Shrouded in Darkness (Shrouded Series) (34 page)

“Oh yes, you are.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’m not budging on that. Having you in the picture is going to raise questions. Questions neither one of us want to answer. We haven’t gone through all this just to have Miracell become public knowledge. You’ve been dead against it from the beginning. And I’d be the first one to agree that it’s just too dangerous. You know it.” When he looked like he might argue, she lifted her chin and shook her head. “I don’t need to be coddled. Do you understand?”

His lips firmed, but when she continued to argue her point, he finally nodded to her relief.

“You’re too damn stubborn.”

She lifted a brow. “And of course, you aren’t?”

After Jake disappeared from the house, she found her cell phone and made the call to the authorities. It didn’t take long for the coroner and police to get to the house and do their thing. The questions were direct and to the point along with her answers. She didn’t have anything to hide. Not really. As to any suspicion directed toward her, there was none. Only sympathy.

As she watched them carry Malcolm and Joyce away in body bags, it really hit her how final and real everything had become.

Several hours later, she stood in front of the window above the kitchen sink and watched the last police car drive down and disappear behind the trees. The coroner had left an hour earlier. Several minutes later, she heard Jake enter the kitchen and join her at the counter, but she continued to stare out the window.

“Well, it’s finally over,” she said.

But was it? Margot wondered. Joyce’s words came back to whisper inside her head. Was her brother still alive? Could he be out there somewhere and not tell her?

Never. Johnny would never be that cruel. Still…

Tomorrow she’d mention to Jake what Joyce had said. But not this moment. This moment she needed to heal her shattered body and mind from the day’s events before she had the needed strength to investigate further.

“Yeah, it’s over,” Jake said softly beside her.

She grabbed the edge of the counter with tight-fisted hands. “I killed someone today. And not just a stranger—someone I considered a friend at one point.”

He eased up from behind and wrapped both arms around her waist. “Don’t say that,” he whispered thickly against the crown of her head. “It was an accident.”

She sighed hard. Closing her eyes, she leaned against his chest. “I know.”

But even knowing Jake spoke the truth, she still felt tainted. Today, she’d lost her innocence, but at the same time she’d gained something more important—the knowledge that she was a survivor. She could take life’s blows and come up for more. She’d always had little self-confidence. First it had been her parents, then Malcolm to bring her down. When she’d taken those baby-steps to gain that inner strength, Malcolm had rebelled against it. But she was strong. Stronger then she could have ever imagined. Yes. She’d become a survivor.

She searched and found Jake’s hand across her stomach. It felt strange yet wonderful to touch warm skin instead of the cool leather of his glove.

“I love this—having you here with me.”

“The feelings mutual.” His hold tightened around her.

She smiled, feeling the brush of his lips against her hair as she turned in the circle of his arms. Looking up, Margot caught her breath at the expression in Jake’s eyes. She realized she’d stumbled on something far more profound than the will to survive.

Love. Simple and honest. The emotion softened the rugged lines of Jake’s face and darkened his eyes to indigo.

Who would have thought? When Jake came into her life, she’d been drowning in despair and self-pity, but somehow she’d managed to claw her way out. She wouldn’t have done it without Jake. And now with him in her life, the future held so much promise.

“It all feels too good,” she whispered. “What if something—”

“Don’t.” Rubbing a thumb over her lower lip, he slowly searched her face. “I’m not about to question anything. Not anymore.

Because, you know what? When I ran from Boston, I’d been so terrified of dying that I missed out on what really mattered. And that’s the journey, not the end. So don’t start doubting the future. Instead, when something good comes along, take it and savor the moment.”

And Margot did exactly what Jake suggested as he bent down and brushed his lips against her mouth. She savored the taste, the feel and the heat of Jake’s kiss.

The End

THE SHROUDED SERIES

Shrouded in Mystery

John Davenport wakes from a car accident with a dead man beside him and a duffle bag in the back seat with over one hundred thousand dollars in cash and a loaded gun. He has no memory of his past or how he got there. His only clues are a photo with the address of a shelter and a driver’s license with the name of Clark Kent. They lead him to Boston, but once there, he’s left with more questions and a sense of eminent danger.

But nothing prepares him for the phenomena he finds within himself. His hearing’s more acute than any animal, his strength beyond anything human. Stranger still, he shares the same alias as the renowned Superman.

Katherine Spalding knows she’s one of the lucky ones. Born with money and looks, raised and educated among Boston’s elite, she has the respect and admiration of friends and the community. But her luck’s about to turn to chaos when a tall, gorgeous man with the most incredible gray eyes stumbles into her life. Katherine doesn’t know what to make of him. He claims he’s Clark Kent. But is he saint or sinner, hero or villain or...just plain crazy? Is she willing to find out, even at the risk of her life?

Shrouded in Illusion

Someone wants Skye Hunter’s son, Tyler, and they’re willing to kill to get him. On the run for her life, Skye turns to the only person she believes can help her—a complete stranger with a shared past.

David Bishop thinks Skye is crazy. But when he realizes she has the same strange phenomenon inside her body that he does—

the ability to move objects with her mind, David is forced to question his life, his childhood and his father’s motives. Can these two lost souls uncover the mystery of their telekinetic powers and save Tyler and themselves in the process?

THANK YOU

for reading Shrouded in Darkness.

Next in the series:

Shrouded in Mystery

(Book Two of the Shrouded Series)

John Davenport's Story

Tentatively released Summer 2012

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EXCERPT OF SHROUDED IN MYSTERY

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. – Arthur Ashe

He came to with a jolt. Wind rushed through the broken windshield and slashed vicious tentacles against his face, while shattered glass and snow lay scattered across the dashboard and his lap. Pain cut into his skull and the back of his neck. With a tentative hand, he touched his brow and came away with damp fingers.

Blood.

He blinked several times, unable to understand why he sat behind the wheel of a car.

Some type of car accident? He couldn’t remember.

The vehicle rested at an odd angle, its nose dipped downward, and the driver’s side tilted toward the pine tops. Waning light turned a cloudless sky to a dirty gray. Dawn or dusk? He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. How had he gotten here?

Lifting his hands, he peered at them. They were large, long fingered, and free of calluses. Fine brown hairs dusted their backs.

Stranger’s hands. His hands.

He wrestled for answers—a memory, an image, a clue to his identity—anything.

Nothing but a black, empty slate.

Panic welled in his throat and cut off the air to his lungs. He couldn’t remember anything about himself. He didn’t have a name, a past, a family. He didn’t exist.

Finally, he managed to drag in a lungful of air, but its frigid sting rushed passed his throat and into his lungs too fast. Oxygen flooded his head and white sparks danced across his peripheral vision.

No. He needed to stop. Now. And focus. Think.

He forced himself to relax, to calm the wild thump of his heart. After a moment he managed to breathe in a slow, steady rhythm, and the panic eased. He turned and noticed the passenger to his right. A man sat slumped, silent, his body thrown forward and held in place by his seatbelt.

“Hey, are you okay?”

No answer.

He nudged the man’s shoulder with a hand. “Can you hear me?”

No response.

Something wasn’t right.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and slapped a palm against the dashboard to stop from pitching forward. Awkwardly, he twisted in his seat, eased forward and ducked to get a better look at the person’s face. That’s when he noticed the hole above the passenger’s open and unblinking eye. For several long, heart-rending seconds, he stared at how the blood pooled from the wound, and then dripped, again and again, slowly but steadily onto the person’s jean clad leg.

A gunshot wound. Had to be. “Jesus!”

Until now, he hadn’t noticed the pungent odor of death and how it clung to the interior of the car. At the stench, his stomach lurched but kept from heaving its contents.

The passenger wasn’t even a man but a kid in his late teens. A dead one at that. And the boy sure as hell didn’t die from a car accident with a bullet hole in his head.

Repulsed by the idea, but determined to find something of importance, he dug inside both outer pockets of the teenager’s jacket.

He needed something to tell him what the hell was going on or at least who sat dead in the car with him. Next, he unzipped the kid’s jacket and felt around. His fingers caught on something jutting from a shirt pocket. He pulled it out and lifted it up to get a better view.

A picture. He managed to make out that it was a photo of the passenger and a woman with her arm draped over his shoulders.

They stood in front of a building of some type. He turned the photo over and read: Me and Katherine at the Morning Dove.

At least it was something. But not nearly enough to tell him who either one of them were.

Had he been the one to kill the kid?

There’d have to be a gun.

Quickly, he stuffed the picture inside the pocket of his down jacket and started searching. The fading light forced him to grope around the seat and floor by his feet and that of the dead teenager. He reached for the glove box, the most logical place for a weapon, and kept his gaze away from the body.

He didn’t find a weapon inside but he did find a flashlight, which he flipped on and aimed at the car’s floor. Still no gun. The relief was almost immobilizing. Because if he’d found a gun, he’d have proof that he’d murdered the boy. The idea of sticking the barrel of a gun into that kid’s face—

No. He didn’t want to go there.

He aimed the light in the back of the car where the beam caught on a navy blue duffle bag. Finally something. Not liking the idea of reaching over the back and brushing up against the dead teen, he decided to go outside and around. He opened the door, jumped out, and landed in a foot of snow, which seeped under his pants and bit into his skin.

Suddenly lightheaded, he bent over and rested his hands across his knees. Eyeglasses, he hadn’t noticed until now, slipped from his nose and fell to the ground. He plucked them from a snow as gray and lifeless as the sky. When he rose, a wave of dizziness seized him. He swayed and latched onto the car’s roof with one hand. God, he was weaker than he’d thought.

After he regained his equilibrium, he opened the back door, unzipped the duffle bag and aimed the light inside. And froze.

He’d hoped for some clue to his past—anything—but what he discovered was far from what he’d imagined.

Cold, hard cash. The bag was stuffed with bundles of it, all tied by bank straps. With the flashlight trained on the bag’s interior, he lifted one bundle out and fanned the top edges and did it again to insure he wasn’t hallucinating. Hundreds. Every single one of them. The bills trembled against his fingers, while his heart rate kicked into a rapid rhythm. At the very least, there had to be more than a hundred thousand in front of him.

How? Why? What type of person carried this amount of money around with them?

He dropped the bundle back into the bag, opened the sides wider and realized he wasn’t done. Far from it. Something large rested inside. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and pulled the item from the bag. Beneath, the flashlight’s beam, the dark silver gleamed as if recently polished.

A gun.

“Holy Shit.”

Something big had gone down, and he’d been involved. But what?

He hated the feel of the gun beneath his fingers as he shoved it back in the bag. But even though he disliked touching the weapon, he’d obviously found it important enough keep one around.

What the hell type of person was he?

Then he heard something other than the wind through the pines. A cry. It had a distinct rhythm, growing low, then high, increasing in intensity as it approached.

He stilled.

The murdered teen, the cash, the gun. All incriminating, all unexplainable. The police or paramedics would never believe him.

He didn’t even believe himself.

Fear shot him into action. He grabbed the bag—he might have lost his mind, but he wasn’t stupid enough to leave something like that behind—pivoted and stumbled away from the car and the dead boy.