Burning Rivalry (Trevor's Harem #2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

apparently leading into a deeper, larger room, is narrow and too long for … for whatever you’d expect behind a door that I’d swear was the same goddamned one from that foster home, shipped here to fuck with my head. It’s too dark. There’s plenty of light in the hallway and in the room I can make out ahead, but the space between is like a secret passage in an old home in a classic murder mystery. Something Scooby Doo and his gang might run into.  
    It’s too dark. In just this little stretch, which can’t be more than twenty feet long, it’s practically black. It doesn’t smell musty and there aren’t any cobwebs, but I keep wanting to brush at my hair to free it of spiders.  
    Ahead, a large office chair rolls from one side and blocks the exit from this coffin of a passageway. There’s nobody in it. The chair is just sitting there, blocking a few feet of the illuminated rectangle ahead. My logical mind knows I can walk forward and push the chair away, but the deeper part is suddenly terrified. The closet door closing all those years ago, with me and my tormentor inside.  
    A hand settles on my left shoulder from behind. I jump hard enough that I swear I almost hit the ceiling.  
    “Relax. It’s just me.”  
    I know the voice. It’s Daniel. But now the hallway door is closed and without any light above, he’s mostly a shape in the shadows.  
    “The bulb’s burned out. Watch your step.”  
    “I didn’t see you,” I say, trying to control my breathing. My mind is a frightened animal, and I’m trying to wrap my hands around it. I don’t want him to hear how badly he startled me.
    “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”  
    Bullshit. I feel certain, right now, that’s exactly what he meant to do.  
    “Don’t worry. You didn’t.”  
    A small chuckle in the darkness. He nudges me forward because we’re facing off in the gloom.  
    “They say animals can smell fear,” he says.  
    “Good for animals.”  
    “Humans, too.”  
    I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, and don’t want to ask. We’re out of the little passage a second later, and I’ve shoved the rolling chair aside. There’s nobody here in what Erin called a control room, so I have no idea how it moved earlier. I can properly see him. He must have noticed the chair move while he was lurking behind me in the dark, but he doesn’t seem mystified. It’s just another game he’s playing with me, as he’s been doing all along. Falling for any of it makes me feel stupid. I got spooked for no reason. It’s irrational and if Daniel is trying to fuck with me, he got lucky once but won’t again.  
    “It’s true, you know.”  
    “What?”  
    “We can smell fear. Not consciously. Not even in a way that’s really understood. But study after study shows that on some level, we’re all aware of things happening with other people that they may not even know — or admit — about themselves. Like moods. Like chemical signals that we don’t have any kind of ordinary capacity to even detect, but still somehow seem to.”  
    “Fascinating.” I’m already looking around, interested only in finding whatever Brandon-related communications are in here, then confronting Daniel for snooping. It isn’t straightforward. The room is larger than I’d have imagined, filled with monitors, computers, and controls of all kinds. I suppose the narrow passageway is supposed to connect the hall and a room that seems to have been shoved behind the bathroom. No wonder the door seemed so out of place: There’s no space for a room behind it, between the bathroom and the wall. We’re closer to the home’s heart, tucked neatly away.  
    “I’m only telling you,” Daniel says, “because if you’re afraid, there are people who will be able to — ”  
    I spin to face him. “You’re snooping in my email.”  
    “Erin told you.”  
    “Of course Erin told me. You thought she wouldn’t?”  
    I wait for him to react with