He finished a bag and let it fall to the platform, then tore open a new supply. With the precision of a machine, his hand rose and fell from his lips. He stood perilously close to the
edge and divided his attention between the darting rodents and studying the people who came through the entrance to the platform and marched toward him. Repeatedly, he stood on tiptoe to get a better view. Looking for her, she was sure.
Olivia fidgeted. One hand went to her throat, but the newspaper folded away from her face and she grabbed it again. Her train was posted now. Another empty crisp bag, the last one, fluttered to the ground. The man made a motion with one hand. He only watched the passengers now, but he dropped crumbs from his clenched right fist onto the tracks.
He was feeding the rats.
Sickened, Olivia made herself look again. His back shook while he continued to toss crumbs. Laughter. He was deeply entertained by the rats’ antics. A small, thin person in a black trilby with the brim turned down. His head and body, in a streaky-bacon suit, seemed all one.
The tracks vibrated, heralding the approach of the next train. Olivia pressed to the wall, gauging her next move. If he got on, she wouldn’t. And she’d hope he didn’t see her before the train left.
One glance toward the exit. Another glance back. He’d gone. She couldn’t see him. Where was he? Olivia looked behind her, cringing, expecting to see him there.
The sound of the train grew louder, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out a great gust of noise, a swelling gasp with a chorus of spine-tingling screams and hysterical yells.
Alarms sounded, then the wail of a warning siren. The train’s brakes howled on the tracks and the thing grated and sparked to a stop halfway along the platform. The doors remained closed, and faces pressed against the insides of the windows.
One man’s voice roared above the rest, “Is she dead?”
Olivia’s legs wobbled. Her insides jumped and she became aware of tears streaming down her face. With her back still against the wall, she slid along behind the straining mass of onlookers. Looking at what?
Faces turned this way and that. Mouths opened and closed, but Olivia couldn’t seem to hear what they said. Someone nearby said, “They think she was pushed.” “Nah,” another said, sneering in an attempt to sound tough, “she’ll ‘ave tripped. I don’t understand why some of ‘em gets so close to the edge.”
“Excuse me,” Olivia whispered, “please excuse me.”
Νο one heard.
She made her shaky way toward the exit. Some poor woman had been in a terrible accident. Just standing there, waiting for a train to take her to work, she’d been hurled…Olivia dropped the paper and put her hands over her ears. She couldn’t do anything to help.
Stumbling, she carried on until a new spectacle tossed another wave of disturbance into the crowd. Medics, firemen and policemen dashed into view, ordering people aside as they came.
Olivia reached the clearing made by the arriving professionals. She tried not to look at the object of their burst of activity, but failed.
Close to the edge of the platform lay a woman. Her ashen face was turned toward Olivia and blood ran in garish streamers over her skin, but her eyes were slightly open and her lips moved.
Α great leap of hope and gratitude all but sent Olivia to her knees.
She stood still, drove her hands repeatedly into her pockets and smiled through tears.
“If he hadn’t been so quick, she’d have been down there.” Α kneeling woman pointed to the tracks, then indicated a man in jeans and a sweatshirt who looked as white as the patient. “She was already going over the edge when he grabbed her. He could have been pulled in with her, but he didn’t think about himself.”
Olivia made another search for the man from the bakery, but he’d obviously slipped away. Probably because the possibility of meeting the law scared him off. Coward.
The medics had opened a gurney and were immobilizing the woman preparatory to moving her.
Olivia stepped closer. She had to. Someone picked up a woolen hat that rested half on and half off the edge of the platform. He said, “This is a bit tatty but it could have been worse. Her brains could have been in it.” His nervous laugh brought a weak, answering titter from a few shocked observers.
The hat was red, bright red.
Reddish-brown curls fanned out from the prostrate woman’s head.
The belt on her old tan raincoat had snapped and trailed at her sides.
Olivia tore off her own hat and spun away. She crept into the tunnel leading to the lifts, searching around her with each step. When a lift arrived and opened, she looked inside before entering with a crowd, and facing the direction she’d come from. Sounds bombarded her, and the frenetic beat of her heart joined in the fearsome racket.
The lift doors slowly closed, and once more she gave thanks for her good luck, but an instant before heavy rubber moldings thumped together, the man from the bakery came into view. He ran, held onto the crown of his hat with one hand and waved the other while he yelled, “Wait.” He wore dark glasses that should have made it all but impossible to see down here. “Hold the lift!”
“Like ‘ell we will,” a girl with turquoise dreadlocks said. She knocked away the fingers of someone coming to the runner’s aid and the door slid closed. “Some of us has got work t’do. ‘Angin’ about for one of them streaky-suited City gents? Not likely, mate.”
That poor woman down there had almost died, almost been killed. Olivia was convinced there had been an attempted murder, and that she had been the intended victim. The woman had been unlucky enough to bar a marked resemblance to her and to be wearing clothes too similar to be discernible from Olivia’s in a madly heated moment.
Now, the would-be murderer—and she knew without a doubt it was the man at the bakery—would make his getaway, but that didn’t mean that if he was crazy enough, he wouldn’t be back once he discovered he’d not only failed to kill, but had attacked the wrong victim.
From her right pocket Olivia drew out the bakery bag. It was a squelching mass, the inside coated with thick red jelly.
*
Glass Houses will be available in eBook in October 2011.
Please turn the page for an excerpt from Stella Cameron’s March 2012 new release Darkness Bound.
In the Spring of 2012 I will unleash the Chimney Rock series—sexy, suspenseful, paranormal romances set in the wilds of Washington State.
Something is hiding on Whidbey Island…something that only comes out at night…
After her husband’s death, Leigh Kelly is drawn to the quiet woods of Whidbey Island, and the town of Chimney Rock. But island life isn’t as peaceful as it seems, and Leigh can’t shake the feeling that something in the woods is watching her.
Please turn the page for a sneak peek of the first book in the series, Darkness Bound, available March 2012.
DARKNESS BOUND
First volume of The Chimney Rock Books
by
Stella Cameron
Chapter 1
“We’re going to highjack this woman, body and soul,” Niles Latimer said. “I feel like crap about it but we don’t have a choice–unless we give up and wait to die, one-by-one.”
Standing in the bed of his truck beside a small stone cottage, he spoke telepathically to his second-in-command, Sean Black, who was several miles away, leaping through great, dark trees on agile feet. Sean was in his werehound form and at the speed he moved would arrive momentarily.
Niles paused, flexed his shoulders. From behind him he heard the familiar sounds of the powerful animal grazing past branches, using the dense forest as cover to allow him to move freely, hidden from any inconvenient and curious eyes. Even in his human form, Niles wasn’t tempted to turn around when Sean arrived–werehounds recognized each other instinctively.
Werehounds understood each other as either hounds or humans but other humans couldn’t hear them speak as hounds. Hounds could not speak aloud to either human or hound. They commun
icated between themselves on open channels or could limit their mind track between two or more.
“We appear to have no choice about the decision we’ve made,” Sean mind-tracked. “Unless, as you say, we scrap this plan completely and accept the inevitable. There’s still time for you to leave before she gets here. She doesn’t know you, doesn’t expect you to be here, so if you pass her on the way out you can say you took a wrong turn”
Niles understood reverse psychology when he heard it. “Accept that our numbers will continue to shrink while we cling to the fringes of human society, never allowed to live among them openly, you mean? I’m not ready to do that.” “We’re living among them now,” Sean said.
“Carefully,” Niles said. He looked over the waters of Saratoga Passage sweeping in beneath the bluff where the cottage stood. Wind spun dead leaves and grit into the cold air. He sighed, loving this place, hating that he and his kind could not find peace there. “We consider every move we make. If they knew what we are we would probably have to leave.”
“Or stand and fight.”
Niles swallowed a curse. “Fight the human world we want to be part of? Back to reality, Sean. We are sworn never to harm a human unless they threaten us. Without them we have no hope of getting back our own humanity. We are not like the werewolves—they are animals and they like it that way. We’re not the men we were meant to be either, dammit, but we’re not giving up, not now. Not ever.”
“They are too quiet,” Sean said. “The wolves. I keep expecting them to interfere with our plans somehow.”
“You’re only saying what I’ve been thinking.” On these occasions Niles wished hounds could hear wolves’ thoughts, but they couldn’t, just as the wolves couldn’t hear theirs. ”The others must wonder, too. If they knew our plans, Brande and his pack would have every reason to stop us. We know too much about them. He knows we could make their lives hell.”
“It’s getting late,” Sean said. “Are you sure Gabriel gave you the right day for her arrival at Two Chimneys?” Two Chimneys was the name of the cottage the woman had inherited from her dead husband. She was about to come back for the first time since that death.
Niles rarely noticed fading light. He preferred the darkness and had perfect dark-sight, but he glanced around and wondered if Sean might have a point. “Gabriel ought to know. He’s going to be her new boss. She’s supposed to start in his office in the next couple of days and she’ll need to settle in here first. Gabriel said she’d come today.”
“This thing you’re doing could blow everything apart,” Sean said. “It could totally backfire. What if she goes running for the nearest cop the minute she finds out what you are?”
“I’ll feel my way. If she isn’t receptive to me, we’ll forget it–for now. We’d have to anyway.”
“How will you know if she’s receptive?” There was laughter in Sean’s thoughts. “When she arrives, you say, Hi, I’m Niles and I’ll be your new mate. All the females of my species have died out giving birth, but-–“
“Knock it off, Sean.”
Sean wasn’t done yet. “I need you to have my offspring, and find more females to do the same thing with other members of my team. We want to restock our ranks. Oh, and we can’t be sure you won’t die the same way our own females did.”
“Get back to the rest of the team and bring them up to date,” Nile said sharply. “They’ve got to be on edge. I’ll check in later.”
Niles felt Sean close his mind, and heard him go on his way.
A flash if silver caught Niles’ attention. A small car passing the cottage on the far side. Leigh Kelly had arrived. He stood absolutely still, his eyes narrowed.
He had waited a long time for this day, this meeting. If this woman knew his plans she wouldn’t even get out of her car.
The thought of what lay ahead scared the hell out of him.
Leigh left the front door of the cottage open to let in fresh air. The little house had been closed up for eighteen months since her husband Chris had died, and the musty smell inside made her eyes sting.
Or she told herself it was the smell that caused the start of tears.
Can I do this? She had thought she could, thought she was ready.
She glanced at the open steps leading to the sleeping loft and nearly lost it completely. A recollection shouldn’t be so clear you could see it. But she could see Chris climbing down those stairs early in the morning, his dark blond hair mussed, beard shadow clinging to the grooves in his cheeks and the sharp angle of his jaw—and that half-sleepy, half-sexy and all impish smile on his lips.
Leigh shivered and hunched her shoulders. No matter how hard this was at first, she would get past the waves of hurt, even disbelief. She had come too far not to make it all the way back to a full life.
For a few moments she leaned on the doorjamb and made herself take in the main room of the cottage, the main room with its fireplace on either side. This would be a happy place again. Sure it would take time, but Chris would want her to make it and she would, for both of them.
They had almost two years of wonderful time together before their marriage—only days after that marriage. But she wouldn’t wipe out a moment of that time, except for losing him.
She had gone inside, dropped her bag and started shrugging out of her green down coat when a thud, followed by another, and another, froze her in place. Her dog, Jazzy, still sat on the edge of the cottage porch, unperturbed, even though his head was turned toward the noise. Nothing moved beyond the big front window.
The thudding continued.
Carrying her coat, her heart thundering, Leigh tiptoed into the kitchen to peer through the window over the sink, then the one in the door, covered by a piece of lace curtain held tight top and bottom of the glass by lengths of springy wire.
Her stomach made a great revolution. Late afternoon had turned the light muzzy but in front of a wall of firs that was acres deep in places, stood a shiny gray truck with a long cab and a businesslike bed piled high with chunks of wood. In that truck bed stood a tall, muscular man in a red plaid shirt who tossed the logs to the ground beside the lean-to woodshed as easily as if they were matchsticks.
Leigh put her coat back on and crossed her arms tightly.
What was he doing here?
The door stuck and it took several wrenches to get it open. The ground was muddy from recent rainfall. Crossing her arms again, she kicked off her shoes and stuffed her feet into a pair of green rubber boots by the wall, where they were always kept–beside a larger pair.
Leigh glanced away from Chris’s boots at once.
“Afternoon,” the man called.
Leigh shaded her eyes with a cold hand and squinted to see him. He was very powerfully built, with dark wavy hair, long and a bit shaggy. The sleeves of the red wool shirt were rolled up. His Levis clung to strong legs, a dark T-shirt showed at the neck of his shirt. She couldn’t make out much more.
“What are you doing here?” she said. And she felt vulnerable since he could probably throw her as easily as one of the chunks of wood.
“Well–“
”Are you planning to squat here?” she asked, keeping her voice steady and sharp. “Because if you are you can forget it. This is my place. Get on your way.”
She wished she weren’t alone and kept herself ready to rush back the way she had come if he threatened her somehow.
“Hey, sorry. I’m just delivering wood like I told Gabriel Jones I would. I meant to do all this before you got here.” He had one of those male voices you don’t forget. Low, quiet and confident. And now that he had stopped moving wood an absolute stillness had come over him, a watchfulness. He was taking her measure. “I must have my days mixed up,” he added.
That explained it, right? Gabriel had asked this man to bring the wood. “I see.” She felt like an idiot, but she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t trouble and likely to turn on her.
“The shed was full when…the last time I was here.” The day she and Chr
is had left, never to come back together.
“Apparently your stash got borrowed,” the man said. He flipped up one corner of his mouth. “With the house empty for so long you probably hosted a few beach bonfires. It’s starting to get cold. You’ll need this yourself now.”
She didn’t care about how cold it might get. The man sounded reserved but sure of himself and he made her edgy. He was probably right about the beach fires. Kids from the quiet little town of Langley and the outlying areas needed a way to let off steam and there were worse ways than having beach parties around Chimney Rock Cove.
“I’ve already stacked some of this by the front door,” the man said. “Easier to get it to the fireplaces that way.”
She had been too busy forcing herself to go into the cottage at all to noticed details.
The man didn’t seem threatening–not really. Except for that stillness that didn’t feel quite natural. “You sound as if you knew I was coming,” she said. Of course he did. He had already said as much.
“You know how things are around here,” he responded without looking at her. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business, but your new boss, Gabriel, he said you took some sort of office job at the bar. He mentioned it to me when he got me to clean your gutters.”
The blood that rushed to her face throbbed. It would look awful, splotchy and bright red around the freckled bits where her skin stayed pale. “Clean the gutters?” she said and swallowed. “Gabriel thinks of everything.”
“I was glad to do it. Niles Latimer–“ he hopped down from the back of the truck and wiped his right hand on his jeans, and wiped and wiped, then hesitated and put the hand in his pocket. “I’m in the cabin by the beach.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “That way.”
Leigh felt his stillness even more strongly. Something restrained by his own will. If he didn’t want to hold it back, what then?
A rapid but stealthy current of energy invaded her, touched her in places and ways beyond understanding. She was responding to him. The most subtle yet definite change in light, an intensity, sharpened the lines and shadows of his features.
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