Share No Secrets Read Online Free Page A

distance. “Hurry up, Mom! If he jumps in that fountain in the lobby—”
    “The worst he’ll do is bump his head. The fountain is empty. You’re acting like a hysterical mother, Skye. Settle down.”
    They entered the lobby in time to see one hundred pounds of shining black and white hair charging up a winding staircase to the second floor, barking for all he was worth. Odd how slowly Brandon ambled across the backyard when she wanted him to come in for the night, Adrienne mused. She’d thought he was getting arthritis, but today he moved like he’d been shot out of a cannon.
    “Brandon, come back here!” Skye shouted.
    “Save your breath,” Adrienne said. “He’s not coming back on his own.”
    “But what about that caretaker guy?”
    “If he’s upstairs, he’ll catch Brandon. Claude certainly won’t hurt him.”
    Skye took the stairs two at a time. Adrienne suddenly felt every one of her thirty-six years as she tried to keep up. I need more exercise, she thought. Jogging, aerobics, yoga. Learning to use the Pilates machine she’d just bought. It all sounded exhausting.
    The second-floor hall was dimmer than below. Only one light glowed beneath a crystal cover midway down the hall, and a strange, sweet scent filled the area. Skye stopped. “What’s that smell?”
    Adrienne sniffed. “Flowers. Jasmine.” She sniffed again in slight alarm. “I also smell smoke. Maybe we should go back downstairs—”
    Brandon let out three deafening barks. Skye darted down the hall yelling the dog’s name. He barked again.
    He wouldn’t be leading us into a fire, Adrienne thought, panicked nevertheless by her daughter’s headlong rush toward the barking. “Skye, wait!”
    The girl halted almost immediately, but Adrienne could tell it wasn’t in response to her command. Skye stared into one of the hotel rooms from which flickering light spilled into the dim hall. Her lips parted and she said softly, “Brandon, come here,” as she knelt and held out her hand.
    Adrienne reached Skye’s side. She looked into the room and saw candles flickering on the dressers. The heavy, sweet scent of jasmine floated from the wax. Brandon sat stolidly near the foot of a bed. That was all Adrienne could see. Brandon and the foot of the bed covered by a lush bedspread of ivory brocade. What the dog stared at near the head of the bed escaped her range of vision. But she had the strange sensation that she was supposed to go into the room. Something
waited
for her in that room.
    The feeling grew. I should pull my daughter away from the door, Adrienne thought as dread grew in her mind. I need to get Skye away from here because nothing good lies on that hotel bed Brandon is staring at. Nothing that Skye should see.
    But Skye rose and strode into the room before Adrienne could grab her shoulder. Skye jerked to a stop about five feet away from Brandon, her eyes widening as they fixed on the bed. Brandon looked up at her and whined. The frozen look on Skye’s face and the dog’s pathetic whine drew Adrienne into the room almost against her will. She stopped at the foot of the bed, staring, unblinking, disbelieving.
    Two thick pillows in creamy satin pillowcases rested against the padded headboard. A woman’s head lay against one. She was deathly pale, but her expression was peaceful, the lips shut, the eyelids closed, the long russet-colored hair smoothed like silk away from her face. The hair had been combed behind the right shoulder but spread over the neck and down over the left shoulder, partially obscuring her cheek and neck until it fanned out where the top of her left breast disappeared beneath the bedspread.
    In the wavering candlelight, Adrienne caught the flicker of a barrette on the left side of the woman’s hair, near her temple. It was nearly two inches long, made in the shape of a butterfly with tiny chips of blue, green, and pink Austrian crystals sprinkled on the gossamer wings. Adrienne had seen the barrette a hundred