The Stranger Read Online Free Page A

her legs. Her car hadn’t just skidded off the road. This girl had been in a wreck.
    I found no broken bones, open wounds, or signs of internal injuries. It was all very good news, because the chances of me getting her to a hospital tonight were exactly zero, given the storm raging outside. She had admitted that she hadn’t slept for days. She was probably suffering from exhaustion. Her lights might be out, but she wasn’t going to die on me.
    I felt like a goddamn scumbag. My stomach churned when I remembered my reaction on the road. The shock in her green eyes at my attitude was probably authentic. I’d been such a jackass, accusing her of collusion, neglecting to notice her distress. Part of it had been her fault. She hadn’t told me she was hurt and, slipping and sliding aside, she carried herself with poise, as if nothing was wrong with her. The rest of this clusterfuck rested squarely on my shoulders. The shitty day and the ongoing feud had gotten to me. Way to go, jerk.
    My eyes wandered as I finished undressing her. I couldn’t help but notice her body’s fine curves. I hadn’t taken off a woman’s clothes in a while. These days, I ran high on stress and short on joy. I trailed the long line of her back, appreciating the smooth stretch of tanned olive skin, soft and even beneath my fingertips.
    Dammit. This woman just seemed to call out to the idiot in me. I covered her with the down duvet. She’d be warm for sure. I fetched a glass of water and some ibuprofen, lifted her up on the bed and braced her head against my chest, inhaling a lungful of her scent in the process.
    “Hey, Summer.” I shook her gently. “Wake up, just for a sec. I’ve got something that’ll help you feel better. After that, you can get back to sleep.”
    She stirred in my arms. For a moment, her eyes opened into narrow slits. I put the pills in her mouth and pressed the glass to her lips.
    “Drink up,” I said. “Now swallow. Good. Are you warm enough?”
    “Tired,” she mumbled before her lids fell back into place, shutting out the light.
    I laid her back on the pillows. She was out cold. For a guy who hardly ever slept more than three hours in a row, I envied her capacity to disconnect from the world. She looked peaceful.
    I studied her face, where a set of well-constructed lips presided over her features. A pair of dark, hard-angled eyebrows broadcasted her emotions, live-tweeting her thoughts without censorship when she was awake. Cut straight to just above the shoulder, the blunt lines of her thick black hair added a sense of competence to her features. She had this kind of hard, precise, unconventional beauty, and perhaps because there was so much definition built into her face, the engineer in me found the construction fascinating.
    I ran two fingers over a crescent-shaped mark on her neck. It felt smooth to my fingertips. Parked slightly below her ear, it looked like a moon sliver, a waning moon, to be precise. I wondered if it was a birthmark or a tiny burn, something she’d acquired along the way, a miniature version of my not-so-delicate scars.
    Enough speculation already. I barely knew the woman. The odds were low that she was part of a conspiracy, but I couldn’t afford to take the chance. I looked through her purse and found her wallet. Summer Silva, age twenty-nine, resident of Key Biscayne. According to her business card, she was an associate architect with Carrera and Associates.
    I scrolled through her cell and looked through her contacts, recent calls, emails, and messages. The stepmother texted like a certifiable maniac and emails from work crammed her inbox, but I found nothing that could link her to Alex or anyone in my family. Still, I had to be cautious.
    I changed into my sweats and a T-shirt and, punching the keys on my tablet, checked the cabin’s overall status. The solar panels had retracted properly. The generator had kicked in. I punched a few buttons to secure the doors and engage the