A Passerby in the Dark

The voice coming through the phone belonged to Dane's mother, Anna Hunter.

"This is work I chose."

Dane undid the buttons of his shirt and let his head fall back against the chair. No one turns away a family's love, but too much worry has a way of driving a person onto the defensive.

"I'm looking after myself. You don't need to worry."

So that was it. Two days running, the family house had called, and he had found it suspicious. Just as he'd thought—bringing up Eva had been the point all along.

Dane pressed a hand hard against the headache rising behind his eyes. These were people no suit of armor and no face set hard as steel could keep out. The ache was one only family could summon.

"Mother."

The things that had ever left regret in him were never the ones he chose. They were the things he had been made to do by someone else's will.

"Pressing me about my relationship with Eva won't change anything."

He knew that a measured warmth, an easy compliance, was what kept the peace of a house. But having to say the same thing every time they spoke was wearing him thin.

Dane let out a soundless scoff and pressed his fingers into the frown gathering between his brows. The conversation ran on without end and without an answer, until the dizziness of it nearly took him.

"I'm sorry. It's nearly time for my meeting. I should go."

As always, he closed the call on a courtesy that was only an excuse.

"Damn it..."

Feelings this far on the wrong side of the ledger, stacking one over another, were not a good sign. From here on he would have to make his intentions about Eva unmistakable. To do that, of course, he would first have to collide with the people standing behind her.

Still leaned back in the chair, he tapped his fingertips against the desk. Within easy reach lay a woman's ID.

The moment Zena had left her seat, he had gone to the receptionist.

"That woman walking out just now. Who did she come to see?"

The employee followed his gaze and watched Zena's back as she passed, backpack on, through the glass revolving door and out.

"A guest for CEO Liam Carlson, sir. She left without collecting the ID she'd checked."

What came back to him was a name he had not expected. Dane sat at the desk and brought his interlaced hands to his mouth. What reason did she have to come looking for Liam? An undefined, faintly unpleasant question mark lodged itself in his mind.

Was she, after all, the woman Liam had set on him—just as he had suspected at the start? If so, even taking it to Liam would win him no honest answer.

The fingers that had been drumming the desk went still for an instant, then moved to the drawer. From among a few cards that had never made it into the holder, one came up between his fingertips. He punched the number into his phone and lifted it to his ear.

"This is Dane Hunter."

On the other end of the line, a pleased round of pleasantries followed his introduction. Dane drew his thumb along the crooked smile spreading at one corner of his mouth.

What... what is this?

At some point Zena dragged in a ragged breath and forced her eyes open in a rush. The music hammering at her ears stretched and warped like a worn-out record, and the people around her overlapped, then scattered, then overlapped again in slow motion. Across from her, a man and a woman had their arms around each other, mouths locked.

"You okay?"

Luke's voice sounded right beside her. Zena rolled her whitened eyes to the side. She had never once seen Luke from this close. She couldn't read the eyes sunk deep in shadow beneath the sharp ridge of his brow, but she could tell he was smiling.

She gathered her blurring vision and fixed it on the clock on the wall. Her head hung heavy as pulled taffy, and it took her a long while just to make out that it was nine-thirty. She couldn't remember what had happened. It was as if someone had taken scissors to the evening and snipped a piece clean out. Not much time had passed. How had she lost herself like this in the space of a moment?

Zena fumbled for her bag. It had been on her knees, and now she couldn't find it; she groped around herself for a long time before her hand met the bag where it had fallen at her feet.

"You that drunk?"

As she bent her trembling body to pick it up, Luke's hand touched the nape of her neck. Cool, and sticky. Every hair on her body stood up.

"Want to go lie down in my room? If you're tired, you can sleep it off and head out."

Something she couldn't name lay coiled in his darkened gaze. Even with her head swaying from the drink, she could feel that something was seriously wrong. Her breath came shorter, and a red light went on in her mind.

"Luke..."

Her hazy thoughts had turned into nothing but question marks. She knew her own limits better than anyone. She was not so weak that a few glasses could take her under. All she knew was that she had accepted the drink Luke handed her, and that sometime after that her mind had simply gone.

"If you don't want to crash at somebody else's place, then just lie down for a bit. Yeah? Do that. You look wiped."

Her chest rose and fell, heavy, up and down. Opening herself took time. Raising the wall again took only an instant. Her mind filled, as if with some neurosis, with the sharp edge of wariness.

"I think I need to go."

Zena clutched her swaying head with one hand and got to her feet. The ceiling spun, and she felt she might collapse at any moment, but she forced her knees straight so it wouldn't show. Luke rose with her and looked down, eyes narrowed.

"Why? Stay a little longer."

With every step the floor seemed to drop away beneath her. She lost her balance and more than once folded against the wall. Somehow she made it up the basement stairs.

"Zena."

Luke came staggering after her and caught her by the shoulder.

"Let go. I have to leave."

Zena answered coldly and shook his hand off. Only then did Luke wipe away the smile he had been holding at his mouth.

"If that's how it is, I'll take you."

"It's fine. I can go by myself."

"You look drunk. I'm not letting you go alone."

The what-ifs drove her to the edge of a cliff called distrust. Luke's eyes, his voice, his hands—all of it called suspicion up in her.

"It's fine, it's fine. There are guests—why would you..."

A chill sank through her, and yet, in answer, heat was moving through her whole body. At her words Luke shut his mouth for a moment and scowled.

"Come on. I just want to hang around with you a little longer. I'd feel bad just sending you off."

Zena barely caught her reeling head. As the time they spent together had stretched on, had it been a mistake, somewhere in it, to let her guard down? Months in the same workplace, and still everything she knew of Luke was only the surface of him.

"Let go."

Fear and helplessness came down on her at once. Right now the only thought she had was that she had to get away from this place.

"How am I supposed to send you off like this? I'm telling you, it's dangerous."

"I can take a taxi."

She steadied herself as best she could and slipped a hand into her bag. The phone she had put in there was nowhere to be found.

"Where's my phone...?"

Luke set one hand to his temple with a look of displeasure and let out a sigh.

"Why are you asking me? I saw you on the phone with somebody earlier. You probably dropped it. Let's go back in. I'll find it for you."

Zena inched her feet backward. The strength leaving her body had reached its limit. Her mind was turning opaque, and heat had begun to cover her.

"Zena, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Ignoring Luke's voice, she put what strength she had into her knees and forced one step after another.

Fortunately, a taxi pulled up in front of them just then. People who had only now arrived at the party climbed out, talking loudly. Zena threw herself into the cab they had left, as if she were leaping.

"Hey—miss!"

At the mumbling voice, dreamlike, Zena opened her eyes.

"Where... is this..."

She murmured it through eyes only half open.

"I said we're here!"

The driver's face, making no effort to hide how pathetic he found her, was turned toward hers. At some point the taxi had stopped in front of her house. She had never thought that rental, bleak under the dark, could feel this welcome.

"Th-thank you."

She pulled a few bills roughly from her wallet and handed them over, then started walking, fighting knees that kept buckling under her. Tonight gravity felt doubled, and the breath leaving her was hot.

To be this limp—unable even to look after her own body—something else had to be at work. An uncontrollable heat washed her vision white, then blinked it into black, over and over.

Fumbling, she reached into the backpack for her keys. Like the vanished phone, the keys were gone without a trace. She sank onto the steps at the front door, turned the bag inside out, and went through every last thing in it. Nothing.

Hoping her roommates might be home, she rang the bell again and again, but there was no sign of anyone inside.

Rachel spent most Fridays at her boyfriend's and stayed through the weekend, and Kaylee, too, made a habit of burning weekend nights down to dawn and stumbling home dead drunk. No phone, either. With no way to reach anyone, all that remained was to wait, without end, for someone to come back.

"Haa..."

Zena buried her head between her knees and drew a breath. Every nerve in her body stood on end, running hot. Heat pooled in the secret places of her and turned to a prickling.

Hoo. Hoo. She tried to steady her breathing, to calm herself, and it did nothing. Even breathing arrived as a stimulus. Her body twisted with it.

"Nnh."

Caught in that strange sensation, her stirred-up body would not obey her.

Between her legs she was growing slick and damp. Sweat beaded on her brow and in the hollow of her chest. Just the fumbling of her fingers at the hem of her clothes sent heated breaths breaking from her, one after another. She could hardly hold herself upright; her upper body kept tipping forward. A trembling hand closed on the rusted rail.

Haa. Please. Someone—

A hurt sound slipped from her mouth before she knew it. And then it happened. Someone's hand came down on her shoulder.

"Hey."

Zena's shoulder flinched. She lifted her swaying head, but everything that met her eyes was a blur. Still, she could tell that what stood blocking her way was a tall man in a suit.

"Wh-who..."

Ha. The man let out a sound like air going out of him. She wanted to say something, but her lips kept spilling only heated breath. Wariness rose in her all the same, and yet if someone meant her harm right now, she had no confidence she could properly fight it.

"Let's just say I'm a passerby."

Who was he? She had heard that voice somewhere. Her heat-fogged mind started up a few beats late. A voice pitched viciously low, a cologne that was not unfamiliar, a suit that announced its price. The pieces came in separately and locked together like a puzzle.

...Dane Hunter?

Zena forced down the breath that was coming too fast. Her mind insisted he could not be here, and yet every nerve in her body recognized him. Her body, gone soft as warm taffy, could do nothing about it.

"Get up."

The man's firm hand caught her shoulder and hauled her upright. Her legs, with no strength in them, had lost their use and only folded beneath her. Zena bit down hard on her molars and swallowed a moan. Everywhere his hands touched, a strange, indecent sensation spread.