Last Look (26 page)

Turn the page for a bonus excerpt from

Last Breath

on sale July 31, 2007

Prologue

April 2007
Somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan

He lay on the ground and shifted his weight from his left hip, where a small pile of stones seemed to have imbedded themselves while he was sleeping.
Lie down with rocks, wake up with stones,
his tired mind paraphrased an old saw.

He inched quietly onto his back, one hand wrapped around the handgun he was rarely without, all his senses having gone on alert when he woke suddenly. He listened intently for any sound that might mean he was no longer alone on this mountaintop, but after ten minutes of barely moving, he had to assume it had been the dream that had pulled him from sleep.

For the fourth time in less than three weeks, Connor Shields had had the same dream.

He was in his favorite hotel, in his favorite city, leaning on the iron railing that enclosed the balcony overlooking the Moroccan coast of the Atlantic and watching the gulls circle overhead. The sky was as blue as he’d ever seen it, and the breeze as gentle as a caress. Coming on the heels of the past few weeks spent in a Middle Eastern desert, the peaceful morning was balm to his soul.

There was a rap on the door, and he answered it without hesitation.

“Your breakfast.” The dark-eyed woman carried a rectangular tray in both hands and headed straight for the balcony. “You should eat here, in the sun. It will relax you.”

“Magda, you’re more like my mother than my mother was.”

“Someone has to watch out for you,” she said without smiling. “It might as well be me.”

She placed the tray on the small glass table and removed the napkin to reveal a plate of warm croissants, figs, a thinly sliced pear, and a small mound of white cheese.

“Sit and eat. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

“You’re way too good to me,” he said as he sat at the table.

“I certainly am.” Magda went through the double doors into the room and disappeared into the hall. When she returned, she brought a second tray upon which stood a tall carafe and two cups. She poured coffee into both cups, placed one before him, then sat in the chair opposite his.

“Nice of you to join me.” He offered her the croissants, but she waved him off.

“I eat early, at dawn. You know that. I need an early start if I’m to take care of you and the rest of my guests in the manner in which I’ve made you accustomed.”

“There is no finer hotel in Essaouira. It’s the reason I’ve come to love this city. The reason I spend any available free time right here.” He tilted his cup in her direction before taking a sip. “And besides, there’s no better coffee anywhere in Morocco.”

Satisfied, Magda leaned back in the chair and raised her face to the sun, her eyes closed.

“There’s a new guest who checked in two days ago. An American woman. She’s an archaeologist, she says, on holiday.”

“So?”

“So you should make her acquaintance. She’s very pretty. Blond. Soft-looking. She doesn’t go out much.”

“So maybe she’s tired. Maybe she sleeps a lot.”

“Maybe she’s lonely. Maybe she’d appreciate a little companionship from a fellow countryman.”

“Why are you always trying to set me up?”

“Because you live like a mercenary.”

“I’m not a mercenary.”

“I know what you are. But you still need a nice girl in your life.”

“I have a nice girl in my life. I have you.”

“I’m old enough to be your mother, and if you ever looked at me that way, Cyril would slit your throat.” She smiled, but her eyes remained closed.

“Your husband should be jealous of you. You’re one in a million, Magda.”

“I know.”

She opened her eyes and stood, then patted him fondly on the arm as she walked past him.

“The American woman takes tea in the courtyard every afternoon at four,” she said without breaking stride. “Today she’ll be seated at one of the tables for two, in the corner near the palms.”

Magda closed the door behind her.

He’d made a phone call and spent several minutes discussing a case before disconnecting the call. From the balcony he could see into the courtyard, where right at that moment, a woman in a gauzy white dress had stopped to put a large hat atop her head. Before her hair had disappeared under the hat, he’d noticed it was blond, cut short in a choppy style, as if done without artistry or skill. She was tanned, almost as tanned as he was, and even from a distance, he could see she was very well put together.

The American Magda had told him about?

Tea in the courtyard at four might be interesting after all. He watched her disappear through the courtyard gates and hesitate, as if unsure of her direction. For a moment, he was tempted to join her, to offer her a tour of the marketplace, but he had a meeting in twenty minutes with a man who had information his superiors were quite eager to obtain.

He turned off the laptop, located his sunglasses, and locked the door behind him. The pretty blond would have to wait.

But it had been he who had waited, the next day and the one after that, watching from his balcony for a glimpse of her.

“You missed your chance.” Magda shrugged when curiosity finally got the better of him and he asked if tea with the American archaeologist was still a possibility. “She checked out this morning.”

He started to say something flippant, but she stopped him with a glance from those dark eyes.

“You should have met her when I told you to,” Magda said smugly. “Now you’ll have to wait till next time.”

“Next time?”

“Of course. She’ll be back.” Magda smiled with satisfaction. “And so will you.”

But the blond hadn’t been there the next time he’d stopped for an overnight on his way back to the States, nor was she there the following trip.

“You missed her by three days,” Magda told him the last time he stayed at the Villa.

“Missed who?” He tried to be nonchalant.

“Missed who.” She glared at him. “Dr. McGowan, who do you think.”

“Who’s Dr. McGowan?” He frowned. It was not a name he recognized.

“The pretty archaeologist. The blond, the American. You know damned well who I mean.”

“I didn’t know her name.”

“It’s Daria. Daria McGowan. Dr. McGowan to you who couldn’t bother to make time to meet her.”

“She’s been back?”

“Several times.” Magda’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you weren’t interested.”

“Who said I was interested?”

Magda had merely laughed at him, and her laughter rang in his ears, rousing him from sleep.

Connor’s free hand rubbed the back of his neck, his other hand still holding the handgun, because in this part of the world, you literally did not know what you’d find hiding behind the next rock. He stared up at the sky, watched the stars flickering overhead, so vivid, so close he could almost reach up and touch them. There were no city lights to compete, no sounds of the civilized world here, just the occasional call of an owl, and the agonized scream of its prey.

He thought of the dream and of the woman, the elusive archaeologist, and wondered why she was still in his head. She certainly wasn’t the only woman to have crossed his path, though admittedly, life was such these days that he’d rarely had the time to say more than
hello, nice to meet you,
to any woman who might have caught his eye. Which was just fine with him. Connor had an agenda, and he hadn’t penciled in
find a woman.
Maybe someday, but not now. Then again, maybe never. Life was too complicated. Or, he mused, too simple.

There were reasons he volunteered for every dicey assignment the FBI had up its sleeve. For one thing, he knew the hills of Afghanistan as well as anyone in the Bureau. With so much of the Bureau’s resources going toward fighting terrorism, more and more agents were finding themselves on foreign soil. Connor had been one of the first agents to volunteer for such work, and as such, had established his own network of contacts throughout the region. One in particular had proven to be a tremendous asset, and it had been this man Connor had traveled, mostly on foot, to see. His assignment completed, the information he’d sought secure, he was on his way back home. Hopefully, he thought, not for long. Home was just too painful a place to be, and had been ever since he’d learned that it had been his cousin Brendan who’d murdered Connor’s own brother, Dylan, two years ago. The fact that Connor had been the target made him feel intense guilt rather than any sense of relief he might have felt at having been spared.

Dylan had been the best of the lot, had been engaged to marry the woman of his dreams, had a wonderful life ahead of him. If Connor had been given the chance to live that night over again, he’d have gone in his brother’s place willingly. Connor had faced death so many times over the past fifteen years, he no longer feared it nor whatever would follow. He’d be forty on his next birthday, and had been a loner for most of those years. Dylan, on the other hand, had made a friend of everyone he’d ever met. Not a day passed when Connor did not wonder why the wrong brother had been taken. He couldn’t help but think that Dylan had been the victim of a vast cosmic error. He, Connor, had never really been in love—not the way Dylan and his Annie had been, anyway. He’d never considered himself a permanent fixture in this world, whereas Dylan had had everything to live for. Connor hadn’t had a real relationship with a woman in…he tried to recall how long and couldn’t.

Which was why the recurring dreams about the blond Daria McGowan—Dr. McGowan—puzzled him so. He’d lost count of the number of times in the past year he’d had that same dream. And while he’d feigned disinterest to Magda, the truth was that the dreams had prompted him to look up a little info on the doctor’s background. Strictly out of curiousity, of course.

He learned she was thirty-six years old and was an internationally recognized authority on ancient Middle Eastern civilizations, specifically, the art and artifacts from the region. He learned her findings had been published by a prestigious university press, that she had lectured widely in the U.S. and Europe, and was highly regarded by her colleagues. Respect for her was so high that she’d been invited to view findings in areas where her nationality and her gender were not usually welcomed. She was the daughter of a well-known anthropologist and an equally regarded archaeologist, so it would appear she’d been nurtured from the cradle to become what she was. In some circles, it would appear from several articles he’d located through the Internet, what she was, was larger than life.

He wondered if he’d ever see her again in real life.

Whatever. Experience had taught him that what would happen, happened. There were some things you just couldn’t plan for. He was still three days from Kabul on foot, and then he’d be on his way to Morocco.

A stiff breeze picked up and he pulled the blanket around him against the cold. Three more days, then a warm, comfortable, familiar room at his favorite inn. Magda would coddle him and bring him wonderful food and endless cups of the best coffee he’d ever tasted. In the bar, her husband would drink with him into the wee hours of the morning and they’d trade stories over tumblers of scotch.

And maybe the pretty blond would wander in. If not this time, maybe the next.

Dorsey frowned and lowered herself onto one of the chairs, a bad feeling snaking its way around her insides. “What’s up?”

“I just caught a report that was coming in from HQ. Case in Georgia I thought you should know about.”

“Go on,” she said cautiously. It wasn’t like Decker to hedge.

“The body of a woman was found a couple of weeks ago. The ME’s best guess is she’d been dead less than eight hours.”

“Cause of death?”

“From the preliminary report, looks like multiple stab wounds to the torso, exsanguination.”

“Sexual assault?”

“Not sure.”

“O-kay…” She dragged out the word.
And I need to know this because…?

It wasn’t as if she had no corpses of her own to deal with. And Georgia wasn’t her territory, so what was Decker’s point?

Decker sighed. “There’s no easy way to do this. The woman had no identification on her, so the locals faxed her description to other agencies in the surrounding area hoping someone would be able to match her to a missing persons report.”

“And…” Dorsey felt impatience rise within her chest.

“I’ll cut to the chase. The victim has been positively identified as Shannon Randall.”

“Not possible.” Dorsey felt herself relax. This had nothing to do with her after all. “Shannon Randall died in 1983. The state of South Carolina executed her killer, remember? This has to be a different Shannon Randall, Decker.”

Also by Mariah Stewart

FINAL TRUTH

DARK TRUTH

HARD TRUTH

COLD TRUTH

DEAD END

DEAD EVEN

DEAD CERTAIN

DEAD WRONG

UNTIL DARK

THE PRESIDENT’S DAUGHTER

Last Look
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

2007 Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2007 by Marti Robb

Excerpt from
Last Words
copyright © 2007 by Marti Robb

Excerpt from
Last Breath
copyright © 2007 by Marti Robb

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains excerpts from the forthcoming mass market edition of
Last Words
and the hardcover edition of
Last Breath
by Mariah Stewart. These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50017-5

v3.0