Eye of the Beholder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for Shari Shattuck

  “Exploding like a string of firecrackers let loose beneath one’s feet, Shattuck’s debut novel keeps the reader deliciously on edge.”

  —Publishers Weekly, on Loaded

  “Lethal is fast-paced, edgy, and extremely sensual.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Unlike many heroines . . . Cally Wilde is a fully formed, strong, and engaging character throughout this fast-paced and suspenseful mystery.”

  —Booklist

  “Complex and totally entertaining.”

  —Fresh Fiction, on The Man She Thought She Knew

  “Shari Shattuck scores a big hit with The Man She Thought She Knew. Smart, fast-paced, and sexy, this book kept me riveted to my seat.”

  —USA Today bestselling author Julie Kenner

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745,

  Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, September 2007

  Copyright © Shari Shattuck, 2007

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09833-2

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This one’s for Joseph, who inspires, encourages, and loves me. I can’t say “thank you” enough, so this says it for always.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My heartfelt thanks go to Laura Cifelli for her enthusiasm and support on this book. My gratitude goes as always to Paul Fedorko for his constant cheerfulness and encouragement, which mean so much. To my daughters, who love that I write and what I write, and who give me the time and space to write, even when they need me to come watch them jump on the trampoline, make them a sandwich, or help them save the world, I love you with all my heart. And to the two best girlfriends on the planet, Karesa McElheny and Michelle Echols, for standing by me through everything and holding me up a little bit higher so that I can see a little bit farther, I want to say thank you. My world is a far lighter place because of you.

  Chapter 1

  Thursday

  The Eye of the Beholder Beauty Salon and Day Spa opened for business on an ominous Thursday in January. Since the day after Christmas a roof of clouds had loomed over Shadow Hills. For seventeen days the strongest rains in a century had pelted the wealthy horse suburb of Los Angeles, and at last, on this particular Thursday, the valley’s ceiling was showing small cracks. Blots of liquid blue sky were seeping through. The cerulean stains were widening and leaking clumsy shafts of sunlight that stabbed small, greedy portions of the drenched, forest green hills. The effect was glorious, luminous swatches of color surrounded by hungry shadows that hovered, eager to swallow up the vibrant outbreaks.

  Greer Sands passed through the glass doors of her salon, looked up to the less threatening sky and the promising hills, and took in all the beauty of the two combined. The effect was so huge and dangerous that it made her tremble.

  She stood for a moment overwhelmed by the pull of crackling storm energy surging in her. She felt the force of the weather as an insistent thrumming, as though her torso were strung with cords that nature plucked with skilled fingers, playing her like a musical six-string barometer.

  She did not turn
when her partner, Dario, came out and lit a cigarette as he settled next to her.

  From his impressive six-foot-four-inch frame, Dario smiled down at his friend with handsome, watchful eyes. “Feeling like a guitar in a mariachi band?” He had known Greer, and her special sensitivities, for over fifteen years.

  Her face, which was smooth in repose, revealed her forty-three years when she turned and smiled at him. Soft lines crinkled around her amazingly green eyes and the corners of her mouth. “Something’s coming,” she said to him through lips so full they almost seemed to get in the way of her words, lips made for pouting mischievously but not for conversation. And then she turned her eyes back up at the play of light as though whatever she sensed was coming was written up there like an archangel’s sprawling footnote.

  Dario nodded, his thick, black, glossy curls brushing his shoulders, and he watched her with eyes that had been compared to a night sky in the desert: deeply dark, but spattered with stars.

  Greer went on, “Changes, and that’s always good, and the number three for me—three new friends, I think—but there’s something”—she tilted her head to one side, pursed out her luxurious lips, placed a hand flat on her chest, and shuddered—“something else, something black.”

  After their twenty years of friendship, Dario was accustomed to these bouts of psychic revelation, and though he had learned to trust them from experience, he’d never grown particularly comfortable with them, especially not when they pained Greer.

  He shifted his weight and felt a surge of protectiveness. Time for a distraction technique, he thought.

  “Something black?” he asked in feigned exasperation. “I certainly hope not! I’ve got enough peroxide on Mrs. Lawless to bleach Mickey Mouse! It had damn well better not come out black.”

  To Dario’s relief, it worked. Greer laughed, and with a last glance over her shoulder at the magnificent panorama of water and light, she turned and walked back inside.

  Dario watched her, admiring the way he had cut her thick auburn hair. He admired—in a purely objective way—her full and womanly form, but mostly he admired himself for having the good sense to have a woman like Greer as a best friend. Gratitude filled him like the warm burn after a shot of good whiskey as he watched her walk back to the reception desk. He sighed and glanced at his watch; minibreak was over. Crushing out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, he put it carefully into the trash can, scanning to see that there were no other butts or trash on the sidewalk in front of their brand-new salon.

  Greer watched Dario survey the busy salon as he walked back to his station, and when she caught his eye they shared a proud wink. The Eye of the Beholder was off to a roaring start, even considering the weather. Or perhaps because of it, Greer thought. She and Dario had done their research well. This wealthy area was ripe for a luxury salon, and because of the mudslides and flooding limiting their routes to Los Angeles proper, the locals were eager to get out and be steamed, soaked, prodded, cut, trimmed, buffed, shellacked, blown dry, and thrust back out into their Expeditions and their five-bedroom ranch homes.

  Greer turned to the pretty teenager standing next to her. Celia had a body that seemed capable of growing in only one direction at a time, and so far it had been up. Her hair was stick straight, blue-black and hung so flat that it gave the impression that her pale face was peeking through a velvet curtain. She was wearing a short black tube-like dress and clunky black Mary Jane shoes. The overall effect was that of an exclamation point.

  “Celia,” Greer addressed her, “I’ve got an appointment coming in now, so you’ll have to mind the front. Remember what I told you about the appointment book?”

  “Double-check the date before I write it in and only use pencil?” the punctuation mark of a girl asked as though unsure of the correct response.

  “And?” Greer prompted.

  “Get the phone number?” Celia added.

  “And?”

  The brown eyes flicked left and then back, widening slightly in fear. She couldn’t remember anything else. “And . . .” She bit her lip.

  “And relax.” Greer smiled at her, feeling the girl’s nervousness bristling a foot away from her body and smoothing it down with caressing words and a warm hand on Celia’s arm. “If something goes wrong, we’ll fix it. It’s not the end of the world, or the salon. Okay?”

  Celia smiled sheepishly. “Okay,” she agreed.

  Greer left the girl to worry her way through her first day. She entered the small treatment room and lit a candle; the cleansing scent of rosemary permeated the small room. Sensing a presence outside, Greer went to the door, opening it just as the woman was raising her hand to knock.

  “Hello . . . Leah?” Greer asked, extending her hand in introduction. “I’m Greer. Come right in and get comfortable on the table, facedown. We’re doing reflexology today, right?”

  Greer wasn’t surprised when Leah’s nod seemed a bit reluctant; she was used to people who were hesitant their first time. So she asked a question she knew the answer to. “Anything in particular you want to work on?” Even without her special sensitivity Greer would have been able to read the signs of stress in this woman. Even after a sauna and a shower, Leah had her hair combed back so neatly that it looked more like it had been mowed, and there wasn’t a trace of mascara smudged below her eyes.

  “Just stress.” Leah had the face of an Italian aristocrat, beautiful, with sienna brown eyes that appeared specially designed to veil any true sign of her inner life. “General stress.” The way she held herself perfectly upright spoke of relentless self-consciousness that never took a day off.

  To give Leah privacy while she took off her robe and climbed up onto the massage table, Greer stepped out into the hall. Standing quietly, with her hands on her chest and her head bowed, Greer closed her eyes. She found and focused her mind and intuition on Leah’s energy.

  It had the usual amount of city smut all over it, and a large dose of anxiety, things that were so prevalent these days that, sadly, most people had come to think of them as acceptable. There was damage too, though—abuse. Greer sensed a man with a violent temper and the woman’s fear, both all too common as well. Sighing, she reentered the room after a soft knock and moved to the side of the table. Then she placed one hand between Leah’s shoulder blades and the other on the small of her back. Greer held still and took a deep breath to sense the flow of energy through Leah’s taut and toned body.

  Immediately Greer’s hands began to heat up, and the dark blockages showed themselves to her clearly. One thing in particular leaped up and stung her.

  Before she could block it, into Greer’s mind rushed one of the two worst memories of her life. Since she was a child Greer had known things about people, little things, like who was on the phone when it rang. She had sensed only small things until one night when she was fifteen.

  She had been getting ready to go meet her best friend, Sarah, for a movie at the local mall, and David Bowie’s “Changes” blared from her record player. As she had leaned toward her mirror to dab on some sparkling lip gloss that Sarah had loaned her, the reflection before her had suddenly faded out of focus. Her face had still been there in the mirror, but suddenly and sharply a sensation had overcome her that was so enveloping that she had been incapable of using her senses to experience anything else.

  The phenomenon had removed her completely to another place, a place where time was bent, impossible to track; she had been aware only of utter and absolute terror. She had known without words or question that Sarah was in mortal danger. Greer had stumbled, unseeing, to the phone, still holding Sarah’s lip gloss in her hand, to try to call her friend, to warn her. Then the room before her had disappeared and the vision had begun.

  The fifteen-year-old Greer could see Sarah; she was walking along a dark sidewalk, and coming the other way was a man—a man whose face Greer couldn’t make out. In her vision the man was surrounded by jagged shapes, like shards of darkness that moved with him but were visually i
mpenetrable. She could feel Sarah getting closer to him; she could sense the man’s egregious intent as he stalked toward her friend. Alone in her room, Greer dropped to her knees in despair and cried out loud, “No! Sarah, run!” But of course Sarah couldn’t hear her. Desperately Greer struggled to focus on the numbers on the phone, but she could see nothing but the phantom figures, the night, and the strange, jagged black shadows.

  The two figures came closer and closer to each other until, paralyzed with fear, Greer watched as the man passed Sarah, turned, and struck her on the back of the head; then he dragged her into the bushes of an empty lot that bordered the sidewalk.

  Then, as abruptly as the vision had begun, it ended. Greer found herself lying on the floor of her room, the green shag carpet distorted as it came in view inches from her face. She was sobbing and sweating. With trembling hands she gathered the phone and dialed Sarah’s number.

  Sarah answered the phone in her usual bright, eager voice. Greer almost fainted with relief. She made an excuse for the call, then went to her bathroom to vomit up the bile of fear. Greer was so shaken by the force and depth of what she had seen and felt that she was afraid to tell anyone, afraid to be thought a freak. Even Sarah, who had always treated Greer’s talent with enthusiasm, couldn’t always conceal that she was vaguely uncomfortable with the oddness of it. This vision, Greer worried, would have both repelled and frightened her friend. So Greer didn’t tell Sarah; she convinced herself that it had been a fantasy or an anxiety attack. She briefly considered telling her mother, but decided against it. It was a choice she was to regret until the day she died.

  The two friends went to the movie that night. They had ice cream afterward, and laughed and flirted with a group of boys they knew from school. Greer reveled in the familiarity and acceptance of her friend, but being unable to tell Sarah about her eerie experience made her feel distanced, different, and lonely. And, no matter how hard she tried to deny it, she couldn’t shake the uneasy apprehensiveness.