Silent Surrender

“I’ll stay the night,” he said in a gruff voice.

Sarah’s lips parted to mouth the word “What?”

“I said I’ll stay the night.”

She shook her head, her mind racing. She grabbed her Palm Pilot and wrote, “No.”

“Look, Sarah, you may think this was a random burglar, but I don’t. Think about it. That story came out about you overhearing a kidnapping, and someone breaks in to your apartment and attacks you all in the same day. Too coincidental for me.”

Fear seeped back inside her, chilling her to the bone. “But you don’t need to stay—”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Sarah.” He cleared his throat. “I know I was out of line earlier, and I told you it won’t happen again. But I will keep you safe.”

Sarah’s heart fluttered. He’d keep her safe from danger, but who would protect her from him?

Silent Surrender
Rita Herron

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rita Herron is a teacher, workshop leader and storyteller who loves reading, writing and sharing stories with people of all ages. She has published two nonfiction books for adults on working and playing with children, and has won the Golden Heart award for a young adult story. Rita believes that books taught her to dream, and she loves nothing better than sharing that magic with others. She lives with her dream husband and three children, two cats and a dog in Norcross, Georgia. Rita loves to hear from readers. You can contact her at www.ritaherron.com or P.O. Box 921225, Norcross, GA 30092.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Sarah Cutter—A deaf woman who has lived in silence for twenty years regains her hearing only to hear the terrifying sounds of a woman’s desperate cry as she is being kidnapped. When she tells the police her bizarre story, she suddenly finds herself running for her life and facing the biggest fear of all—losing her heart to her protector, Adam Black.

Adam Black—A jaded cop who must accept Sarah Cutter’s bizarre story and protect her life in order to find his missing sister, but can he protect himself from falling in love with the tempting but vulnerable woman?

Denise Black Harley—Adam’s missing sister is a doctor on the verge of a brilliant discovery that could help mankind—or get her killed.

Russell Harley—Denise’s estranged husband has hard feelings about the separation, but is he bitter enough to seek revenge?

Sol Santenelli—Sarah’s godfather—he saved her life once and loves her more than anything—or does he?

Charles Cutter—Sarah’s father—a research scientist who murdered his own wife and almost killed his daughter twenty years ago so he could sell his secret discovery to a foreign government—but is everything as it seems?

Robey Burgess—A nosy reporter who is onto the story of a lifetime—will he break the story in time to earn his fame or die trying?

Arnold Hughes—This former military man and the CEO and cofounder of the research park was a close friend of Sarah’s father—or was he?

To Denise O’Sullivan,

for asking for something different…hope you enjoy.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Epilogue

Prologue

July, 1981

A loud explosion rumbled through the house. Five-year-old Sarah Cutter clutched her tattered blanket to her chest and tried not to cry. She hated thunderstorms. Especially lightning.

Suddenly the walls erupted into flames and she screamed.

“There’s a bomb!” her mother yelled. “Run, Sarah, get out!”

Sarah bolted off the sofa, dashing toward the kitchen and her mother, but another loud explosion rocked the floor beneath her, and she stumbled and fell. Glass and wood shattered around her. Jagged shards stabbed her face and arms, and flames shot into the doorway in front of her.

“Mommy, help!”

Smoke stung her eyes, so thick it billowed around her, clogging her vision. Then her mother’s blurred figure staggered into the doorway, flames eating at her clothes. Sarah stretched out her arms. But instead of grabbing her, her mother shoved her backward. “Run, honey, get out! Now!”

Another boom tore through the house, and the roof collapsed on top of her mother, sending blood trailing down her forehead. Tears streamed down Sarah’s cheeks. She had to save her mother. She crawled forward, but heat scalded her knees, and glass slivers jabbed her palms. The fire was gobbling the wood floor, hissing like a monster!

More wood splintered and rained down, pelting Sarah’s body. She covered her head with her hands and searched for her father. She saw him through the window. He was outside. He would save them!

But another board smacked her temple and pain exploded in her head. Then silence came, as swift and jarring as the darkness that sucked her into its big dark hole.

A sudden deafening silence.

Chapter One

Twenty years later

Today Sarah’s sentence of silence would finally end.

She struggled to pull herself from the deep sleep of the anesthesia. If she could open her eyes and focus, she would be able to hear again. Hear the beautiful sounds of music. Voices. Laughter.

Her fingers and toes tingled and her arms felt heavy, but slowly she moved one hand. In even slower degrees, she opened her heavy eyelids and finally brought her surroundings into focus. The doctor’s warnings rose in her mind: Don’t expect miracles. You had a lot of scar tissue to remove, and will have some swelling that will take time to go down. You may experience some pain and discomfort, some warbled sounds. And it’ll take time for your brain to retrain itself to interpret sounds. Be patient.

She’d been patient for twenty years, waiting on the right doctor, on advances in technology to produce a sophisticated hearing implant that could restore her hearing. Finally good news had come.

Her godfather, Sol Santenelli sat hunched over, asleep in the chair in the corner, his scruffy gray beard and hair sticking out as if he’d run his hands through it a thousand times. Dear sweet Sol. What would she have done without him?

He’d taken care of her after her parents had died in the explosion, and then when she’d struggled with her deafness. And when she’d been unable to speak after the fire, he’d called in a specialist. Once her vocal cords had healed from the smoke damage, the doctors hadn’t found any physical reason for her lack of speech; they’d blamed it on trauma. And when she was old enough to understand, that her father had actually set off the explosion and killed her mother, Sol had held her while she’d cried.

She wanted him to wake and talk to her, wanted to hear his voice again.

A sound suddenly burst through her consciousness, and Sarah’s fingers tightened around the hospital bed. The special hearing implant was actually working— she would hear again.

She strained for another sound. A voice maybe. Someone walking? A door closing?

But suddenly a piercing pain shot through her temple. She pressed her hand over her ears, tears filling her eyes. The pain was excruciating, triggering nausea in her stomach. Seconds later, a muffled cry broke through the pain—the sound of another scream. Just like the sound her mother had made before she died.

Her heart squeezing, Sarah searched the room for the woman, but it was empty, except for Sol. Where had the scream come from? The hallway maybe? Another room? Dr. Tucker had suggested her hearing might be more acute than a normal person’s because of the high-tech implant, but she hadn’t believed him, hadn’t been able to imagine hearing sounds—

The voice broke through again, “Where are you taking me?”

“Just shut up, Dr. H—” Static cut in, making the words garbled, “—ardy a…nd do as w…e say.”

“No!” The woman cried out again as if she were struggling to escape.

“I said sh…ut up or y…ou die.” A harsh smacking sound, then a dull thud followed.

The man had hit the woman, Sarah realized, a chill rippling up her spine. She must have fallen to the floor. Was the woman dead? Being kidnapped?

Confusion clouded Sarah’s brain. She was in the hospital, so where was the woman? In the hall? The room next door? Was she a nurse? A patient? Another doctor?

She gripped the bed rail again and struggled to get up. She had to get help. Had to tell someone. But her limbs were too heavy to lift. She tried to speak, but her voice squeaked, so she pounded on the bed rail, shaking it to wake her godfather.

Seconds later, he stood by her side, smiling, tucking her hair behind her ears with his bony fingers, his gray eyes full of concern and love. She raised her hand enough to sign, describing the incident.

“Honey, you had to be dreaming. You’ve been under anesthesia. The drugs can do funny things to your mind.”

His voice sounded like heaven, thick and deep and slightly hoarse with emotions just as she’d imagined. He squeezed her hand, and she smiled at the unfamiliar stubble on his jaw, wishing she could verbalize how much the sound of his voice meant.

“You can hear me, can’t you love?”

Sarah nodded, her throat clogging at the moisture she saw glistening in his eyes. Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d imagined the woman’s scream. She’d probably been dreaming about the explosion that had killed her parents and had heard the haunting memory of her mother’s cry.

But the sound of the woman’s scream echoed in her mind as she drifted back to sleep. And she couldn’t help but wonder if there really had been a woman in danger somewhere in the building. If so, who was she and what had happened to her?

Three days later

“I THINK MY sister is missing.” Detective Adam Black, Savannah Police Department, paced a wide circle around his desk, glaring at the mounds of paperwork he had yet to do. But he couldn’t think about mundane tasks right now. He had to find Denise.

His partner, Clayton Fox, stared up at him with a frown. “Look, Black, don’t go jumping to conclusions.”

Shoving aside a half-empty cup of coffee, Adam grabbed the phone and punched in her number. He let the phone ring a dozen times, then slammed it down in frustration. “Where the hell is she? I’ve been calling her for three days and she hasn’t answered or returned my calls.”

“Did you try to reach her at work?”

“Of course. The secretary at the research center said she went on vacation, but Denise never goes anywhere without telling me. Something’s wrong.” He gripped the desk edge with white-knuckled fists. “She’s in trouble somewhere, Clay, I can feel it.”

Clayton’s black eyebrows rose. “Have you checked with her friends? Her husband?”

Adam nodded. “Denise and Russell are separated. He claims he hasn’t talked to her in weeks. And she’s not close with anybody else that I know of. Since the separation she’s been spending all her time at the research center.”

“Do you know what she’s working on?”

“No. Most of those damn projects are so top secret I wonder if the scientists even know what they’re involved in.”

“Maybe she’s absorbed in her research, staying late—”

“Sleeping at the office?”

Clayton shrugged but Adam shook his head. “She’d still check in.”

A moment of real concern darkened his partner’s eyes. “Have you checked the hospitals then…”

He let the sentence trail off and Adam understood the implication. The hospitals, the morgue… “Yeah. But I’m checking again.”

“I’ll get busy with that paperwork for the captain.”

Adam nodded his thanks, his chest tightening as he scanned the police reports for victims, deaths or hospital injuries that might point to her whereabouts. He breathed a sigh of relief when he hung up from the morgue. Thank God, he hadn’t found her name or anyone fitting her description.

Phones pealed around him, computers hummed away and loud voices sounded from the captain’s office. He’d drive over to Denise’s and see if she was home. Maybe she had the flu and wasn’t answering her phone.

But the door swung open and in walked a frail-looking woman, triggering a hum of silence across the room. All the male cops immediately sized her up, Adam included. She was a hell of a looker, about five-four, slender frame but generous chested, delicate heart-shaped face with pale porcelain skin that looked like it belonged on a doll and hair so black it resembled charcoal. Her eyes were almond shaped, the color a vivid, startling blue that reminded him of the sky after a heavy thunderstorm. And her lips were full and pink like ripe raspberries.

He fisted his hands by his side, shaken at his response.

She scanned the room, her gaze meeting his, and heat curled low in his belly. The pull was there, hot and sudden, a feeling that hadn’t happened to him in a long time. As if she felt the charge between them and was afraid of it, she jerked her gaze away, and headed toward one of the female officers. Probably thought Bernstein less intimidating because she was a woman. But she was wrong. Bernstein had a soft spot for no one.

Clayton loped toward the woman. Adam dug in his pocket for his keys, then mumbled a curse when Clayton motioned for him to join them in one of the interrogation rooms.

Several minutes later, after Clay had introduced the two of them, Adam stared in surprise as the woman scribbled a message on a Palm Pilot. Her name was Sarah, soft and sexy just like her. But her last name was Cutter, a bit sharp, although it mirrored the wariness in her eyes.

She claimed she’d been in the hospital three days before and had overheard a woman scream for help.

“What woman?” Clayton asked.

“And why the Palm Pilot?” Adam indicated the small computer.

She bit down on her lip, drawing his attention to the delicate curve of her chin and the vulnerable shadows that haunted her face. He didn’t want to feel sorry for her, but judging from the dark smudges beneath her eyes, she’d been through hell and back. He wondered if she was sick, then wanted to kick himself for being concerned. He knew better than to get involved.

He had his own damn problems.

“I don’t speak well,” she wrote. “I lost my hearing when I was five.”

“But you can hear now?” he asked. She’d frowned when he’d spoken, her eyes creasing together as if she’d had to concentrate to understand him. And she kept staring at his mouth while he talked as if she might be reading his lips. Or maybe she was just too afraid to look into his eyes again.

In any case, he found himself fixated on her mouth, on those kissable lips, and he didn’t like it.

“Yes, I recently had surgery and received hearing implants.”

Ahh. He arched a brow and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Clayton spoke up, “Okay, tell us exactly what you heard.”

She scribbled, “I don’t know who the woman was. I heard her cry out, then decided I must have imagined it. But I’ve heard her voice again, twice this week.”

“Did you tell someone in the hospital about the woman?” Clayton asked.

“Yes.” Her mouth formed the word silently. “My godfather. He suggested I’d been dreaming because of the medication. But the more I think about it, the more I know I was awake. The people must have been down the hall or in the next room or outside the window.”

Clayton rocked the wooden chair back on two legs. “You’re saying you heard a woman being kidnapped but nobody else in the building heard it except you? What are you, a psychic or something?”

Adam bit back a chuckle at the disbelief in his partner’s voice.

She shook her head, a spark of anger lighting her eyes while she fidgeted with a silver locket around her neck. Finally she turned to Adam and met his gaze again, as if she wanted to see if the connection was still there, if he’d believe her. It was, the sliver of awareness tingling along his nerve endings, but he steeled himself against any emotion.

She finally tore her gaze from his and wrote, “Yes, but my godfather Sol convinced me the anesthesia had affected me. After I went home, though, I heard the voices again. One night, it was late, the man and woman were arguing….” She shuddered as if the memories were too painful to revisit. Adam had the insane urge to fold her in his arms and comfort her like he used to do his sister when she was little and woke from a nightmare.

“Wait a minute.” Clayton held up a hand to stop her. “First you heard the voices at the hospital, then at home? How close do you live to the hospital?”

A shadow passed over her eyes. “About ten miles.”

Adam thumbed his hair from his face, impatience flaring at himself for being attracted to her. This woman was some kind of psycho, wasting their time. Clayton shot him a sideways grin as if he had read his mind and agreed.

“Were you sleeping when you heard them?” Clayton asked in a soft tone.

“Yes, but I woke up with this strange piercing sound in my ear. Then I heard the man and woman arguing. The man was forcing her to go somewhere with him.”

“And these were the same people you heard at the hospital?” Clayton asked.

She nodded.

“Did you recognize the voices?”

She glared at Clayton. “I told you I just got my hearing back, so, no, I hadn’t heard the voices before.”

Adam almost smiled at her small show of spunk. “Listen, ma’am, it’s a stretch to think you heard something strange go down at the hospital,” Clayton said, “but to hear those same voices again miles away from the hospital at your house, that’s impossible. Have you ever heard voices in your head before?”

The woman sounded schizophrenic, Adam decided.

She shook her head no again, and those vibrant blue eyes swung Adam’s way to see his reaction. Bizarre as it sounded, he found himself trying to make some sense of her story. Could her hearing implant somehow work like a radio transmitter?

She hesitated as if she had a moment of sanity and realized how crazy she sounded, then gave him a pleading look. “I received an experimental type of hearing implant at the research center. The doctor said my hearing might be warbled at times, more acute at others, and in the beginning it might sometimes be delayed.”

“Delayed hearing? A special hearing implant that allows you to hear through walls?” She was a candidate for the nuthouse. Adam pointed to himself, then Clayton. “Could you hear everyone else on the street talking? How about us—did you hear us talking from your house, too? Is that why you came here?” He stood, annoyed at himself for being suckered in and wanting to believe her when he should be looking for Denise.

“Are you saying you have some kind of bionic ear?” Clayton asked.

She stood this time and closed her eyes briefly as if to regain control. When she opened her eyes, her expression bordered on panic. She knew her story sounded crazy yet she’d come anyway. Why?

And she was looking at Adam, all sad-eyed and sincere and fiercely determined to make him believe her. She had so much depth there—it was almost as if she could see inside him, smell the cold distance he put between himself and everyone else in the world. The distance he had to keep in order to survive.

Shaken, he looked away and stared at the window, purposely raised his chin so he wouldn’t have to look into those soulful eyes. So he wouldn’t have to see the slight tremble in her hands, the quiver of that bottom lip. So his body wouldn’t stir at the soft vulnerability in her feminine form.

So he wouldn’t reach out and touch her.

This was the wrong damn woman to even think about jumping in bed with. She needed psychotherapy instead of a detective. He turned and opened his mouth to tell her that but his partner cut him off.

“How did you lose your hearing, Ms. Cutter?” Clayton propped one leg on the battered table between them and leaned forward, his tone sympathetic.

A moment of anguish glittered in her eyes. Adam watched her fold her delicate hands, noticed the way she’d chewed her nails down to stubs, saw the faint scars along her palms and saw another one at the edge of her hairline, and all his protective instincts kicked in. What exactly had happened to her? Had she been in an accident? The scars looked faded and old, but she immediately dragged a strand of that ebony hair over the spot as if to hide it. Had she been victimized recently or early in her life?

“That isn’t important,” she replied. “What’s important is that I heard a woman in trouble and you need to find her.”

Clayton lowered his voice to a placating tone, “Look, I can understand your concern, but you have to give us more to go on than this. If a woman was in danger at the hospital, don’t you think someone on staff would have heard, too?”

She shrugged as if she had no answers, only questions.

Stupid questions and a crazy story that no one would believe.

Denise’s face flashed through Adam’s mind, and he glanced at the clock, worry knotting his stomach. He had time for no one but Denise and his job. “Why don’t you wait outside and we’ll discuss this?”

She snatched her Palm Pilot and stalked from the office, her head held high.

Adam shook his head in pity as he watched her go, dismissing the sexual draw that made him itch to go after her.

Still, he couldn’t help himself—when she closed the door, he found himself wondering what her voice would sound like.

SARAH FOUGHT for a steadying breath as she leaned against the closed door. Several police officers and one seedy prisoner in a vulgar T-shirt handcuffed to a chair stared at her.

The detectives obviously hadn’t believed her.

In fact, she could hear them laughing through the door.

She supposed she couldn’t blame them—her story did sound bizarre. But it had happened. And those men, even her godfather, couldn’t convince her otherwise. Sol. She’d thought he of all people would have supported her. But he’d reiterated the doctor’s warnings about her brain having trouble interpreting sounds at first, the delayed translation between the sound and her interpretation, then his theory about the effects of anesthesia. He’d even suggested the surgery had resurrected repressed memories of the explosion that had caused her hearing loss and suggested she talk to a psychiatrist.

Another shudder passed through her as she heard Detective Black’s gruff voice. She’d never met a more masculine man, one who radiated such stark power. He’d watched her with an intensity that had burned straight to her core.

She’d never felt that kind of heat from a man before.

It was the very reason his laughter had hurt so much. She’d been ridiculed as a child. Without her hearing, she’d learned to read nonverbal facial and body gestures, little nuances that others never even noticed. The very reason she’d felt such a strong attraction toward him. The reason she’d avoided his gaze. The sultry heat charging the air between them had been too electric.

Why had he been irritated at her, though? Because he saw her as weak? Didn’t he realize she was trying to help save this poor woman?

“That broad must have come from the psych ward,” she heard the detective named Fox say through the door. “She was beautiful, but crazy.”

A curse word erupted from Detective Black’s mouth, burning her ears through the walls. She could almost see those wide cheekbones tighten, his naturally dark skin glisten with sweat as his anger mounted. “A sexy one, but you’re right, she needs medication. And what about that closed mouth? If she’d been able to hear until she was five, surely she had developed some speech.”

“Yeah, more than a little weird.”

She fought not to let the humiliation overwhelm her, but childhood memories of being taunted surfaced, clawing at her self-control again. Sol had been disappointed she hadn’t instantly regained her speech when her hearing returned. Another reason he wanted her in therapy.

She moved toward the front of the station house, ignoring the curious looks. A tall, lanky man wearing khakis and wire-rimmed glasses bent to drink from the water fountain. He looked faintly familiar, as if she’d seen him when she was in the hospital. No, it couldn’t have been. Yet, he watched her as she crossed the room and she did remember him. He was the reporter who’d confronted her outside the hospital wanting an interview about her hearing implant. He’d known about the explosion that had caused her hearing loss, and all about her father. So many ghosts to deal with…

Had he followed her here?

She squared her shoulders and ignored him, then strode toward the female officer’s desk. Sarah swallowed, angling herself so the reporter couldn’t see her.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

Sarah nodded, took a pen and paper from the officer’s desk, then scribbled a few lines. She hesitated, continued writing, then handed the note to the other woman.

The officer frowned at her message just as the two detectives emerged from the back. Sarah walked out the door, struggling not to reveal her emotions as their laughter boomed behind her down the hall.

Seconds later, she entered the darkened parking deck, shivering at the early-afternoon shadows hovering around the concrete structure. As usual, she hesitated, gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness and scanned the interior for strangers, wielding her keys between her fingers in case someone tried to grab her. She wasn’t paranoid, but any female alone in the city had to play it safe, especially a deaf one. Her other senses had to make up for her lack of being able to hear someone approach.

The acrid smell of garbage seeped into her nostrils and the clattering of something—an aluminum can maybe—sent goose bumps up her arms. Another rattling sound broke the strained silence. Keys? Footsteps? Traffic noises, a hushed voice, a scrape. The different sounds bombarded her, disorienting her as to their proximity. She searched the darkness, found her car and headed straight toward it, almost running. Down two aisles, over beside the far wall. Only two more rows to go.

Her breath caught in her throat when she spotted a dark van parked beside her Jetta. She’d heard a news report say vans were the primary vehicle used for abductions.

She heard a clickety-clack sound and froze, then resumed walking and realized the sound had come from her own heels. Deciding she’d let the past few days rattle her, she slowed her steps. But a shadow caught her eye. Something had moved. A cat maybe? Somebody lurking behind one of the boulders?

She glanced to her left, quickly cutting a path around the van, her gaze scanning the area around it in case someone was hiding there. Laughter echoed off the concrete walls behind her and she tensed. The sound reminded her of the detective’s harsh laughter. His mocking words ran through her mind, distracting her momentarily, and she stumbled over the drain and dropped her keys. Cursing, she knelt to grab them when a shuffling noise reverberated behind her. Then a pair of black shoes suddenly appeared, and a man’s hand reached out for her.