Free The Witch of Stonecliff by Dawn Brown Page A

on something hard, the sole of one shoe rolling over a hardened lump. His pulse jumped. What in the hell was that?
    He unlocked the door, shoved it open and hit the switch on the wall. The ugly, overhead fixture filled the small hall will pale light, the glow spilling out onto the stone step and illuminating an old shank of knotted rope.
    His pulse beating so fast he could taste it, Kyle sank onto his haunches for a better look. Brown rust had hardened the fibres. He plucked up the rope with his thumb and forefinger and narrowed his gaze. Was that paint, or—his stomach shrivelled—blood?
    He straightened, gaze sweeping the pitch black surrounding him. The hair on the back of his neck bristled. Someone had left this for him because it sure as shit hadn’t been there when he had left.
    Who?
    But part of him already knew the answer: whoever had tied the rope around his wrists in the first place.

II
    “Jack, you need to tell your mother that you’re coming home with me. She seems to think you’re going to Dorchester with them.”
    Jack’s dead
. The words popped into Kyle’s head so quickly, he would have blurted them out if speech had been possible. Instead, he watched Leigh hurry about his hospital room with a quick efficiency that he used to admire, but now left him dizzy and a little nauseous. To be fair, the nausea wasn’t Leigh’s fault. The delightful cocktail of painkillers turned him light-headed and made his stomach queasy—but they also left him fuzzy and too detached to care.
    According to his doctor, he was healing nicely. Due to the jagged angle of the cut, there would undoubtedly be scarring, but there was a chance that he might speak again.
Might
.
    In the meantime—he glanced over to the pen and paper on the table next to his bed—he could still write. He should be grateful for that, at least. After all, he lived by his pen.
    No,
Jack
lived by his pen, but Jack was dead. Besides, writing had landed him in this mess to begin with.
    “I know they’re worried for you,” Leigh continued, refolding the clothes his mother had folded into his bag earlier that morning. Checkout time was tomorrow, and a thin sliver of fear wriggled through his bleary indifference like a persistent worm every time he thought of it. Maybe he needed another pill. “But you have a home of your own. God knows you’ll recover faster with me than you will smothered by that lot.”
    Kyle reached out for his pen and pad. His responses from his conversation with police earlier that morning seemed to glow from the top sheet. They hadn’t believed him, not a word.
    He crumpled the paper into a tight ball. Leigh glanced up as he started to print on the clean page.
    I want to go home
    “I know you do,” she said, a soft smile lighting her lovely face. She was a stunning woman with dark brown, almost black, hair and brilliant blue eyes. Normally, she could get anything she wanted from him with that smile, but right then he was completely indifferent to it, to her. Maybe it was the drugs. “The doctors and specialists in London will be better than anything you’ll find in bloody Dorchester, I can promise you that. And once you’re settled, we’ll have a little welcome home for you. Nothing too big, just a few friends. Everyone’s been asking for you.”
    Cold knotted his insides. The stares. The questions. He tapped the tip of his pen on the paper to get her attention.
    to Dorchester.
    Leigh frowned. She never liked to be told no. “I realize what you’ve been through was traumatic, but you can’t simply hide from the world. The sooner you’re home, back to your routine, the sooner you’ll be back to normal.”
    He would have laughed at the very idea if he could. Normal was gone and never coming back. He underlined
Dorchester
, hoping Leigh would finally understand.
    Fat, glossy tears welled in her eyes and her mouth pulled down at the corners. She could get her way with her smiles, but Kyle never reacted to her tears,