Tightrope - Hardcover

Quick, Amanda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399585362 ISBN 13: 9780399585364

Publisher: Berkley, 2019

Synopsis

An unconventional woman and a man shrouded in mystery walk a tightrope of desire as they race against a killer to find a top secret invention in this New York Times bestselling novel from Amanda Quick.

Former trapeze artist Amalie Vaughn moved to Burning Cove to reinvent herself, but things are not going well. After spending her entire inheritance on a mansion with the intention of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast, she learns too late that the villa is said to be cursed. When the first guest, Dr. Norman Pickwell, is murdered by his robot invention during a sold-out demonstration, rumors circulate that the curse is real. 

In the chaotic aftermath of the spectacle, Amalie watches as a stranger from the audience disappears behind the curtain. When Matthias Jones reappears, he is slipping a gun into a concealed holster. It looks like the gossip that is swirling around him is true—Matthias evidently does have connections to the criminal underworld. 

Matthias is on the trail of a groundbreaking prototype cipher machine. He suspects that Pickwell stole the device and planned to sell it. But now Pickwell is dead and the machine has vanished. When Matthias’s investigation leads him to Amalie’s front door, the attraction between them is intense, but she knows it is also dangerous. Amalie and Matthias must decide if they can trust each other and the passion that binds them, because time is running out.

About this title

About the Author:

Amanda Quick is a pseudonym for Jayne Ann Krentz, the author of more than fifty New York Times bestsellers. She writes historical romance novels under the Quick name, contemporary romantic suspense novels under the Krentz name, and futuristic romance novels under the pseudonym Jayne Castle. There are more than 35 million copies of her books in print.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Amanda Quick

Chapter One

Six months earlier . . .

“Fly for me, Princess,” the killer said. “If you fly, I’ll let you live.”

He was lying.

Amalie Vaughn knew that death awaited her at the top of the trapeze ladder. She had no choice but to climb to the narrow platform. The long wire necklace strung with glittering black glass beads was a garrote around her throat. The Death Catcher used it as a chain to control her.

He followed behind her on the ladder. The black necklace dangled down her back within his reach. Every so often he gave it a sharp tug to make it clear that he could slice open her throat whenever it pleased him.

Only one more rung remained until she reached the platform. In the morning they would find her body and she would be a headline in the local paper. The Flying Princess Dies in Tragic Accident.

“I watched you fly tonight at the evening performance,” the Death Catcher said. “You were so pretty in your costume. It was all I could do to wait until now.”

His voice was a ghastly parody of a lover’s croon. He was trying to coax, charm, and seduce her to her doom but he could not conceal his feverish excitement.

She was almost at the top of the ladder. When she looked down she saw that the floor was illuminated by twin rows of lanterns. There was no net. The Death Catcher had staged the scene with great care, as if preparing for a real performance in front of an audience.

His real name was Marcus Harding. He had been hired on as a rigger. His work had been good. The high wire walkers and the trapeze artists of the Ramsey Circus always inspected the rigging before they practiced and performed. Their lives depended on the skill of the men who rigged the wires and cables.

Marcus Harding was an expert—and only a skilled rigger would know how to sabotage the equipment so that the death of a flyer looked like an accident.

This was how the three flyers in the other traveling circuses had died, Amalie thought. The police in each of the small towns where the performers had been killed had concluded that the victims had perished in tragic accidents or, perhaps, by suicide. But now it was clear that the hushed rumors that had circulated in the circus world were true. The man they called the Death Catcher was not just a frightening legend. He was real.

Moments ago he had awakened her with a knife to her throat. He had dragged her from her bunk in the train car, slipped the black necklace around her throat and forced her to cross the empty circus grounds.

He had propelled her into the silent, night-darkened big top and made her climb the ladder to the trapeze platform.

The ease and skill with which he followed her told her that he was accustomed to high wire and trapeze equipment. She was very sure that he had once been a performer himself.

She was shivering so badly it was all she could do to cling to the ladder. She had been raised in the circus and trained to fly at an early age. The trapeze was as familiar to her as a bicycle or a car. But she was trembling tonight, and not just because she knew Harding intended her to die. She was fighting something besides panic. Her senses were in a fog.

It dawned on her that the killer had drugged her. He must have poisoned her at some point during the evening, probably at dinner. They had all eaten the same hash and the same vegetable soup served out of the same pots but Harding could have slipped something into her food.

She had been left alone that evening. The other performers and the clowns, animal trainers, ticket sellers, and roustabouts were still in town, celebrating the surprisingly successful run in Abbotsville. The Ramsey Circus was one of the few traveling shows that had survived the worst of the economic disaster that had followed in the wake of the Great Crash of ’29, but it was struggling financially. The stock market had collapsed nearly a decade earlier, but much of the country was still trying to escape the shadow of the Depression. Ticket sales during the past week had been a rare bright spot in an otherwise dismal season.

She had stayed behind and gone to bed early because she had not felt well. She could not afford to get sick. She was the star attraction. Her circus family depended on her.

Her head was slowly clearing but her heart was still beating too fast. She reached the top of the ladder and transitioned to the small platform. She grasped one of the upright poles that supported the narrow board on which she stood and took deep, clarifying breaths.

The only good news was that Harding could no longer reach the black necklace. He had stopped a couple of rungs down, his waist even with the platform. She realized that he did not feel confident about joining her on the board. There wasn’t much room. Perhaps he was afraid he would be vulnerable. Perhaps he feared that she would try to take him with her when she went down.

No net.

“Time to fly,” Harding said. He braced himself on the ladder with one hand and took out the knife. He waved the blade slowly back and forth as if trying to hypnotize her.

“If you do as I tell you,” he said, “and if you’re as good on the trapeze as everyone says, if you really are the Flying Princess, I will let you live.”

It was then that Amalie heard the high, muffled giggles. They emanated from the darkened seats. Someone was watching. She was dealing with not one, but two human monsters tonight.

Never let the audience see you sweat.

“We both know you won’t let me live,” she said, fighting the fear and the effects of the drug. “You can’t afford to do that because I know who you are. I can identify you. So of course you have to kill me.”

“Fly, you stupid bitch. It’s your only chance. If you don’t perform I’ll slit your throat and throw you off the platform.”

There were more giggles from the shadows.

“Who’s your pal in the audience?” she asked.

“If you want to live, shut your mouth and fly.”

Her nerves and senses were a little steadier now. They were on her territory. She was the Flying Princess. The trapeze was her realm. She ruled here. And she never worked with a net.

“Sure.” She grabbed the bar as though preparing to perform. “How many times have you done this? They say at least three flyers have been killed in the past few months. Did you murder them all by yourself? Or did you need help?”

“Fly or die, Princess.”

Harding watched her with the eyes of a snake. She sensed that he was a little rattled, though. She had gone off script. He was not accustomed to that.

She toyed with the bar, testing it. Her flyer’s intuition warned her that it did not feel right. Harding had, indeed, sabotaged the equipment. If she flew for him she would go down.

“I’m not going to fly for you,” she said. “If you want to kill me you’ll have to step out onto the platform with me. You don’t have the nerve to do that.”

Harding roared and bounded up the last few rungs of the ladder, the knife aimed at her midsection.

“I’ll gut you first,” he said.

It was in that instant when he transitioned from the ladder to the platform that he was vulnerable, because he was using one hand to grip the knife and the other to cling to the support pole.

She had inherited her excellent reflexes and her keen sense of balance from her father. She also had what her father had called flyer’s intuition. She relied on it now.

She jabbed the end of the trapeze bar at Harding just as he lunged at her. The length of metal connected with his knife arm. He did not drop the blade but the attack startled him and deflected his aim. He missed her by inches and drew back for another thrust.

“You crazy bitch,” Harding yelled.

“I fly for a living and I do it without a net,” she said. “Of course I’m crazy.”

She whipped the bar at his knife hand.

He reacted instinctively, raising his arm to block the strike. But the move had been a feint. She yanked the bar back and went at him again, wielding the length of metal like a spear.

Enraged, he dropped the knife and grabbed the bar instead. He yanked on it, intending to rip it from her grasp.

She let go.

He was not expecting that. He still had one hand wrapped around the support pole on his side of the platform, but he was off balance. Instinctively, he clung to the bar as if it could support him if he went over.

She held on to the upright on her side and lashed out with one foot. The maneuver swept one of his legs off the platform.

He lurched to one side, still instinctively clinging to the bar in a desperate effort to regain his footing.

The sabotaged rigging broke. The bar came free of the lines. Harding released his grip on it but he had waited a split second too long. In the trapeze world when you were working without a net, a split second in timing meant disaster.

He tried to cling to the support pole but he was dangling in midair now. The palm of the hand that he was using to hang on must have been damp with the rush of panic. He lost his grip.

He went off the platform and plummeted straight down. The shock of his body hitting the packed earth floor reverberated throughout the night.

An eerie silence gripped the deeply shadowed tent. For a moment Amalie could not move. She was riveted by the sight of the crumpled form on the ground.

The sound of panicky footsteps brought her out of her frozen state. She remembered the watcher. She turned quickly, searching the shadows.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure moving swiftly down the aisle between the seats.

The watcher disappeared into the night.

She had to concentrate very hard to make her way back down the ladder. By the time she reached the ground she was shaking so badly she could barely stand. She had heard about other flyers who had lost their nerve. She wondered if that was what was happening to her now. What would she do if she could not fly?

She found Harding’s knife on the ground not far from his body. She gripped it very tightly. When she got to the entrance of the tent she heard the roar of a car engine being driven at high speed. The sound faded rapidly into the night. The watcher had fled the scene.

That should have been reassuring. She probably did not have to fear a second attacker tonight. But it also meant that the monster who had giggled in anticipation of watching her fly to her death was still alive.

Chapter Two

Amalie knew that something had gone very wrong when the robot named Futuro carried the suitcase onto the stage. It was a small thing, really; just something about Dr. Norman Pickwell’s expression.

Pickwell stood at the podium on the other side of the stage. He was in his late forties, with a neatly trimmed beard and a pair of gold spectacles. He had just ordered the mechanical man to carry the suitcase behind the curtain, leave it there, and return to the stage with a tea tray.

No one else in the theater seemed to notice the startled expression that flashed across Pickwell’s face when Futuro reappeared with the suitcase instead of the tray. But Amalie had spent a good portion of her life performing dangerous stunts in front of an audience. It was a career in which the smallest miscalculation in midair spelled disaster. Her intuition had been honed to a razor-sharp edge.

A moment ago Pickwell had been lecturing the audience on the wonders of the future, when most labor would be done by robots. Now he was distinctly nervous.

He recovered quickly.

“Futuro, put down the suitcase and pick up the vase of flowers that is on the bench,” he commanded.

Amalie glanced at her aunt, Hazel, who was sitting beside her. Hazel was watching the demonstration with rapt attention. She did not appear to have noticed anything strange about what was happening onstage. She was clearly captivated.

The robot was humanoid in shape, with a surprisingly sleek aluminum body. It did not look like one of the blocky, clunky images on the cover of Thrilling Wonder Stories or Popular Mechanics. The head resembled an ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s death mask.

Hidden motors whirred and hummed as Futuro obeyed Pickwell’s new orders. Flashlight-sized eyes glittering with an eerie blue light, the robot clomped across the stage and set the suitcase on the bench.

Futuro appeared to deliberate for a moment before it picked up the vase of flowers in two metal hands.

Dr. Pickwell seemed somewhat relieved but Amalie thought the inventor still looked uneasy.

“As you can see,” Pickwell said to the audience, “Futuro is capable of carrying out many of the tasks one expects of a well-trained butler. My invention is only the first of what I predict will be an unlimited number of mechanical men. In the future, robots will free humankind from the dangerous work now performed by humans in mines, shipyards, and factories.”

A man in the front row leaped to his feet. “You mean the damned machines will take our jobs. How is the average working man going to make a living if robots take over?”

A murmur of disapproval rippled across the theater. The Palace was a fashionable venue in the very fashionable town of Burning Cove. The audience was composed primarily of people who had purchased tickets because they wanted to be amazed and astonished and, above all, entertained. Most of the men wore evening jackets. The women were in glamorous cocktail dresses and heels. Amalie suspected that very few of those occupying the red velvet seats had ever worked in a mine or a shipyard or a factory.

Tickets for the demonstration of Futuro had been expensive and hard to come by. The only reason she and Hazel were there was because the inventor had graciously provided them with passes. Dr. Pickwell was staying at their newly opened bed-and-breakfast. Pickwell was, in fact, the first and, so far, the only guest at the Hidden Beach Inn.

Earlier, Amalie and been interested to see that a number of the town’s movers and shakers were in the audience, including Oliver Ward, the owner of Burning Cove’s biggest hotel. His wife, Irene, the crime beat reporter for the Herald, sat next to him. She had a notebook and pencil in hand. Oliver’s uncle, Chester Ward, said to be an inventor in his own right, had accompanied them. Chester, with his unkempt gray hair and spectacles, looked rather like a mad scientist in a horror movie. He was watching the demonstration with a mix of fascination and, Amalie sensed, deep suspicion.

Luther Pell, the owner of the town’s hottest nightclub, the Paradise, occupied a seat in the second row. Pell was not alone. Two people had accompanied him to the theater. Amalie assumed that the sophisticated woman in the stylish gown next to him was Raina Kirk, Burning Cove’s only private investigator. Word around town was that Miss Kirk and Luther Pell were romantically linked.

The man in the seat on the other side of Pell was a stranger. Amalie was not surprised that neither she nor Hazel recognized him. They were new in town, themselves. There were a lot of people they did not know. But there had been enough curious and...

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0399585362
• ISBN 13: 9780399585364
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320