Jenna Mills - A Cry In The Dark

She knew better than to look. She knew better than to indulge. But she glanced around the richly paneled lobby, anyway, toward the collection of formal sofas and wing chairs situated next to a stone fireplace. A large Aubusson rug stretched leisurely across the hardwood floor. A huge mahogany bookcase held leather-bound books.

The scene was perfectly normal, a few lingering guests, a woman curled up with a book, almost a carbon copy of a hundred other afternoons since she’d joined the hotel’s staff. And yet, something was off. Something was different. It was like a movie playing at the wrong speed, motion slowed just a fraction, elongated, jerky. Not quite real.

Because of the man.

He sat in a wing chair near the fireplace, impeccably dressed. His button-down shirt was dark gray, open at the throat, and his jeans were black. In his hands he held a newspaper—the same section he’d been holding for close to an hour.

She’d never seen someone sit so very, very still for so very, very long.

The disturbing current pulsed deeper. She knew she should look away, quit staring, but the whisper of fascination was too strong. He was tall. Too tall, too broad in the shoulder, to fade into anonymity. She’d noticed him, felt the ripple of his presence, the second he’d walked into the lobby. He carried an aura of authority like so many of the powerful patrons of the hotel, but the shadows were different. They were thick and they were dark, and they swirled around him like flashing warning signs.

Just like they did her brother, Anthony.

Look away, she told herself again, but then the man’s eyes were on hers, and for a fractured second it was all she could do to breathe. They were a deep brown like his hair, yet the darkness eddying in their depths defied color.

His expression never changed. There was no amusement at catching her staring, no quick swell of masculine triumph, no discomfort, no irritation, just the cool, impassive gaze of a man who saw everything but felt nothing.

It was a look she’d never seen before, and it scorched clear to the bone.

Frowning, humming louder, refusing to let the man affect her one second longer, she grabbed another rose, this one a pure deep yellow with a long, dark-green stem, and debated where to place it for maximum impact. Until she’d come to work at the hotel styled after an English manor house, she’d never imagined something as simple as a vase could cost more than she earned in a month. Granted, it was lead crystal and made in Ireland, but still. She’d always found old mason jars and chipped drinking glasses worked just fine.

“The lights are on, but apparently nobody is home.”

Danielle looked up to find Ruth Sun, one of the hotel’s long-time assistant managers, smiling at her. “Pardon?”

The woman’s dark eyes twinkled. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”

Danielle’s heart beat a little faster. Everyone in the hotel knew Ruth had the boss’s ear. She’d been around forever. One bad word from her, and all Danielle’s hard work could be for nothing.

“You know how I get when the flowers arrive,” she said lightly. “Everything else—”

“—falls to the background,” Ruth finished for her. “I noticed.” Her smile faded abruptly, and she reached out to grab Danielle’s wrist. “Dear, you’re bleeding.”

Danielle stared at the trail of dark-red blood running against the pale skin of her arm. “I…” Focused on the unsettling man, she hadn’t felt a thing. “It’s just a prick.”

Ruth made a maternal clucking noise, one that should have comforted Danielle, but instead unleashed a sharp curl of longing for the mother taken from her life over a quarter of a century before. “You need to get that cleaned up.”

Danielle nodded but didn’t move. “Did you need something?” she asked. “Before?” When she’d been oblivious to everything but the echo of the cry that had ripped the fabric of the quiet June afternoon, and the man with the disturbing eyes.

“Not really.” Ruth reached into a cabinet behind the long reception desk and came up with antiseptic and cotton. “Just thought you’d want to know someone was asking about you.”

“About me?”

Ruth poured antiseptic onto the cotton. “What your name was, how long you’d worked here, if you were married, that kind of thing.”

Danielle went very still. She worked hard to keep her face clear of all emotion, but when Ruth pressed the cotton to her skin, the sharp sting made her wince. God, she’d been so careful, covered her tracks so cleanly. “Who?”

Ruth kept dabbing. “A man.”

The dread circled closer, tighter. No wonder she’d been edgy all afternoon. He’d finally come looking for her, the brother she’d not spoken with in two long years. Her heart leaped at the prospect, then abruptly slowed.

Her brother wouldn’t ask about her marital status—but there had been another man earlier in the week. He’d seemed charming enough, but Danielle had seen through the aristocratic manners to a muddy aura that warned her to keep her distance. “What did he look like?”

The assistant manager looked up from her handiwork. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice him. He’s been sitting in the big leather wing chair most of the afternoon. Dark hair. Tall.” Ruth let out a dreamy sigh. “Very, very tall.”

With eyes like pools of midnight on a cloudless night. “The guy in the gray button-down?” Danielle asked, and her heart beat a little faster. A lot harder.

“That’s him,” Ruth said. “Real good-looking guy.”

Intense, Danielle silently corrected. Striking.

Gone.

“All better,” Ruth pronounced, but the words barely registered. Danielle stared across the lobby, toward the elegant wing chair that now sat empty, the newspaper abandoned on the floor.

The quick slice of unease made no sense. “Where did he go?”

“He’s right—” Ruth’s words broke off. “That’s strange. He was there just a second ago.”

Frowning, Danielle glanced around the lobby, toward the elevator, the sweeping staircase, the elegant front doors. Found nothing. Not the man, anyway. There were other patrons, the businessmen, the elderly couple from Wichita, the honeymooners from Madison, but the tall man with the flat eyes was just…gone.

Except she still felt him. Deeply. Disturbingly.

“You going to get that?” Ruth asked.

Danielle blinked and brought herself back, heard the low melody of her mobile phone. Through a haze of distraction she reached for the small black device to which only four people had the number—her manager, her sister and her son’s school and day-care center. “Hello, this is Danielle.”

“Turn around.”

She stiffened. “Come again?”

“Paste a smile on that pretty face of yours and turn around, away from the old woman.”

Everything flashed. The motion of the lobby dimmed, slowed, seemed to drag. “I don’t understand—”

“Just do it.”

Her heart started to pound. Hard. Instinct warned her to obey, even as an age-old rebellious streak dared her to lift her chin and defy. She’d done that before, many times. And the cost had been high.

Slowly she turned from the comforting din of the hotel lobby and took a few steps away from Ruth. “Okay.”

“Good girl.” The voice was distorted, genderless.

“Who is this? What do you—”

“I have your son.”

The world stopped. Fast. Violently. She no longer faced the hotel guests, but knew if she turned around, she would see nothing. No movement. No life.

But then the words penetrated even deeper, beyond the fog of shock and the blanket of horror to the logical part of her, the part Jeremy had honed and fine-tuned, sharpened to a gleaming point, and another truth registered.