Dark Mysteries Read Online Free Page A

locked door.”
    He
was asking her to stay in his home? With him? She looked up from
under her lashes, suspicious. Why? Why not just make her stay on the
couch in the office? Why would he want her in his personal space?
Because if he had any ideas about them... hooking up or anything...
he could squash that right now. She was not interested in that. No
matter how sexy the man was. If there was one thing she had learned
in her life, it was men were trouble.
    “Relax,
sweetheart,” he said, smiling at her discomfort, “you're
not my type. I was just thinking of your comfort. Take the office
couch,” he said, moving toward the door in the hallway.
    Ellie
jumped up out of her seat, grabbing her sweater and her coffee.
Watching him walk away, she realized how much safer she would
actually feel with him close by. He was a giant, hulking,
intimidating figure who apparently owned at least one gun. Judging by
the ease at which he handled it, she imagined he knew how to use it.
Or any other weapon that crossed his path.
    “No,
wait, please,” she said, coming up behind him. “I'm
sorry. I'm just... not myself tonight.”
    “Normal,”
he said shrugging and opening the door to his apartment.
    Ellie
walked in behind him, looking around. Looking for escape. Because
that was where her mind was trained to go. Find the exits. Know the
floor plan. Know the layout of furniture. Close your eyes and count
the steps. So that even in the dark, you can find your way around. So
no matter where you are, you have the home field advantage.
    “Are
those windows solid?” she asked, feeling anxiety bubble up.
They didn't open. She couldn't slink through. Wasn't that like...
illegal? Didn't you need two exits from every building?
    “Yeah,”
Xander said, watching the near-hysteria on her face. Weird. Very
weird. He walked over to one of the windows, tapping on it. “But
it's real glass. Not that plastic glass shit they use now. You need
to get out, you throw something at it and you're out.”
    Ellie
nodded, looking over at the kitchen, the makeshift dining table. His
bed. Where he would be sleeping. Just a few feet away from her. The
red couch looked worn, but plush and soft. And she wasn't about to
complain. She had done more than her share of sleeping upright on
trains. In train stations. On buses. An old couch was certainly
better than that.
    “Here,”
Xander said, walking over and pulling the sweater out of her hand.
“I'll take this and hang it up.”
    “Thanks,”
Ellie mumbled, not wanting to sit down and get everything wet. She
sipped at her coffee, watching Xander walk around, finding a hanger
and hanging the sopping wet material on the curtain rod next to the
kitchen. He walked slowly, but deliberately. With what she could only
describe as a swagger. Like cowboys in old west movies walked.
    She
moved over toward the dining table, picking up one of the many
newspapers he had sitting there. The page was opened to an article on
New Jersey heroin. She glanced it over, knowing the story. Until she
found a picture, her stomach twisting in an awful grip. Of course
they suspected him. Because it was him. The picture was a
surveillance picture of him walking out of a restaurant, his ear
pressed to his cellphone, one of his henchmen at his side. Looking
cool, collected, intimidating. Commanding.
    “You
look like you've seen a ghost,” Xander commented, coming toward
her holding a blanket and pillow.
    Ellie
jumped back slightly at his words, dropping the paper like it had
burned her. “Oh. No. It's this... overdose story,” she
covered, “they were so young.”
    “Drugs,”
he shrugged, walking over and placing the bedding on the couch. “A
bad economy in which even grads can't get a job breeds an air of
hopelessness. Kids turn to anything that makes them feel anything
else. It's not a problem that is going anywhere anytime soon.”
    “You
sound like an expert in the field,” she said, watching his back
as he spread the blanket on