Murders' Row by Donald Hamilton

Author:Donald Hamilton [Hamilton, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

IT WAS A stupid damn business. By the time I had fished her up and towed her back and arranged her artistically at the water’s edge, I felt like a prize damn fool. Soaking wet, with water squelching in my sharp Petroni shoes, I made my way back up the beach disgustedly, and stepped behind the car to watch and wait.

It didn’t take long. The cold water had brought her around. I saw her head come up. Her long dark hair, washed free of combs and pins, covered her face like seaweed. She pushed strands of hair from her eyes, sitting up in the shallows, and looked around dazedly, regarding her surroundings and herself with shock and horror. I could hardly blame her. She’d left a gay party and got into her expensive car, something had happened that she couldn’t quite remember, and now she was discovering herself in the sodden wreckage of her party finery washed up like driftwood on a dark and lonely shore…

I saw her draw a long breath and take her runaway emotions under firm control. She got to her feet, took a couple of steps to dry land, and stood there looking around in the moonlight, rubbing her hands on her hips to get the wet sand off them. Now there was something aggressive and challenging, something startlingly primitive in the way she stood there, brown and tall and lean, with her bare feet planted solidly in dry sand, well apart. The wet white cocktail dress could have been a scrap of hide or woven bark. Plastered to her body unheeded, leaving one tanned shoulder bare, it gave her a look of barbaric nakedness. All she needed, I thought, was a stone-tipped spear, and maybe a tame ocelot for a pet. The damn cat didn’t need to be very tame, at that. She could handle it.

She stood there, looking and listening warily. I saw her take notice of the Cadillac, stuck in the sand, and I saw her discover her shoes and purse, closer at hand. Presently she moved over and studied them, frowning. She shrugged, and at last gave some attention to her dress, twisting the skirt up hard against her thigh to force the water out of it.

After yanking the wrung-out garment into some kind of order, she squeezed the excess water from her hair and found something in her purse with which to tie the hair back out of the way. She stepped into her shoes, and moved towards the car, but froze as I stepped into sight and came towards her.

“You didn’t have to wake up,” I said, stopping in front of her.

“You!” she breathed. “What are you doing here? What in God’s name do you think you’re-what do you want?”

“You didn’t have to wake up,” I said. “I could have arranged it the other way, too. Call it an object lesson, Mrs. Rosten.”

“I’ll kill you for this,” she said softly. “I will! I’ll shoot you down like a dog, Peters-or are you Petroni tonight?”

“Let’s say Petroni,” I said.

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