The Watchers Read Online Free PDF Page A

Family sort of way. That’s when she saw the light in the tower, waving in her direction. It drifted out of sight, and then reappeared facing the lake. It waved once more then, poof , it was gone.
    Nightwatchman with a flashlight, she thought.
    But after a few more sightings she realized the nightwatchman only appeared when the cathedral bells rang the hour. Always beginning at nine in the evening, always moving counter-clockwise around the tower. East, north, west, south. Then she realized it wasn’t a flashlight in his hands, it was a lantern. And it looked as if he was shouting something from the balconies.
    One night, just before nine, she stepped on to her terrace and waited. The bells rang nine times and presto, there he was. And damn if he wasn’t shouting something. But his voice was lost in the din of traffic rising from Pont Bessières. She grabbed her cellphone, texted her sister in Los Angeles.
     
anny u won’t believe it. they gotta lunatic locked in a bell tower over here. he’s got a lantern and screams at night. looking at him right now!
     
better watch out, kat. frankenstein was from switzerland
     
i thought he was german
     
that was hitler
     
tres weird. love to all
     
come home and give it urself. parental units still way po’d abt evrthng. kids crying, gotta go
     
    She’d forgotten about the light in the bell tower, till tonight.
    Nine o’clock bells and cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo .
    She finished brushing her hair, looked at her face in the mirror. Twenty-six years old and not a wrinkle in sight. Little eye shadow, eye-liner, a hint of mascara. Nothing else needed. Her hazel-coloured eyes did the rest. It was the flaw in her left eye, a silver squiggle in the iris. Men looked at it, then they stared, then they were hooked.
    Tonight’s lucky fish, some Brit with a double-barrelled name. Senior partner in London’s biggest law firm. He requested she wear her hair down on her shoulders, the way she looked in the pictures. All her clients liked her to look the way she looked in the pictures. Playboy , Girls of UCLA issue.
    Barely legal Katherine Taylor was the star with the cover shot. ‘Jean Seberg’s cool in the body of an angel’, read the photo caption. Inside, she was stretched naked on her back atop a pile of cash in a bank vault, highlighting her major in International Economics, which it wasn’t but who the fuck cared? Another shot straddling a bentwood chair wearing nothing but a French beret, to highlight her minor in French, which it was but who cared again? It was a goof, something she did on a dare. But after a week of test shots she made the cut. Suddenly it was a goof paying fifty thousand bucks. Playboy called it a scholarship. What a hoot, she thought. A million guys beating their meat and dreaming it was her fucking them, not their own grubby paws … and they call it a scholarship. She laughed all the way to the bank, wondering how goofy it could get.
    The answer came a year later in the Marquis Hotel off Sunset.
    A girlfriend was late for a night on the town. Katherine waited at the bar. The bartender presented a drink from someone in the room, she pushed it aside. Few minutes later a well-dressed guy stood next to her, asking if she’d care to be presented to his boss. The guy’s accent was Arabic.
    ‘Presented … to your boss. Let me ask you something, bud, do I look like a birthday cake to you?’
    ‘Please, miss, I mean no offence. My boss is sitting over there.’
    Katherine saw a neat gentleman in an expensive tailored suit, alone in the corner. Espresso and glass of water keeping him company.
    ‘So, who’s the boss?’
    ‘He is a prince of our royal family in Saudi Arabia. He wishes me to tell you he admired your photographs very much and would like you to join him, please.’
    ‘A prince. And you call him “boss”. Wouldn’t “master” be more like it?’
    ‘They are the same, miss.’
    Katherine shrugged.
    ‘Yeah, well, tell him I already have