AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“On the eleventh floor?” Darius had become so tense, he was barely breathing.
“Eleven B, according to the other residents,” the security man confirmed.
It had to be Honey. There really couldn’t be two dogs in the building without permission, and both on the eleventh floor.
“As we’ve only been here a couple of hours and were unsure of the system, we called Mr. Wynter for further instruction. He advised we call you,” the other man said briskly. “If we couldn’t reach you, he told us to call him back and he would come out to deal with the situation personally.”
Darius’s hand was clenched so tightly about his cell phone, he could hear the stress it was putting on the plastic casing. “You’ve reached me, so Mr. Wynter’s presence won’t be necessary. In fact, I’m still up in my penthouse apartment, so I’ll be down in two minutes. Tell Dave to remain at the desk, and I’ll want you to accompany me up to apartment 11B.” He ended the call as abruptly as he’d taken it.
He paused only long enough to push the file on Mia’s life into a drawer before hurrying to take the elevator down to the lobby. All of his family had access to his apartment, and the last thing he wanted was for one of them to visit in his absence and find and read that confidential file.
He put the file out of his thoughts as he went down in the elevator. Instead, he felt weighed down with a terrible sense of foreboding as to what he was going to find in apartment 11B.
What the hell could have happened when Honey, a dog who was trained to deal with the stress of her human, was obviously barking and in distress?
* * *
“Mia! Fucking hell, call an ambulance. No, don’t bother, I’ll get a doctor to come out to her. It will be quicker. Then we can decide on the hospital. Go and check the other rooms. And for God’s sake, let Honey out before she breaks down the damned door. Honey is the dog!”
Mia heard the impatient instructions, even half recognized the voice as belonging to Darius Kingston. But she had no idea why he was making them, or even where here was.
Her head hurt, the light harsh on her eyes even through her closed lids, and it seemed too much effort to do anything except exist. To even think of opening her eyes and allowing in that full light so she might get her bearings didn’t seem like a good idea right now. Even if the man speaking really did turn out to be the gorgeous and sexy Darius Kingston.
An arm slid beneath her shoulders now and lifted her against what felt like a warm rock. “For fuck’s sake, Mia, open your eyes and look at me.”
Exactly where Mia was, and why she was, came rushing painfully back to her.
She remembered feeling something was wrong when she let herself and Honey into Giles Fletcher’s apartment when they returned from their morning walk.
The strong metallic smell.
The hairs on the back of her neck standing on end.
Honey’s throaty growls.
Going into the sitting room and seeing the destruction there.
Seeing…
Smelling…
Oh my God!
Mia’s lids flew open, and she looked up at Darius Kingston staring down at her with anxious and intense blue eyes as he cradled her against what she’d thought was a warm stone but was actually his rock-hard and muscular chest.
The graphic images of Giles Fletcher lying on the carpet in the middle of his sitting room, his head at an unnatural angle from where his throat had been cut, rushed back inside her mind. As did the pool of blood that had soaked into the rug and the way his dead eyes were staring sightlessly toward the ceiling above.
Her fingers gripped the front of Darius’s shirt as she sat up, her frantic gaze moving to where—
Giles Fletcher’s body was no longer lying on the bloody Aubusson rug he’d been so proud of!
The room was still a mess, paintings and furniture lying broken on the floor, drawers pulled out and emptied, but there was no body or blood.
The latter was probably because there was no rug either.
Mr. Fletcher wasn’t going to be happy about the disappearance of his expensive—
Mr. Fletcher wasn’t going to be happyorunhappy about anything ever again, Mia inwardly reminded herself, because Mr. Fletcher was dead!
