Now You See Her
Authors: Linda Howard
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PRAISE FOR THE SENSATIONAL
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLERS OF
Linda Howard
NOW YOU SEE HER
“Steamy romance morphs into murder mystery....”
â
People
“An eerie, passionate, and thrilling tale of murder and the paranormal....
NOW YOU SEE HER
is bound to catapult the phenomenal Linda Howard to a whole new level.”
â
Romantic Times
“Sensual page-turning. . . . Linda Howard brings psychic phenomena, hot sex, and deadly danger into the life of an appealing young artist. . . . Howard keeps the suspense streamlined and straightforward.”
âAmazon.com
KILL AND TELL
“Linda Howard meshes hot sex, emotional impact, and gripping tension in this perfect example of what romantic suspense ought to be.”
â
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“A riveting masterpiece of suspense. Linda Howard is a superbly original storyteller.”
âIris Johansen,
New York Times
bestselling author of
And Then You Die
“An explosive conclusion to a clever, smoothly-crafted tale of adventure, romance, and intrigue.”
â
Lansing State Journal
(MI)
“Ms. Howard has always been a riveting storyteller, and every time I think she can't do better, she does. The pages turn themselves.... A must-read.
â
Rendezvous
SON OF THE MORNING
“Linda Howard offers a romantic time-travel thriller with a fascinating premise ... gripping passages, and steamy sex.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“A complex tale that's rich with detail, powerful characters and stunning sensuality. This is a story you won't be able to put down until you reach the explosive conclusion. It's no wonder that Linda Howard is the best of the best.”
âCompuServe Romance Reviews
“Son of the Morning
is an incredible blending of romantic suspense, supernatural, medieval, and time-travel genres in what will be claimed as one of the top action novels of the year.”
âPainted Rock (online review)
SHADES OF TWILIGHT
“Wow! This powerful saga about a wealthy dynasty that is torn apart by a vicious murder will chill, thrill, and excite you.... [A] tale of lust, greed, and revenge ... that will leave you staggered and extremely satisfied. Linda Howard never fails to create a story that will shock, amaze, and warm you with its gifted touch. This is a passion-filled masterpiece.”
â
Rendezvous
“Family, loyalty, love, sex and revenge steam up the pages.... Howard . . . maintain[s] tension through a twist-filled plot.”
â
Publishers Weekly
AFTER THE NIGHT
“Small towns are the perfect background for mysterious secrets, and Ms. Howard pens a tale loaded with them. Her sensuous style of writing makes the reader aware of the all-consuming desire between the hero and heroine. Add to this the dramatic climax, and you get extraordinary pleasure from this novel.”
â
Rendezvous
“A real southern scorcher. . . . Howard is a master of sexual tension.”
â
Gothic Journal
DREAM MAN
“A contemporary thriller/romance.... Sexy, very hard to put down.”
â
The Newport Daily News
(RI)
“The incomparable Linda Howard brings high-voltage power and hard-edged sensuality to this emotional roller coaster of a novel, which is sure to keep readers riveted until the final nail-biting conclusion. They don't get much better than this.”
â
Romantic Times
“Ms. Howard has wonderful pacing, a good ear for dialogue, and knows how to turn on the steam.
DREAM MAN's
mix of drama, violence, paranormal ability and sex makes it a perfect candidate for a USA Original Picture.”
â
Birmingham Post-Herald
(AL)
“Linda Howard never fails to entertain with a powerful and passionate story. . . . One of the best.”
â
Rendezvous
Books by Linda Howard
A Lady of the West
Angel Creek
The Touch of Fire
Heart of Fire
Dream Man
After the Night
Shades of Twilight
Son of the Morning
Kill and Tell
Now You See Her
All the Queen's Men
Mr. Perfect
Open Season
Published by POCKET BOOKS
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.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 1998 by Linda Howington
Originally published in hardcover in 1998 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: 0-671-56882-5
           0-7434-8289-1 (pbk)
           ISBN-13:978-1-4165-0380-4
           eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-4087-1
First Pocket Books trade paperback edition July 2003
10Â Â 9Â Â 8Â Â 7Â Â 6Â Â 5Â Â 4Â Â 3Â Â 2Â Â 1
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
P
ROLOGUE
Clayton, New York
It was the third of September, one of those cloudless, perfect days nestled between the heat of summer and the approaching winter chill. The sky was so blue that Sweeney, getting out of her car in the supermarket parking lot, went stock-still and gawked upward at that amazing blue bowl as if she had never seen sky before. She hadn'tânot like this.
If there was one thing in life she knew, it was colors, and she had never before seen that particular shade of blue. It was incredible, deeper and darker, richer than any sky had the right to be. Just for today, this perfect day, the haze of atmosphere between heaven and earth had thinned, and she stood closer to the edge of the universe than she ever had before, so close that she felt almost as if she might be sucked into that blue, right away from earth.
Could she reproduce it? Mentally she mixed the
pigments, automatically discarding some as her internal eye judged the results. No, that touch of white would make the shade too babyish. This wasn't a wimpy blueâit was the most kick-ass blue she had ever seen. This was pure and dramatic, pulling her in and overwhelming her with the richness of its beauty. She stood with her face upturned, errand forgotten, and felt exalted by color, filled to overflowing, her heart swollen and aching with ecstasy.
When she finally remembered to drag her gaze back to earth, her eyes were dazzled. She saw a flash of . . . something, and though she hadn't been looking at the sun, she thought the sky must be brighter than she'd thought, because her eyes needed to adjust. She blinked, then squinted. It was something solid, and yet not quite. ... It was a child, oddly two-dimensional.
She looked at the child, blinked, then looked again. Shock hit her like a sledgehammer, congealing her blood, numbing her fingertips.
The child was dead. She had attended his funeral a month before. But on this perfect day, while performing a perfectly ordinary errand, she saw a dead child walking across the parking lot.
Speechless, Sweeney darted her gaze to the woman the boy was following: his mother. Sue Beresford was carrying a bag of groceries in one arm, her other hand clutching the little paw of her rambunctious four-year-old, Corbin. Her face was drawn, her eyes shadowed with the sharp grief of a mother who had lost her older son to leukemia only a month before.
But there was little Sam, dead a month, following along behind her.
Sweeney's feet were frozen to the pavement, her entire body numb and incapable of movement as she watched the little boy desperately trailing behind his mother, trying to get her attention. “Mom,” ten-year-old Samuel Beresford kept saying, his voice thin with anxiety. “Mom!” But Sue didn't respond, just kept walking, towing little Corbin behind her. Sam tried to catch her shirt, but the fabric slipped through his insubstantial grasp. He looked at Sweeney and she plainly saw his frustration, his bewilderment and fear. “She can't hear me,” he said, the words wavering as if she heard them through an imperfect sound system. He hurried to catch up, his thin legs flashing under the loud plaid of his baggy shorts.
Sweeney swayed with shock and put her hand on the hood of the car to brace herself. The sun-warmed metal felt slightly gritty under her fingers. The blue bowl of the sky pressed down as if it would swallow her, and she stared mutely after the dead child.
The thin figure clambered into the backseat beside Corbin, moving quickly before his mother could shut the door. Sue got behind the steering wheel and drove out of the parking lot. Sam's pale, translucent face shone briefly in the rear window as he looked back at Sweeney; his hand lifted in a forlorn little wave. Automatically she waved back.
Her mind formed one word:
Ghost
C
HAPTER
    O
NE
New York City
One Year Later
I
t was one thing to believe in ghosts, another to actually see them. Sweeney had discovered, though, that the kicker was whether or not she
knew
the ghost. In the small village of Clayton, New York, where she had lived until almost a year ago, she'd had at least a nodding acquaintance with most of the inhabitants, including the dead ones. In New York City, she didn't know any of them, so she could look past the translucent faces in the crowd and pretend not to see them. Back in Clayton, after she had seen the ghost of Sam Beresford, she had never known when another ghost would stop and speak, and she had never been sharp enough to play it cool and pretend nothing had happened. No, she'd just
had
to react, and before long people were giving her those looks that said they suspected she was losing her marbles. She had packed up and moved before they began pointing at her on the street.