Left to Crave (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book Thirteen) Read online

  She felt the hand still tugging insistently at her sleeve, trying to pull her away from the stream. She stumbled, feet pressing into slick mud and pulling again with a faint sucking sound. She didn't want to leave. Didn't want to move.

  She wanted to keep an eye on the monster. Just to make sure.

  Another little shiver trembled down her spine. John and his daughter were beneath the bridge, but Claudia's tear-filled eyes were open again. They glanced around, blinking. When they settled on Adele, though, Claudia just stared.

  Adele looked back, shivering again.

  No one had been here to witness the shooting. No one had seen him drown.

  No one except for John Renee's ten-year-old daughter.

  Would she tell what happened? Would she even be able to piece it together? She'd been so frightened. Adele had saved her, in a fashion. The killer had wanted to do horrible things. But would Claudia understand any of it?

  “Please—come with me. I need you to answer a few questions, agent. Would you like a jacket?”

  The voice in her ear seemed a disembodied thing. She was only staring at Claudia now.

  The girl looked away again, burying her face in her father's shoulder.

  Another jolt of panic.

  What if Claudia told John? Would she be able to face him?

  Renee had offered to get his hands dirty on her behalf in the past... But he cared for her because she was better than that. At least, that's what he'd said. A fat lot of good it would do to preserve their relationship to embark on the next stage behind bars.

  The same niggling voice in her mind returned. You did what you had to...

  “Shut up,” she snarled beneath her breath, beginning to move, allowing herself to be guided away by the officer at her hip.

  No amount of trying to convince herself she'd done the right thing—done what she had to do—would change the fact that she'd killed a man in cold blood. She could remember countless other times where she'd rushed to the aid of a suspect after they'd been contained. Only months ago, in Venice, she'd shot a killer, then hurried to his side to stop the bleeding.

  But this time... no.

  She'd watched him die. She'd let him drown.

  And she'd meant to do it.

  “Come this way,” the voice said at her side. “Please, Agent Sharp. Just a few questions. You can speak with your partner later.”

  Questions indeed. The first of many questions, interviews, maybe even interrogations.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Their luxurious mountain home stood against the backdrop of the Swiss Alps. Snow-tipped peaks and gray flanks cradling prickling firs caressed a descending horizon of wispy clouds stippled with starlight.

  Anita Vosloo's turn signals blinked behind her as she locked her Mercedes' doors. She strode around the car, briefcase in one hand, her high heels clicking against the smooth asphalt of the driveway.

  She heard the quiet whir of the metal gate behind her, up the driveway, slowly closing. Ahead, their home overlooked the mountains, with a hot tub in the backyard, visible just around the edge of the brickwork.

  A light was on in the garage, and she paused, peering through the window.

  “Henry?” she called, frowning. She could see the edge of his BMW mirror through the garage's window. His car was here...

  “Henry?” she called, louder, frowning.

  But where was he?

  She sighed, glancing towards her keys then back at her sedan. Her husband had made a habit out of parking the cars for her. At least, that's what he said. For her. Really, it was for him. He was worried she'd accidentally scrape the paint of his beloved BMW.

  “Just the one time,” she muttered beneath her breath. She glanced at her watch, and then her cell phone. No messages.

  Normally, when the gate up the driveway triggered, it would alert her husband's phone. He had ample time to reach the driveway and pull her car into the garage. She couldn't remember the last time he'd been late.

  Briefly, she wondered if she ought to just do it herself. But she remembered the last time someone had scraped his car, and how Henry hadn't left his study for a week. She sighed, muttering beneath her breath about men and their toys before deciding it was perhaps best to just find her husband.

  She moved up the mansion's steps and towards the two, large oak doors. A sizable cardboard box, with multiple strands of plastic binding, rested on the top step. The box had been ripped open, packing foam visible where it had been returned to the container once the desired contents had been removed.

  She paused long enough to glance towards the label on the front of the large, empty box. Leon Antiques.

  “Ah, it arrived,” she murmured to herself. At least this would put her husband in a good mood. “Henry! Where are you? I'm home, dear!”

  But again, no response. She pushed open the door to their home—they rarely locked it--and stepped into the main atrium. Two curling staircases met at the top of an overhead walkway. But the lights downstairs were off... Strange. She glanced off down a side hall, towards her husband's study.

  The door was closed, but there was no light beneath the doorway either.

  Strange...

  She frowned but then spotted an item in the middle of the atrium, beneath the walkway.

  A large grandfather clock. The same item they'd bid on at the auction only days ago. The packing material outside had been clue enough but now here was the actual prize.

  Even in the dark, the antique clock, with its brass face and etched Koa wood sides was something to admire. A sinker redwood frame for the misty glass up top only helped seal the abalone trim.

  Another one of her husband's little toys.

  It was quite a nice piece, though. Henry had insisted they win it at the auction—and when her husband wanted something, he often got it.

  She reached out, flicking on the lights.

  But they didn't work.

  She frowned, glancing towards the switch and trying it again. The lights remained off. “Henry?” she said, a bit quieter now, speaking into the enormous, old home. A slow shiver trembled up her spine.

  She lowered her briefcase slowly, and took a hesitant step further into the house, towards her husband's study. He normally kept the door closed when he was working on a day-trade, but why were the lights off?

  Her fingers trembled in front of her now. She frowned at this subconscious reaction. Normally, she didn't consider herself a particularly timid person.

  Why weren't the lights working, though?

  Where was her husband?

  She reached the door to her husband's study, feeling a cold dread flooding through her. Her fingers gripped the handle, and she wet her lower lip with a dab from her tongue.

  Then, as cold as the snow-capped mountains, she tried the handle.

  The door swung smoothly open, revealing a large study, with an enormous oak and mahogany desk and a model ship on top of an aquarium in one corner. Her husband's computer was still on—flashing lights and fast-moving scroll as the computer tracked the changes in the market. Binders and binders of information, printed, rested against the side of her husband's desk.

  But no sign of the man himself.

  She stared towards the aquarium, watching the piranhas in the tank swirl about. She hated those fish, but her husband was quite fond of the little, prickly-toothed devils.

  She tried the light switch by the door...

  This one didn't work either.

  Had the breaker switched? Perhaps Henry was dealing with the lights.

  She glanced through the room a final time, looking for any sign of—

  Ding...

  She nearly leapt from her skin, whirling around at the sudden, muted noise. Eyes wide, heart hammering, she winced, readjusting her foot where she'd nearly twisted her ankle in those stupid high heels.

  Where was that sound coming fr—

  Ding!

  A faint, pathetic noise... Coming from the grandfather clock.

&nbs
p; She stared at the old antique, and the glassy face stared back. Another faint Ding!

  Cold shivers still maneuvered up her back, but as she stared at the clock, her heart raced... Something was off with that sound. She remembered the deep, bass boom of the clock striking the hour back at the auction house. It was one of the things that had drawn her husband to it.

  Another, pathetic little Ding!

  She approached the old antique, suddenly very conscious of how much larger it was than her. The top was nearly a foot taller, and it was wider than two of her standing side by side.

  Ding!

  Now, the shivers up her back came with a churning stomach. She reached out the same shaking hand, wishing desperately the damn lights had been on.

  “Henry?” she called again, louder.

  Ding!

  She gripped the brass latch on the side of the antique clock, pried it open with relative ease. And then, feeling quite silly for being spooked by a stupid clock in a big house, she opened the grandfather clock. Ding!

  Darkness met her gaze. The shadow of the stairs above, the interior shadows of the clock, the lack of lights—it all made it difficult to see.

  Nothing… Nothing in the clock at all. ’he'd been acting silly.

  This was all...

  What was that?

  A pale something suspended in the shadows. She reached out, hesitantly, prodding the pale thing.

  Cold skin.

  A hand.

  A scream caught in her throat. The motion of her push suddenly knocked loose a false, wooden panel.

  A body spilled out, tumbling towards her and crashing to the ground in front of the old clock.

  Now, the scream ripped from her lungs. Anita stumbled back, screeching at the ceiling, hands in front of her to protect her face.

  But the body w’sn't moving... a corpse.

  Dead.

  ’he'd stumbled back so far, her shoulder blades pressed to the door of her husb’nd's study now. Her ankle ached—this time, in her haste, she had sprained it.

  Still gasping, wide-eyed, staring in horror, her vision adjusted in the dim dark.

  She recognized that combover, reddish hair streaked with white. Recognized those eyes—normally so warm, so friendly. Now empty and cold.

  “Henry...,” she murmured, horror in her chest, hyperventilating now. “H—henry...”

  Her dead husband just stared back at her, his one hand laying ahead of him, flat on the tiled floor as if he were reaching towards her, pleading for help.

  Dead.

  “Henry!” she screamed again.

  But this time, the sound was drowned out by a deep, bass, DONG! as the grandfather clock rang again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Adele's assessment, “paid leave” might as well have been called “incentivized exile.” She lay on the couch, her arm over her eyes, blocking out the sunlight streaming through her apartment window. In the kitchen, she could hear her father—who'd extended his stay—moving about the unit. By the sound of clinking glasses and swishing water, he was tidying up.

  Seven days had passed since the incident in the park.

  Seven days of lounging around her apartment, waiting for one of two results. The all clear from Foucault himself, allowing her back into the field, or—the far more horrible option—a knock on the door, followed by a raid of cops with cuffs, looking to drag her downtown.

  Every ring of the doorbell, every thump of her neighbors' closing doors, or the rustle of the postman just outside her unit—it all roused a sense of dread.

  Would they believe her report? So far, it didn't seem like John's daughter had contradicted anything. At least, not that Adele was aware of. Claudia had simply told the police that she'd been kidnapped, and Adele had saved her. For now, that's all they knew. But stories could often change...

  “Gaaaah!” she moaned at the ceiling, her eyes still hidden behind her raised arm. “This is the worst!”

  Her father turned off the faucet in the kitchen. She heard the faint sound of swishing cloth as he dried his hands. Then, the Sergeant's gruff voice echoed into the living room. “Haven't heard back yet?”

  “No.”

  “They said it would take a few days, yes?”

  “It's been seven, Dad!” she moaned.

  Adele wasn't particularly proud of her tone. She felt like a child, kicking and groaning on the way to the dentist. But part of her liked this space.

  Children couldn't be blamed... not really.

  Not the way an adult could be.

  Children, by and large, didn't murder.

  The same sense of anxiety she'd familiarized with swirled through her stomach. Adele hunched now, wincing on the couch and wishing with all her might she could just be swallowed by the cushions.

  She could still hear his sneering voice. Could still feel the recoil of her weapon as she shot him. Could still hear the faint burble of bursting air as he drowned in the stream. And more than any of it, could feel the way her mind had reeled. Her legs had anchored to the muddy shore beneath the bridge.

  She'd watched him die. She'd wanted him to die.

  Was it really murder?

  Yes. A small voice blurted back just as quickly. A voice she'd been contending with for the last seven days. A voice she didn't much like at all.

  He'd been hurting Claudia—he'd been threatening Adele.

  But he was unarmed. Injured.

  He'd been reaching for a knife.

  But then he'd let it go. He was drowning. You could've helped him. You were duty bound to render aid.

  Adele felt another burst of anxiety in her stomach. There were no two ways about it. She'd killed a man. Her finger had been on the trigger. Her indifferent gaze had glared down like a spotlight on his drowning form.

  Of course, he'd deserved it. He'd deserved far worse.

  That wasn't the point.

  “Deserved” had nothing to do with legal. Justice didn't always have anything to do with it either. The Spade killer, the Painter as he called himself, had skated in Paris on a technicality—statute of limitations. They didn't have evidence for his most recent murders. So the police had let him loose. Claudia had been captured because the justice system hadn't done its job.

  How was that right?

  She shivered again, pressing her head against the stuffed arm of the cushioned couch. No matter how she justified it, or what way she looked at it, Adele knew the truth. Evil people did evil things—it was her job to stop them without becoming like them.

  And she'd failed.

  She was... a... a...

  Murderer. The same voice whispered.

  “Merde!” she spat at the ceiling.

  “Language!” her father snapped in English.

  Adele wrinkled her nose, lowering her arm and blinking against the sunlight stinging the back of her eyelids. “This is my place, isn't it?” she said petulantly.

  “Well, you should have a no-swearing policy wherever you are,” her father returned, standing near the kitchen still.

  “I have a swearing policy,” she said. “At least two curses per day or you're fined. Let's hear it Dad. Give me your best cuss.”

  She heard a resigned sigh, followed by thumping footsteps as her father's sturdy frame moved from the kitchen towards the couch beneath the sun. She heard a faint creak as he sat on the opposite arm of the couch.

  She blinked, wincing against the sun and shifting her head a bit so her father's outline blocked most of the glare. He wore a familiar white t-shirt and his sailor-strong arms, hairy as ever, were flecked with soap bubbles from the sink. His thick, drooping mustache hadn't been combed yet this morning and jutted wildly every direction.

  “This isn't like you,” her father said simply, staring at her. “Get off the couch. Go do something.”

  She looked back at him. For a moment, she felt irritated, but then the tone of his voice penetrated her cloudy thoughts. Not angry, not judgmental... concerned. Odd this. Her father was concerned
for her? He rarely showed it.

  She sighed, waving the same hand she'd shielded her eyes with. “I'm not supposed to go anywhere. Not until I'm cleared.”

  “You're not supposed to leave Paris. That's not the same thing as going for a jog or a swim. You used to love swimming.”

  “Yeah. Like two decades ago.”

  “That long? You're getting old, Adele.”

  It took her a second to realize he was joking. She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Not all of us can stay young forever like you.” She propped up on the couch, blinking and allowing her vision to adjust to the light through the window.

  Her father had been staying with her during the incident. He'd extended his stay after he'd heard what had happened. What she'd done.

  He was...

  Happier now.

  It seemed strange to say it. But his gruff edges, his harsher mannerisms—they were still there, but less somehow. He smiled more. She'd even caught him whistling the other day.

  “You know, Adele...,” he said carefully, his hand moving from the couch towards her foot. For a moment, it looked like he wanted to pat it out of affection, but instead he lost his nerve and patted the cushion. Still, his eyes were gentle. “I want you to know something...”

  “We're not out of soap, are we?”

  “Funny. No, I'm being serious. Listen to me.”

  Adele remained propped on her elbow, watching her father. If anything, he looked nervous all of a sudden: uncomfortable. His cheeks were turning an odd rosy hue.

  “What is it? Are you alright?” she said suddenly, pushing up a bit further until she was sitting straight postured, her arms dangling over her knees towards her feet.

  “I’m fine—I’m… Yes. T’at's what I wanted to say... Just...,” his voice grew hoarse and he looked away now, scowling towards the ground as he so often did when he got even a whiff of an emotion. But he summoned some hidden courage and looked back at her. “You did good, kid.”

  “I... I'm not sure what you mean.” Of course, she knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “You did what I never could. For years I tried. Years. But you did it. You put that evil little runt in the ground. You buried the bastard.”