Buch lesen: «The Guardian»

CHAPTER ONE

THE SHARK WAS DUSTY.

Nearly six feet long, it was stuffed, mounted and hung on the wall above the sagging couch. Its downturned mouth grinned with cruel teeth.

On the shark’s head was a black baseball cap. In white letters, it said UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE.

A tall man, naked except for a towel knotted around his middle, stood before the shark. He held the phone and listened to a voice half a continent away. His face was grim.

I don’t want to get involved, he thought with deep distaste. Those days are over. I’m out of the game. For good.

But because it was Corbett talking on the other end of the line, Hawkshaw listened.

“There’s no choice,” Corbett said. “She’s got to get out of town. She knows it. I can’t keep her safe.”

Hawkshaw adjusted the towel around his waist. He was dripping salt water onto the old braided rug.

He said, “I was about to get into the shower.”

Corbett said, “This guy who’s after her—this stalker—he’s getting dangerous. Not just to her, to her kid. He’s started to look on the kid as some sort of rival.”

A kid, Hawkshaw thought with weariness and guilt. He tried to keep himself indifferent, unassailable. “Why can’t the police handle it?” he asked.

Corbett said, “The guy’s smart, Hawkshaw. He doesn’t threaten her outright. But he never stops watching her. And he lets her know he’s watching—and that he wants her.”

Hawkshaw sighed in disgust. He didn’t like the sound of this. An anonymous stalker was the worst and most slippery kind. “You’ve got no idea who this psycho is?”

“None. He’s a voice on a phone. He’s a note in the mail. He’s the ice pick in your tire. The dead bird on your doorstep.”

“How long has he been after her?”

“Eighteen months,” Corbett said. “It started with a couple of notes. Anonymous calls. It built. She changed her number, kept it unlisted. I encrypted her computer so nobody could get into her e-mail. But nothing works. She needs to get the hell out of here.”

Hawkshaw stared at the shark. It returned his gaze with a glassy, emotionless eye.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Hasn’t she got people of her own to go to?”

“No. Her parents are dead. She’s a widow. She’s got a friend in another city who’ll help. But I don’t want her going straight there. I want to throw this bastard a curve. Have her take such a crooked path, he can’t follow.”

“And I’m the crooked path she takes.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Hawkshaw. This woman doesn’t want charity. She doesn’t want to run—she’s a fighter. If the guy was a threat only to her, I don’t think she’d budge. But there’s the kid.”

I don’t want to help widows and children, Hawkshaw thought with resentment. Throw them to the sharks. He ran a forefinger along the edges of the shark’s teeth. They felt pleasantly sharp.

“She’s no shrinking violet,” Corbett insisted. “She’s an extremely independent, self-reliant woman—”

Then let her be independent and reliant by herself, Hawkshaw thought.

“—listen, Hawkshaw,” Corbett continued, “this guy who’s after her, he’s getting ready to explode. All the signs are there. Something very bad is about to happen unless she and the kid get out of here. It’s instinct. I can’t shake it. You understand?”

Corbett’s instinct. Hawkshaw understood all too well. He stared at the scar that snaked up the tanned flesh of his right forearm. Oh, yes, he would always remember Corbett’s instinct; he was beholden to it for the rest of his life.

But he said, “My Galahad days are over, Corbett. I’m a hermit now. I like it.”

“But you’re staying there?” Corbett asked, slyness in his voice. “In Florida?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Hawkshaw said. “I’ll probably sell the place. I’ve got to fix it up. One of these days.”

“That’s what you said six months ago.”

“Time flies.”

“Look, she could help you. She’s got energy, she’s enterprising,” Corbett said. “Up here she can’t even work anymore. The stalker—he disrupts her workday, calls her co-workers. He’s starting to harass everybody she comes into contact with.”

Bingo, thought Hawkshaw with a sure, sickening realization. Suddenly he knew he wasn’t going to get out of this. “Everybody?”

“It’s a figure of speech,” Corbett said.

Hawkshaw closed his eyes. As in a vision, he saw Corbett’s round, good-natured face, the receding hair, the mustache that never seemed even on both sides.

He saw Cherry, Corbett’s wife, pretty and ever-generous. He thought of Corbett’s adolescent twin girls in last year’s Christmas snapshot, their smiles silvery with braces. He was godfather to both.

Hawkshaw opened his eyes. He wiped a cobweb from the shark’s fin. “Everybody includes you, doesn’t it, Corbett? It includes Cherry and the girls, too. Don’t bloody lie to me. I know you too well.”

There was a moment of silence. Finally Corbett said, “That’s not a factor. It goes with the territory. My major concern is for the woman and her son. That’s the truth.”

Oh, hell. Depression stole over Hawkshaw like a long, cold shadow.

He sat down on the old couch. He thought of Corbett and all he owed to Corbett.

A hopeless sensation yawned within him. He knew what he was going to say and wished with all his heart that he could say something else.

“All right,” Hawkshaw said. “Fax the details to me, in care of the Flamingo Motel.” He gave Corbett the number. “Tell the woman and kid I’ll take them on. For a while. A couple weeks maybe.”

“Good. If we cover her tracks well enough, maybe she can break free of him. Go her own way.”

“Amen,” said Hawkshaw. The sooner the better.

There was another awkward silence. Then, with feeling, Corbett said, “You won’t be sorry about this.”

Yes, I will, thought Hawkshaw.

He was already sorry.

THE DETECTIVE, CORBETT, came back from the downstairs pay phone and into his private office. He was a stockily built man with thinning hair and a mustache that always seemed slightly off-center.

He gave Kate a smile that had no happiness in it. “You’re going away,” he said. “It’s set.”

Kate’s arm tightened around Charlie, her six-year-old son. “Can’t you at least tell me where?” she asked.

Charlie wriggled. He hated sitting still and was fidgety.

Corbett shook his head. “It’s best you don’t know yet. Out of the Midwest. That’s all I can say. I’m sorry.”

I have no secrets, Kate thought numbly. Wherever I am, whatever I do, the stalker knows. He always finds out. Always.

She let Charlie slip away from her. He ran to the window, stood on tiptoe and looked out at the summer afternoon.

Her hand fell uselessly to her lap. She could only stare at Corbett’s kind, jowly face.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

She swallowed. “How—how long do you think we’ll have to stay there?”

“I don’t know,” Corbett said. “Till we’re sure he hasn’t tracked you. Once we know that, you’re free to move on.”

To move on.

The words tolled ominously in Kate’s mind. She had known it might come to this, of course. She and Corbett had talked about it, insane as it was.

Wordlessly, both she and Corbett turned their gazes to Charlie. The boy shifted his weight from foot to foot and hummed as he stared outside. He tugged restlessly at his brown forelock.

She had tried to prepare Charlie for the possibility that they would have to leave. But how, really, did one prepare for such an extreme and desperate action?

“I—I—” Kate stammered “—well, it’s necessary. It has to be done. That’s all there is to it.”

“Yes,” Corbett said. He came to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “If we can’t keep him away from you, then you’ve got to get away from him. Both of you. Where he can’t find you.”

We have to run. Like hunted animals. Because there’s a madman out there. This can’t be happening. Not really.

Kate shook her head to clear it. “I didn’t want anybody else involved. Why can’t Charlie and I just leave on our own? I could go straight to my friend. Eliminate this middle person, this stranger—”

“We were in the Secret Service together,” Corbett said. “He retired two years ago. He’s the best, Kate. And he’s worked with kids. Consider it a security move for a while, that’s all. I couldn’t trust you to anyone better.”

But his words didn’t reassure her. She felt stunned, shocked, empty, unreal. “Won’t you at least tell me his name?”

“Kate,” Corbett said wearily, “the less you know the better. I want you to go home, pack the bare necessities. I’m taking you someplace else tonight. In my car, not yours. I’ll get your plane tickets. You’ll have to travel under another name.”

She straightened her back and tried to square her jaw, which felt twitchy, undependable. “How soon? When do you want us to go?”

“As soon as possible.”

“How long are we supposed to stay with this—person?”

“Until we think you’re safe.”

Safe. A bitter giddiness filled her. She smiled at the irony of the word. Safe.

“Until we make sure he hasn’t traced you,” Corbett said.

“He,” Kate echoed. Her stalker was nameless, faceless, shapeless. He was nowhere and everywhere. He seemed like some monster out of mythology, with a thousand eyes to watch her, a thousand ears to listen to her, a thousand invisible tentacles to reach out at her.

“Our things—” she said, thinking of their small condominium, stuffed with its trove of mementoes. There were the photos, the antiques, Charlie’s toys, her precious books.

Corbett kept his expression matter-of-fact. He folded his arms. “I’ll see you get them when you’re settled. I’ll arrange it so it can’t be traced.”

“My bank account,” she said. “I’ll have to transfer the funds. But if I don’t even know where we’re going—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

She thought fretfully of the man to whom Corbett was sending them. “This person—this friend of yours—I’ll need to reimburse him. I don’t want to owe anybody.”

Corbett’s only answer was an ironic smile. “I know you, Kate. You’ll pull your own weight.”

“But how?”

“There’ll be something. He’s thinking of selling his place. He needs to put it in shape. Maybe you could help him.”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I can do that, all right.” She’d worked her way through high school and most of college as part of a cleaning crew for a real estate company. She didn’t like the work. But she knew how to do it.

Charlie, bored with looking out the window, ran to her, tugged her hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Kate bit her lip. How did you tell a child that this might be the last time he’d see home? That you were fugitives now, and that perhaps you could never come back?

But she stood, forcing herself to smile. She gave Charlie’s hand a confident squeeze.

“Charlie,” she said, injecting all the cheer she could into her voice, “remember that trip I told you we might take?”

THE WOMAN AND KID were arriving that night. Hawkshaw was no happier than before about the prospect; he felt as evil-tempered as a snake shedding its skin.

Still, he was nagged by the alien thought that he should clean house. This was such a distasteful impulse that he promptly quelled it

He did, however, force himself to put sheets on the twin beds in the guest room. At least, he supposed it was a guest room. Up until now he’d been lucky enough to avoid having guests.

Outside, rain poured down, hammering on the roof and streaming down the windows. The weather was too vile to fish or kayak, so restless, he stayed inside and did push-ups.

He told himself he would do a hundred, then make himself examine the file of material Corbett had faxed him about Katherine Kanaday.

But after a hundred push-ups, he still felt too restless, so he started a second hundred. After three hundred, he gave up. He lay on the floor for a moment. He swore, muffled, into the braided rug.

Then he rose, snagged a beer from the refrigerator and picked up the Kanaday file. He wore only a pair of denim cutoffs; he didn’t bother much about dressing these days, and he didn’t intend to.

He swung his long body down on the couch, kicked a couple of boating magazines out of his way. He plumped up the ancient sofa pillow, settled back and opened the file Corbett had faxed.

There were a couple of fuzzy pictures of the woman and kid. The kid was cute. In his heart of hearts, Hawkshaw liked kids; he considered them a sort of separate species and thought it a damn shame they grew up to be human beings.

The woman he dismissed as nothing special. Too thin, her hair too long and curly. Corbett said her hair was reddish. Hawkshaw had never been attracted to redheads. Carrot-tops, he thought dismissively.

He began to read about her. She was thirty-two years old, had a college degree, and had worked as assistant manager in a new-and-used bookshop. Had been married to a professor of computer science at the local college.

Ho-hum, thought Hawkshaw, looking over her background: a quiet life, boring and bookish. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Until a year and a half ago. Then her husband had suddenly and unexpectedly died of a brain tumor. Ten days later, the stalking began. An odd sequence—was it a coincidence?

Hawkshaw stretched. He scratched his bare chest and took a sip of beer. He read on.

Corbett had written,

On the morning of February 11, Kanaday opened front door of her apartment to get paper. On doorstep found single white rose wrapped in cellophane. Beneath it, note, unsigned. Note laser-printed on white paper. See attached.

Hawkshaw picked up a separate stack of papers clipped together. He read the top one, which was labeled, in Corbett’s firm handwriting, “First Note.”

I THINK OF NOTHING BUT YOU. I WANT YOU WITH ALL MY BEING. IF I CAN’T HAVE YOU, I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WILL DO. GIVE ME A SIGN THAT I CAN COME TO YOU. WEAR THIS ROSE ON YOUR COAT TODAY.

Hmm, Hawkshaw thought, cocking an eyebrow. Mildly interesting. Not overtly threatening, just psycho enough to make a person nervous.

He went back to Corbett’s account. The Kanaday woman said she at first thought the incident was only a “sick joke.” She’d thrown away the rose and thought no more of it. Until the second rose appeared.

Again the nameless admirer asked her to wear the flower. Again she threw it away. Then the phone calls started. A man’s voice, low, unrecognizable, breathless, hungry.

Wherever she went, he seemed to know. He told her what she had done, whom she had seen, to whom she had talked, what she wore. Somehow he seemed to watch her all the time.

The stalker’s threats were always veiled, never explicit. Small things appeared—like the roses, the notes. Others disappeared—like the dog’s leash or a pair of muddy tennis shoes left outside beside the door mat.

And the calls, wrote Corbett, never stopped. It didn’t matter how often the Kanaday woman changed her number; the stalker always found out the new one. Then, angry that she’d tried to elude him, he would plague her even more unmercifully. At last, when she no longer answered the phone at home, he began to harass her at the bookstore, and he did so until she had to quit her job.

Hawkshaw frowned at the closing paragraphs.

Kanaday had just started a new job at the Columbia Mall bookstore. Near closing time, she received a call from the stalker.

He claimed at that moment he could see her son. He described the boy’s clothing and play activity. He said, “I know why you don’t come to me. It’s because of the boy. You feel guilty because you have to pretend to want him more than you want me. I’ll take care of that, and then I’ll come for you. And then you’ll be mine forever.”

Hawkshaw swore under his breath. He closed the folder and tossed it on the floor. He stood, restless again. He walked to the window. The view was still obscured by rain.

Stalkers, he thought with loathing. He stroked the scar along his forearm, then turned and glowered at the file.

“Find the bastard, Corbett,” he said between his teeth. “I’m not up to these games anymore.”

He drained the beer and glanced at the clock, calculating the hours of freedom he had left. It was a silly clock, shaped like a cat, whose tail was the wagging pendulum. The phone rang. The back of Hawkshaw’s neck prickled in apprehension.

His phone seldom rang these days. Somehow he knew this call meant more bad luck.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY WAS BLACK and starless. The plane taxied down the wet tarmac, came to a stop before the small air terminal.

Key West, said illuminated letters that rose from the terminal’s roof. Their pastel color was haloed by mist.

Key West, thought Kate. Florida. We’re really here. Corbett had told her their destination only when he had taken her inside the terminal back home.

Now she and Charlie were exiles, strangers in a strange land. Everything felt unreal—how could it seem otherwise? They had come to the Florida Keys to live with a man she had never met, had never even spoken to.

A wave of anxiety surged through her, but she ignored it. Keeping her head high, she carried her sleeping son down the stairs of the plane.

Charlie was exhausted. They had been traveling since dawn, and their flight had been delayed in Miami for five hours because of the torrential rains.

Here in Key West the drizzle was light. The moon was masked by clouds. Beyond the airport’s chain-link fence, Kate saw palm trees mistily gilded by the parking lot lights. The air was sultry and pungent.

Charlie stirred against her shoulder. “What’s that smell?” he asked crankily.

“It’s the ocean,” she told him, although the scent was as new to her as it was to him.

He yawned and relaxed, snuggling his face into her neck. She held him more tightly and made her way inside the terminal’s glass doors. The boy was growing heavy, and their carry-on bag was sliding awkwardly from her shoulder. She paused, trying to hoist it more firmly into place. She glanced about.

Even at this hour the terminal was lively. She heard Jamaican accents mingling with those of Brooklyn; she saw a Muslim woman in a black veil and a Sikh man in an azure turban.

College students crowded elbow to elbow with retirees, and a young Asian couple, looking tired, carried sleeping twin infants. There seemed to be almost every sort of person—but nowhere did Kate see anyone who might be looking for her and Charlie.

Her clothing was purposefully nondescript: faded jeans and a heather-gray T-shirt. Sunglasses hid her brown eyes, and a scarf covered her red-gold hair.

She had done everything in her power not to be attractive or have an ounce of sex appeal. She did not want to be noticed or remembered.

She shifted Charlie in her arms and took off the scarf. She took off the sunglasses, too, which seemed silly so late at night, and stuffed both into her carry-on.

She shook her head to clear it and gazed at the crowd around her. No one seemed to take the slightest notice of her or her child.

She eyed the crowd again, unsure for whom she searched. Charlie sighed again and buried his face against her neck, as if wearily begging her to make everything normal again.

Normal. The word mocked her. Normal.

Her arms tightened around her son with fierce protectiveness. A now-familiar anger swept through her, and she welcomed it; it was her friend and it kept her going.

But Lord, she was tired. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the fatigue away, marshaling her strength. She took a deep breath, then another. Suddenly, a voice spoke her name. It was a male voice, gravelly, yet oddly soft.

“Katherine Kanaday?”

Her eyes flew open. As if by magic, a tall man had materialized in front of her. His lean face filled her vision, and she blinked, disconcerted.

Her gaze met his, which was an intense blue-green, and unreadable. Her chin jerked up, and she eyed him with the suspicion that had become second nature to her.

She had pictured a bland-faced older man much like Corbett. But this man must be only in his early forties, and he looked anything but bland.

Corbett’s words came flashing back to her. You can depend on him.

But Kate’s breath stuck in her chest because this stranger didn’t seem like someone to depend on. He looked more like a man who created danger than safety.

He towered over her, all height and hard muscle. A wide-brimmed Aussie hat hid his hair and shadowed his eyes. He had an angular jaw and a cleft chin. His cheekbones were high and prominent, and he was deeply bronzed by the sun. He had not shaved for several days.

His khaki shirt looked weathered, and Kate could see a triangle of brown chest. Around his neck was a leather thong from which dangled some sort of small stone fetish.

He said, “If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me.”

If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me. It was the strange sentence Corbett had picked to serve as a password, and only he and she and this man knew it. The knots in her nerves untied themselves, and she almost smiled.

He didn’t. His face remained impassive. But he took off the hat. His brown hair was thick and streaked by the sun. The sideburns showed the faintest glint of silver.

“W.W. Hawkshaw. I’m a friend of Corbett’s.”

He offered her his hand, and she took it. A small, unwanted tingle of sexual awareness swarmed through her nerves.

Guiltily, she drew her hand away. Sex wasn’t to be trusted. It was what had gotten her and Charlie into this insanity in the first place.

Charlie clutched her more tightly and burrowed his face against her. He muttered something nearly incoherent about going home.

“Shhh,” she whispered. She no longer knew where home was.

Once again resentment warred with her fatigue. But before she could sort out her feelings, before she could even try, Hawkshaw had jammed on the hat again, pulling the brim back to its stem angle. He was ready to get moving.

“Allow me, ma’am,” he ordered, reaching for Charlie.

“I can handle—” she began, but he ignored her. Somehow, he had the boy out of her grasp and expertly cradled in his right arm. Charlie stirred, but didn’t waken.

Kate stared at the hard-looking man, but he only nodded toward her carry-on bag. “That, too, ma’am,” he demanded.

“It’s not that heavy.”

But he stripped it from her, slung it over his own free shoulder.

She stood, feeling half-naked without her burdens, and oddly nettled to be so efficiently relieved of them. He was a high-handed man, and she didn’t like it.

“You have other luggage?” he asked.

“Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “The most important’s the dog—I hope they haven’t lost her.”

“Dog,” he repeated, completely without enthusiasm.

He made Kate feel awkward, and she resented it. “Corbett said it was all right to bring the dog. He said he asked you about it, and—”

“It’s fine,” Hawkshaw said, holding up his hand as if to silence her. “Don’t mention it.”

He started toward the baggage pickup area. “This way.”

Kate had no choice but to follow him. Why was he so damned preemptory? Because they were late? Maybe he’d been waiting for hours, and it had soured his mood. Well, it was good of him to have waited at all, and she supposed she should apologize, just to be polite.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” she offered, hurrying to keep up with him. “Our plane was delayed in Miami a long time—”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m aware of that,” Hawkshaw said.

“I know it was an inconvenience. Thank you for—”

“Don’t bother,” he said curtly.

“I just want to apologize for any—”

“Don’t bother,” he repeated and looked away pointedly, as if he found her irksome.

Oh, to hell with him, she thought tiredly. If he’s a boor, he’s a boor. I didn’t come down here for a friendly guy. I came for a tough one.

He stopped before the luggage carousel. He didn’t say, “How was your trip?” He didn’t say, “How’s my old friend Corbett?” He didn’t say anything.

She didn’t, either. Suddenly all she wanted was a bed and eight hours of sleep. She’d deal with Mr. Charm, here, in the morning, when she’d got her strength back.

She studied him furtively, taking his measure. His eyes had permanent creases at the outer edges. They gave him the look of a man who had spent his life watching the world around him and watching it carefully.

He didn’t look at her. She had the impression he was purposefully ignoring her. But then, almost against his will, it seemed, he gazed down at Charlie. His craggy face didn’t mellow.

“So this is Charlie?” he said.

Kate looked at her son, so young, so innocent of what was happening to him, lying so trustingly against this stranger’s chest. A rush of tenderness swept away her other emotions, and she felt a lump like a fist in her throat.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s Charlie.”

HAWKSHAW HAD WAITED for the plane with deep misgivings. He was a private man about to surrender his privacy, and he had already damned himself for it a thousand times.

And his mood was frankly rotten. Right before he’d left for Key West airport, his ex-wife had called from Hawaii. She had an engagement singing in the lounge of a very upscale hotel on Waikiki Beach. “I’m in love,” she’d announced. “I’m finally over you. I think I’m going to get married.”

Suddenly Hawkshaw had remembered everything he’d worked to forget: the loss, the guilt, the failure, the incredible emptiness.

He’d forced cheer into his voice and congratulated her with all the heartiness he could muster. He didn’t ask her the details. He didn’t want to hear them.

She deserved to be happy, God knew. But basically what Hawkshaw had wanted to do was get drunk and stay that way for about a week. Maybe put his fist through a wall or two, that sort of thing.

But instead of mourning for the woman he wanted, he was stuck baby-sitting for one he didn’t want in the least. The Kanaday woman was prettier than he’d expected, and for some obscure reason, this annoyed him.

Certainly Corbett’s fuzzy photos had given no hint of her attractiveness. She’d looked thin and uninteresting in the pictures.

In the flesh, she was slender, not skinny, and her features, although not perfect, were good enough, and the red-gold of her hair was stunning.

Hell, he’d thought, no wonder somebody’s after her. And then he’d thought, Dammit, Corbett. What have you done to me now?