Someone's Watching Read Online Free PDF Page A

officer. He looked down at Robbie over a counter covered with paperwork.
    “I’d like to see Detective Judy Lieber. My name’s Robbie Ivy.”
    “Is she expecting you?”
    “No, but she knows me.” Robbie wondered what the detective would make of her reappearance. It had been a year since they’d seen each other. A year since the double murder of a couple of ordinary people on a quiet residential island in Miami Beach. One of the victims had been Robbie’s mentor. The mentor who had been Jeremy’s mother. But Jeremy had also lost his father that night.
    Robbie often wondered, would the killer have been caught as quickly if Jeremy hadn’t pursued his parents’ murderer? She didn’t think so. And much like Jeremy, it wasn’t in Robbie’s nature to leave things to other people.
    The officer was talking to someone on the phone. It occurred to Robbie that Lieber might not be in. But no matter. If she wasn’t, Robbie would speak to someone else. She had made up her mind. She wasn’t leaving here until she was sure something was being done to find her sister.
    A balding uniformed cop carrying a clipboard crossed the lobby to the two sleeping girls. The girls sat up and stretched. Robbie heard the cop say something about safe space and calling their parents.
    The door to the elevator opened and Detective Lieber emerged. Robbie felt a mixture of pleasure and sadness as she took in the slim middle-aged woman with graying shoulder-length brown hair, deep-set brown eyes, and a furrow in her brow. Lieber wore a poorly fitting pantsuit and black sneaker-like shoes, not very different from how she dressed a year ago.
    “Robbie,” Lieber said, clasping Robbie’s hand in her own. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve often thought about you and Jeremy. How are you? How’s Jeremy doing?”
    “Everything’s good,” Robbie said, hearing a quiver in her voice. She hadn’t considered that the detective was bound up with memories Robbie would have preferred keeping buried. “Mostly good.”
    “I don’t think I would have recognized you on the street.” Lieber took a step back. “You’ve let your hair grow. It suits you, but you look younger—especially with the feathered earrings and jeans. Quite a change from the serious businesswoman.”
    “I’ve changed on the inside, too.”
    “I imagine you have.” Lieber’s own face and demeanor were much the same as Robbie remembered—light wrinkles around her eyes, sun-spotted skin, a tautness in her movements that suggested she could spring into action at the least provocation.
    “Are you in a hurry?” Lieber asked. “Or do you have time for breakfast?”
    “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
    “Sure, but I’m starving. Let’s run across the street to the diner. I want to hear what you’ve been up to.”
    As they waited for the light at the corner of heavily trafficked Washington Avenue, Robbie told Lieber about her job as a bartender at The Garage and her jewelry-making hobby. They crossed the street and detoured around construction, passing a tattoo parlor, a tanning salon, a souvenir store selling T-shirts. The air smelled like decaying garbage. A large crowd of tourists pushed past them, separatingRobbie from Lieber. And for an instant, Robbie was back in Boston’s Faneuil Hall, her mother’s hand slipping out of hers, the crowd swallowing her up.
    “Mommy,” Robbie almost called out, but the moment passed and Lieber was again beside her.
    “So,” Lieber said, “the last I heard, you and Jeremy drove off to see America. Took his dad’s old red Corvair. I kept worrying about the car breaking down and you two being stranded.”
    “It broke down once or twice. Jeremy fixed it.”
    “Did he now?” Lieber grinned. Robbie always sensed Lieber had a soft spot for Jeremy.
    They climbed the four steps up to the entrance of the 11th Street Diner, a railroad car converted into a restaurant. Lieber held open the door and they stepped inside.