Page 121 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

The stranger’s eyes had locked on hers, and Jules was powerless to break away from their hold. Something almost but not quite tangible swirled around him—something darker and far more chilling than the massive shadow. The temperature in the alley dropped as shudders rippled through her.Lord.That was as much of a prayer as she could summon as the man closed the space between them. Fifteen feet. Ten. Eight.

A sudden burst of song—a creepy, dissonant ringtone emanating from the stranger’s shirt pocket—yanked her from her trance. Still moving toward her, he pulled out the device and hit the button on the side to silence it.

Belatedly, Jules’ sympathetic nervous system kicked in, the sudden shot of epinephrine sending her stumbling backwards three steps before she turned and lunged for the door. The man did not attempt to stop her as she flung it open and dove inside.

Dante.If he really was a cop, Jules needed to get to him. Her entire body trembled, and she pressed a hand to the wall as she lurched along the hallway and into the seating area. Ignoring the heated looks and irritated huffs of other patrons as she pushed past them, banged into the backs of two different chairs, and nearly knocked a loaded tray from the hands of a server, she made her way across the floor to the table in the far corner.

It was empty. Dante’s jacket had been hanging over his chair when she left, hadn’t it? Unable to visualize the scene, Jules clawed through the thick fog of panic swirling in her mind to see if she had mentally documented that fact. She was pretty sure it had been, which meant one thing.

For the first time tonight, Jules actually wanted to be in the presence of Dante de Marco, and, true to his contrary nature, the man was gone.

CHAPTER

TWO

Dante wheeledinto a parking spot behind the station. In a desperate bid to clear away the cobwebs, he scrubbed his face with both hands, stubble rasping beneath his fingers, before shouldering open the car door. What a night. First that disaster of a date with Jules Adler, which had ended when he returned to their table to discover she had taken off without bothering to say goodbye.

Fitting.

The second he’d shoved open the door and stalked into his empty apartment, he had hauled all three sisters into an online chat, during which he had let them know in no uncertain terms that they were to immediately take down his profile and that, going forward, they needed to stop interfering in his life. A little harsh, but hopefully he had finally gotten through to them.

The only reason Dante had agreed to go out with Jules was that he’d turned down the last ten women they had presented to him, and he really wanted to get them off his back. Nothing to do with her profile or any kind of reaction he may or may not have had to it. That would have been crazy. After what happened with Carina three years ago, he was definitely not interested in getting involved with another woman. Which, for some reason,his sisters could not seem to grasp. Of course, they were all happily married, which meant he must want to be as well, right?

Wrong.

Dante reached the front entrance of the Calgary police station where he worked and pushed inside, forcefully enough the door banged against the wall behind it. After tossing and turning for hours following the call with his sisters, he’d finally drifted into a restless sleep around two in the morning. Then, at three, he’d been jerked from his shallow slumber by the buzzing of his phone. A summons to come into work.

The receptionist, Mona, was a gruff woman in her sixties who treated Dante like a recalcitrant teenage son she needed to keep in line. Most of the time, he got the sense she was going back and forth between wanting to hug him and feeling the urge to ground him. She often did the former and he half expected her to try the latter one day.

Mona turned from the filing cabinet as he approached. “You look terrible.”

No doubt. He’d barely slept in thirty-six hours and had done little but splash cold water on his face and run his fingers through his hair before heading out fifteen minutes earlier. “Thanks, Mama Mona.” For fun—because goodness knew he hadn’t had any of that last night—Dante pressed a quick kiss to her cheek.

“Go on with you.” She smacked a file folder against his chest. “Witness is in room three. Not being very cooperative, apparently. The chief wants you to get a few more answers as well as a sketch of the perpetrator.”

“Understood.” Flipping open the folder, Dante ambled along the hallway lined with interview rooms, scanning the report. Twenty-eight-year-old woman strangled to death. He winced. Calgary didn’t have that many homicides in a year, usually less than a couple of dozen, and each one hit home. Perpetrator inthe wind. One witness. He reached interview room three and turned the knob to push open the door, his eyes still on the paper. Witness’s name was…

At the sound of a low groan, he glanced up, his brain taking a few seconds to compute what his eyes were telling him. The woman he’d been on a date with only a few hours earlier huddled on a hard plastic chair on the far side of a small table, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, knees drawn to her chest. She looked even smaller than she had in the pub, when he’d expressed doubt about her ability to do her job. He winced again.

“Jules?” Dante stepped back, checked the door—yep, number three—and then walked into the room and closed the door behind him. His head was spinning from more than lack of sleep. Jules had witnessed a murder last night? When? How?

He crossed the room, set the folder on the table, then nudged aside a blank notepad to lean in and press both palms to the table, his eyes probing hers. “Are you okay?” Now that he was actually looking at her—something he’d barely done on their date—and she wasn’t sitting in the dark, shadowy corner of the pub, he could see that her eyes were an unusual and mesmerizing combination of blue and green.

She shrugged. “I mean, other than the fact that the last few hours were likely the worst of my life, sure. I’m great.” She tilted her head, the clump of short, shimmering hair she’d tucked behind one ear tumbling loose. “You really are a cop.”

“And the official police sketch artist, yes. Why, you didn’t believe me?” Dante pushed himself up from the table and pulled out the chair across from her.

“I wasn’t sure what to believe. Is your name actually Dante de Marco?”

He tapped the nametag pinned to his uniform.D. de Marco. “Are you actually a firefighter?”

“I am.”

“So, you really can lift a hundred-and-sixty-pound man.”

The barest hint of a smile crossed her lips. Although she dropped it quickly, Dante couldn’t stop the fleeting thought that, if he was in her life, he would happily dedicate every spare moment to making that smile appear often. He blinked. In her life? The woman could barely stand to have him in the room. Hence the groan when he strolled in.

Focus.