Every Breath You Take (7 page)

On her third stroke, he leaned the full weight of his body against her.

On her fourth stroke, he closed his eyes in quiet pleasure.

“I’m lonely, too, Max,” Kate whispered. In the aftermath of her father’s death her emotions were so raw that just the realization that this dog was also lonely brought tears of empathy to her eyes. Trying to concentrate on something else, she thought about the possible ramifications of her reckless decision to have dinner with a stranger that night, and stroked Max’s head. When she finally glanced at her watch, it was fifteen minutes to eight. “I have to go now,” she said, giving the canine’s head a quick pat before moving away from him. “Tell you what,” she added, trying to sound cheerful for his sake, “if I get back here alive and unharmed tonight, we’ll have breakfast together in the morning, and I’ll order you an entire, all-meat breakfast of your very own. How does that sound?”

Large brown eyes looked at her imploringly, and he wagged his tail. He wanted more petting, and that was as clear as if he’d spoken the words. Kate backed into the suite and put her hand on the sliding glass door to pull it closed. In an idiotic attempt to bribe the forlorn dog to feel better—and make herself feel less guilty—she made him promises as she slowly pulled the door closed. “I’ll order you bacon and sausage. Better yet, I’ll order you a steak with a bone that you can take with you and bury! You really have to go now,” she urged, closing the door the last inch. On the other side of the glass, the dog stared at her intently; Kate reluctantly turned away.

Ten minutes later, wearing the outfit she’d originally chosen, Kate bent down to slip on a pair of light blue sandals with narrow straps, then picked up the little blue
clutch-style purse that matched the shoes. It was time to find out if she’d made the most idiotic and possibly dangerous mistake of her life by agreeing to have dinner outside the hotel with a total stranger. If she didn’t return that night and ended up dead, no one would ever know who murdered her.

Partway to the door, she had an idea and turned back. From her green canvas tote bag, she dug out the pen and tablet she’d used earlier and tore off a fresh sheet of paper. On it, she wrote in large letters, “I’ve gone out to dinner with a man who says his name is Mitchell Wyatt. I met him this afternoon in the Sandbar when I spilled a Bloody Mary on his shirt. The waiter can give you his description.” Satisfied, she propped the note on the living room telephone, where it would be easily spotted by the police if they were investigating her disappearance. Once they read her note, they’d surely check with the waiters at the Sandbar, and one or more of them would be able to give a good description of her abductor.

At the door to her suite, Kate paused again and glanced over her shoulder at the terrace door. Max had moved off the terrace into the grass, and was poised to run. Evidently, he was too wily to hang around on her terrace if she left, and Kate was glad of that. She assumed he’d head for the safety of the trees and the company of his canine friends, as he usually did, but when she was only a few steps away from the white stucco villa that housed her suite, the brown dog bounded around the building and trotted straight to her side. Kate stopped worriedly and he sat. “You’re getting way too daring,” she warned him sternly. “The groundskeepers are on the lookout for you, and I can’t protect you if I’m not here.” Pointing to the woods, she ordered, “Go!”

He glanced in the direction she pointed, then back at her.

“I know you understand me,” Kate told him firmly,
“because people are always chasing you off and telling you to go away, and then you do it. Now, I mean it.” She patted his head because she couldn’t help herself; then she pointed to the line of trees and ordered sharply, “Go away!”

He stood up slowly.

“Go on—go away!” Kate said sharply, and clapped her hands for emphasis; then she turned her back on him and walked purposefully down the path to the hotel’s main entrance. From the corner of her eye she watched him running toward the trees, but angling in the same direction she was headed. He was so large and so agile that he covered an amazing amount of ground in an effortless, loping canter, she noted admiringly, but if he intended to try to meet her outside the front of the hotel, he’d get into trouble for being there. She thought of the way he’d leaned his body against her and closed his eyes a little while ago when she petted him, and she felt like a cruel witch for running him off just a few minutes later.

“G
OOD EVENING, MISS,” THE DOORMAN SAID WHEN
K
ATE
walked past the lobby of the hotel’s main building a few minutes before eight. Festive torches lit up the entrance and lined both sides of the long driveway. Couples were arriving and departing in a steady stream, some dressed for dinner at the hotel, others wearing shorts and heading for more casual island nightspots. “May I get you a taxi?”

“No, thank you.” Kate looked down the line of waiting vehicles. Most were red or white compact rental cars, she noticed idly; then she remembered reading that Volkswagen bugs were the preferred choice of serial killers. If Wyatt was driving one of those, she would not get into it, she decided. Rather than going into the lobby and waiting there, she wandered slowly down a sidewalk bordered with giant bushes on her left and the hotel’s main driveway on her right. As she neared the end of the bushes, she saw a black convertible with its top down turn into the drive, but a sudden outburst of angry male shouts from the other side of the bushes filled her with foreboding and made her quicken her pace in their direction.

Two bellboys trotted past her, apparently summoned by the shouting. Kate heard one of them say the word
dog
, and she broke into a run just as Mitchell Wyatt brought the convertible to an abrupt stop at the curb beside her. She saw the surprised look on his face as she
raced past his car, but she didn’t have time to stop and explain.

Reaching the end of the bushes, Kate came to a halt beside the bellmen, and her fear quickly turned to reluctant amusement. Two angry, shouting gardeners were chasing Max in circles and waving their rakes at him, but he was easily staying out of their reach.

Behind her, Mitchell Wyatt said drily, “For a moment back there I thought you were running toward my car because you were extremely eager to see me again.”

Over her shoulder, Kate flashed him a distracted, laughing look. “Were you flattered or frightened?”

“You ran past me before I had time to react.” A moment later, he added jokingly, “If you’re interested in betting on the outcome between the dog and the gardeners, I’ll give you the gardeners and ten-to-one odds.”

“At twenty to one, that’s still a sucker bet,” Kate replied with a plucky smile. He grinned at her quip, and suddenly Kate’s earlier fears that he could be a violent criminal seemed nonsensical. She waited a few more moments to assure herself that Max was in no danger of actually being caught; then she turned and walked with Mitchell toward his car. “I wish they wouldn’t chase him,” she said. “One of the maids told me that several of the local islands have problems with packs of dogs roaming around, but this dog isn’t dangerous. He’s just hungry. He isn’t doing anyone any harm.”

“If I understood what the bellmen were talking about just now, that dog is doing the gardens a whole lot of harm because he’s so big,” Mitchell said as he opened the car door for her. “And he also scares the hotel guests. Last week, he ran up to a little girl and she got hysterical.”

“He’s lonely,” Kate said sadly, thinking of the way he’d leaned against her and blissfully closed his eyes when she petted him. As she slid onto the passenger seat,
she said, “What language was the doorman speaking? A lot of the hotel staff speaks French, but that wasn’t French.”

“It was Dutch, and I may have gotten most of it wrong—” he said, but the screech of automobile brakes behind them made them both turn sharply, just in time to see the dog bounding across the drive between cars, followed closely by a golf cart with the two gardeners in it. The golf cart stopped safely at the curb and an arriving taxi stopped in time, but a departing taxi was accelerating on the other side of the median, and Kate screamed a warning to the dog. Max swerved at the sound of her voice and tried to run to her instead. The taxi hit him.

Kate was out of the car, running, before the taxi driver got out of his vehicle. Mitchell caught up with her and grasped her arm. “Let me take a look first,” he insisted.

“I want to help,” Kate cried frantically, trying to wrench free of his grasp. “Let go of my arm.”

Stunned that she wanted to subject herself to what could be a gory scene, Mitchell let her go and quickened his pace to keep up with her.

When Kate rushed around the front of the taxi, her fear turned into anguish. Max’s still body was lying on its side, his head against the curb, his eyes closed. Kneeling next to him, she felt frantically for a pulse at his throat. She found it and relief flooded through her. “He’s alive,” she said quickly, “but we need help.” Lifting her head, she looked toward the bellmen and gardeners who’d gathered into a group next to the taxi driver and Mitchell. “Call a veterinarian right away,” she told the hotel’s employees.

One bellman looked blankly at the gardeners and then the other bellman. “A veterinarian?” he repeated as Kate began tentatively examining the bleeding cut on Max’s head.

“An animal doctor,” Mitchell clarified impatiently in English, then again in Dutch.

The gardeners were aghast at the suggestion; the bellmen were obstinate. “No, miss, no doctor,” one of them said. “We’ll take care of the dog, you go now and enjoy your evening.” He said something in Dutch to his companions and the group of men moved forward.

Their shadow fell across Kate just as she realized how they were likely to “take care of” a large, destructive, unconscious animal that was an annoying nuisance to adult hotel guests and a terrifying threat in the minds of some of their children. “What do you intend to do?” she asked stubbornly.

“We’re going to drag him off the road now so the cars can get through, and then we’ll take him away.”

“No!” Kate said with an adamant shake of her head. “He shouldn’t be moved. The cars can go around him. He may have spinal injuries or broken bones.” They didn’t care one bit about any of that, she realized, so she appealed urgently to the man she’d promised to take to dinner. “We have to help him!”

Mitchell gazed at her beautiful face and realized she expected him to agree that it was imperative to save the life of a mangy, homeless, mongrel dog. And, suddenly, he did agree—although it was her eyes and not the dog that caused him to come to that conclusion. Inwardly amused by the effect those beseeching green eyes were having on him, Mitchell said solemnly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

The doorman smiled politely as Mitchell approached. “Good evening, Mr. Wyatt.”

Mitchell assumed the doorman would have witnessed the scene in the driveway, so he ignored the greeting, refrained from giving explanations, and tackled the problem: “The dog is badly injured. Where’s the nearest animal doctor?”

“There’s one here on Anguilla, but he will be closed by now.” As proof that it was quite late, he glanced meaningfully at the setting sun.

Having already anticipated that that would be his answer, Mitchell strode past him into the lobby and headed for the front desk, where two couples were waiting to check in and another man was asking for directions. When he was halfway across the lobby, the manager emerged from a side door, saw Mitchell, and rushed forward to greet him. “Mr. Wyatt!” he exclaimed delightedly.

Mitchell reached into his pocket.

“I didn’t realize you’d booked reservations with us,” the manager said, holding out his hand for a handshake. “I’ve been busy with our new assistant manager because he’ll be in charge for the next week. I have to make an emergency trip to the States tomorrow, and he’s quite overwhelmed, I’m afraid.”

Mitchell clasped the manager’s outstretched hand and slipped a $100 bill into his palm. “I’m glad you’re still here tonight, Maurice, because there’s been an automobile accident in the hotel driveway that requires your special attention.”

“Oh, no! Is anyone hurt?”

“Yes.”

“One of our guests?”

“No, one of your stray dogs,” Mitchell said, already striding toward the telephone on the front desk with Maurice rushing along beside him. “I need an ambulance and a physician here immediately.”

“You … you want me to send for an ambulance and a physician because a stray dog has been injured out there?”

In reply, Mitchell picked up the telephone and held the receiver toward the flustered manager. “I want them to come as fast as they possibly can. I’m
extremely fond
of this particular dog.”

The manager took the receiver, pressed one button on the telephone, and hesitated. “They’ll refuse to treat a dog.”

“Appeal to their humane instincts,” Mitchell said drily as he withdrew cash from his pants pocket and began peeling off large bills to cover whatever inducement the ambulance driver and physician demanded before they’d make the trip.

The manager watched him a moment, then quickly dialed the rest of the ambulance’s phone number.

Mitchell stayed until that call and the one to the physician were both successfully completed; then he left the “inducement money” with the manager to dole out to the recipients.

Kate Donovan was in clear view across the driveway when he emerged from the hotel. The taxi driver had left in his taxi, the bellmen and gardeners had dispersed, and she sat alone on the grass, in the median beside the curb next to the dog, with her legs curled beneath her. Captured in the glow of torchlight, with her red hair a silken mantle across her shoulders and her hand gently stroking the injured dog, she looked ethereal.

She looked up as Mitchell neared, searching his face for a clue as to what he’d accomplished.

“Help is on the way,” he promised, crouching on his heels beside her. “How’s the patient?”

She shifted her attention to the dog as she answered, her fingers gently stroking the animal’s shoulder. “His breathing seems a little stronger and more regular. I can’t feel any broken bones, and his cuts aren’t deep, but he may be hemorrhaging internally. He started to come around a few minutes ago, or at least I thought he did.” She fell silent, and Mitchell said nothing more because he was listening for a particular sound. He heard it very soon—a siren growing louder and louder.