Chasing Shadows

by Karen Harper

  “Who sent it? Who the hell took my daughter?” Jace roared and reached for Nick.

  Claire stood and wedged herself between the men. “Stop it! Stop it, Jace. It won’t help. We’ll explain!”

  But would Nick go into what was obviously a trap set up for him? If not, if she went alone, would this Clayton Ames who must be behind this give Lexi back? Or if he thought Nick cared for her or her daughter, would they be in danger, too?

  “I’ll go, do what he says,” Nick said in a deadly calm voice. It was as if he’d read her mind. “It’s time I faced him. I’ve crossed him so many times, and he kept dancing out of reach, but it’s time now. I’ll go.”

  To her amazement, he put his index finger by his lips to get them to keep quiet. He gestured for them to follow him out of the room. He quietly opened the door to the closed garage and motioned them out. Once they were inside the dim garage, he closed the door to the house but still spoke in a whisper.

  “I’ve had my house bugged more than once, but I do regular sweeps. I didn’t think of it here, but it’s time to trust no one and no place. If there’s a listening device, it’s more likely to be in the house. No time to look for it now. Time to act.”

  “This note says it has to be both of us,” Claire insisted. She still had the envelope and note clutched in her hand. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “The drones—it’s obvious we, or you, have been watched from the day of the courthouse shooting.”

  “And with all the trees at Shadowlawn,” Nick said, “a drone wouldn’t work, so he sent someone to watch us, someone I chased that day. Maybe someone who hit Jace over the head when he showed up there.”

  “Who the hell are you two talking about?” Jace demanded. “And why would he take Lexi if he wants you, Markwood?”

  “I’ll explain, but only if you swear you won’t go to the police, that you’ll let me—”

  “Us,” Claire put in.

  “—play this his way—or at least seem to until I can figure out what to do—how to get your daughter back. She’ll come first, not me...”

  Nick stopped speaking. He shrugged. When Claire reached out to grip his arm, Jace said, “You know, I got some photos of you two together at a park, another of you near the hotel in St. Augustine, and one of when Claire was shot at the courthouse and you were bending over her, Markwood. I’m sure they were shot with drones. I couldn’t figure out how someone knew to find me at the airport in LA. And it came with a handprinted note, kind of like that one, that told me not to trust you, and to get back to get Claire away from you. I should have heeded the warning.”

  Claire cried, “He’s been watching all of us! Who does he think he is—God?” She crunched the envelope she still held. It seemed stiff. She looked inside, then pulled out more papers. She gasped. “A printout for two airline tickets, Nick, in your name and mine, Miami to Grand Cayman Island—first thing tomorrow morning. And your name’s here for ordering the tickets.”

  “Which I didn’t.”

  “And,” she said, shuffling to get to the third sheet, “a copy of an online reservation it looks like you made for a place called the Reef View Club, oceanfront suites on the north end of Seven Mile Beach.” Crying again, she showed them to Nick, then Jace snatched them.

  Nick muttered, “Look, I swear to both of you I’ll get Lexi back, and I didn’t set any of that up, even if it looks like it. If it costs me everything—my life—which it well could, I’ll get both Lexi and Claire back safe. Knowing how he thinks, it would be just like him to stage my suicide. He—he likes to torment me, so I’ll have to hope, after he lets them go, he’ll let me go, too. But I doubt it. I’ve tightened the screws on him again, so I—doubt it.”

  Jace slammed his fist down on the hood of Claire’s car. “All right, since this guy, this enemy, seems to know everything you do, I’m going, too—to ride shotgun. It will screw the career I’ve worked so hard for, but I’m going. You two can look like you’re following orders, and I’ll fly down in the plane I can borrow. When we’re all there, I’ll tail you—change how I look, keep out of sight but be there if you need me or we need a fast escape. I know a place I can stay.”

  “Even out here, keep your voice down,” Nick said, raking his fingers through his hair. “I can’t stop you, but I can’t advise it. You can see how this guy operates. Okay, here’s the thing. He framed my father, ruined him, and I think murdered him, but set it up to look like a suicide I’ve never been able to disprove—so far. You can see he’s rich and powerful. If you insist on going south on your own, let’s go back into the house and stage a loud scene where you say you’re giving me—both of us—forty-eight hours to get your daughter back or you’re going to the cops. Then storm out and do your damnedest to be sure you’re not followed to wherever you keep your plane. Maybe fly down ahead of us, but steer clear of contacting us there. We’ll no doubt be watched, but maybe—if you’re careful and lucky—you can watch the watchers.”

  “Yeah, got it,” Jace said. “Believe me, I know how to follow orders, and I get it about carrying a dead dad around with you for years. Then, let’s get this show on the road—or die trying.”

  Claire pulled her hand back from Nick’s arm. He was shaking. His usual tan complexion looked bleached out with fear. “Claire,” he said, “I repeat, we’ll get her back, no matter what it costs.”

  She nodded. Jace looked as shell-shocked as she felt. Nick, devastated. No, he looked determined and as quietly angry as Jace was openly fuming. Despite it all, she didn’t hate Nick, never could. Or Jace. God help her, the three of them were a team now, a desperate but daring team.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed CHASING SHADOWS,

  don’t miss the next story in Karen Harper’s SOUTH SHORES series...

  DROWNING TIDES

  Coming soon from MIRA Books!

  Keep reading for a sneak peek...

  Author’s Note

  Since I have lived the last thirty winters in the lovely city of Naples, Florida, I had always wanted to set another story there. (I did use that Southwest Florida setting for two earlier books, BLACK ORCHID, 1996, and BELOW THE SURFACE, 2008, which has recently been rereleased with a Heather Graham novel in a book entitled STILL WATERS.) So was born the SOUTH SHORES series, set in cities, states and countries—and beautiful beaches!—which I have lived, loved and visited. Although we are dedicated Ohioans, I figured out by adding up our Florida months that we have lived there for a total of ten and a half years.

  For this first SOUTH SHORES novel, I owe a great deal to my stepson and daughter-in-law Bill and Sunny Harper for their help with St. Augustine sites. Although we have visited them there numerous times, it took someone living in the area to answer all my questions. They own and operate two stores in Old Town St. Augustine in Heritage Walk off St. George Street. Their shops are Nautical Watch, which specializes in leather goods, and Mara’s Hotter Side, which features salsas and other spicy delights made from the regional datil pepper. If you’re in that historic city, stop by to see them and say hi.

  Except for its cash crop of indigo, Shadowlawn Plantation House is greatly based on the beautiful antebellum Oak Alley in Louisiana, which we visited on a Mississippi River boat trip. For a look at this historic home, please visit its website at www.OakAlleyPlantation.com and think of fictional Shadowlawn. However, indigo plantations once flourished in northern Florida, and Kingsley Plantation, mentioned in this novel and located near Jacksonville, is a great example of this. Kingsley has a fascinating story of its own, including its claim to being haunted. It is operated by the US National Park Service.

  All the characters in this novel are fictional. The sheriffs who appear in the book are strictly creations of my imagination and no way reflect on the actual government or police forces in Florida.

  Thanks as ever to my team at MIRA Books, especially my editor Nicole
Brebner and publicist Lisa Wray. As ever to my agent Annelise Robey and the Jane Rotrosen Agency staff, especially Meg Ruley who has been with me through thick and thin. My husband Don has been my travel companion for years as well as my proofreader.

  Please say hello and take part in the various questions and contests on my Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/karenharperauthor or visit my author website at www.karenharperauthor.com. You can also drop me a note at Karen.Harper.Author@gmail.com.

  Karen Harper

  “The thrilling finish takes a twist that most readers won’t see coming.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Broken Bonds

  Looking for more thrilling and suspenseful reads from New York Times bestselling author Karen Harper?

  Don’t miss the second installment in the brand-new South Shores series:

  Drowning Tides

  “A compelling story...intricate and fascinating.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag on Dark Road Home

  And be sure to follow each electrifying tale in Karen Harper’s gripping Cold Creek trilogy:

  Shattered Secrets

  Forbidden Ground

  Broken Bonds

  “Harper, a master of suspense, keeps readers guessing about crime and love until the very end.”

  —Booklist on Fall from Pride

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  Drowning Tides

  by Karen Harper

  1

  2014

  “I’ll get her back, Claire. I swear to you, I’ll get your daughter back.”

  “We’ll get her back together,” she insisted, turning toward Nick as he drove the rental car across I-75 to Miami where they would catch their plane.

  Thank God, Claire thought, Florida was narrow west to east, but the drive across the state on what Floridians called Alligator Alley seemed endless. Claire’s four-year-old daughter, Lexi, had been kidnapped, taken to the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman. They had round-trip Cayman Airways tickets, leaving this morning from Miami and getting into Grand Cayman early afternoon. They also had reservations for a place to stay on the island—all provided by the kidnapper who wanted much more than Lexi.

  Claire clenched her hands so tightly in her lap that her fingers went numb. She frowned at the canal where alligators basked like logs in the early morning sun, and white herons and ibis fluttered in the tops of mangrove trees. Early October was just past the rainy season, and the air seemed crystal clear. But nothing looked beautiful to her anymore.

  How could she ever have imagined when she went to work for criminal lawyer Nick Markwood that it would come to this? The two of them had been through hell enough already, but this horror was so much worse.

  “Let’s go over some things again,” Nick said.

  Ever clever, seemingly calm, even in the chaos of his own life, and now hers and Lexi’s, too, Claire thought. But she clung to that. She needed that—and him.

  “Yes. Yes, all right,” she agreed. “I know we have to go along with him, play by his rules. But we have to find his weakness, a way to save Lexi and you, too—if he lets any of us go.”

  “Clayton Ames controls people the way he does his international business empire,” Nick said of the sixty-four-year-old billionaire business mogul.

  “Except for you. He found he couldn’t control you, that you would pursue him for your father’s murder, even if he had it staged to look like a suicide. You’d think by now he’d ignore your attempts to prove that, since he always just slips out of reach. Nick, that’s what terrifies me about him having Lexi—and soon having us. He can make people disappear.”

  A noisy semi went around their car with a deep honk of its horn. They passed the exit to the Miccosukee Seminole Indian reservation on the edge of Everglades National Park. The lush foliage merged with the saw grass prairie of the Glades with its tree-filled raised mounds called hammocks. At last a scattering of west coast buildings appeared along with green and white highway signs to Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

  She stared at Nick’s profile, seemingly set in stone. She was grateful he was as obsessed with saving Lexi as she was, and she loved him all the more for it. It seemed the long night they’d spent planning and packing had etched deeper lines on his chiseled face. The silver streaks along the temples of his dark hair seemed more pronounced and his gray eyes more intense than even during the days they’d struggled to get answers and stay alive on the St. Augustine murder-suicide case. He suddenly looked older than thirty-nine, but then, she felt far beyond thirty-two today.

  How ironic she’d decided she would not work as his forensic psychologist again if an assignment took her away from Lexi, and now her daughter had been taken away from her—from her own front yard. Claire had vowed she’d stay home in Naples and stick to more mundane investigations through her Clear Path fraud-fighting website, but here they were, more desperate than ever.

  “As I said, expect the worst from Clayton Ames,” Nick told her, his voice hard as it always was when he spoke of his archenemy. “We have to watch what we say at all times, in the airport, on the plane, even once we get to our Grand Cayman hotel, because he could have places bugged or his lackeys hovering. Expect to be under invisible surveillance day and night. We’ll walk on the beach away from others if we want to be sure we’re not overheard. Nothing about Jace, especially. He’s risking his neck to fly down on his own in case we need him.”

  It went unspoken between them that they couldn’t have stopped Jace Britten anyway. Her ex-husband had arrived at Claire’s house just after Lexi was taken and saw the threatening note the drone had delivered. Lexi’s abductor had evidently driven a car like Jace’s and even resembled him to a degree, to get the child close enough to grab. But Claire had to agree with Nick that Jace could be a loose cannon in all this.

  “Jace and I may be divorced, but he’d do anything for Lexi.”

  “And for you,” he said, turning to shoot her a sudden stare before looking back to the road. “He still cares for you a lot.”

  “I’ll never forgive myself if his plan to fly down there on his own blows up. He’s a skilled pilot and used to jets, so it’s not that. But rather if he’s harmed once he’s there or ruins our chances of getting Lexi back.”

  “At least he knows the stakes. But as I said, Ames likes to know exactly what his competitors, even in business, are saying and thinking, what’s going on. I wouldn’t have rented this car at the last minute if I didn’t think he’d manage to bug my other one.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice shaky. She looked at the narrow, deep waterways that ran along this four-lane highway. “I’ll be careful what I say and when.” She turned toward him, tugging her seat belt out to give herself room to sit sideways. “Nick, I can’t thank you enough for risking yourself to get Lexi back. I know Ames means to harm you.”

  “He does, but I’m banking on the fact he likes to exert his power, make his enemies twist and turn, control and ruin them, torment them. I’m hoping he means to make me toe his line somehow, not just trade my life for hers.”

  Claire broke into tears again when she’d tried since yesterday to keep calm. But she felt she was spiraling down into a dark hole. At least she didn’t have a horrible dream last night from her narcolepsy in the half hour she’d gone to sleep. Right now, she didn’t need her so-called “sleeping disease” or her powerful meds that controlled it. Despite her deep exhaustion, for once, she couldn’t sleep.

  “Sorry. I’m okay. I mean, not okay, but holding up. Really,�
�� she tried to assure him as she grabbed for a tissue in her purse on the car floor and swiped under her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, too, sweetheart,” Nick said, reaching over the console to grip her knee with one hand. “But, despite all this, I can’t be sorry we met, that we—we care for each other. Again, I swear to you on my life, we will get Lexi back and get through this. Then I’ll leave your life so that bastard doesn’t try to use you and those you love to get to me again.”

  A tear trickled down Nick’s cheek from under his sunglasses, but, focused on the road again, he ignored it. She loved him desperately despite hating him, too, over this—didn’t she?

  Claire made herself look away from him. Fear was on his face but fury, too. Did he know her heart was broken not only over Lexi but over what he’d just said—that once they got her back, Nick would leave their lives?

  * * *

  As Nick took the turn south toward the Miami Airport through a maze of curved and elevated ramps and overhead signs, the horrible day he’d found his father dead came back to him. That waking nightmare crashed in on him sometimes when he least expected it. His attorney dad whom he adored and had later patterned himself after, dead. His head partly gone. Pistol in hand. Blood spatter and brain matter on the wall behind his desk.

  He heard again his own shrill, young voice. “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

  Obviously a suicide, the coroner ruled: late at night, wife out of town, son supposedly asleep upstairs, trajectory of the bullet, spatter pattern, only the deceased’s fingerprints on the gun. And the fact his father had recently lost huge real estate investments, ones he’d made on the advice of his trusted friend, Clayton Ames, Nick’s “Uncle Clay.” Later, in his teens, Nick had found papers stashed in a metal box that showed his father had meant to expose Ames as a cheat and fraud.

  But Nick had known even then—his mother did, too—that Dad would not have killed himself and left them broke and bereft like that. The only good thing that had come from their public family tragedy was Nick’s dedication to becoming a criminal lawyer. Eventually to found two entities to help distraught people: Markwood, Benton and Chase, LLP, the law firm in which he was a senior partner; and South Shores, a secret, separate enterprise which sought out and defended those who were wrongly accused of or ruined by murder or suicide.