Someone to Watch Over Me Read online

  “I have my own car and driver,” Valente said shortly, starting to step around him.

  “Then you can take your car and lead the way, but Mrs. Manning rides with me.”

  At his confrontational tone and manner, Valente’s chauffeur suddenly started forward. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Valente?”

  “There is going to be,” O’Hara warned with a surprisingly sharp edge to his voice.

  “Get the hell out of the way—” Valente said in a low, explosive voice.

  “Please!” Leigh cried. “We’re wasting time.” She looked at Michael Valente, her eyes pleading. Her life had become a dark, dangerous, unknown sea that she had to navigate, and at the moment, O’Hara was the only slightly familiar person in it. She rather wanted him with her. “My husband told Mr. O’Hara to stay with me. I’d like to let him do that.”

  To her surprised relief, Valente capitulated immediately, but the look he gave O’Hara was distinctly unpleasant. “Get in and drive,” he said shortly, holding the door himself for Leigh.

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  Seated next to Valente’s pilot, wearing thick padded headphones to muffle the roar of the rotors, Leigh anxiously scanned the scene below. The state police had blocked off the mountain road, men were swarming over the steep snow-covered incline, and trucks with winches were backed up on the shoulder. Police cars from the NYPD and the state police lined both sides of the road, and several police helicopters were flying slow circles over the hills nearby, undoubtedly searching for the cabin that Leigh believed was near the site of her accident.

  Valente’s voice came through her earphones, calm, matter-of-fact, and strangely reassuring. “They’ve found something in the water down there, and they’ve already got the winches connected to it.” To the pilot, he said, “Put us down on the road, behind the tow trucks.”

  “It’s going to be tight, Mr. Valente. There’s a wider spot a half mile back where the trees aren’t so close to the road.”

  “Mrs. Manning can’t walk that far. Put us down behind the trucks,” he ordered.

  It occurred to Leigh that if the helicopter crashed because it got hung up in tree limbs, none of them were going to be able to walk anywhere for a very long time, but caution was not a priority of hers at that moment.

  The helicopter rotors were still whipping snow into a white typhoon when Valente came around to her side and lifted her down. His eyes narrowed when she bent forward, clutching her midriff. “How bad are your ribs?”

  “Not bad,” Leigh lied, trying to catch her breath. “Small fractures.” With O’Hara on her left and Valente on her right, Leigh looked around for the two New York City detectives. Detective Littleton was standing in the road, a phone pressed to one ear, her hand covering the other, her ponytail blowing in the wind. Shrader was on the shoulder of the road, opposite the tow trucks, talking to a New York City officer. He saw Leigh, ended his conversation, and started toward her. “Good morning, Mrs. Manning—” he said politely; then he recognized Valente, and Shrader’s expression turned positively hostile.

  “Have your helicopters found any sign of the cabin yet?” Leigh asked.

  “No,” Shrader said curtly, his gaze riveted on Michael Valente’s face. When he finally shifted his attention to Leigh, he looked at her with such icy contempt that she felt as if she’d committed a crime merely by being in Valente’s presence.

  “Are you certain you’ve found my car?” she asked.

  His gaze flicked to Valente. “At this moment,” he informed her sarcastically, “I’m not certain of anything.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode toward the tow trucks, but first he stopped to say something to the officer he’d been talking to earlier. The officer nodded and walked in the direction of Michael Valente’s helicopter.

  Put off by Shrader’s attitude, Leigh stayed where she was, partially shielded from the wind by Joe O’Hara and Valente, while the winches on both trucks revolved slowly, haltingly, grinding almost to a stop, then moving abruptly again as they slowly dragged the dead weight of an unseen object through the trees and up the incline. Leigh thought of walking over to the edge of the road to get an early glimpse of what she knew was going to be her car, but she stayed where she was, reluctant to go near Shrader in his current mood. She watched the helicopters searching the ridges to her right; then she glanced to the left and saw the police officer in an intense conversation with Valente’s helicopter pilot. The pilot was retrieving books and documents from inside the plane and showing them to him. “What is he doing?” she asked Valente, motioning to the officer.

  Valente looked in the direction she indicated. “He’s hassling my pilot,” he replied flatly.

  Based on his attitude, Leigh assumed that being hassled by the police was probably a regular routine for him. “Oh,” she said lamely.

  “Mrs. Manning—” Shrader motioned for Leigh to join him. “Is that your vehicle?”

  With inexplicable feelings of dread, Leigh walked slowly to the edge of the embankment and looked down at the tortured metal remains of what had once been her car. No longer oblong and shiny black, the Mercedes was burned to bare metal in places and mangled into a shape that vaguely resembled a squashed cube. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my car.”

  Valente came up behind her and looked over the embankment. “Jesus Christ!” he said softly.

  Tearing her gaze from the automobile that had nearly been her temporary casket, Leigh focused on the helicopters searching the distant skyline. “How long do you think it will be before they find the place I was supposed to meet my husband?”

  “It’s hard to say. Could be any minute, or it might take hours or even longer.”

  Before she could say anything, one of the officers shouted that Shrader had a radio call, and he turned his back on her and strode off. Praying that the call involved news of Logan, Leigh watched Shrader walk over to a patrol car, reach in through the open window, and take out the police radio. He listened for a moment; then he twisted around sharply and looked up at the horizon to the northeast. Leigh followed his gaze. One of the helicopters had narrowed its circle and was swooping lower and lower, flying in very tight circles. “They’ve found something!” she burst out, grabbing Valente’s arm in her excitement. “Look—over there, at the helicopter farthest away. He’s flying low, and the other helicopters have started over there toward him. They’ve found Logan. I think they’ve found Logan!”

  Shrader finished talking on the radio and tossed it onto the front seat of the car; then he trotted over to her. “One of our pilots thinks he’s found the house. Small stone cabin with a light gray slate roof. He thinks he can make out a stone well, too—like a little ‘wishing well’ near the cabin. Did your husband mention anything about a wishing well?”

  “Yes!” Leigh exclaimed. “Yes, he did. I’d forgotten about that!”

  “Okay, then,” he said, turning to motion to Littleton. “Let’s go!” he shouted. He started toward their car, and Littleton trotted to it from the opposite direction, getting in on the driver’s side.

  Leigh tried to run after him and nearly passed out on the third step from the streaks of pain in her ribs. “Wait,” she called, grasping her midriff. “I want to go with you.”

  Shrader turned, frowning at the delay, as if he’d forgotten she had an intense personal interest in the search. “It would be better if you wait here.”

  “I want to go with you,” Leigh repeated angrily.

  He glanced around, saw the police officer who’d been “hassling” Valente’s pilot earlier, and motioned him over. After a brief conversation, Shrader continued toward his own car, and the police officer walked over to Leigh. The name tag on his jacket said he was “Officer Damon Harwell.”

  “Detective Shrader said you can ride with me,” Harwell told her; then he turned a scathing look on Valente. “You’re finished here, Valente. Get that bird off the road before I impound it.”

  Leigh was dimly embarras