Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(41)

I stopped. I could see her. A motionless dot on the gray landscape, roughly a football field length away. Framed by the gray sea, she suddenly seemed a fragile and at-risk figure right out of literature, somewhere between Anna Karenina and The Woman in White.

She wasn’t alone.

In front of her were two other people.

I pulled a pair of binoculars from the fanny pack and lay down in the wet grass, not caring about the mud. I was soaked, anyway. The binoculars were small but powerful. Faces sprang into focus. The two men from San Francisco. Also wearing black raincoats and holding umbrellas. I watched as Karen Li set down her black bag. The skinnier man picked it up, said something, walked away. The other man was saying something, too.

I took a sharp breath. Without warning he had suddenly leaned in and seized her thin shoulders. Her back was to the ocean. I could see her shaking. See him saying something. Underneath, a fifty-foot drop into the whirlpools and rocks and frigid Pacific currents.

I remembered their watchfulness, the whiff of danger that had rolled off them in the coffee shop. The expression of terror on her face as she left. That had been a very safe and public place. Now she stood literally at a cliff’s edge.

Alone. No one else in sight.

No one to help her.

In the space of several seconds my role had fundamentally changed.

I no longer needed to follow Karen Li. Now I needed to save her life.



* * *



In perfect conditions the world’s fastest man could cover one hundred yards in just under ten seconds; the fastest woman, about a second longer. On a track, I could run it in less than double that time, but given the wet grass and treacherous footing, there was no way I’d reach them. I didn’t need to, though. I just needed the man to see me. I didn’t much think about what would happen then. Maybe he’d run. Maybe a more aggressive reaction. But he wouldn’t push someone off a cliff in front of a witness.

He’d want to leave either two bodies, or none at all.

I ran. All out, straight toward them. My heart banged, my breath rasped.

She took a backward step away.

He stepped forward, hands gripping her shoulders.

I ran faster.

Another step back. Now she was only a few feet from the edge.

I was close enough to see the wind whipping at her raincoat. Her mouth moved as she said something I couldn’t make out.

They saw me.

The man’s hands fell from her shoulders and he stepped away from her.

She edged away from the ocean.

I slowed to a fast jog, gave them a look of casual curiosity, just someone wondering what on earth two people were doing standing around in this weather. Threw a little wave as I passed by. A friendly hello. A gesture that said I’d remember seeing them.

The man turned and started hurrying in the same direction his partner had gone.

Karen Li started walking quickly toward town.

I was of no more use to Care4. But I had saved a life. It seemed a good trade.

I found her back in town, getting into her car. I crossed the street and walked over. Still in my muddied jogging gear. The rain still coming down hard.

“Karen,” I said. “I think we should talk.”





23


“You’ve been following me. Haven’t you?”

We sat on the wide front porch of the hotel where I had first changed into my jogging gear, barely more than an hour before. Below us stretched the Pacific, gray water joining an equally gray sky in an invisible horizon.

Karen Li was drinking hot tea with lemon. Both her slender hands wrapped around the ceramic mug as though seeking its warmth. I was reminded again how pretty she was. The pale, delicate face, not much makeup. Dark, expressive eyes and whitened teeth that looked orthodontist perfect. We sat in a pair of rocking chairs off to one side of the porch. I had changed out of my wet running gear and back into my original clothes.

“You’ve been following me,” she said again. “For how long?”

I sipped coffee from my own mug. I had ordered a strong French roast and was drinking it black, as always. The coffee, brewed by the hotel café, was good. Good coffee wasn’t a guarantee at hotel restaurants. It was always nice to encounter it. “Longer than today.”

“Are you the only one who’s been following me?”

“As far as I know. I can’t answer that definitively.”

She raised her mug, drank. Still looking out to sea. “Who hired you?”

“Ask me a different one.”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I can guess.”

I said nothing. Watched a couple walk out the front door of the hotel. They started down the stairs, the man’s arm around the woman, whispering something. She laughed, nestled into his arm as he raised a jaunty blue umbrella. They looked happy. An anniversary, maybe, or a spontaneous getaway. I thought of Ethan and wondered if I’d hear from him.

“Why did you want to talk to me?” Karen wanted to know. “If you were hired to follow me, doesn’t that defeat the point? Now that I know about you?”

It was a fair question. “I don’t know much about you. But best I can tell, you’re swimming in deep water. May be time to get out.”

Her dark eyes flashed. “What do you think you know about me?”

I considered my response. An odd situation. She was right. I was working for Gregg Gunn. He had paid me. At the same time I wasn’t going to let someone die on my watch. Twenty grand didn’t buy that. Nothing did. Karen Li was giving something to someone. And I’d tell Gunn what I’d seen, as I’d been hired to do. She would also stay safe. I wasn’t about to stand by and let the woman in front of me get pushed off a cliff. “They’re concerned,” I said. “About their information. Their secrets. Which is logical.”