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Authors: Lara Adrián
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his dark head and backed off to let his elder feed.
CHAPTER
Five
H e hadn’t even bothered to call and leave her a message last night.
Typical.
Probably had a big date with his remote control and ESPN, or maybe after he left her place the other evening, he’d met someone else and gotten a more interesting offer than schlepping Gabrielle’s cell phone back out to Beacon Hill. Hell, he might even be married, or involved with someone. Not that she’d asked, and not that asking would have guaranteed he’d have told her the truth. Lucan Thorne probably wasn’t any different than any other guy.
Except he was…
different
.
He struck her as being very different from anyone she had ever met before. A very private man, almost secretive. Definitely dangerous. She could no more see him sitting in a recliner in front of the television than she could envision him tied down with a serious girlfriend, let alone a wife and family. Which brought her back to the idea that he must have gotten a better offer elsewhere and decided to blow her off, an idea that stung a lot more than it should have.
“Forget about him,” Gabrielle scolded herself under her breath as she edged her black Cooper Mini to the side of the quiet rural road and cut the ignition. Her camera bag and gear sat beside her in the passenger seat. She gathered it up, grabbed a small flashlight from the glove compartment, pocketed her keys in her jacket, and got out of the car.
She closed the door quietly and cast a quick look around. Not a soul in sight, not surprising given that it was just nearing 6 A . M . and the building she was about to enter illegally and photograph had been shut down for about twenty years. She walked along the empty stretch of cracked pavement and cut a sharp right, heading down through a ditch then up into a pine-and-oak wooded lot that stood like a thick curtain wall around the old asylum.
Dawn was just beginning to creep over the horizon. The lighting was eerie and ethereal, a misty haze of pink and lavender shrouding the Gothic structures with an otherworldly glow. Even bathed in soft pastels, the place held an air of menace.
The contrast was what had brought her out to the location this morning. Shooting it at dusk would have been the more natural choice, capitalizing on the haunted quality of the abandoned structures. But it was the juxtaposition of warm dawn light against a cold, sinister subject that appealed to Gabrielle as she paused to retrieve her camera from the bag slung over her shoulder. She snapped off a half-dozen shots, then clapped the lens cap back on, and continued her trek toward the ghostly buildings.
A tall wire security fence loomed in front of her, barricading the property against nosy explorers like herself. But Gabrielle knew its hidden weakness. She had found it the first time she had come to the place to take exterior pictures. She hurried along the line of the fence until she reached the southwest corner, then squatted down near the ground. Here, someone had discreetly severed the links with a wire cutter, creating a breach just large enough for a curious adolescent to wriggle through—or a determined female photographer who tended to view
No Trespassing
and
Authorized Personnel Only
signs more as friendly suggestions rather than enforceable laws.
Gabrielle pushed open the flap of snipped fence, shoved her gear inside, and scrambled spiderlike on her belly through the low opening. A shiver of apprehension coursed along her limbs as she came up on the other side of the fence. She should be used to this type of covert, solitary exploration; her art often depended on her courage to seek out desolate, some might argue dangerous, places. This creepy asylum could certainly classify as the latter, she thought, her gaze drifting to graffiti spray-painted next to an exterior door that read,
BAd VIBeS
.
“You can say that again,” she whispered under her breath. As she brushed the dirt and dried pine needles
CHAPTER
Five
H e hadn’t even bothered to call and leave her a message last night.
Typical.
Probably had a big date with his remote control and ESPN, or maybe after he left her place the other evening, he’d met someone else and gotten a more interesting offer than schlepping Gabrielle’s cell phone back out to Beacon Hill. Hell, he might even be married, or involved with someone. Not that she’d asked, and not that asking would have guaranteed he’d have told her the truth. Lucan Thorne probably wasn’t any different than any other guy.
Except he was…
different
.
He struck her as being very different from anyone she had ever met before. A very private man, almost secretive. Definitely dangerous. She could no more see him sitting in a recliner in front of the television than she could envision him tied down with a serious girlfriend, let alone a wife and family. Which brought her back to the idea that he must have gotten a better offer elsewhere and decided to blow her off, an idea that stung a lot more than it should have.
“Forget about him,” Gabrielle scolded herself under her breath as she edged her black Cooper Mini to the side of the quiet rural road and cut the ignition. Her camera bag and gear sat beside her in the passenger seat. She gathered it up, grabbed a small flashlight from the glove compartment, pocketed her keys in her jacket, and got out of the car.
She closed the door quietly and cast a quick look around. Not a soul in sight, not surprising given that it was just nearing 6 A . M . and the building she was about to enter illegally and photograph had been shut down for about twenty years. She walked along the empty stretch of cracked pavement and cut a sharp right, heading down through a ditch then up into a pine-and-oak wooded lot that stood like a thick curtain wall around the old asylum.
Dawn was just beginning to creep over the horizon. The lighting was eerie and ethereal, a misty haze of pink and lavender shrouding the Gothic structures with an otherworldly glow. Even bathed in soft pastels, the place held an air of menace.
The contrast was what had brought her out to the location this morning. Shooting it at dusk would have been the more natural choice, capitalizing on the haunted quality of the abandoned structures. But it was the juxtaposition of warm dawn light against a cold, sinister subject that appealed to Gabrielle as she paused to retrieve her camera from the bag slung over her shoulder. She snapped off a half-dozen shots, then clapped the lens cap back on, and continued her trek toward the ghostly buildings.
A tall wire security fence loomed in front of her, barricading the property against nosy explorers like herself. But Gabrielle knew its hidden weakness. She had found it the first time she had come to the place to take exterior pictures. She hurried along the line of the fence until she reached the southwest corner, then squatted down near the ground. Here, someone had discreetly severed the links with a wire cutter, creating a breach just large enough for a curious adolescent to wriggle through—or a determined female photographer who tended to view
No Trespassing
and
Authorized Personnel Only
signs more as friendly suggestions rather than enforceable laws.
Gabrielle pushed open the flap of snipped fence, shoved her gear inside, and scrambled spiderlike on her belly through the low opening. A shiver of apprehension coursed along her limbs as she came up on the other side of the fence. She should be used to this type of covert, solitary exploration; her art often depended on her courage to seek out desolate, some might argue dangerous, places. This creepy asylum could certainly classify as the latter, she thought, her gaze drifting to graffiti spray-painted next to an exterior door that read,
BAd VIBeS
.
“You can say that again,” she whispered under her breath. As she brushed the dirt and dried pine needles
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