TENDER DECEIT (Romantic Suspense Mystery Novel): First Love Series ~ Book 1 (12 page)

Leah stuffed the USB stick into her shorts pocket and looked furtively around. Through the glass of the tailor shop window, she could see out into the rest of the mall. It was late morning now and the place was starting to fill up. She thought of the man in the lingerie section of the department store next door. He could be out again any minute and she had no intention of letting him see her in here. 

Grabbing the jacket, she pushed the door of the shop open and stepped out—just in time to see the man also step out of the department store on her left. Their eyes met and she saw his gaze drop to the jacket in her hands and a gleam of triumph light his eyes. Quickly, she turned and headed for the escalators.

He came straight after her. There was no pretending now. Leah raced down the moving steps, taking them two at a time, and heard him clattering after her. Reaching the ground floor, she hesitated for a second, then swung around and continued down the next set of escalators to the basement.

Like many shopping centres on Orchard Road, the Merlion Mall had a vast warren of basement arcades which boasted even more shops, restaurants, cafés, boutiques, and food courts, as well as a connecting passageway to the nearby MRT station. You could almost shop your way from one end of Orchard Road to the other without ever coming above ground, simply travelling through the network of underground arcades which connected various shopping malls to each other.

For once, Leah was grateful for the crowds in Asia, as she quickly lost herself in the sea of people milling through the corridors. She looked back. The man had just arrived in the basement as well and was looking left and right for her. Leah ducked her head lower.

He started in her direction. She turned and pushed ahead again. The crowd surged around her and Leah tried to move with them, to hide in their midst. The corridor bent to the right and she found herself in an underground food court. Queues were already starting to form around several of the stalls and most of the stools around the tables were already taken. People ate lunch early in Asia. Leah swerved around a man carrying a tray laden with bowls of steaming
laksa
, the smell of coconut milk and lemongrass wafting over her, then she paused by the edge of a
sushi
stall and looked back.

The man was still behind her, peering over the heads of people around him, his eyes searching methodically. Leah didn’t think he had seen her, but he was coming at a quick pace and, if she wasn’t careful, he would see her in a moment when the crowds parted. She had to find somewhere to hide until he went past.

She looked desperately around. Beyond the food court, most of the stores were open plan, with wide entrances and big window displays, giving her no protection from searching eyes. Then she spied a unit on the corner up ahead, which seemed to have wood-panelled walls with small round windows instead. From the décor and cute fish designs on its signage, Leah guessed that it was some kind of salon or spa. Whatever it was, it would offer her some privacy and a mud facial made as good a disguise as any. She pushed open the door and hurried inside.

“Hello! Welcome to the Happy Harmony Internet Fish Spa!” A smiling girl with a baby face came eagerly forwards.

“The what?” Leah gaped at her.

“Pedicure by doctor fish! You haven’t tried before? It’s very wonderful—very relaxing.” The girl herded Leah further inside.

The interior had been remodelled so that a series of low counters ran up and down the room, with computer screens and keyboards placed at intervals along the counter and a cushion in front of each screen. But the cushions were placed at floor level, so that you sat directly on the floor, and, where your feet would have gone, a long canal had been cut into the floor, directly beneath the counter, so that your legs dangled off the edge and into the canal.

A few people were already sitting at various cushions, their fingers at the keyboards and their legs deep in the canal. Their feet were actually in water, Leah realised as she looked closer, for the canal was full of clear water.

Then she blinked and looked again. The water in the canal was teeming with tiny, silver fish.

They clustered around people’s feet, nibbling at their toes. Leah looked around
in disbelief. Nobody in the room seemed that bothered. They continued tapping away, unconcerned, with their feet in the water full of fish. You would have thought that having your toes eaten alive by fish while you surfed the net was a common occurrence. Maybe it was in Singapore.

“What are they doing?” Leah asked the girl.

“These are
Garra rufa
fish,” the girl explained. “They do fish therapy for you—natural exfoliation—as they eat the dead skin on your feet.”

“They eat the
what
?” said Leah.

“Come, come, you try. Best
pedicure, very smooth and soft.”

“Er, no thanks…” Leah said, recoiling at the thought. But her protests were overruled and before she knew it, she found herself paying for a half-hour session and being shown to a computer an
d cushion. She chose a seat at the back of the room, but facing the store doorway so that she could see anybody who walked in.

Gingerly, Leah lowered her feet into the water and braced herself as the fish swarmed around her toes. She gave a gasp and squeal as a dozen little mouths got to work, but after a while, the ticklish feeling faded into a pleasant tingling sensation. Leah wriggled her toes and chuckled, forgetting for a moment about Toran, about the man following her, about her father’s jacket, even about the USB stick. This was one new Singapore experience she could get used to.

The tinkle of bells announcing the store door opening brought her rapidly back to the present. Leah hunched down behind her screen. But it was only a young couple—obviously tourists—coming in for a fish therapy experience. Still, it reminded her why she was there and Leah took the USB stick out of her pocket and regarded it grimly.

She had no idea what was on it, but she knew that she had to keep the contents safe. Until she found out what was going on, this was the only link that could help prove that her father was murdered.
And help Toran
, the little voice inside her head whispered, but Leah thrust it away impatiently.

She couldn’t let this evidence fall into the wrong hands. Leah looked around the room. She couldn’t hide here forever and she wondered how long it would be before the man would pick up her trail again. They hadn’t tried to yet—perhaps they were biding their time, waiting to see what she would reveal—but if Warne’s men knew that she had found her father’s incriminating evidence, they could easily corner her and overpower her, forcing her to give it up.

Leah thought of Inspector Ravi and his shrewd, dark eyes. Could she go to him? Would he believe her? A foreign tourist making crazy accusations about one of the richest and most respected men in society… would she be laughed at or even cautioned for wasting police time? If Bentley Warne was powerful enough to get a high-profile journalist like Toran nearly put in prison, there was no telling what he could do to her. The Singapore justice system could be ruthless, especially if manipulated by those with power. 

If there was a downside to a country with such a clean, well-organised, crime-free environment, it was the crazily strict laws and harsh penalties
which people lived under in Singapore. After all, there was probably no other country in the world where you could be fined hundreds of dollars or be threatened with jail time for simple things like chewing gum, jaywalking, or even failing to flush a public toilet. As for drugs—Leah shuddered—Singapore had one of the toughest anti-drug laws in the world. If you got caught trafficking drugs, it was death by hanging, no exceptions. It wouldn’t be that difficult for Warne to plant drugs in her possessions, to be conveniently “found” by the police. If she were arrested and her passport seized, she could be detained for weeks, even months, while trying to prove her innocence…  

Suddenly the thought of what she was up against was overwhelming and Leah fought back a wave of fear and panic. In spite of herself, her thoughts flashed to Toran and, for a moment, she wished that he was here beside her. He would know what to do; he would keep her safe…

No.

Leah took a deep breath. No, she couldn’t trust Toran. And she couldn’t go to the authorities, at least not for the
time being. Not until she had definite proof of Bentley Warne’s involvement. She looked down at the USB stick. The proof could be right here. She just had to keep it safe until she could figure out what to do with it. 

The bells by the door tinkled again. Leah looked up. A young, blond guy with a wispy beard, in board shorts and sandals, had just walked in. She heard him asking the baby-faced girl if he could just surf the internet without having fish therapy.

Of course, the internet!
Leah couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. Coming in here had been a blessing in disguise. She knew exactly what to do now. Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she brought up the browser and navigated to a cloud storage site. Quickly, she opened a new account, then plugged the USB stick into the computer and transferred the contents to the cloud storage folder in cyberspace.

Her eyes flicked over the files that were being transferred. They were video files. Curious, she hovered her mouse over one of the files, then moved it resolutely away again. There was something on these files worth killing for and a public internet café was definitely not the place to view them. She would have to check them out later.

The transfer complete, Leah logged out and closed down the browser, making sure to clear the browsing history. Then she wiped all data from the USB stick. She ejected it from the computer and looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, then returned it to the inner breast pocket of the jacket.

Carefully, she pulled her feet out of the water and dried them on the towel provided. She was surprised to find that they were baby-soft to the touch. Perhaps there was something to this fish therapy after all. Leah gave the tiny fish in the water a last affectionate look, then stood up, collected her shoes from reception and left the internet fish spa. With the data safely protected by password out in cyberspace and no longer on the USB stick, Leah felt braver and walked confidently back the way she had come.

The lunch rush was thinning out a bit in the food court. The wonderful aroma of frying garlic roused her stomach and reminded Leah that breakfast had been hours ago. She was just pausing to examine the menu of a noodle stall when somebody jostled her roughly. Leah stumbled and felt something tug sharply at her left elbow. When she regained her balance, she realised that her father’s jacket was no longer slung over her left arm. She whirled around. It was now in the hands of a man who was walking rapidly away.

Arriving back at her hotel after a late lunch in the food court, Leah felt a wave of fatigue hit her. She hadn’t slept well last night and the early start and the strain of the events that morning were beginning to catch up with her. In the lobby of her hotel, soft piano music was playing in the background, bellboys were carefully pushing trolleys piled high with luggage, and guests were standing around in groups of threes and fours, consulting maps and fidgeting with cameras. Leah shook her head as she walked over to the lifts and pushed the button. Everything seemed so incredibly
normal
.

The lifts pinged softly and Leah stepped inside. She leaned against the inner wall, shutting her eyes for a moment as the lift ascended. In spite of her tiredness, she smiled to herself. She felt a sense of smug triumph as she thought of Warne’s men finding the USB stick in the jacket pocket and opening it eagerly, only to find it empty. Would they think that it was empty from the start or would they realise that she had wiped the data?

It didn’t matter, Leah thought as she unlocked her door and stepped into her darkened hotel room. The point was that she had outsmarted them and now she was safely back in her room. She gave herself another congratulatory smile. Her hands reached out to grope for the light switch and then she felt herself seized from behind, a hand clamping over her mouth.

For a second, it seemed like an echo of what had happened when she was seized two nights earlier and her mind jumped instantly.
Toran?
Then Leah realised that the arms holding her were hurting her in a cruel grip and the hand over her mouth was sweaty and sour with the smell of cigarettes.

She tried to scream, the sound coming out muffled. She began struggling, kicking and wriggling and trying to yank her head free. They lurched across the room and slammed into the desk, sending the brochures she had been looking at earlier flying. They reeled back, still locked together, and tripped over the coffee table. Leah heard more things being knocked to the floor.

Then she was thrown on her back on the bed, the breath whooshing out of her as she bounced on the mattress. Hands held her down. She thrashed on the bed, fighting like an animal, screaming with all her might. The hand came up and smacked her across her face. Leah gasped, the scream bitten off. The hand hit her again. She whimpered and tried to curl away, all thoughts of screaming now gone. She couldn’t see properly in the dim light, but she could hear—a rasping, panting breath as the man loomed above her. She whimpered again and thought she heard a laugh.