Alex Archer - Beneath Still Waters

Paul had gotten her an oversized corner suite with an incredible ocean view. After arriving, she stood in front of the window for a short while, simply admiring the scenery, and then turned and headed for the bathroom.

Annja slipped out of her bathing suit and stepped into the shower, washing the salt from her skin and hair before getting out and toweling herself dry. She had just started brushing out her long hair when her cell phone rang.

Thinking it was Paul, she snatched it up without looking at the number.

Answering it, she said, “Don’t tell me you’re canceling dinner…”

“Annja, get me out of here! He’s a freakin’ maniac and I can’t…”

The connection was abruptly cut while the speaker was in midsentence, but she’d recognized the voice immediately. It would have been hard for her not to, for she’d heard it practically every day of her professional career for several years.

It had been the voice of her producer in New York and the man behind the runaway success of Chasing History’s Monsters , Doug Morrell.

She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it, as if it might suddenly impart the necessary information for her to understand just what the heck was going on. She could feel her heart rate rising, the blood rushing through her veins in anticipation of what might come, and her hand itched to call her sword to her side.

She found it funny that her body reacted to the situation as if there was real danger when intellectually she recognized it for what it was—one of Doug’s crazy little stunts to get her to call him while she was on vacation.

He’d called and left messages several times over the past few days, begging her to call him in New York, but so far she’d managed to ignore them. She was on vacation, after all, and there wasn’t anything urgent enough on her current schedule to justify his pulling her away from that.

He, of course, thought differently. In his early twenties, Doug ate, slept and breathed the program and its success. Nothing was more important to him than its continued success, and he’d been known to chase her down in the far corners of the globe to get answers to tiny little questions that weren’t important and could wait to be answered, if answering was necessary at all, when she returned from her time off.

This was no doubt one of his more esoteric attempts to get her attention.

Calling was one thing. Trying to scare her out of her wits with some crazy scheme was another.

She knew of one way to put an end to that, at least.

She checked her cell phone’s call log and found the number that the call had come in from. She didn’t recognize it as his cell number or his office phone, but that didn’t mean anything; Doug could have used someone else’s phone.

Ignoring the faint feather of unease that was starting to unfurl in her gut, Annja hit redial.

It rang once, twice and then was answered on the third ring.

Annja didn’t give Doug a chance to say anything.

“Listen up, Doug, because I’m only going to say this once. I. Am. On. Vacation. I can deal with the decisions about the show when I return, which will only be in a few days, so chill out with the sick jokes! Understood?”

There was silence on the other end of the line, and then a voice said, “This isn’t a joke.”

It didn’t sound like Doug.

The voice was too deep, too guttural. Doug also talked a mile a minute, and this guy was calm, rational, his speech seemed carefully measured even in so short a response.

That’s what he wants you to think , she told herself, but don’t fall for it. It’s Doug. It has to be .

She knew that he could have disguised his voice quite easily with the help of a voice modulator purchased from any halfway-decent electronics store. In fact, she thought she heard the slight echo behind his words that indicated that such a device was being used.

The speaker wasn’t finished.

“Do not attempt to trace this call. The signal has been scrambled through more countries than I can count. Just listen.”

Trace the call?

“I have your friend Doug. If you do as I ask, he will be returned to his home in good health. On the other hand, if you don’t do precisely what I ask, then you will never see him again. Rest assured, though, that if that happens, I will make certain that he suffers considerably before I kill him. Do we understand each other?”

Annja felt the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand at attention as the threat was delivered calmly and succinctly.

It certainly sounded convincing.

“Cut the crap. I know it’s you, Doug. You can’t fool me.”

The voice chuckled. “Apparently, I can, because this is not Doug.”

The chuckle caused Annja’s irritation, already smoldering, to grow into an open fire.

“You’re not Doug, huh? Well, we’ll see about that.”

Annja pulled the phone away from her ear and hit the disconnect button. She waited a beat and then immediately dialed Doug’s cell phone from memory.

The phone rang and rang and rang.

No answer.

That flicker of unease she’d felt earlier came back and began threading its way up her spine like a snake moving through tall grass.

Frowning, Annja tried again, this time calling Doug at his apartment in Brooklyn.

No answer there, either.

Of course not, dummy , she berated herself. He’s at the office, just as you thought. Try there .

She did as her subconscious bid her, calling Doug’s office line and cursing herself for not doing that in the first place.

The phone began ringing.

Come on, come on, pick it up , she urged.

His voice mail kicked in after the fifth ring.

Now Annja was starting to worry. Doug was almost never out of contact; he even took his cell phone into the bathroom with him. The fact that she couldn’t reach him anywhere was starting to feel suspicious.

He’s just on the other line , she told herself. Give him a minute and call him back .

She did so, and this time the phone was answered on the third ring.

“Doug! Thank heavens!”

But it wasn’t him.

“Annja?” a female voice asked tentatively.

“Who’s this?”

“Karen, Doug’s assistant.”

Of course. Now that he had an assistant he was apparently too important to answer his own phone.

“I need to speak to Doug, Karen. Is he in?”

“No. I haven’t seen him since you left for vacation,” she said.

What? Three days? Maybe longer?

“Do you know where he is?” Annja asked.

With a sudden feeling of dread, she knew what the answer was going to be before it even came out of Karen’s mouth.

“No. That’s why I’m so glad you called. I was hoping you could help me find him.”

It was a bad sign that Karen didn’t know where Doug was.

A really bad sign.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go,” she told Karen, hanging up the phone before the other woman could say anything more and fighting the sense of panic that was quickly filling her as she frantically dialed the original number.

Just as before, it rang three times and then was answered.

“I’m listening,” Annja told the person on the other end.

“Perhaps now you will take me seriously, yes?”

Annja did her best to hang on to her temper. When she got scared, she had a tendency to get irritated and if this guy really had Doug she didn’t want to tick him off by blowing her cool.

“Where’s Doug? What have you done to him?”

“Done? I haven’t done anything,” the person said. “Yet.”

It was just one word, but it had the power to freeze her blood in her veins.