Silent Surrender

by Rita Herron

  “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

  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.

  Books by Rita Herron

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  486—SEND ME A HERO

  523—HER EYEWITNESS

  556—FORGOTTEN LULLABY

  601—SAVING HIS SON

  660—SILENT SURRENDER†

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  820—HIS-AND-HERS TWINS

  859—HAVE GOWN, NEED GROOM>*

  872—HAVE BABY, NEED BEAU*

  883—HAVE HUSBAND, NEED HONEYMOON*

  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 T

  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-T

  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 stggled 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 whi
le 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?

  Confusiuded 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 the 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

  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 hear
ing 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.