Every Single Secret by Christina Dodd

Author:Christina Dodd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2024-01-16T21:02:41+00:00

26

“Soon, Torval will give me someone.” Doug Moore’s voice slid across the syllables like a snake tasting its prey. “Someone random, probably, or someone who displeased him somehow. That person will simply disappear from the party. No one will know where the unlucky bastard has gone, and no one will ask. Not if they’re smart. I’ll have him. Or her. It doesn’t matter to me who it is—”

Please, God, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to be so afraid.

“Only that I get to practice my trade. I don’t have nightmares about the screams and the smells and the sounds of bones breaking. I have nightmares if I go too long without hearing them. Torval likes to keep me happy. I’m the best in the business. If I’d had longer with Lorenze Winterbourne, I’d have known all about you and the woman.”

Rowan took a fortifying breath and pivoted, a slight smile on her lips. “It’s too bad for you my father managed to free himself, take you down and escape. You must still have nightmares about that.”

Moore moved like lightning, grabbing Rowan’s left wrist and leaning into her face. “He didn’t free himself. He was securely locked to the table when I left him to investigate that noise. I was hit from behind.” He shook her wrist and sprayed saliva as he spoke. “It was you. I know it was you, and I’ll make you sorry.”

She looked him right in the eyes. “That blow to the side of your head has addled your brain. It was Lorenze Winterbourne.”

Moore squeezed her wrist and began the slow motion that would wrench it behind her back and dislocate her shoulder. “Confess,” he murmured in his most comforting, kind tone. “Confess and I’ll release you. Confess and the pain will stop...”

Rowan had the fighting talents, she could have freed herself, but Joe stood across the ballroom, and his advice echoed in her mind—Don’t let them know about your defense skills.

Yet it was so hard to stand here and take it. She had suffered before, but pain was always new, always sharp, never expected, wanted, or easily borne. She could hold out until Joe got to her...couldn’t she?

She realized the pin-striping on Doug Moore’s dark blue suit was actually that: a series of sewing pins lined up in a row, and every third one dripped with blood.

God. God! Had she scoffed at ghosts in this house? Of course the dead haunted the halls. They wanted justice as surely as did Rowan’s mother and Joe’s baby sister.

Rescue came from an unexpected source.

“Get your hands off her!”

Through the maze of bruised skin and grinding bones, she recognized the voice.

Doug Moore turned with a snarl to the speaker, and when he saw Gregory Torval standing there, he froze in astonishment.

“Let her go.” Torval’s voice was harsh with anger and command.

Moore dropped Rowan’s wrist and backed away.

Before Rowan could do more than cradle her arm in her hand, Joe was beside her. He put his arm around her, pulled her tight against his body.

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