giving him a teasing look. “So who are you meeting for lunch? Yet another struggling hotel owner whose hotel you’re going to buy and then turn into a raging success?”

“No, I’m just here having lunch with my son.” He gestured behind him.

Brady, his second eldest son, lived only a few miles from Sonoma in Geyserville. Monica’s gaze flickered over Mr. O’Neill’s shoulder, past the hostess waiting patiently behind the desk, toward the restaurant’s bar…and she froze.

Shaun O’Neill stared right back at her. Her breath stopped in her throat and seemed to hum there. She recognized the strange sensation, something she had only felt twice before in her life—at her first sight of a cherry red Lamborghini, and the very first time she’d met Shaun O’Neill, ten years ago at a Zoe International banquet.

Her heart started racing as he rose from his seat at the bar and walked toward them. His expression was unfathomable. Was he happy to see her? Indifferent? Something about the way he held his eyes made her think he felt the same rush of intensity she did.

No, she had to find a way to smother the electricity zinging through her veins. Shaun was a cop, and she would never, ever date anyone in law enforcement. In the E.R., she had seen what that profession did to the families left behind, had tried to heal the unhealable pain of losing a fine man to a criminal’s gunshot. She knew her heart wouldn’t be able to handle it.

She also knew she wouldn’t be able to handle him.

As he approached, his scent wrapped around her—a thread of well-tooled leather, a hint of pine, a deep note of musk—a combination uniquely Shaun’s. “Hi, Shaun.” She gave a polite smile that hopefully masked the way he made her feel so…alive.

“Hi, Monica.” The deep voice had a slight gravelly edge to it, promising danger and excitement. “It’s been a long time.”

“I didn’t know you were back in Sonoma.”

“I quit the border patrol,” he said softly.

“What?” Surprised, she looked up at him and immediately drowned in the cerulean blue sea of his straightforward gaze. Shaun had always been aggressive with his stance, with his looks—and he was that way now, standing a little too close to her, staring a little too intently. “I…” She cleared her throat. “I thought you loved the border patrol. The last time we met, you were so enthusiastic about it.”

“I’m back to spend time with my family. I’m thinking of applying for the Sonoma Police Department.”

“Not as exciting as the border patrol,” she remarked, looking for his reaction.

He shrugged.

How strange. He still had that bad-boy air about him, but there was something that reminded her of a wounded dog. No, a wolf. A wounded wolf. She wanted to reach out to him, to help him if she could.

Wounded wolves still bite. She had to remind herself that he wasn’t her type. She had to stop now so she wouldn’t go any deeper. She wouldn’t submit herself to the kind of pain she’d seen in the Emergency Room. She shook off the memory of a cop’s widow’s shaking shoulders and forced her mind back to the present.

Then something invisible raking along her spine made her jerk. She turned to look out again through the glass of the restaurant doors but only saw the same view of Sonoma City Hall, made of local quarried stone that looked more flint-gray today under the overcast skies. Different tourists from the last time she’d looked walked around the grounds now.

She was being paranoid. She had to get a hold of herself.

She turned back to Mr. O’Neill. “The last time we talked, you mentioned how you were going to sell the Fontana Hotel in Marin and do consulting work rather than buy another hotel. Do you know when that’s going to happen?”

Mr. O’Neill smiled at her. “Does your question have anything to do with the rumors I heard that your father’s going to expand the spa and add a hotel?”

Monica grinned. “Guilty as charged. I have a lunch appointment in a few minutes, but do you have time today to talk about possibly consulting for him?”

He gave her a sharp look. “Have you talked to Augustus about this yet?”

Heat like a sunburn crept up her neck. “Uh…Dad mentioned yesterday how he needed help now that he’s actually decided to go forward with the hotel.”

Mr. O’Neill smiled. “I do have time this afternoon.” He turned to Shaun. “Did you want to come with me or pick me up later?”

“I’ll come with you.” His voice was light, but his blue eyes flickered to Monica.

She had to remind herself that she wanted to speak with his father, not with him. “Great. Thanks, Mr. O’Neill. Three o’clock at our house?”

“Sounds good. Who are you meeting for lunch, by the way?”

“It’s a potential investor for my free children’s clinic. Phillip Bromley.”

Shaun’s jaw suddenly tightened and his eyes became shards of ice. “The son of the CEO of Lowther Station Bank in San Francisco?”

She nodded. “His brother’s a medical missionary in Kenya. I’ve known Phillip for a few months, but last week at the Zoe banquet, he expressed interest in my clinic and mentioned that his brother might be willing to donate his time to the clinic when he returns to the States this summer.”

But Shaun was shaking his head. “You should stay away from Bromley.”

“Shaun…” Mr. O’Neill said gently.

“Why?” Monica said. “Phillip has always been perfectly civil to me.” Whereas Shaun’s wildness seemed to exude from him, only barely restrained by his conservative white cotton shirt and jeans.

There was also anger underlying that wildness as he answered, “It’s just a mask. It’s not the real him.”

A mask? Monica hadn’t seen that at all, and she prided herself on being able to read people rather well. She didn’t particularly like Phillip—there was something about his manner that seemed too self-focused and self-serving—but she hadn’t detected anything deceptive during the times they spoke to each other.

“He’s dangerous,” Shaun growled. “You need to stay away from him.”

Shaun’s commanding tone grated down her spine, and she lifted her chin to glare at his set face. “How is he dangerous?”

Shaun’s lips tightened briefly. “He just is. You don’t know him.”

“And you do?”

“Better than you do.”

“Children,” Mr. O’Neill said in a long-suffering voice, “play nice.”

Monica backed down. Mr. O’Neill was right, she was being childish. The same fiery temper that got her into arguments with her dad was now picking fights with a man who only wanted to…what? Warn her? Protect her? She wasn’t used to men like Shaun, whose life work was protecting people. Her ex-boyfriends had mostly been artists and playboys, who all seemed “soft” now compared with Shaun’s solid presence.

She had to admit that his presence made her feel less uneasy, less vulnerable to the eyes that might—or might not—be watching her. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing outside again, but saw no one lurking or looking at her.

At that moment, her cell phone rang, and the caller ID said it was Phillip.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Mr. O’Neill said quickly, giving her a peck on the cheek before letting the hovering hostess seat him and Shaun at a table.

She answered the call. “Hi, Phillip.” Were his ears burning because they’d been talking about him?

“Hi, Monica. I’m sorry, but there’s an overturned construction truck here on highway 121. I’ll be about twenty minutes late.”

“No problem. I’ll be waiting.”

She had the hostess seat her at a table, but stopped when she saw it was right in the center of the large windows at the front of the restaurant. She glanced out at the tourists and pedestrians on the street. No one was even looking in her direction, but she felt as if a cold hand gripped her around the throat.

“Could I get a table near the back?” she asked, and the hostess nodded and seated her at a small table at the back of the restaurant.

However, it was close to where Shaun and his father were seated. She didn’t want to request another change so she sat, but it was hard for her to keep her head averted with Shaun only a few feet away to her right.

At least the horrible feeling of being watched was gone. She spent a few minutes checking her email on her phone, but then the restaurant’s owner and chef, Lorianne, approached her table with a long white florist’s box and a huge grin on her face. “Hey, Monica. I happened to be up front just now when this was delivered for you.” Excitement radiated from her bright eyes as she sat down across from her. “Who’s it from? You didn’t mention a new boyfriend when I talked to you a couple weeks ago.”

“I still don’t have a boyfriend. Your guess is as good as mine.” Monica didn’t look at Shaun, but could sense him glancing at her at Lorianne’s words. Really, what business was it of his? She wished she weren’t so close to their table.

“Ooh, a secret admirer,” Lorianne said. “Well, as owner of this fine establishment, I am entitled to view any and all flowers delivered.” She winked at Monica.

A part of her was flattered by the gift. Who wouldn’t be? But another part of her was wary. Who gave flowers to a woman through a delivery and not personally? Then it occurred to her that maybe Phillip had them delivered in advance of their meeting. He had seemed a bit friendly last week at the Zoe banquet, but she’d been careful not to encourage anything more than a business relationship. She hoped he didn’t misinterpret her body language.

Well, she knew who it wasn’t from. She tried to angle her body away from Shaun as she lifted the lid. An odd cigarette smell made her eyes burn, and she blinked away sudden tears.

In the box, nestled among white tissue paper, lay a huge dead snake.

Monica gasped and dropped the box onto the table, making the silverware rattle.

“Oh, my gosh.” Lorianne’s eyes were huge.

The ugliness of the gift seemed to stifle her, and Monica fought to breathe. Who would send her something so hateful, so horrible?

“I’m so sorry,” Lorianne said. “If I’d known…”

“Monica, are you all right?”

Shaun’s voice cut through the shocked fog of her brain, and she managed to swallow, her eyes still riveted to the hideous carcass. Then she felt his fingers grasp her chin and turn her head away from the sight into his concerned face. The blue of his eyes calmed her a little.

His finger caressed her cheek. “Breathe. Are you all right?”

She swallowed again. “I’m fine.” Her voice came out shaky.

“Who is this from?” Mr. O’Neill’s outraged voice filtered through her consciousness.

She steeled herself, then pulled away from Shaun’s hand and looked back at the box. A white envelope peeked out from behind a jagged fang in the open mouth. Shaun reached forward, but she moved faster to take it, not touching the snake. Her fingers trembled as she opened it and pulled out a thick, plain white notecard.

Monica,

Consider this a warning. Cease your efforts on your persistent plans. Your free children’s clinic will never see the light of day. I will kill you if I must. My course is set, my determination sure. If you do not abandon your clinic, my vengeance upon you will be “As the snake late coil’d, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength."

It was unsigned.

The menace and yet the poetry of the words frightened her. She began to shiver violently.

Who would do this? Why would anyone want to stop her free children’s clinic?

“‘The snake late coil’d.’” Shaun’s voice was hushed and yet harsh at the same time as he read the note over her shoulder.

At the quote, his father jerked in surprise, his brow furrowed.

Monica’s fear chilled as she took in Shaun’s burning eyes and pale face. “What is it?”

“Could I see it, please?”

Monica handed the notecard to him.

He studied it with a frown, which deepened as he read.

“Shaun?” Mr. O’Neill asked. There was an urgent gravity and also a slight quaver to his voice.

Monica could see the note in Shaun’s hands tremble slightly, and she realized his hands were shaking.

He glanced at his father, and some unspoken message passed between them. Mr. O’Neill turned whiter than the notepaper and swayed.

“Mr. O’Neill!” Lorianne rushed toward him and helped him to sit down in a chair.

“I’m fine.” He waved her away, but his hand gripped the table edge tightly.

Monica turned to Shaun. “What’s going on?”

His entire body had become taut like a bowstring. His eyes darted to hers, feral, fierce. Then he blinked, and a steely determination replaced the fleeting wildness.

“The man who wrote this letter killed my sister.”

He shouldn’t have said it in front of everyone that way, but the shock had ripped through him like a California breaker wave.

“Right this way…” The hostess’s voice died away as she approached the back of the restaurant with two lunch customers and saw them all around Monica’s table.

Lorianne immediately moved to block their view and spoke to her hostess in a low voice. The woman smiled at the couple and said, “If you’ll follow me, we’ll find you a different table.”

They walked away, but Shaun could see that the restaurant was filling up with people coming in to eat lunch. He reached over Monica’s shoulder and covered the box with the lid to hide the snake from view—hers as well as any of Lorianne’s customers.

“You have to call the police,” Mr. O’Neill told her.

Lorianne looked a little strained at the suggestion, but she nodded to Monica. “I remember what the delivery guy looked like—short, really thin, big nose. Brown hair. I’ll talk to the hostess to see if she remembers, too.” She moved away to intercept the woman as she was returning to the front desk after seating the couple at a different table by the window.

Shaun sat at a seat at the table while Monica pulled out her cell phone, but she dialed a different number than 9-1-1. He was about to ask who she was calling when she said, “Aunt Becca, I’m at Lorianne’s Café. I need you to call Detective Carter and have him meet me here.”

“Monica, what happened?” Shaun could hear her aunt’s voice through the cell phone, sharp with concern.

“I got a threatening note.” She opened her mouth as if she’d say more, but then rushed on without mentioning the snake. “He doesn’t need to bring an officer with him. I don’t want to make a fuss and chase away Lorianne’s customers.”

Her aunt said something briefly and then Monica hung up.

“So Becca’s still dating Detective Carter?” Shaun’s father said, trying to adopt a normal tone of voice, but Shaun could hear the reedy thread of stress behind his words.

Monica nodded. “She has his direct number so he’ll be here sooner than if I’d called 9-1-1.”

Her clear amber eyes found Shaun’s, and he could read the question in them about what he’d said about his sister. “I’ll tell you about it when the detective gets here,” he promised.

She also called Phillip and canceled the lunch appointment. Shaun’s jaw tightened as he faintly heard Bromley’s voice. Something about an overturned truck. He was probably lying.

Detective Carter must have been nearby because he arrived at the restaurant within minutes. He pulled off his sunglasses as he entered the dining room, and his gray eyes were filled with concern as he saw Monica. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice kind.

“I’m fine. You know Patrick and Shaun O’Neill, right?” She gestured to Shaun and his father, who were sitting at the table. Detective Carter seated himself in the remaining chair. Then she pushed the box toward him and handed him the notecard.

The detective’s expression grew hard as he read the note, but it grew fierce when he lifted the lid and saw the snake. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

Monica recited how someone had delivered the gift to the restaurant and Lorianne had carried it to her. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “You don’t know who sent this?”

She shook her head, but her eyes darted to Shaun. “But Shaun mentioned something about his sister,” she told the detective.

Shaun looked to his dad, whose lined face seemed to have aged a decade. “Tell them,” Patrick said, his voice weak.

Shaun paused, staring at that hated notecard, gathering his thoughts. Finally he said, “Five years ago, my younger sister, Clare, moved from Sonoma to Los Angeles to work at one of Dad’s hotels and to be closer to her boyfriend, Johnny. She had gotten her MBA the year before, and she was consulting for a free family planning clinic where Johnny was director, which was also down in L.A. But a couple months after moving, she was found dead in her apartment by her roommate.”

He had to pause, to let the ache in the base of his throat ease so that he could continue. “It looked like suicide—drug overdose. But I knew my sister. She didn’t use drugs. Her roommate said the same thing, and they hung out together a lot. Also, I had spoken to her on the phone the day before. We talked every week. She wasn’t depressed, and she wouldn’t have taken her life.”

His father nodded slowly. “I spoke to her once or twice a week, too.”

“When I was going through her things, I found postcards and letters that had been mailed to Clare during the two months before she moved to L.A. and also a few mailed to her L.A. apartment. They threatened her life if she didn’t stop consulting for the family planning clinic.”

He realized his hand had clenched into a fist, and he willed his fingers to relax. Breathe. You’re just telling the story. Except it hadn’t been just a story to him. It had been a surprising and hurtful discovery to make after burying his only sister. Clare had been the jewel of the family, especially after Mom had died. Losing his sister had shattered them all.

“Did she file incident reports?” Detective Carter asked.

“I don’t know if she did for the notes she received in Sonoma,” Shaun said. “I did find a report number in her notebook, but for an incident report she had filed in L.A.”

The detective scribbled in his notebook. “I’ll look into it.”

“I confronted her roommate, Angela, about the notes,” Shaun said. “Clare had confided in her about it all. Angela said that Clare had kept this secret from Dad and me and my brothers because we were all too protective of her and we wouldn’t have let her move to L.A. if we’d known.” Shaun fought back the wave of guilt. He had known how desperately Clare wanted to leave Sonoma, which at its heart was a small town despite the heavy tourist traffic. But Clare had been the only girl among four brothers, and their mom had died years ago, so they were naturally a bit overprotective of her. But maybe if they hadn’t been, she might have felt she could confide in her family and Shaun could have protected her.

“Did the L.A. police look into her death?” Detective Carter asked. “They should have, if she filed an incident report for the notes.”

“They couldn’t conclusively prove it wasn’t suicide,” Shaun said. “Her boyfriend and roommate had alibis. Also, Angela told me that Johnny had been receiving threatening notes and other death threats for over a year from anti-abortion activists who opposed the family planning clinic, so when Clare first got the notes in Sonoma, she thought they were along the same lines. She also thought the notes would stop once she moved, but the stalker found her in L.A. and kept sending her letters and gifts.”

At the word gifts, Monica shivered and her eyes slid to the white box resting in front of Detective Carter. Shaun wanted to comfort and protect her as he hadn’t been able to do for his sister.

As he hadn’t been able to do for any of the women in his life.

“Couldn’t the L.A. police find anything?” Monica asked him.

“They focused on the anti-abortion activists angle, but I thought that the notes Johnny got were different from hers. His were violent death threats, but one of her notes quoted from Don Juan by Lord Byron—the same quote as that.” He pointed to Monica’s note.

Her eyes became wide and dark in her pale face. “So that’s why it caught your attention.”