Quiet as the Grave

      Kathleen O’Brien

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Dear Reader,

      When you first met Mike Frome and Suzie Strickland, back in Firefly Glen, they were just impetuous teenagers, full of attitude and hopeless longing. They took foolish risks, as so many of us do when we’re young, trading a sensible tomorrow for a thrilling today.

      A special thanks to all the readers who wrote, asking for more. What happened to those two grouchy, mismatched kids? Did they ever find contentment? Did they ever find their way back to each other?

      I know how you felt. They were special kids, and they deserved a happy ending. But, as we all know, happiness isn’t handed out to the most deserving, like a merit badge. Sometimes you have to wait a long time, and trudge through a lot of tough times.

      Quite simply, sometimes you have to fight for it, tooth and nail.

      Now, ten years after their beginnings in Firefly Glen, Mike and Suzie are ready to meet that fight head-on. Mike’s divorced from the glamorous Justine, sharing custody of his son, Gavin. Purple-haired, fiery-tempered Suzie has reinvented herself as a cool, collected beauty, and is even building a career as a portraitist.

      But the calm is an illusion—the eye of the hurricane. Justine has turned up dead, and the authorities are only a heartbeat away from arresting Mike. If he’s going to save himself, he’s going to have to find out what really happened to his beautiful, toxic wife. He’s surprised to learn that his strongest ally is the feisty girl he left behind in high school. The girl whose heart was too strong to be broken then—or daunted now.

      I hope you enjoy their story.

      Warmly,

      Kathleen O’Brien

      www.KathleenOBrien.net

      Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

      CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

      CHAPTER NINETEEN

      CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

      CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

      BONUS FEATURES

      CHAPTER ONE

      EVEN AS THE DREAM played out, the man knew he was dreaming. Except…how could dream be the right word for anything so real? It was more like time travel. While his body lay there, helpless on the bed, twitching and whimpering and trying to wake up, his mind flew back to the cave and lived it all again.

      Lived the stink. The air in the cave was wet. It had rained all day, and moisture clung to the slimy, pitted walls. Now and then a pocket of algae grew too heavy and popped from its secret pore. It slid across the gray rock slowly, an insect leaving behind a shining trail of ooze.

      Everyone had come tonight, which was rare—but they must have heard that this would be special. Too many men crowded into the space, so the wet, stinking air was hot. He felt light-headed, as if the oxygen levels were too low. He wondered if they’d all die here, breathing foul air until they collapsed where they stood. How long would their bodies lie in their black robes before anyone discovered them?

      Maybe they’d never be found, and they’d rot here. Poetic justice, surely. They were already rotted on the inside.

      His mask was too tight. He couldn’t breathe. He adjusted the cloth so that the eye and mouth holes lined up better.

      When the girl was brought in, it was obvious she’d been drugged. The man practically had to drag her through the opening. Her head kept dropping. She made small sounds that weren’t quite human, more like a puppy whining in a cage.

      From there the dream went black. No sight. All sounds. The sound of metal against metal. Metal against rock. Metal against skin.

      And always the puppy sound, begging. Struggling to find its way out of the cage. Sometimes the noises escalated a little, but they never got very loud. The cage held. The puppy had almost given up hope.

      The cave seemed to come alive then, as if it was being sucked into an auditory whirlwind. Weeping and low moans. Wet noises, as if someone gargled fear. Heavy breathing that rode the naked back of animal grunts. Babbling, strangely religious, from the blind trance of terror.

      And then, finally, at the very end, one heartbreaking human word. The word to which everyone, even the dreamer, could be reduced, if things got bad enough.

      “Mommy,” the girl cried, though God only knew where her mother was. Not here, not in this wet stone room full of infected air and sweating men. The girl hadn’t been more than a child when she came in, but she was a baby now. They had peeled fifteen years from her in fifteen minutes.

      “Mommy, help me!”

      And it was at that moment—every time, no matter how hard he prayed it wouldn’t happen—that the dreamer felt his body jerk and release, spreading shame all over his pajamas, his sheets, his soul.

      THE TUXEDO LAKE Country Day School Open House was the highlight of the elementary school season, and the Tuxedo Lake mothers knew it. They spent the entire morning getting ready. Manicures, pedicures, facials, eyebrow waxing and a hundred other little rituals Mike Frome had never known existed until he married Justine Millner.

      Though he and Justine had been divorced two years now, he would never forget what an eye-opener the six years of their marriage had been. Her sunshine-colored hair, which used to mesmerize him the way a shiny bell on a string mesmerizes a cat, apparently was really an ordinary brown. Without its makeup, her face seemed to have different contours entirely.