Hush Read Free Page A

phone’s) location. At the same time, she stared hard at one corner in particular, on the left side of the fireplace well beyond the reach of the moonlight. She got the jittery-making feeling that someone was there, and directed her phone/flashlight beam toward it accordingly.
    Her voice was sharp. “Jeff! Are you—?”
    She broke off abruptly as, behind her, Jeff’s phone rang, so close it startled her. Doing a quick about-face, she saw nothing but moonlight and shifting shadows.
    Puzzled, she peered into the gloom, the words Damn it, Jeff just about to fall from her lips.
    Then his phone rang again, making her look up. One of the shadows resolved itself into a pair of bare masculine feet dangling limply in the air a little higher than her head.
    Riley blinked. The feet were still there.
    Her throat tightened.
    Long, slim feet. Slightly crooked toes.
    She knew them.
    Oh, God. She knew them.
    Riley stopped breathing. She stopped everything. Time seemed to stretch out into an eternity between one heartbeat and the next. She stared at the feet while her stunned mind did its best to reject what she was seeing.
    The ringtone blared once more. The sense of being caught in a moment out of time shattered. Riley sucked in air. It wasJeff’s ringtone. From Jeff’s phone. Following the sound, her gaze slid up over lean bare calves. He was wearing black gym shorts, a black tee: exercise clothes. The phone was there, probably in the waterproof pouch he clipped inside his shorts for exercise or swimming, on the lifeless body that hung motionless not ten feet away.
    Jeff’s lifeless body.
    Riley’s heart lurched. Her stomach dropped straight down to her toes.
    There was no mistake: the moonlight streaming in through the French doors touched on Jeff’s blond hair. Fine and pale, it was one of the first things she had noticed about him when he had swept her off her feet in Philly all those years ago.
    She must have made some kind of strangled sound, because her throat ached like something wild and fierce had just torn its way out of it. She didn’t remember inching forward, but suddenly she was close enough to discover that what she smelled was the ammonia­like odor of pee: he had wet himself.
    Jeff. My God.
    Limp and pale, he hung suspended in midair.
    Unable to believe what her eyes were telling her, Riley touched his leg. It was solid, all muscle and bone. Of course it was: Jeff was a runner. The fine hairs on it felt silky. His skin was warm. Did that mean . . . ?
    She tried to call out to him, but no sound emerged. His wrist was out of reach. Frantically she grabbed his ankle, felt for a pulse.
    Nothing. No beat. His leg was heavy and inert.
    She let go, and his whole body moved, but not in a good way.He swung a little, back and forth, from where she had tugged on his leg.
    Horror surged through her in an icy tide.
    Holy Mary, Mother of God  . . .
    In this moment of extremis, the teachings of her childhood took over: the Catholic prayer for the dead unspooled with frantic urgency through her head.
    Hands shaking now, Riley drew back a step and ran the light from her phone over him.
    His head was tilted at an odd angle. Something narrow was wrapped around his neck, digging into the skin beneath his jaw.
    His face was dark. Purplish. His handsome features were hideously contorted.
    His eyes were open. They gleamed dully as the beam hit them.
    He didn’t blink. His pupils were fixed. Unseeing.
    It hit Riley then like a thunderclap: Jeff was hanging by the neck from the gallery railing. He was dead .
    Agony exploded inside her chest.
    Oh, God. Oh, God .
    A scream ripped into her already aching throat, where the constriction of the muscles there strangled it before it could escape.
    Everything seemed to blur. The room spun. Her phone fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers. Realization merged with grief merged with fear, combining into a deadly lance that stabbed her