Suspicious by Heather Graham
Dear Reader,
August in New York City is unique. The buildings and concrete seem to generate heat, people fan themselves on platforms while waiting for an air-conditioned subway car, and reading seems the best escape for the dog days of summer. This month, as I get lost in an Intimate Moments romance, my cat, Antoine, watches the ceiling fan go round and round. He may be contemplating a vertical leap, but I’m thinking how excited readers will be about August’s lineup. What better way to spend a hot and muggy afternoon?
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham returns to Intimate Moments with Suspicious (#1379). Set in the Florida Everglades, this roller-coaster read plunges us into a murder investigation…and an unforgettable romance between a detective and a hauntingly beautiful lawyer, who has a particular interest in these mysterious deaths. What happens when a woman wakes up to find she can’t remember her identity but can speak several languages? Find out in veteran RaeAnne Thayne’s The Interpreter (#1380), a love story that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Vickie Taylor dazzles with her page-turning adventure Her Last Defense (#1381), involving a frantic search for a deadly virus-carrying monkey. As a doctor and a Texas Ranger try to ignore their fierce attraction, they plow through the forest to prevent a global crisis. In Warrior Without Rules (#1382), Nancy Gideon tells the story of a bodyguard who has his own way of dealing with life: Don’t get too involved. Will his assignment to protect an heiress make him break his iron-clad code?
I wish you a joyous end of summer and hope you’ll return next month to Intimate Moments, where your thirst for suspense and romance is sure to be satisfied. Happy reading!
Sincerely,
Patience Smith
Associate Senior Editor
HEATHER
GRAHAM
SUSPICIOUS
INTIMATE MOMENTSTM
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
SILHOUETTE BOOKS
ISBN 978-1-5525-4342-9
SUSPICIOUS
Copyright © 2005 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
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Books by Heather Graham
Silhouette Intimate Moments
In the Dark #1309
Suspicious #1379
Books by Heather Graham writing as Heather Graham Pozzessere
Silhouette Intimate Moments
Night Moves #118
The di Medici Bride #132
Double Entendre #145
The Game of Love #165
A Matter of Circumstance #174
Bride of the Tiger #192
All in the Family #205
King of the Castle #220
Strangers in Paradise #225
Angel of Mercy #248
This Rough Magic #260
Lucia in Love #265
Borrowed Angel #293
A Perilous Eden #328
Forever My Love #340
Wedding Bell Blues #352
Snowfire #386
Hatfield and McCoy #416
Silhouette Books
Silhouette Christmas Stories 1991
“The Christmas Bride”
Silhouette Shadows Anthology 1992
“Wilde Imaginings”
Silhouette Shadows 1993
“The Last Cavalier”
HEATHER GRAHAM
New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham has written more than one hundred novels, several of which have been featured by Doubleday Book Club and the Literary Guild. She currently writes for Silhouette Books, HQN Books and MIRA Books, and there are more than twenty million copies of her books in print. Heather lives with her husband and several of her five children in Miami, Florida.
To the Miccosukkee tribe of Florida
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
COMING NEXT MONTH
Prologue
The eyes stared across the water.
They were soulless eyes, the eyes of a cold-blooded predator, an animal equipped throughout millions of years of existence to hunt and kill.
Just visible over the water’s surface, the eyes appeared as innately evil as a pair of black pits in hell.
The prehistoric monster watched. It waited.
From the center seat of his beat-to-shit motorboat, Billy Ray Hare lifted his beer can to the creature. He squinted as he tried to make out the size of the beast, an estimation at best, since the bulk of the body was hidden by the water. Big boy, he thought. Didn’t see too many of the really big boys down here anymore. He’d even read some article about the Everglades alligators being kind of thin and scrawny these days, since they were surviving on insects and small prey. But every once in a while now, he’d still see a big beast sunning along the banks of the canals in the deep swamp.
He heard a slithering sound from the canal bank and turned. A smaller gator, maybe five feet long, was moving. Despite the ugly and awkward appearance of the creature, it was swift, fluid and graceful. Uncannily fast. The smaller crocodilian eased down the damp embankment and into the water. Billy watched. He knew the canals, and he knew gators, and he knew that the long-legged, hapless crane fishing for shiners near the shore was a goner.
“Hey, birdie, birdie,” Billy Ray crooned. “Ain’t you seen the sun? It’s dinnertime, baby, dinnertime.”
The gator slid into the water, only its eyes visible as the body swiftly disappeared.
A split second later, the beast burst from the water with a spray of power and gaping jaws. The bird let out a screech; its white wings frantically, pathetically, beat the water. But the huge jaws were clamped. The gator slung its head back and forth, shaking its prey near death, then slid back into the water to issue the coup de grâce, drowning its victim.
“It’s a damned dog-eat-dog world, ain’t it?” Billy murmured dryly aloud. He finished his beer, groped for another, and realized that he’d finished the last of his twelve-pack. Swearing, he noticed that the big gator across the canal hadn’t moved. Black reptilian eyes, evil as Satan’s own, continued to survey him. He threw his beer can in the direction of the creature. “Eat that, ugly whoreson!” he croaked, and began to laugh. Then he sobered, looking around, thinking for a minute that Jesse Crane might be behind him, ready to haul him in for desecrating his precious muck hole. But Billy Ray was alone in the swamp. Alone with the bugs and birds and reptiles, with no more beer and no fish biting. “Bang-bang, you?
Big money. What the heck.
They made big money out at that gator farm. Old Harry and his scientist fellow, Dr. Michael, the stinking Australian who thought he was Crocodile Dundee, and Jack Pine, the Seminole, and hell, that whole lot. They made money on alligators. Damn Jesse and his reeking white man’s law. Now he was the frigging tribal police.
Billy Ray shook his head. The hell with Jesse Crane and his whole bleeding-heart crowd. What did Jesse know? Tall and dark and too damned good-looking, and all powerful, one foot in the swamp, the other foot firmly planted in the white world. College education, plenty of money now—his late wife’s money, at that. The hell with him, the hell with all the environmentalists, the hell with the whites all the way. They’d been the ones who screwed up the swamp to begin with. While the whole country was running around screaming about rights—equal pay for women, real justice for blacks, food stamps for refugees—Jesse Crane didn’t see that the Indians—the Native Americans—were still rotting in the swamps. Jesse had a habit of just leaning back, shrugging, and staring at him with those cool green—white-blooded—eyes of his and saying that no white man was making old Billy Ray be a mean, dirty alcoholic who liked to beat up on his wife. Jesse wanted him in jail. But Ginny, bless her fat, ugly butt, Ginny wouldn’t file charges against him. Ginny knew where a wife’s place was supposed to be.
Alcoholic, hell. He wasn’t no alcoholic. God, he wanted another beer. Screw Jesse Crane.
“And screw you,” he said aloud, staring at the gator. Those black eyes hadn’t moved; the creature was still staring at him like some prehistoric sentinel. Maybe it was already dead. He squinted, staring hard. Tough now to see, because it was growing late. Dinnertime.
Sunset. It was almost night. He didn’t know what he wanted more, something to eat or another beer. He had neither. No fish, and he’d used up his government money.
The sky was orange and red, the beautiful shades that came right before the sun pitched into the horizon. But now the dying orb was creating a beautiful but eerie mantle of color on the water, the trees that draped their branches over it, and the seemingly endless “river of grass” that made up the Everglades. With sunset, everything took on a different hue; white birds were cast in pink and gold, and even the killer heat took a brief holiday. Jesse would sit out here like a lump on a log himself, just thinking that the place—with its thick carpet of mosquitoes and frequent smell of rot—was only a small step from heaven. Their land. Hell, he had news for Jesse. They hadn’t been the first Indians—Native Americans—here. The first ones who’d been here had been wiped out far worse than animals ever had. But Jesse seemed to think that being half Indian made him Lord Protector of the realm or something.
Billy smiled. Screw Jesse. It gave him great pleasure just to think nasty thoughts about the man.
A crane called overhead, swooped and soared low, making a sudden catch in the shimmering water, flying away with a fish dangling from its beak. Smart bird—caught his fish, flew away, didn’t wait around to become bait himself. In fact, it was a darned great scene, Billy thought sourly. Right out of National Geographic. It was all just one rosy-hued, beautiful picture. The damn crane had captured his dinner, the five-foot gator had captured his dinner, and all Billy Ray had caught himself was a deeper burn and a beer headache.
And that other gator. The big one. Big enough to gulp up the five-footer. Hell, it was big enough, maybe, to be well over ten feet long. Maybe it was way more than that, even. Son of a bitch, he didn’t know. He couldn’t tell its size; it was just one big mother, that was all. It was still staring at him. Eyes like glittering onyx as the sun set. Not looking, not moving. The creature didn’t seem to blink.
Maybe the big ole gator staring at him was dead. Maybe he could haul the monster in, skin and eat it before any of the sappy-eyed ecologists got wind of the situation. Ginny always knew what to do with gator meat. She’d “gourmeted” it long before fashionable restaurants had started putting it on their menus. Hell, with that gator, they could eat for weeks….
“Hey, there, you butt-ugly thing!” Billy Ray called. He stood up; the boat rocked. Better sit down. The beer had gotten to him more than he’d realized. He picked up an oar and started slowly toward the big gator. It still didn’t move. He lifted his oar from the water. Damn, but he was one asshole himself, he realized. Gator had to be alive, the way it was just setting there in the water, eyes above the surface.
Watching him.
Watching him, just like the smaller gator had watched the crane.
“Oh, no, you big ugly asshole!” Billy Ray called out. “Don’t you get any ideas. It’s my dinnertime.”
As if duly challenged, the gator suddenly began to move. Billy Ray saw more of its length. More and more…ten feet, twelve, fifteen…hell more, maybe…it was the biggest damned gator he’d seen in his whole life. Maybe it was a stray croc—no, he knew a croc, and he knew a gator. This fellow had a broad snout and clearly separated nostrils, it was just one big mother…cruising. Cruising smoothly toward him, massive body just gliding through the water. Coming fast, fast, faster…
He frowned, shaking his head, realizing he really was in something of a beer fog. Gators didn’t come after boats and ram them. They might swing along and take a bite at a hand trailing in the water, but he’d only seen a gator make a run at a boat once, and that was a mother protecting her nest, and she only charged the boat, she didn’t ram it.
This one was just warning him away. Hell, where was his gun? He had his shotgun in the boat somewhere….
Unable to tear his eyes from the creature’s menacing black orbs, he groped in the boat for his shotgun. His hand gripped the weapon; the creature was still coming. He half stood again, taking aim.
He fired.
He hit the sucker; he knew he hit it.
But the gator kept coming with a sudden ferocious speed.
The animal rammed the boat.
Billy Ray pitched over.
Sunset.
The water had grown dark. He couldn’t see a damned thing. He began to kick madly, aiming for the bank. He swam. He had hit the gator with a shotgun. Surely he had pierced the creature’s tough hide; it had just taken the stupid monster a long time to die. He’d been an idiot. His rifle was at the bottom of the muck now; his boat was wrecked, and the water was cool and sobering.
Sober…yeah, dammit, all of a sudden he was just too damned sober.
He twisted around and was just in time to see the monster. Like the others of its kind, it stalked him smoothly. Gracefully. He saw the eyes again, briefly. Cold, brutal, merciless, the eyes of a hell-spawned predator. He saw the head, the long jaws. Biggest damn head he’d ever seen. Couldn’t be real.
The eyes slipped beneath the surface.
Billy Ray started to scream. He felt more sober than he had ever felt in his life. Felt everything perfectly clearly.
Felt the movement in the water, the rush beneath him…
He screamed and screamed and screamed. Until the giant jaws snapped shut on him. He felt the excruciating, piercing pain. Then he ceased to scream as the razor-sharp teeth pierced his rib cage, lungs and windpipe.
The creature began to toss its massive head, literally shaking its prey into more easily digestible pieces.
The giant gator sank beneath the surface.
And more of Billy Ray’s bones began to crunch….
Billy Ray had been right all along.
It was dinnertime.
Chapter 1
At first it seemed that the sound of the siren wasn’t even penetrating the driver’s mind.
E
It was natural to speed out here—it felt like one of the world’s longest, strangest drives, with mile after mile of grass and muck and canal, interspersed by a gas station or tackle shop here or there, the airboat rides, and the Miccosukee camps.
But after you passed the casino, heading west, traces of civilization became few and far between. Despite that, the road was a treacherous one. Impatient drivers trying to pass had caused many a traffic fatality.
He overlooked it when someone seemed competent and was going a rational number of miles over the limit.
But this Lexus…
At last the driver seemed to become aware that he was trailing, the siren blazing. The Lexus pulled over on the embankment.
As Jesse pulled his cruiser off on the shoulder, he saw a blond head dipping—the occupant was obviously searching for the registration. Or a gun? There were plenty of toughs who made it out to this section of the world, because there was enough godforsaken space out here for all manner of things to go on. He trod carefully. He was a man who always trod carefully.
As he approached the car, the window came down and a blond head appeared. He was startled, faltering for a fraction of a second.
The woman was stunning. Not just attractive. Stunning. She had the kind of golden beauty that was almost spellbinding. Blond hair that caught the daylight. Delicate features. Huge eyes that reflected a multitude of colors: green, brown, rimmed with gray. Sweeping lashes. Full lips, colored in shell-pink gloss. Perfect for her light complexion and hair.