They're Watching (2010) by Gregg Hurwitz Read Free Book Online

holding two of the DVDs. "What the hell is this? Are you paying someone to watch our house? To keep an eye on me? Or is this Martinique's doing? She spies on me while you spy on Don? Not even getting into how fucking invasive this is, I thought we were beyond this."
    "Whoa, wait a minute. Those recordings are of me--"
    "They're surveillance. So a few clips caught you. How many others are there? What have they been watching me do?"
    "I have no idea who's behind those videos."
    I took a quick step forward, and she recoiled in fear. I froze. She'd never flinched from me before, not ever. We stood in the still house for a moment, both of us horrified by her reaction.
    She brushed a lock off her forehead and flattened her hand against the air, willing us both to calm down, slow down. "You're telling me you're not part of this."
    "No. No. Of course not."
    She looked away, took a deep breath. "Patrick, you're starting to scare me here. You've been like a coiled spring. And now it's as if you've gone off the deep end. You're snooping by their fence, up on our roof spying on them, now you go storming over there. I didn't know what to do. I thought this whole thing was going to blow up on their porch. Don has all those hunting rifles. This is gonna get you killed, and then I'm gonna have to feel guilty."
    "Get me killed?"
    "I thought Don was going to shoot you." She gave a dark little cry, half anger, half relief. "And if anyone's gonna shoot you right now, it should be me."
    I held up the third DVD. "You need to see this one."
    Still using the tissue to preserve any prints, I slotted it in, and the blue screen quickly gave way to the shaky view of the back of our house. As the clip ran, Ariana pulled her legs under her, distressed, and pressed a cushion across her thighs. She gasped when the latex glove materialized to grip our doorknob. For the first time, I noted the black sweatshirt covering the brief flash of the intruder's wrist.
    The footage ended, and Ariana said hoarsely, "Why didn't you tell me about this? Why didn't you go to the cops?"
    "I didn't want to scare you." I held up a hand. "I know. But I just found this one tonight. On our roof. I was coming to tell you, right now. But I wanted to rule Don out first, for obvious reasons."
    She said firmly, "There's no way this is Don."
    "I agree. But still, the cops aren't going to do any good."
    "What do you mean? Someone came inside our house."
    "It's creepy, but it's not proof of a crime. They'll say they don't have a way to know who did it. They'll say it could've been you."
    "Me? Patrick--"
    "They won't be able to do anything. 'Contact us again if there's further trouble. Blah, blah, blah.' "
    The doorbell rang. She froze. "Shit, oh, shit," she said. "You might not want to answer that."

    Chapter 8
    I opened the door, revealing a vast, pyramidal woman with oval, plastic-frame glasses. Her hair, a touch puffy, was center-parted and feathered. The pooch under her belt said she was a mother, and she had the brisk, no-nonsense demeanor to back it up.
    "I'm Detective Sally Richards. This is Detective Valentine. He'll give you his first name if he's feeling social."
    A slender black man stepped out from behind her. His hair was about two inches deep all around--no shape, no notched part, just a uniform rise of dense black curls. His mouth twitched, his mustache undulating. Like her, he wore slacks, a button-up, and a blazer.
    Behind me, Ariana said faintly, "Detectives? I assumed they'd just send a couple patrolmen."
    "Bel Air service." Richards hoisted her belt, weighed down with a hip-holstered Glock and a flashlight. "The surveillance tape sounded bizarre, so Dispatch kicked it to us. Plus, we're bored. West L.A. station. There's only so much Starbucks you can drink. Even the doughnuts aren't doughnuts. They're gourmet cupcakes."
    Valentine blinked twice, displeased.
    Ariana had called them to protect me from Don's guns, but now that they were here, they required an explanation