Нора Робертс - Hideaway

Okay, yes, her hands shook, but only a little. And she’d do what she hadn’t done since coming back to Big Sur. She’d lock her doors.

But she’d wait until morning to call her father because why give him a sleepless night. She’d keep that upset for herself and do what she always did when the past crept into the now.

She’d find an old movie on TV, one with plenty of noise, and fill the night with sound.

And she’d wait to tell her grandparents until they returned from L.A.

The evening air held balmy in L.A. Holiday lights twinkled with the temperature hovering in the midseventies as the sun dipped down toward twilight.

Charles Anthony Scarpetti, retired from the practice of law, drew a hefty fee on the lecture circuit. He often appeared as a legal expert on CNN.

At seventy-six, with three divorces under his belt, he enjoyed the single life and the smaller home that required only two day staff and a weekly grounds crew to maintain.

He had a pool man, three times a week. He credited swimming, his preferred method of exercise, for keeping him in top shape.

Swimming, and a few careful nips and tucks. After all, he remained a public figure.

He swam every morning—fifty laps. He did another fifty every evening, with a top off in his whirlpool before bed. He’d given up cigars and refined sugar—both a sacrifice.

He slept eight hours a night, ate three balanced meals a day, kept his alcohol intake to a glass of red wine nightly.

He fully expected to live, healthily, into his nineties.

He was about to be disappointed.

At precisely ten o’clock, he stepped out of his house to cross to the pool. The underwater lights shined on the tropical blue water heated to a precise eighty-two degrees. He removed his robe, draped both it and his towel over the bright chrome curve of the ladder of the bubbling whirlpool area where he would end his last lap.

He walked the forty feet to the deep end, dived.

He counted off the laps, nothing but the water, the strokes, the count in his mind. He moved smoothly, steadily, as always in a strong freestyle.

As he counted off ten, fingers brushing the side, something exploded in his head. He feared a stroke—his housekeeper worried him constantly about swimming alone at night.

He tried to push up, push out, his eyes opening wide. He saw blood in the water, spinning like red spiderwebs in the pristine blue.

Hit his head, something had hit the side of his head. Confused, he struggled to surface, groping for the lip of the pool.

Something held him under, pushed him down.

Flailing, fighting, he gulped water. He clawed, pawed, felt his fingers break the surface. Hope cut through panic, but he couldn’t find the side, couldn’t pull himself up to the air.

When he tried to scream, water flooded his lungs.

Then the panic, the hope, the pain slid away as he sank.

Over her first cup of coffee, Cate tried to wake up her brain by going over her mental list for the day.

She’d voiced and sent the second set of five chapters on her audiobook job to the engineer and producer. Maybe she’d start on the next five. If she needed to do any fixes to the second set, she could just stop, fix, move on.

Or she could work on the couple of smaller jobs she had pending, wait to hear from the engineer.

The poor night’s sleep nudged her toward the smaller jobs.

She should work out—it might get her moving. She really should walk up to the house—that was kind of a workout—then put in an hour … okay, forty-five minutes in the gym.

Maybe she should do that first and avoid her typical afternoon not-enough-time excuse.

Maybe she should have a bagel.

Obviously, she just needed more coffee. Her brain would wake up, and all would be revealed.

And when she felt fully awake and steady, she’d call her father in London. Keep her promise.

She started to shuffle back to the coffee maker, and through the wall of glass saw Dillon coming down the path.

She ducked back, even knowing that he couldn’t see her through the treated glass. And looked down at herself.

Old woolly socks, old flannel pajama pants—the ones with frogs all over them—the sweatshirt she’d pulled over the T-shirt she’d slept in—tried to sleep in. The faded pink one with a hole under the left armpit and a coffee stain that resembled Italy’s boot down the center front.

She kept meaning to toss it, but it was so damn soft.

“Really?” she murmured. “Just really?”

She swiped a hand over her hair. How bad was it?

Bad.

Merde!

No makeup either—and she probably had sleep crust in her eyes.

Mierda!

She rubbed at them as she crossed over to answer his knock. Ran her tongue over the teeth she’d yet to brush.

What sort of human being came knocking on a woman’s door at eight-thirty-five in the morning?

She pulled out her most casual smile as she opened the door. And hated him, sincerely hated him in that single moment for looking just amazing.

“Hi. You’re out and about early. Where are the dogs?”

“Back home. Sorry, did I get you up?”

“No, in fact, I was just going for my second cup of coffee.” She walked back toward the kitchen, slapping herself for not putting on workout gear. Then she’d look athletic instead of lazy and sloppy. “You take it black, right? I could never manage that.”

Wishing she could at least grab a mint, she reached for another mug.

“I need to talk to you.”

“All right.” She glanced back, mug in hand. Slowly turned all the way around as she saw what her obsession with her own appearance had blocked out.

The worry, the concern in the way his eyes scanned her face.

He didn’t know about the call, did he? She hadn’t told anyone about the call yet.

Then her brain cleared enough to remind her it wasn’t always about her.

“God, did something happen? Gram, Julia?”

“No, no they’re fine. It’s nothing like that. It’s Charles Scarpetti. The lawyer,” he added when she only stared. “Your mother’s lawyer from back then.”

“I know who he is. He plays a legal expert on TV now. I know he wrote a book about some of his high-profile cases, and my kidnapping was one of them. I didn’t read it. Why would I?”

“He’s dead. They—the pool guy—found his body floating in his pool a couple of hours ago. It’s going to hit the news if it hasn’t already. I didn’t want you to hear about it that way.”

“All right.” She set the mug down, then rubbed her hand over the bracelet she wore. Darlie’s hematite for anxiety. “All right. He drowned?”

“The LAPD’s investigating. Red has some connections there, and he got word. He—you should know he’s still looking out for you.”

“All right. Sorry.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I don’t know what I feel. Are you saying he might’ve been killed?”

“I can only tell you what Red told me. His contact in L.A. says it smells—that’s a quote. I just didn’t want you to switch on the news and get hit with it.”

“Because they’ll bring up the kidnapping.” Nodding, she picked up the mug again, went to the coffee maker. “And we’ll start a round of poor, brave Caitlyn. Charlotte will do some interviews, weep Hollywood tears over the daughter lost to her. We’ll have some speculation why I quit the business—or the on-screen aspect of it. And since the guy I made the mistake of getting involved with last freaking year is already using the breakup, months ago, to pump up some publicity, we’ll toss that in.”

Muttering curses in French, she paced a moment.

“Are those bad words in French?”

“What? Oh, yes. More impact.”

After setting the black coffee on the counter, she opted for water. Her brain was definitely awake now, no more coffee needed.