To Trust a Stranger Read online

  She trusted her husband and got burned. Now she’s playing with fire and daring

  To Trust A Stranger

  Suspicion burned within Julie Carlson—the heartbreaking, infuriating suspicion that her husband, a wealthy and powerful contractor, was having an affair. Not sure whom to trust, Julie turns to a handsome stranger. . . . Private detective Mac McQuarry ignores his better judgment about not mixing women and work when he’s hired by Julie Carlson. Not only is she drop-dead gorgeous, but Sid Carlson was a player in Mac’s inglorious downfall from the Charleston P.D.—and revenge would be sweet indeed. But when Mac witnesses an explosive hit that targeted Julie, the tables are turned—and Mac and Julie become the hunted. With their fiery flirtation sparking into full-blown passion, they must crash their way through a maze of buried secrets and deadly deceptions.

  Karen Robards electrifies the page with thrilling passion and suspense in this heart-pounding New York Times bestseller.

  “A top-notch romantic suspense writer. . . .[A] steamy novel.”

  —Booklist

  Includes an excerpt from the author’s scintillating New York Times bestseller Whispers at Midnight

  POCKET BOOKS

  Cover illustration by Tom Hallman

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  TO TRUST A STRANGER

  Karen Robards’ sizzling New York Times bestseller is winning rave reviews!

  “Trust author Karen Robards to deliver up another choice romantic thriller. TO TRUST A STRANGER is vintage Robards.”

  —Romantic Times (A Romantic Times Top Pick)

  “[A] tough, sensual romantic mystery from the prolific and popular Robards.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Seduction, corruption, and bone-chilling suspense. . . . This is a really good edge-of-your-seat, humorous, and sexy romantic suspense novel that all can enjoy.”

  —The Sullivan County Democrat

  “[A] taut thriller. . . . An exciting romantic suspense novel that never slows down.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  “One of Robards’ best books. . . . It’s dynamite!”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  “You’ll be snagged on the first page. . . . Robards neatly combines the elements of suspense and romance.”

  —The Pilot (Southern Pines, NC)

  Welcome to

  PARADISE COUNTY

  where danger and desire entwine . . . in Karen Robards’ critically acclaimed, bestselling novel of romantic suspense!

  “An engaging read. . . . Suspenseful and atmospheric, another winner. . . . Readers will cheer and care for her protagonists.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Karen Robards has a unique writing style that provides readers with a fresh voice with every new novel. . . . Paradise County is a high-caliber romantic suspense novel featuring realistic characters struggling with a rainbow of feelings. Robards knows how to raise the temperature on several levels with a strong tale that will excite readers.”

  —Harriet Klausner, ReaderToReader.com

  “A fast-paced, suspenseful novel.”

  —Library Journal

  “Robards expertly balances an intensely sensual love story with a truly chilling suspense plot set against a colorful Southern backdrop. Paradise County will have readers on the edge of their seats until the final page.”

  —Amazon.com

  “Sizzling suspense. . . . A page-turner of the highest order. The sex is hot and the flames of passion leap high, as do the flames set by the crazed killer. Robards provides plenty of chilling moments to occasionally cool things down.”

  —Barnesandnoble.com

  “Along with exceptional heroes and heroines, Robards has delivered wonderfully drawn secondary characters. This makes her tales of romantic suspense feel all the more satisfying.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Robards leads us down the path of intrigue, suspense, and romance, with a touch of paranormal thrown in. You’ll find this thriller hard to put down. Don’t miss it!”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  More praise for KAREN ROBARDS and her bestselling fiction

  “Karen Robards . . . can be counted on to always do a good story and keep you interested on every page.”

  —Romance Reviews

  “Not to be missed.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “It is Robards’ singular skill of combining intrigue with ecstasy that gives her romances their edge.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)

  OTHER TITLES BY KAREN ROBARDS

  Paradise County

  Scandalous

  Ghost Moon

  The Midnight Hour

  The Senator’s Wife

  Heartbreaker

  Hunter’s Moon

  Walking After Midnight

  Maggy’s Child

  One Summer

  This Side of Heaven

  Dark of the Moon

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

  A Pocket Star Book published by

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2001 by Karen Robards

  Originally published in hardcover in 2001 by Pocket Books

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-78660-1

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-7434-2456-1

  First Pocket Books mass-market printing January 2003

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Cover art by Tom Hallman

  This book is dedicated to my new niece, Catherine Spicer, and my new nephew, Hunter Johnson. It is also dedicated to Samantha Spicer, Bradley, Blake and Chase Johnson, Austin and Trevor Johnson, Jason Wearren, Justin Kennady and Rachel Rose. And of course, as always, it is dedicated to my husband, Doug, and my three sons, Peter, Christopher and Jack, with much love.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  'Whispers at Midnight' Excerpt
r />   PROLOGUE

  1987

  “PLEASE. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS.” Kelly Carlson’s voice broke. Tears flowed as she looked beseechingly over her shoulder at the man prodding her forward. The wet tracks sliding down her pale cheeks shone silver in the moonlight.

  “Walk down to the end of the car.” The gun aimed at her back never wavered. The eyes of the man holding it were as cold and soulless as the dark waters of South Carolina’s Lake Moultrie, which spread out like a black-tinted mirror before them, reflecting in its rippling surface the cold blue glitter of the stars overhead. The brand-new champagne-colored Cougar was parked on a twelve-foot-high wooded cliff overlooking the lake. It was a popular spot for family picnics in the summer. Tonight, with the temperature hovering at around forty degrees and the time well past two A.M., it was deserted except for the desperate little tableau being played out around the car.

  “I’m begging you. Please.” Kelly obediently stumbled forward, her gait unsteady, her boots crunching through drifts of fallen leaves. Her voice was high-pitched, near hysteria. Daniel McQuarry could have told her that begging for her life was a waste of time. He would have told her, if the duct tape covering his mouth had allowed him to say anything at all.

  Woozy from the just-ended beating that had left him bruised and bloodied, sick at his stomach with the pain of what he judged to be roughly half a dozen cracked or broken ribs, he could barely keep her in focus as he leaned against the cool smooth curve of the driver’s door, his hands cuffed behind his back, a gun grinding into his spine. Blinking the blood that poured from a cut on his forehead from his eyes, he watched her stumbling progress, mentally apologizing to her for not having recognized the danger earlier, in time to save them both from this. He’d been stupid, cocky, sure of his ability to follow the devil down to hell and come back out again smelling like a rose.

  It was the story of his life, and now it was going to get him—and Kelly, pretty blond twenty-two-year-old Kelly, who’d made the mistake of trusting him with both the deadly secret she’d uncovered and her safety—killed.

  Terror swamped the pain, causing his heart to race. He was twenty-five years old. He had a lot of living left to do. He didn’t want to die.

  Tough titty, as his grandma was fond of saying. Unless something went his way pretty damned fast, he was going to.

  He moved, and the hideous stabbing pain cutting like hot knives through his chest drove out the terror. Nostrils shuddering with the effort of drawing in air through his battered nose, able to take only the shortest, shallowest breaths because of his damaged ribs, he fought to keep from passing out. If he did, they didn’t have a chance.

  Who was he trying to kid? They didn’t have a chance anyway. All his highly specialized training not withstanding, there was no way that he could see out of this.

  One of the four men—he knew them all, had worked and played with them as friends even while doing the job the government paid him to do—surrounding the vehicle popped the trunk. It rose, pale and ominous as Marley’s ghost, above the black, gaping mouth that he realized with sudden icy certainty was intended to be his and Kelly’s tomb.

  He knew how they worked, and how they worked wasn’t pretty. Violence came as naturally to them as breathing, and anyone who posed a threat to them ended up dead. They’d beaten the information they’d needed out of him—or at least, so they thought—and now that they had it, he was just so much garbage to be disposed of. Kelly too, despite the fact that she was the wife of the boss’s son.

  “Daniel, do something.” Kelly’s eyes were wide and terrified as she looked around at him. Her narrow shoulders in the black leather blazer she wore over jeans were visibly shaking. “Can’t you do something? They’re going to kill us. Please don’t let them kill us.” She started to sob, terrible wrenching sobs that hurt him to hear, and turned toward the man behind her. “Don’t kill us. I’m so scared. Oh, God, I’ll do anything. Anything. . . .”

  “You shouldn’t’ve done what you did.” Her captor grabbed her shoulder to stop her, turn her back around. “Get in the trunk.”

  “No! Oh, please. . . .” Gasping and crying hysterically, Kelly shook free and bolted, taking everyone by surprise. She bounded away from the Cougar and fled toward the road, toward the empty ribbon of black asphalt some quarter of a mile away that would have offered her no succor even if she had had a prayer of reaching it, which she didn’t. Her high, keening screams rent the darkness as she ran. Daniel’s blood ran cold. A memory flashed into his mind of a pig he had heard once as it was being hung for slaughter.

  “Get her!” They all, with the exception of the man behind him, raced after Kelly.

  It was his last, best chance to make his move. Summoning superhuman strength, Daniel gritted his teeth against bodily weakness and the torture his ribs were inflicting on him and whirled, kicking out with his leg. The movement was slow and feeble compared with his usual highly trained ferocity, but it caught his captor by surprise.

  He went down with an oath.

  Daniel sprang away, heading for the beckoning line of trees some three hundred yards to the left. If he could reach the woods he had the merest sliver of a chance. But even as he frantically lurched forward, bent like an old crone and in agonizing pain that increased a thousandfold with every step, he knew that it was futile, knew that he wasn’t going to make it.

  In the distance he heard a shot and a gurgling scream: Kelly. His heart leaped, and tears—he hadn’t cried since he was seven—began to ooze from his eyes.

  When the bullet caught him, it was almost a relief. It hit him like a kick from a mule, knocking him forward, sending him sprawling on his face on the hard, cold ground. Instead of hurting, though, the explosion blasted away his pain. Senses dimming, he realized that his spinal cord had probably been severed, and that there was a great pumping hole in his chest. Blood was gushing out around him like water from a hose. Within seconds he was lying in a dark gleaming pool of it.

  The good news was, he didn’t feel pain any longer. He didn’t feel afraid. What he felt was—cold.

  The bad news was, he wasn’t going to make it. He wasn’t going to see his grandma or mother or brother or anyone or anything else he loved ever again in this life.

  More tears leaked from his eyes at the thought.

  But by the time they came for him, two of them, lifting him up by his armpits and his knees, carrying him back toward the car, he was able to look up at the star-studded sky with a little smile on his lips. When they shoved him into the trunk beside Kelly—poor dead Kelly, her eyes stared at him glassily—and shut the lid, closing him into darkness forever, he was able to hold that image in his mind.

  He was still seeing that beautiful spangled sky as he died.

  1

  Fifteen years later

  WAKE UP.

  Julie Carlson’s eyes blinked open. For a moment she lay still, heart racing, staring groggily into the darkness, not sure what had awakened her or why she felt so frightened. It took only a moment or so for her to realize that she was lying in her own bed, in her own bedroom, listening to the familiar hum of the air conditioner as it kept the sweltering heat of the July night at bay and smelling the comforting aroma of her own smooth clean sheets. Her potbellied teddy bear, a poignant memento of her late father, sat stolidly in its accustomed spot on the bedside table. She could just see the comforting shape of it by the faint glow of the alarm clock.

  She must have had a nightmare. That would explain why she was curled up in a tight little ball under the bedclothes when she usually slept sprawled on her stomach; it would account for the now-slowing thud of her heart; it would explain her sense of—there was no other word for it—dread.

  Something’s wrong.

  Although the words were distinct, the urgent whisper was in her head. She was all alone in her bedroom, all alone in the whole huge upstairs of her house. Sid, the dog, was obviously spending another night in the guest room.

  At the thought, Julie
felt her stomach knot. She had gone downstairs around eleven, to find her husband sitting on the couch in the den watching TV.

  “I’ll be up after the news,” he’d said. Not wanting to start a fight—all they did lately was fight—she’d crossed her fingers and gone back upstairs to bed without uttering so much as a cross or demanding word. But here it was—she focused on the clock—at two minutes after midnight, and she was still alone in their bed.

  Maybe—maybe he was still coming. Maybe he was watching Letterman. Maybe tonight Leno had an especially fascinating guest.

  Get real, she told herself, uncurling her arms and legs as anger edged out fear. And maybe the Pope was a Protestant, too.

  Listen.

  Her attention immediately refocused. Trying not to be creeped out, Julie put out a hand, groping for the switch to the bedside lamp.

  Then she heard it, and froze.

  The distant sound—vibration really—of the garage door going up made her eyes widen and her fists clench.

  Her heart gave an odd little leap. Her stomach heaved. She forced herself to take a pair of deep, calming breaths.

  Despite all her hopes, all her prayers, it was happening again.

  Oh, God, what should she do?

  * * *

  Julie Carlson didn’t know it, but she had less than an hour left to live.

  Other than a single light in a downstairs room, her house was dark. It was a big house in an exclusive gated community just west of Charleston, and, if all went according to plan, in a few minutes she was going to be all alone in it.

  Then he would emerge from the shadows beneath the rustling palmettos in her side yard, break in through her back door, and creep up the stairs to the first door on the left. That door opened into the master bedroom, where she should already—it was a few minutes after midnight—be sound asleep.

  Surprise, surprise.

  Roger Basta allowed himself a small smile. This was going to be fun. The thought of what he was going to do to Julie Carlson made his breathing quicken. He’d been watching her for weeks, getting the household schedule down, making his plans, anticipating. Tonight he got to enjoy the fruits of all that labor.