TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS AMANDA QUICK
Tightrope
The Other Lady Vanishes
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
’Til Death Do Us Part
Garden of Lies
Otherwise Engaged
The Mystery Woman
Crystal Gardens
Quicksilver
Burning Lamp
The Perfect Poison
The Third Circle
The River Knows
Second Sight
Lie by Moonlight
The Paid Companion
Wait Until Midnight
Late for the Wedding
Don’t Look Back
Slightly Shady
Wicked Widow
I Thee Wed
With This Ring
Affair
Mischief
Mystique
Mistress
Deception
Desire
Dangerous
Reckless
Ravished
Rendezvous
Scandal
Surrender
Seduction
TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ
Untouchable
Promise Not to Tell
When All the Girls Have Gone
Secret Sisters
Trust No One
River Road
Dream Eyes
Copper Beach
In Too Deep
Fired Up
Running Hot
Sizzle and Burn
White Lies
All Night Long
Falling Awake
Truth or Dare
Light in Shadow
Summer in Eclipse Bay
Together in Eclipse Bay
Smoke in Mirrors
Lost & Found
Dawn in Eclipse Bay
Soft Focus
Eclipse Bay
Eye of the Beholder
Flash
Sharp Edges
Deep Waters
Trust Me
Grand Passion
Hidden Talents
Wildest Hearts
Family Man
Perfect Partners
Sweet Fortune
Silver Linings
The Golden Chance
TITLES BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE
Illusion Town
Siren’s Call
The Hot Zone
Deception Cove
The Lost Night
Canyons of Night
Midnight Crystal
Obsidian Prey
Dark Light
Silver Master
Ghost Hunter
After Glow
Harmony
After Dark
Amaryllis
Zinnia
Orchid
THE GUINEVERE JONES SERIES
Desperate and Deceptive
The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 1
The Desperate Game
The Chilling Deception
Sinister and Fatal
The Guinevere Jones Collection, Volume 2
The Sinister Touch
The Fatal Fortune
SPECIALS
The Scargill Cove Case Files
Bridal Jitters
(writing as Jayne Castle)
ANTHOLOGIES
Charmed
(with Julie Beard, Lori Foster, and Eileen Wilks)
TITLES WRITTEN BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ AND JAYNE CASTLE
No Going Back
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright © 2019 by Jayne Ann Krentz
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Quick, Amanda, author.
Title: Tightrope / Amanda Quick.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056039 | ISBN 9780399585364 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780399585371 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3561.R44 T544 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056039
First Edition: May 2019
Cover photo by Ilona Wellman / Arcangel
Cover design by Rita Frangie
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Rita Frangie, whose artistic eye never ceases to amaze me.
Thank you for another gorgeous cover.
And, as always, for Frank, with love.
Contents
Titles by the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
About the Author
Chapter 1
Six months earlier . . .
“Fly for me, Princess,” the killer said. “If you fly, I’ll let you live.”
He was lying.
Amalie Vaughn knew that death awaited her at the top of the trapeze ladder. She had no choice but to climb to the narrow platform. The long wire necklace strung with glittering black glass beads was a garrote around her throat. The Death Catcher used it as a chain to control her.
He followed behind her on the ladder. The black necklace dangled down her back within his reach. Every so often he gave it a sharp tug to make it clear that he could slice open her throat whenever it pleased him.
Only one more rung remained until she reached the platform. In the morning they would find her body and she would be a headline in the local paper. The Flying Princess Dies in Tragic Accident.
“I watched you fly tonight at the evening performance,” the Death Catcher said. “You were so pretty in your costume. It was all I could do to wait until now.”
His voice was a ghastly parody of a lover’s croon. He was trying to coax, charm, and seduce her to her doom but he could not conceal his feverish excitement.
She was almost at the top of the ladder. When she looked down she saw that the floor was illuminated by twin rows of lanterns. There was no net. The Death Catcher had staged the scene with great care, as if preparing for a performance in front of an audience.
His real name was Marcus Harding. He had been hired on as a rigger. His work had been good. The high wire walkers and the trapeze artists of the Ramsey Circus always inspected the rigging before they practiced and performed. Their lives depended on the skill of the men who rigged the wires and cables.
Marcus Harding was an expert—and only a skilled rigger would know how to sabotage the equipment so that the death of a flyer looked like an accident.
This was how the three flyers in the other traveling circuses had died, Amalie thought. The police in each of the small towns where the performers had been killed had concluded that the victims had perished in tragic accidents or, perhaps, by suicide. But now it was clear that the hushed rumors that had circulated in the circus world were true. The man they called the Death Catcher was not just a frightening legend. He was real.
Moments ago he had awakened her with a knife to her throat. He had dragged her from her bunk in the train car, slipped the black necklace around her throat, and forced her to cross the empty circus grounds.
He had propelled her into the silent, night-darkened big top and made her climb the ladder to the trapeze platform.
The ease and skill with which he followed her told her that he was accustomed to high wire and trapeze equipment. She was very sure that he had once been a performer himself.
She was shivering so badly it was all she could do to cling to the ladder. She had been raised in the circus and trained to fly at an early age. The trapeze was as familiar to her as a bicycle or a car. But she was trembling tonight, and not just because she knew Harding intended her to die. She was fighting something besides panic. Her senses were in a fog.
It dawned on her that the killer had drugged her. He must have poisoned her at some point during the evening, probably at dinner. They had all eaten the same hash and the same vegetable soup served out of the same pots but Harding could have slipped something into her food.
She had been left alone that evening. The other performers and the clowns, animal trainers, ticket sellers, and roustabouts were still in town, celebrating the surprisingly successful run in Abbotsville. The Ramsey Circus was one of the few traveling shows that had survived the worst of the economic disaster that had followed in the wake of the Great Crash of ’29, but it was struggling financially. The stock market had collapsed nearly a decade earlier, but much of the country was still trying to escape the shadow of the Depression. Ticket sales during the past week had been a rare bright spot in an otherwise dismal season.
She had stayed behind and gone to bed early because she had not felt well. She could not afford to get sick. She was the star attraction. Her circus family depended on her.
Her head was slowly clearing but her heart was still beating too fast. She reached the top of the ladder and transitioned to the small platform. She grasped one of the upright poles that supported the narrow board on which she stood and took deep, clarifying breaths.
The only good news was that Harding could no longer reach the black necklace. He had stopped a couple of rungs down, his waist even with the platform. She realized that he did not feel confident about joining her on the board. There wasn’t much room. Perhaps he was afraid he would be vulnerable. Perhaps he feared that she would try to take him with her when she went down.
No net.
“Time to fly,” Harding said. He braced himself on the ladder with one hand and took out the knife. He waved the blade slowly back and forth as if trying to hypnotize her.
“If you do as I tell you,” he said, “and if you’re as good on the trapeze as everyone says, if you really are the Flying Princess, I will let you live.”
It was then that Amalie heard the high, muffled giggles. They emanated from the darkened seats. Someone was watching. She was dealing with not one but two human monsters tonight.
Never let the audience see you sweat.
“We both know you won’t let me live,” she said, fighting the fear and the effects of the drug. “You can’t afford to do that because I know who you are. I can identify you. So of course you have to kill me.”
“Fly, you stupid bitch. It’s your only chance. If you don’t perform, I’ll slit your throat and throw you off the platform.”
There were more giggles from the shadows.
“Who’s your pal in the audience?” she asked.
“If you want to live, shut your mouth and fly.”
Her nerves and senses were a little steadier now. They were on her territory. She was the Flying Princess. The trapeze was her realm. She ruled here. And she never worked with a net.
“Sure.” She grabbed the bar as though preparing to perform. “How many times have you done this? They say at least three flyers have been killed in the past few months. Did you murder them all by yourself? Or did you need help?”
“Fly or die, Princess.”
Harding watched her with the eyes of a snake. She sensed that he was a little rattled, though. She had gone off script. He was not accustomed to that.
She toyed with the bar, testing it. Her flyer’s intuition warned her that it did not feel right. Harding had, indeed, sabotaged the equipment. If she flew for him, she would go down.
“I’m not going to fly for you,” she said. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to step out onto the platform with me. You don’t have the nerve to do that.”
Harding roared and bounded up the last few rungs of the ladder, the knife aimed at her midsection.
“I’ll gut you first,” he said.
It was in that instant when he transitioned from the ladder to the platform that he was vulnerable because he was using one hand to grip the knife and the other to cling to the support pole.
She had inherited her excellent reflexes and her keen sense of balance from her father. She also had what her father had called flyer’s intuition. She relied on it now.
She jabbed the end of the trapeze bar at Harding just as he lunged at her. The length of metal connected with his knife arm. He did not drop the blade but the attack startled him and deflected his aim. He missed her by inches and drew back for another thrust.
“You crazy bitch,” Harding ye
lled.
“I fly for a living and I do it without a net,” she said. “Of course I’m crazy.”
She whipped the bar at his knife hand.
He reacted instinctively, raising his arm to block the strike. But the move had been a feint. She yanked the bar back and went at him again, wielding the length of metal like a spear.
Enraged, he dropped the knife and grabbed the bar instead. He yanked on it, intending to rip it from her grasp.
She let go.
He was not expecting that. He still had one hand wrapped around the support pole on his side of the platform, but he was off balance. Instinctively, he clung to the bar as if it could support him if he went over.
She held on to the upright on her side and lashed out with one foot. The maneuver swept one of his legs off the platform.
He lurched to one side, still instinctively clinging to the bar in a desperate effort to regain his footing.
The sabotaged rigging broke. The bar came free of the lines. Harding released his grip on it but he had waited a split second too long. In the trapeze world when you were working without a net, a split second in timing meant disaster.
He tried to cling to the support pole but he was dangling in midair now. The palm of the hand that he was using to hang on must have been damp with the rush of panic. He lost his grip.
He went off the platform and plummeted straight down. The shock of his body hitting the packed earth floor reverberated throughout the night.
An eerie silence gripped the deeply shadowed tent. For a moment Amalie could not move. She was riveted by the sight of the crumpled form on the ground.
The sound of panicky footsteps brought her out of her frozen state. She remembered the watcher. She turned quickly, searching the shadows.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark figure moving swiftly down the aisle between the seats, heading for the exit.
The watcher disappeared into the night.
She had to concentrate very hard to make her way back down the ladder. By the time she reached the ground she was shaking so badly she could barely stand. She had heard about other flyers who had lost their nerve. She wondered if that was what was happening to her now. What would she do if she could not fly?
She found Harding’s knife on the ground not far from his body. She gripped it very tightly. When she got to the entrance of the tent, she heard the roar of a vehicle being driven at high speed. The sound faded rapidly into the night. The watcher had fled the scene.