I'll Find You (3 page)

Jonathan’s sister and brother, Diane and Derek Cantrell, had taken care of the funeral arrangements. Callie, who barely knew them, vaguely registered their hostility, thinking they blamed her for their brother’s death. Later, she’d come to realize that they blamed her for inheriting the Cantrell family fortune. Later still, she discovered that fortune was about a tenth what it had once been, that Jonathan had practically run the company into the ground. She’d been thinking of taking a trip to Martinique, to the island where she and Jonathan honeymooned and Sean was conceived, a vague plan that had roots in the fact that she wanted to just run away. With Diane and Derek’s increasingly hostile attitude after they examined Jonathan’s financial records and realized the money just wasn’t there, Callie had taken off. She had kept her own checking account and she used funds she’d saved on her own.

She told William Lister, a man she’d felt she could trust even though he was the Cantrell family attorney, that she was leaving on a trip. She didn’t tell him where. He advised her against it; there were a dozen legal matters to attend to, to which Callie told him that Diane and Derek could have everything, save what she had in her own account. She didn’t care. She just needed to leave.

Derek caught up with her before she took off and tried to wheedle out of her where she was going. He intimated that she was stealing their inheritance, which pissed her off no end. She didn’t give a damn about the money, or him, or anyone. She’d lost the only person who was important to her. Derek also implied that Jonathan had bought her jewels and designer clothes and other lavish gifts. That’s where he felt the money had gone, and he wanted those gifts returned.

To that Callie said, “Bite me.” She didn’t have the money or the mythical gifts. She took off for Martinique and left her cell phone behind so they couldn’t reach her. She was sick of the lot of them. In the end she’d called Lister a time or two, mostly to let him know she was still alive and okay and to keep him from sending the hounds after her.

Callie sensed there was a lot she didn’t know about her husband, but she wasn’t even certain she wanted to know what it was. Maybe that was why her mind shied away from whatever it was she couldn’t grasp. Whatever the case, she’d spent the last month finishing the recovery that had started within the walls of Del Amo Hospital. She wasn’t her old self; that person had died an unlamented death somewhere along the way. She was someone new, someone stronger. Someone who planned to make much better choices from here on out.

He watched the young woman with the red-tinged, blond hair weave through the open market and held his breath, a surge of hot fury licking through his veins. He’d been accused of being cold and heartless by women before, maybe he had been with them, but right now he was churning with rage, his insides hot lava.

His eyes followed her as she picked up several mangos and a papaya and then moved on to examine an array of tropical flowers. He saw her fingers reach out and gently touch a blood red anthurium and fought back the urge to grab her hard and shake her until something fell loose.

Not yet,
he told himself.
Not here.

He traced her movements as she made her purchases, then slipped in behind her as she walked away, her carryall laden with fresh fruit and vegetables, the nodding heads of birds of paradise and tiger lilies almost like a beckoning hand. He followed carefully behind her and realized she was heading toward the bay.

The early-morning stillness of Fort-de-France Bay seeped seductively into Callie’s consciousness. Her senses were lulled, attuned only to the heat, the silence, and most of all the view, as she stood on the pier and watched the ferryboat load visitors for the thirty-minute voyage from Fort-de-France to Pointe du Bout, the tourist resort on the other side of the bay.

Her carryall was loaded with groceries, and she had only one stop left to make: the bakery. But she couldn’t find the energy to move. Stretching her bare arms skyward, she felt the sun soak deep into her skin. Smiling, she squinted against the blinding dazzle of light on the water.

An inflatable boat at the end of another pier was being stowed with provisions, and Callie watched the two men doing the loading without really seeing them. Her thoughts were far away. That same elusive memory was teasing at the back of her mind. She ignored it, unwilling to frustrate herself with being incapable of grasping it, and kept her gaze on the small rubber launch as it roared to life and pulled away from the shore. Her line of sight took in a trim white and royal-blue sailboat anchored in the bay. Small waves from the wake of other boats slapped against the sailboat’s gleaming hull, and a man on deck moved to the rope ladder near the stern, leaning down to help load provisions from the approaching inflatable raft.

Callie’s scalp prickled and she looked around. A man and woman were walking along the dock, arm in arm, and a female jogger with a long-limbed reddish dog trotting beside her swept off to her right. A deeply tanned man about a quarter-mile down the shore held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, the binoculars trained on that same sailboat. She glanced back to the sailboat herself and didn’t see the same binoculars sweep the shore, pass by her once, then casually pass by her again.

Callie closed her eyes and inhaled the heady, salt-laden air. Hearing the launch rev to life once more, she slowly lifted her lids and watched the rubber craft motor back to the pier, a frothy wake fanning out behind it. To her surprise one of the men looked up, saw her, and began to wave frantically.

She glanced around. She was the only person in sight. Did she know this man? She didn’t think so. He had a grizzled beard and bulky build, and even from a distance she could see how dirty his clothes were. Then he put his hands to his lips and threw her an expansive kiss, arms spread wide, his mouth split by a wide grin.

She smiled back. Of course the man was a stranger. A Frenchman. She’d just been the recipient of his romantic enthusiasm.

She lifted her hand and waved a bit self-consciously. Tucker’s bracelet caught the sunlight and threw bright, lavender pinpoints of light in an arc around her. The man in the launch waved again and then the small boat reached the pier and the two men began hauling on more provisions.

Callie looked at her watch. It was time to get moving if she planned to do anything more than hang around the piers. Turning away from the bay, she walked back toward the center of the city.

Feeling something on the back of her neck, she glanced behind herself, her heart suddenly galloping. But it was the same scene. Nothing had changed except the jogger and dog had disappeared around the curve of the pier. The man who’d been watching the sailboat was tucking his binoculars into their case and turning the other way.

Fort-de-France was a thriving metropolis, its streets so narrow that cars parked on the sidewalks, forcing the pedestrians to spill into the street. It was early enough, as Callie headed north, that she wasn’t battling a crowd of people and cars. Her progress was rapid and she arrived at the tiny bakery within minutes.

“Bonjour,”
she said to the woman behind the counter.

“Bonjour.”
The woman smiled distractedly and waited for Callie to make a selection.

There were pastries of every kind. Flaky Napoleons layered with custard, cone-shaped scones filled with coconut crème, pineapple tarts, croissants, crusty loaves of bread. Callie’s French couldn’t stand the test of such exotic names and she pointed to several crème-filled items, unable to resist buying several.

“Thank you.
Merci.”
Callie picked up the bag and settled it into the trusty plastic carryall. Since she had no car she walked everywhere, and after she had found herself an apartment a mile from the city center she learned to limit her purchases to what she could comfortably carry.

The sun was already hot as she headed up the hill toward her apartment. Shifting the bag from one hand to the other, she trekked along until the sidewalks of Fort-de-France gave way to the steep, narrow roadway that led back to the less congested street fronting her apartment. Traffic was thick, and she turned at the first street that could take her away from the main thoroughfare.

A trickle of sweat ran down her spine as she hiked upward. Looking back down the hill, she saw the ferry, shrunk by distance, returning across the bay from Pointe du Bout. Even from this distance she could discern many of the major hotels and tourist resorts that ringed this side of the bay, their white sand beaches sloping into the sea. When Callie and Jonathan had come to Martinique on their honeymoon, they’d stayed at one of those hotels. This time she’d steered clear of them. She asked herself for about the millionth time why she’d chosen Martinique when it held such a dubious memory for her, but she had no answer to that. It was a pretty place. More tropical than Los Angeles. She hadn’t traveled a lot, apart from moving from a suburb of Chicago to the West Coast after a man she’d thought she wanted to marry. It was Bryan’s dream to work as an actor and Callie’s dream to be with Bryan. Neither had worked out.

Tired, she paused for breath, setting down her bag and wiping perspiration from her forehead. It was damn hot. The kind of thick, tropical heat heavy with humidity that stole your breath and weighted down your limbs. Resolutely straightening her shoulders, Callie trudged on again. As the noise of Fort-de-France receded behind her, she almost felt alone on the planet. The only other person in view was a man walking some distance behind her. He looked familiar and her heart jolted before she realized he was only the man who’d been watching the sailboat, his small binoculars tucked into his belt. He was staring into the screen of his cell phone, his forward motion kind of haphazard as his attention was on his phone.

Texting, she assumed, thinking of the disposable phone she’d purchased, then shoved in a drawer. She’d made a few calls since she’d been here, couldn’t act completely like she was a missing person. The few times her phone had rung she’d known it was William Lister or a wrong number. She didn’t answer either way. She didn’t have anything to say to Lister. She would deal with him and the rest of Jonathan’s family when she was darn good and ready. She’d given them everything they wanted, and if they would just leave her alone, she would be back soon enough anyway.

And you’ll leave Tucker.

She couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t. Think. About it.

Cutting across a weed-choked lawn, she took a shortcut the rest of the way. The sun was shining brightly as she turned a corner, walked along a cracked, narrow sidewalk, then ducked into the alley between her apartment building and the one next door.

Where the hell is she going?

He kept a careful distance behind, his gaze not on the smartphone in his hand but on her tan legs and the swaying hem of her gauzy white sundress. He’d been looking for her for over a week, trolling a particular Internet café, making discreet inquiries, getting nowhere. Then she’d turned up at the market and walked down to the pier, big as you please. Soaking in the sights like every other tourist, her crown of hair shining beneath the blazing sun.

He wanted to kill her with his bare hands.

“Don’t do anything rash,” Victoria had warned him in her tight-lipped way. “If you have to bargain with her, okay. But don’t antagonize her any further.”

Like he needed to be told what to do. He’d done plenty of surveillance. Had enough years with the LAPD to be considered an old hand.

Still, Victoria was right in one respect: he wanted to shake the woman until she fell into pieces. He wanted to shatter her self-indulgent world and leave her in the rubble. There would be no bargaining as far as he was concerned. Victoria knew that, but she always tried to make everything sound so civilized. But the only way to deal with
her
was by bringing things down to a level she could understand.

Bargaining was for beggars. Now was the time for action.

The bitch was in his sights.