by Dawn Brown
“You think Warlow might be involved somehow.”
“I’m just afraid it’s not really over.”
Kyle pulled her tighter against him. “It is for us.”
* * *
Seattle
Declan Meyers stood before the hospital vending machine, a handful of change clutched in one fist, a cup of the world’s worst coffee in the other. Salt or sweet? His gaze shifted between a Kit Kat and a bag of Doritos. Despite having stood there for nearly three full minutes, he still couldn’t decide.
God, he was tired.
He wouldn’t be faced with this decision if Josh had shown up with dinner like he said he would. Instead, the hours had ticked by until Dec had finally called his brother. Josh claimed he was still at work, waiting for a call from a contact, but Dec could hear the music and laughter in the background. His brother was in a bar.
Irritation simmered beneath his skin. Typical Josh. Declan had spent the better part of the day at his mother’s bedside, relieving his stepfather who looked like he’d fall down if he didn’t lay down, just as he had all week. His brother, on the other hand, had managed about fifteen minutes Sunday afternoon, four days ago.
Dec sighed. Who was he to judge how his brother dealt with grief? His stepfather walked around like a zombie, Josh drank himself stupid and Declan couldn’t decide between a chocolate bar and a bag of chips.
He’d buy both.
After he collected his unhealthy dinner, he started back to mother’s hospital room.
His shoes thudded on the speckled tile floor, the sound eerily loud in the unnatural quiet of the hospital. At 10 p.m., visiting hours were long over and the only people remaining who weren’t staff or patients were on the same deathwatch he was.
He passed the nurses’ station and nodded to the two women speaking in hushed voices behind the circular desk. They smiled pitying smiles. Declan smiled in return, swallowing down the resentment swelling in his throat. The flare of hostility was completely irrational. The nurses had been nothing but kind these past months, and he was on a first name basis with most of them.
He was tired and keyed up at the same time, the restless agitation plucking his nerves at odds with the heavy languidness sinking into his limbs. He wanted to flop into bed and pull the covers over his head. He wanted to run outside into the cool night and keep running until his lungs burned.
Instead, he continued down the corridor towards his mother’s room. Muted tones of televisions and whispered voices drifted out from the rooms he passed.
He pushed open his mother’s door. The lights had been turned down except for a lamp along the back of the bed frame. The greenish-fluorescent glow lit the back wall and cast a deathly pallor over his mother’s haggard features.
She looked dead.
Please no. Not while he’d been buying a goddamned bag of potato chips.
His heart beating fast against his chest, he crept forward. A soft rattle of labored breathing reached his ears, and his knees nearly buckled. He let out a shuddering breath, set his coffee and snack on the table next to the bed and rubbed his aching eyes with the heels of his hands.
Man, he was a mess. He dropped into the chair next to the bed, lifted his coffee and drank. Blech.
His gaze drifted to the woman wasting away before him. She barely looked like the woman who’d raised him. His mother had been so strong. For the first nine years of his life she’d been all he had. Even after she’d married Allen, and Josh and Katie had been born, she’d been the center that held the rest of them together. How would any of them function without her?
He set his coffee on the table, slouched down in the chair and dozed off watching the cold spring rain pelt the window and listening to the rhythmic rattle of his mother’s breathing.
He dreamed of green, deep and lush. And still water, black as oil. A swampy stink curled inside his nose. There was something in the water, it wanted to pull him down beneath the slick surface. It watched him with red eyes, reached for him—
Declan jerked awake. His dream faded, giving way to his mother’s hospital room, but that horrible stink lingered. What in the hell was that?
Something moved on the wall behind his mother’s bed. The shadow of a person grew tall on the beige paint, as if someone were coming up behind him. Dec whipped around, but no one was there. The room was empty except for—
Thin fingers curled around his forearm. He turned and met his mother’s gaze.
“Mom?” His voice creaked like it hadn’t been used in years.
“Don’t go,” she whispered.
Was she afraid of dying alone? His chest ached. He swallowed the lump knotting his throat before he could speak. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“When they come for you, don’t go.” Her voice gained strength, but her eyes fluttered closed and the fingers gripping Declan’s arm loosened. “They’ll devour you.”
About the Author
Dawn Brown’s first sojourn into storytelling began when she was nine. She would gather neighborhood kids into her garage and regale them with ghost stories, believing even then that atmosphere played an important role in a good story.
Dawn has a diploma in journalism, but found herself pursuing a career in computer leasing. After the birth of her son, she gave up the corporate world to be a mom and write full-time, trading in her dreary cubicle for a dreary room in the attic.
Now Dawn spends her days creating dark, romantic mysteries with edgy heroes, clever heroines and villains she hopes will keep her readers sleeping with the light on.
Dawn lives in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and son.
To learn more about Dawn and her books, visit her website, dawnbrown.ca.
Also by Dawn Brown
The Devil’s Eye
Coming Soon
The Ghosts of Cragera Bay
eISBN: 9781460336199
THE WITCH OF STONECLIFF
Copyright © 2014 by Dawn Brown
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