Spotlight: The Drowning Game by Barbara Nickless
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A woman’s investigation into her sister’s death exposes the dark side of a secret life in a gripping novel of power, money, and murder by a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.
Sisters Nadia and Cass Brenner are heirs to Ocean House, a decades-old empire that builds superyachts for the rich and powerful: emirs, oligarchs, and titans of industry throughout America and Europe. They’re a next-generation success with the design of their soon-to-be-commissioned megayacht for a Chinese billionaire. But the sisters’ entrée into the coveted Asian market is tragically cut short when Cass falls from a fortieth-floor hotel window.
A Singapore detective rules suicide. Nadia’s been in the yacht business too long not to be suspicious. Especially when she discovers Cass’s involvement in dangerously illicit activities. Pulled into the same web of betrayal, lies, and secrets that trapped her sister, Nadia is on the most perilous mission of her life. Because uncovering the truth behind her sister’s death could tear the Brenner family apart―and it just might get her killed.
From Seattle to Austria to the South China Sea, Nadia must hold on to the one thing that can keep her safe. It’s the Brenner family motto: Trust no one.
Excerpt
Singapore
August 25, 6:00 p.m. SGT
Her entire life, Cassandra’s father had told her: Trust no one.
Yet here she was. A foreigner—an ang moh—her life in the hands of people she hardly knew.
Another lesson from her father that she’d ignored.
She moved with deliberate slowness through Singapore’s teeming streets, her skin damp in the 100° heat as she drifted from one clump of tourists to another—their jostling, shouting, picture-taking enthusiasm providing cover. She’d set out from the offices of Ocean House hours ago on the route she’d planned last week—changing directions on a seeming whim, darting through traffic, ducking into couture shops and souvenir stores, pausing to light joss sticks at Buddhist and Hindu temples, her palms pressed together and her head bent in prayer. She descended into the bowels of the underground to hop on and off the metro. Virgil’s words came back to her: watch for repeat vehicles, familiar silhouettes, someone hiding their face behind a map.
A month earlier, she’d killed most of the apps on her phone. Anything that would allow the Chinese to piece together the life of the real Cassandra Brenner. There was no avoiding the city cameras; she could only hope her disguise and a lack of Chinese sleeper agents within the Singaporean security services would protect her.
Spies would say she was running a surveillance detection route—an SDR. Cassandra understood the concept. A few years ago, one of their celebrity clients—a sheikh commissioning a 300-foot luxury motor yacht—insisted she and Nadia learn how to avoid the paparazzi. He’d hired a former CIA case officer to teach the sisters how to conduct SDRs.
At the time it had seemed frivolous.
Not anymore.
She shifted her canvas tote to her left shoulder and the handle of her rolling suitcase to her right, then paused to retouch her lipstick, using a compact mirror to inspect the walkway behind her. Surely she was clear of all surveillance by now—“black” in spy lingo.
Unless she’d missed something. In the vibrant, restless, multiethnic throng swarming the city, failing to spot a tail was as easy as overlooking a spider lurking beneath your sheets.
Every spy is haunted, Virgil had said last night. By our mistakes. By the lives we hold. By the risks we take. It goes with the territory.
She’d shaken her head. I’m not a spy. I’m an amateur.
His dry laugh had sounded like fingers snapping. Cass, listen carefully. It’s critical that tomorrow you’re not made before you reach the hotel. Singapore is one of the most surveilled cities in the world. But it’s got nothing on Shanghai. Tomorrow is a test.
And here she was. She stopped at a corner, waiting for the light to change. Waiting for her sixth sense to offer up that prickle that said eyes were on her.
But her gut whispered that she was black. She crossed the street with the light then paused in front of a restaurant to blot her face with a tissue, the paper coming away dark from sweat, the ruin of her makeup, and traces of adhesive. She was clear. She could hail a Grab car, be at the Marina Bay Sands hotel in minutes. Wash up and order a drink.
God, she wanted a drink.
She checked the time—6:02 p.m. Right on schedule. She turned away from the heady scents of coconut curry and mango and her pretense of perusing a menu in the restaurant’s window and plunged into the crowds headed toward Merlion Park.
Her blouse clung to her back, her capris to her bum. Her bare feet squelched in rubber sandals. An hour into her SDR, the heavens had unleashed the kind of storm—sudden, savage—typical for afternoons in the tropics. Rain had lashed the streets, the sidewalks, the cars, the parks, the trees, the people until the gutters turned into rivers and the sidewalks into a brilliant bloom of umbrellas. People went undeterred about their business, as used to the storms as the heat. Only the tourists cowered under awnings or cursed and ran.
The rain had vanished as suddenly as it came, leaving the early evening pavement gleaming. The ungodly heat pressed back in.
She paused before another restaurant. A car slowed, pulled to the curb. She prepared to run as the back door opened. A trio of young Chinese women spilled out, all dressed to the nines, giggling, gossiping, clicking selfies.
Cassandra watched them disappear into the restaurant.
She was clear.
She rubbed her heel where a blister had formed then attached herself to a different group of tourists. The last residue of rain had evaporated into the laden air and sounds and smells burst forth with rejuvenated enthusiasm. She noted the hiss of tires, the mechanical cheeps and chirps of crosswalks, the tramping of thousands of pairs of feet, feet that belonged to the financial district’s young up-and-comers. The men wore conservative suits and ties. The women flashed an aviary of brilliantly colored skirts and dresses, blouses, and suits. The occasional whiff of perfume and cologne mingled with car exhaust and an intoxicating mix of aromas from the international lineup of eateries.
Moving faster now, she crossed through Merlion Park’s rectangle of grass and past the white-blossomed frangipani trees onto the jetty. She stood overlooking Marina Bay, where the Singapore River spilled into the waters of the cove and from there to the sea.
Across the bay was her destination—the three immense towers of Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Beside her was the city’s iconic twenty-eight-foot-high fountain, the Merlion, boasting the head of a lion and the body of a fish. She turned around as if to take a selfie and observed the crowd, looking for faces she’d mentally categorized earlier. The Chinese man with the maroon leather briefcase and Yankees cap she’d noted outside the Takashimaya Shopping Centre. The Tamil woman in a Chanel suit and sneakers who’d boarded and exited the metro’s Downtown Line when she did.
She rotated in place but saw only new faces.
She dropped her phone in her bag and forced herself to amble as she headed out of the park toward the hotel, the sun now a fiery ball slotting light between the skyscrapers. In a few more minutes, it would be night.
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About the Author
Barbara Nickless is the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of Play of Shadows, Dark of Night, and At First Light in the Dr. Evan Wilding series, as well as the Sydney Rose Parnell series, which includes Blood on the Tracks, a Suspense Magazine Best of 2016 selection and winner of the Colorado Book Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Dead Stop, winner of the Colorado Book Award and nominee for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence; Ambush; and Gone to Darkness. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Writer’s Digest and on Criminal Element, among other markets. She lives in Colorado, where she loves to cave, snowshoe, hike, and drink single malt Scotch―usually not at the same time
