Jenna Mills - A Kiss In The Dark

“Please,” Lance added, playing the emotional card he’d fashioned into an art form during long years of marriage. “Just listen to me. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was careless, I let emotion take over. Trust me, it’ll never happen again.”

“Cut the innocent act!” his betrayer shouted, shattering the illusion of calm. “I’m not falling for it again. You knew exactly what you were doing, and I have the evidence to prove it. Soon, everybody in Portland will know what a gutless coward you are.”

He attacked without thinking, swift, necessarily brutal. There was only a second to react. One second to grab the shiny fire poker before the violent impact of flesh to flesh. The ensuing scream was hideous, the blow shocking, the contrast of red on white horrifying.

The end came obscenely fast.

Dylan St. Croix was nearing the Portland art district when the scratchy report came across the police scanner.

Ten forty-nine at 1467 Lakeview Road confirmed. Requesting backup.

Everything inside him roared violently in protest. Blindly, he changed lanes and whipped his Bronco around, fighting the gnarled rush hour traffic like a living beast. His heart pounded as he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and tore down crowded streets. Red lights meant nothing. Time seemed to crawl.

1467 Lakeview Road. He knew that address. Knew only one person lived there. One woman.

Ten forty-nine. He knew that code. Fatal Injury.

Something dark and primal tore through him. No! he thought savagely. No. He clenched the steering wheel as tightly as he could, determined not to let his hands shake. But he could do nothing about the adrenaline pooling in his gut like poison.

Never was supposed to last longer than six weeks.

Fatal Injury.

Questions battered him, but the scanner granted few answers. Crime scene technicians had been dispatched. The coroner. Possible homicide.

Dylan swerved off the highway and zipped through a Yield sign. And then he was there, the posh Portland neighborhood greeting him like a sleepy still life. He blinked hard, not sure how half an hour had raced by in the space of a heartbeat. He hardly remembered leaving downtown.

With no regard for the sanctity of the quiet community, he swerved around a slow-moving minivan, turned sharply onto Lakeview, then accelerated toward the house two blocks down. Against a crimson-streaked sky, pines towered high and the sun sank low, working in unison to obscure his view. Squinting, he barely saw the police cars that blocked his progress.

He jerked the Bronco to a stop against the curb and threw open the door. Then, God help him, he ran. Men and women and children blocked the sidewalk, crying and wringing their hands, staring. Dylan pushed past them, until he reached the line of yellow police tape. Then he stopped cold.

The fading light of early evening cast long shadows across the wooded lawn, while a tulip-lined walkway meandered toward the wide porch. Golden light spilled from the cathedral-style front door and arched windows. Bushy baskets of impatiens and petunias swayed in the breeze.

So this was where she lived, he thought morosely.

Perfect, was Dylan’s first thought. Tranquil. Deceptively serene. Just like her. Except for the garishly flashing lights of the four squad cars. The two ambulances blocking the street. The cops swarming the yard like a freshly kicked anthill.

This was where she lived, he thought again. This was where she’d died.

Bethany.

His vision blurred, as an unwanted pain sliced through him. He should feel nothing, he knew. Not anymore. But he’d never learned how. He felt everything. Intensely. Always had. He called it passion. She’d called it out of control.

Shoving aside the memory, he forced his long legs to move up the driveway. Steady. Measured. He was a strong man. He’d seen a lot of ugliness in his life—crime scenes were nothing new to him. He’d visited many. He’d even caused a few.

But the cheerful flowers drove home the reality that this time was different.

This time was personal.

“You don’t want to go in there, son.”

Dylan glanced over his shoulder to see Detective Paul Zito break from a cluster of patrolmen and cut across the lawn. Dylan’s work as a private investigator brought him in contact with the homicide veteran often enough that the two had formed an unlikely friendship.

On the third Tuesday of every month, they met by the river at Shady’s for beer and cards. Nothing rattled Detective Paul Zito. Nothing fazed him. Dylan couldn’t remember a single time when the irreverent cop had looked the least bit uneasy. Certainly not stricken.

Until now.

Dylan’s heart rate accelerated. Dread twisted through him. And for a moment, he wanted to turn and walk away. Walk far. Like she had. He wanted to get back in his car and drive, get on with his life. He wanted to pretend the only woman who’d ever crawled under his skin didn’t lie dead inside.

But that was the coward’s way out, and while Dylan had been called many names in his thirty-two years, coward wasn’t one of them.

“Trust me,” Dylan said when Zito joined him on the tulip-infested walkway. “This has nothing to do with what I want.”

The homicide veteran frowned. “Technically, I can bar your sorry ass from taking another step. This is a crime scene. You have no right to be here.”

“I’m family. That gives me every right.”

“So that’s what you’re calling it these days?”

He ignored Zito, stared at the front door. It hung open, allowing light to spill like blood from a starkly white foyer. A wide staircase swept toward the second level. She was in there. He wondered where. If she’d suffered. If she’d known.

A primal emotion he didn’t understand bled through the indifference he struggled to erect. The last time he’d seen her—Christ, he didn’t want to think about that night. Until the scanner report, he’d done a damn fine job of blotting it from his mind. But now he had to wonder. If he’d known it was to be their last, would he have done things differently?

He didn’t want to think about that, either.

Needing to do something, anything, he stooped and snapped off a bloodred tulip. Indifferent, he reminded himself. Objective.

At the sight of his cousin’s white Ferrari parked in the street, his gut clenched. He could only imagine how Lance must feel, the shock and the grief. Lance and Bethany had long since gone their separate ways, but once, he’d pledged to love her forever.

“Where’s Lance? Is he inside?”

“In the living room.”

Dylan pushed past Zito. “How’s he holding up? Is he okay—”

“Christ, Dylan. I thought you knew.”

The tone, more than the actual words, stopped him cold. He’d heard that tone before, the sunny day eighteen years ago when the police chief had shown up on his grandfather’s doorstep.

“I’m sorry, Sebastian. I don’t want to be standing here any more than you want me to, but I didn’t want you to hear from strangers. There’s been a terrible accident…”

Adrenaline spewed nastily, prompting Dylan to turn toward Zito. The white porch rail and neatly trimmed hedges blurred, but the grim-faced detective looked carved of stone.

“Knew what?” Dylan bit out.

“There was some kind of struggle,” Zito said. “Someone took a fire poker to the side of his head. He probably never even knew what hit him.”

“Never knew what hit him?”

His friend frowned. “Looks like the end came pretty damn fast.”

Horror slammed in, hard. Shock numbed the pain. Lance. His smooth, invincible cousin. The St. Croix prince. Dead. Just like so many St. Croixs before him.

“The ex called 911,” Zito added. “She was pretty incoherent.”