Destroyer 89 - Dark Horse by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Cheeta Ching had not slept in two days. There were hollows under her sharp, predatory eyes. Her brain felt like it had been dipped in Alka-Seltzer fizz.

A face haunted her. A strong, white face with prominent, almost Korean cheekbones and deep-set hollow eyes. Those eyes had pierced her ambitious soul. His name was burned into her soul.

"Nero." She spoke the name aloud, tasting its unKorean vowels. "Nero."

She had never met anyone like him. Well, maybe once before. Years ago.

She had almost forgotten the experience. A strange man had broke into her apartment and tied her to a chair. After he had perversely dressed her in a flowing Korean native dress.

Cheeta had thought she was going to be raped. So she had resorted to the formidable weapon that had brought her to national prominence: her razor-sharp tongue. Cheeta heaped abuse on the man. Threatened him. Taunted him. Nothing seemed to work. It was a first. No man-from network presidents to her husband-had ever failed to wither under a Cheeta Ching tonguelashing.

She had steeled herself for the worst.

Instead of raping or kidnapping her, the attacker simply shot a roll of thirty-five-millimeter film of Cheeta, tied to the chair, dressed in Lyi dynasty ham-bok dress, and sputtering scorn.

Then he had left, much to Cheeta's relief.

After she had struggled free of her bonds, Cheeta Ching had contacted Don Cooder, her arch-rival, and accused him of staging the attack. Cooder had denied it.

"You're not even in my class," Cooder had snarled.

Cheeta then hung up and hired thugs to beat him up, shouting "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

Satisfied, Cheeta then waited for the photos to appear in some tabloid. They never had. Nor had they been used to blackmail her.

It was a mystery, and eventually Cheeta Ching had put it out of her mind. But she had never been able to put her strange assailant out of her mind. There was something about his cruel forcefulness that lingered, and sometimes made her fantasize about his return-even though the memory of that ugly incident still made her shiver.

The man who had attacked her reminded her of Nero. A little. The face was different. The eyes were alike. But it was not the same man, she was sure of that. The other had been a pig.

But Nero was different from other men. He was . . .

Words failed Cheeta Ching. No surprise. Most of her on-air material was written for her. Still, there was something about him, something that had made her shiver at the first glimpse of his lean, strong body. Shiver in the same way she had just shivered at the memory of the strange, picture-taking intruder. He was . . .

"A dreamboat," she decided finally, dipping into her half-forgotten teenage vocabulary. "That's what he is. A dreamboat."

Cheeta was hunched in a cubbyhole of the local network affiliate, eating spicy jungol casserole soup. It was in her contract that she be catered in Korean ethnic foods, and God help the idiot who served her Moo Goo Gai Pan.

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