Sidney Sheldon's the Silent Widow: a Sidney Sheldon Novel Read Online
Copyright
Published past HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Outset published in Great U.k. by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Sheldon Family unit Limited Partnership 2018
Comprehend photograph © Robert Jones/Arcangel Images (main image); Shutterstock.com (skyscrapers)
Encompass pattern © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Tilly Bagshawe asserts the moral correct to be identified as the writer of this work.
A catalogue re-create of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the piece of work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or expressionless, events or localities is entirely casual.
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Source ISBN: 9780008229634
Ebook Edition © June 2022 ISBN: 9780008229665
Version: 2018-05-21
Dedication
For Alice, with love.
Tabular array of Contents
Comprehend
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Function One
Chapter One
Affiliate Two
Affiliate Three
Chapter Iv
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Affiliate 8
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Affiliate Xi
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Affiliate 14
Chapter 15
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter 18
Affiliate Nineteen
Affiliate Twenty
Function Ii
Chapter Twenty-Ane
Chapter Twenty-2
Affiliate Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-4
Affiliate Twenty-V
Affiliate Xx-Six
Affiliate Xx-Seven
Chapter Xx-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter 30
Chapter Xxx-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter 30-Three
Chapter Thirty-4
Chapter Thirty-Five
Affiliate Thirty-6
Affiliate Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Affiliate Xxx-Nine
Chapter Twoscore
Chapter Forty-Ane
Acknowledgements
Go along Reading …
About the Author
Besides by Sidney Sheldon
Also by Tilly Bagshawe
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
'No! Please no! I tin't …'
The old man's eyes widened in terror as he stared at the drill, straining against the ropes that leap him. He imagined the spiral metal fleck grinding into his flesh, splintering his basic like shrapnel as they nailed him to the wooden axle.
As they crucified him.
Surely they knew he was proficient for the money? He would give them what they wanted – everything they wanted! He was no skilful to them expressionless.
How long had he been in the warehouse at present? Days? Or only hours? Slipping in and out of consciousness between the beatings, he'd lost track, aware only of the pain in his body: the screaming burns on his peel, thin and creased with age like crepe paper. The fractured ribs and swollen eyes and lips. The tiny razor cuts to his genitals. They had tortured and humiliated him in every sadistic way imaginable, while the young adult female stood in the corner impassively and filmed on her mobile phone. Mean bitch. He despised her most of all, more fifty-fifty than his tormentors.
They appeared to be reaching a crescendo, some sort of grand finale with the drill. Or at least he did. Their boss. The ringmaster at this circus of terror.
The man with the brown optics.
The devil incarnate.
'Please!'
The quondam man's sobs turned to screams equally his torturers switched on the drill, passing it laughingly between them as they revved it louder and louder.
'I'll do anything! Oh God, no!' A warm river of liquid excrement exploded out of his bowels and streamed downward his shaking legs.
The homo with the brown eyes smiled.
'What's that you say?' he taunted, cupping a manicured hand to his ear. 'I'g sorry, my friend, with the sound of that drill I can't hear you.'
He looked on as his men did his bidding, angry as ever past the pleading and the shrieks and the blood, and finally past the silence, one time the show was over. Angry too by the young woman dutifully filming information technology all for his pleasure, as he'd commanded her to practice. He preferred killing women. Merely ending a life, whatever life, was a high like no other. The ultimate expression of power.
Once, the dilapidated old human being hanging lifelessly from the beam in front of him had been rich and powerful. More powerful than him. Or so he'd thought.
But expect at him at present. Like a carcass in an abattoir.
'Should we cutting him down, dominate?' i of the goons asked his primary.
'No.' The human being with the brown eyes stepped forward. 'Exit him there.' Pulling a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket, he stuffed them violently into the corpse's rima oris.
The stupid sometime man had never understood.
It was never about the coin …
PART One
Chapter I
DR NIKKI ROBERTS
Brentwood, Los Angeles.
May 12, 11 p.k.
It never rains in Los Angeles in May, so the calorie-free mist falling on my bare artillery is a surprise. The terminal surprise I will accept on this earth. Merely that'due south OK. I've come up to detest surprises.
Our yard looks beautiful, lush and green. I am standing nether the magnolia tree Doug planted in the spring, just a month before his accident. Blow. I have to end using that word. I know now that my husband's death was no random act of fate. The night that Doug crashed on the 405, burned alive in his dear Tesla: that was the offset.
Not that I knew it at the time. I didn't know anything back then.
The gun in my hand, a 9mm Luger, feels pocket-sized and harmless, like a toy. The man who sold it to me chosen it 'a lovely gun for a woman', every bit if I were buying earrings or a silk scarf. I tried to take my own life in one case before, right after Doug's … after he died. I took pills, more than enough, simply I was unlucky. My housekeeper, Rita, constitute me and called 911. Not this fourth dimension. This time my little toy gun volition get the job done.
I'm non afraid of decease. Never take been, although as a psychologist I've treated countless patients who are. Information technology's a control thing, ultimately. Fright of the unknown. The way I see it, what I'm about to practise is the ultimate act of control. Leaving the world on your ain terms is a luxury.
Non everybody gets that take chances.
Too many people accept died because of me. Tonight another kind, decent human lost his life. A human being I cared about. A homo who cared about me.
This tin't keep. I accept to end it.
The rai
n is getting heavier. I wipe my mitt on my jeans to dry out it and make my grip less slippery. No mistakes this time. I raise the gun to my temple and turn effectually, looking back at the house that Doug and I congenital together. A white clapboard, East Declension 'estate', beautifully lit, with a romantic balcony off the master suite that has views all the way to the ocean. Our dream habitation. Back when we still had dreams. Before there were null but nightmares.
I close my optics and see their faces, one by one, like patterns on a kaleidoscope.
The ones I loved: Doug. Anne.
The ones I could take loved. Lou. We'll never know what might have been.
The ones I let down: Lisa. Trey. Derek. I'm then very sorry.
My last idea is for the ones I hated.
You know who you are. May you rot in hell.
I commencement to weep. I know this is incorrect. I wish there were another way.
But wishing never fixed annihilation.
Chapter TWO
CHARLOTTE
Ten years earlier …
Charlotte Clancy felt the warm summertime breeze caress her skin and with it a tingle of excitement. It was part sexual excitement, part happiness, and part the unfamiliar thrill of doing something illicit. Something naughty. Dangerous, even.
Charlotte wasn't usually the naughty blazon. At eighteen years erstwhile she'd always been a straight-A pupil at her San Diego loftier school, where the virtually trouble she'd ever gotten into was for allowing her girlfriend to crib her Social Studies newspaper on early Mexican civilizations. Charlotte only loved United mexican states – the history, the language, the nutrient. She'd literally had to beg and plead with her parents to let her to piece of work the summertime in United mexican states City as an au pair.
'I don't know, Charlie,' her dad said skeptically. Tucker Clancy was a firefighter and a deacon at the local Episcopal church, virtually as ethical and conservative a family unit man as you lot could hope to find. 'You hear stories. People go kidnapped down there. And the drug gangs … y'all read about beheadings and God knows what other terrible things.'
'That's truthful, Dad,' Charlotte countered. 'But those things are only happening in certain parts of Mexico. Non where I wanna go. Information technology's El salvador and Colombia where yous really have to be careful. And this agency, American Au Pairs International, AAPI – they have an amazing safety reputation. Like, aught incidents in twelve years working down in that location.'
Tucker Clancy listened with pride to his only daughter's negotiating skills. One thing you could say for Charlie: she never did anything half-assed. As usual she had all the facts and figures at her fingertips. And she was a very sensible girl.
In the end though, it was Charlotte's mother, Mary, who had tipped the scales in her favor.
'I'one thousand nervous too, dearest,' Mary told Tucker over dinner at the Steak 'due north' Shake one Friday night. 'Only I don't think we should let our fears concur Charlie back. She'll exist at college in the fall, living on her ain, making all these decisions for herself. She needs some independence.'
'Higher is in Ohio,' Charlotte's dad countered. 'They don't cut people's heads off in Ohio.'
Mary frowned. 'Well, according to Charlie, they don't in United mexican states Urban center either. And the lady at the au pair bureau was super-reassuring. This family they've got lined up for her audio wonderful. The parents are lawyers, they live on this phenomenal manor … Come on, Tucker. Let the girl live a little.'
That conversation had been iii months ago. Charlotte had been in Mexico for two months at present, and boy, had she lived a lot. She'd smoked her first joint, got boozer for the showtime time, cheated on her fellow Todd for the first time and (she could hardly believe it, even when she said it to herself) fallen in dearest with a married man.
It wasn't the dad of the family she was working for, the Encerritos. That would be cheap and tacky, and besides, Charlotte really liked Señora Encerrito, her boss, and would never practise that to her. Not that what she was doing was OK. She knew information technology was wrong to have an affair. In fact, information technology was worse than wrong. It was a sin, a mortal sin. Charlotte came from a solid 'church' family, and there wasn't much wiggle room when it came to morals, peculiarly sexual morals. It wasn't that she didn't care, either. She cared plenty, and she felt guilty and all of that. Simply none of that mattered. Not when he was there. When he walked into a room, when he looked at Charlotte, when he said her name, even when she heard his vocalism on the telephone, everything else went out the window. Her circumspection, her values, her fear, her regrets. Poof. Gone. And when he took her to bed and made love to her? Expert God. At that place were no words to describe the bliss, the accented ecstasy. Charlotte had had sex with Todd hundreds of times, but never like this. Never, in Charlotte Clancy'southward wildest imaginings, had she believed sexual practice could be this wonderful. So she wasn't going to sky? Large deal. She had sky correct here and his proper noun was … Shhhh. She giggled to herself. She mustn't say his name out loud. Not always. Not to anyone.
'What we have is a undercover, cara,' he told her, every time they made love. 'No one must always know. You understand?'
Charlotte did understand. He was married, and much, much older, and an of import man. Their affair had to be discreet. What she didn't sympathize was all his other secrets. The mysterious 'meetings' he would disappear off to in the eye of the dark. The attaché cases stuffed full of The states dollars that she'd seen him hand over to the local principal of constabulary in i of the fancy hotels in town.
'You can tell me, you know,' she would whisper coquettishly in his ear in bed. 'I tin can go along a undercover. I merely … I want to know everything almost you. I desire to be part of your life as much as I can. I dearest you then much!'
He ever smiled, and kissed her, and assured her he loved her too and that he constitute her footling outbursts 'adorable – similar you'. But he never told her anything. 'It's for your own prophylactic,' he would say, throwing in a thrilling element of danger to the already heady state of affairs.
In brusque, Charlotte Clancy was having the time of her life.
And tonight was going to be even improve, the best still.
Following the map he'd given her – so romantic! – she got out of her car and weaved her manner on foot through the maize fields and down towards the river.
She'd taken a big risk a few nights ago, following him in the footling Nissan the Encerritos had provided for her use, headlamps off so as not to exist seen, simply a few hundred yards backside him. Information technology was hard to run across forth the bumpy roads, no more than tracks really, that he turned on to once they'd left the city. She'd started to panic, wondering how she would always get back if somehow she lost him, just at that moment the track gave manner to a subconscious clearing in the copse and he came to a halt. She could make out rows of semicircular sheds, like giant pipes cut in half; inside, men were working at tables, their stations illuminated by old-fashioned oil lamps that fabricated each shed glow softly in the moonlight. Charlotte watched as her lover got out of his car and moved from shed to shed, overseeing the work. It was all quite fascinating, but Charlotte couldn't see what the men were actually doing from where she was parked. With a boldness she didn't know she possessed till that moment, she'd got out of her machine and walked over towards the shed where he was. She'd got to within about ten yards of the door when ii men armed with auto guns leapt out in front of her.
Charlotte screamed then loudly they could probably hear it back in the city. 'Don't shoot! Delight!'
Her lover turned around, a look of shock and anger on his face. Only it chop-chop softened to a grinning, and then a express mirth.
'Cara!' he chuckled indulgently. 'You followed me?'
'I … I wanted to know,' stammered Charlotte, her long legs nevertheless shaking involuntarily at the sight of the guns. 'You wouldn't tell me anything.'
He gestured for the men to let her pass, opening his artillery wide and pulling her into a tight hug. 'I never would have thought you lot had it in you,' he grinned, ruffling Charlotte'southward hair every bit if she were a disobedient only adorable puppy. 'You're a brave footling thing, aren't you, hm? I see I underest
imated you.'
Charlotte swelled with pride and relief. He wasn't angry. He was pleased! She'd been right to take the chance, right to bear witness him she was more than some silly trivial girl, some au pair he was having a summertime fling with.
'Come.' He took her hand. 'Equally you're here, let me show yous around.'
She'd seen information technology all then, all the workings of his empire.
Cocaine.
Even the give-and-take sounded dangerous to Charlotte, similar something from an episode of Miami Vice. She'd never been offered coke in her life, never even seen it. And at present, here she was, in the eye of the storm, actually watching the stuff being produced. It was fascinating, and he showed her effectually with pride, as if this were any other factory or business he'd built. It was also extraordinarily complicated.
In one of the sheds, sheaves of dry coca leaves were being finely ground and dusted with lime before going under a misting machine like a weak garden sprinkler to exist moistened with water. From there, the mixture was taken to another shed where information technology sabbatum in giant vats like cement mixers, into which kerosene was added. The third shed was the 'extraction plant', where cocaine was first separated from the leaves, and then subjected to a complicated process of heating, filtering, pressing, siphoning and mixing with sulfuric acrid, earlier being transferred to yet another edifice where eventually a gummy, yellow solid emerged that he identified equally 'coca paste'. The paste was so carried to a purifying shed, where it was mixed with diluted ammonia and filtered to produce cocaine hydrochloride.
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