Page 6 of Dark Secrets

And if that reliable someone had kept him up half the night wondering what her mouth tasted like, then that was his own shit to work through.

ChapterThree

“Need me to warm up your coffee, hun?”

Delaney glanced up at the waitress in the bright yellow A-line dress and white apron and tried to remember if coffee refills were free. Shit.

“Um.”

“They’re on the house,” the woman added.

“Yeah. That would be great. Thanks.”

“No problem. Your food should be up in just a minute. Sorry about the wait.”

Delaney smiled as the woman moved away. The diner she’d found near her motel might have been a greasy spoon, but it was busy when she’d walked in for an early lunch. The wait and the free Wi-Fi had given her time to do some research on her phone.

First she looked up short-term rentals. If she was going to be in the city for a while, she wanted something with a better lock than the flimsy motel room door. Carpets that didn’t smell like vomit would be a huge bonus. She shivered. She might never get that smell out of her nose.

Everything even remotely close to the pub sat well beyond her budget. Unless this job paidreallynicely, housing costs would eat up all the money she was trying to save. The only things she could afford were across the river in New Jersey, and when you factored in time and gas for the commute, it hardly made the savings worth it.

She sighed. This was precisely why it was easier to hunker down in a small town. Everything was dirt cheap. Even if small towns came with their own set of problems in the form of nosiness. Plus, as a Black woman, she stuck out like a sore thumb with her medium brown skin and tightly coiled curls.

She’d take a big city's anonymity over a small town's curiosity any day. Which still left her dealing with higher prices. Maybe the motel wasn’t so bad. She could ask to be moved to a different room or buy a bunch of candles or something.

When the waitress came back with her food, Delaney’s stomach grumbled. She’d eaten a granola bar that had been set out on the check-in desk at the motel the night before and another one this morning, but nothing else in nearly twenty-four hours. She was pushing her limit to how long she could go without eating.

Which is why she’d treated herself to what the diner menu called the Sunrise Sampler. A little bit of everything. The smells spiraling up to her nose made her mouth water and her stomach cramp in anticipation.

She ate slowly, partly because she wanted to savor every bite and partly because she knew from experience that eating too fast after not having anything in her stomach for so long could lead to throwing everything back up again. Then it would be a waste of food and money.

She cut into a sausage link and popped the bite into her mouth, sighing as the spice and fat exploded on her tongue. A year ago, she never would have been caught dead in a diner like this, salivating over pancakes and sausage. Now, it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

Her phone beeped, and she frowned. No one had her number, so she had no one to text or call. She flipped the phone open to read the small display and saw the search alert notification.

She’d set up several to go to her email, and every day some faceless bot on the internet combed the headlines for the parameters she’d set and let her know if it found anything related to her specs. So far it hadn’t hit on anything relevant. Usually they were similarly worded, but nothing about her. For that she was grateful.

She clicked the link in her email and opened the news article.Local Woman Found Drowned, the headline read. Not about her, not even local to Philadelphia. She scanned the article. Mother of two drowned while swimming. Left behind a loving wife, devoted parents, and one younger brother.

Just another senseless accident, the article declared, but Delaney allowed herself to wonder if that was true or if something more sinister had taken place at the pool where the woman lost her life. She shook the thought from her head and spooned up a bite of egg, smiling when the waitress refilled her coffee again and left the bill.

The bill. Even though she had the money to pay it and leave a nice tip, parting with cash always made her feel a little unsteady. Managing her meager funds had been the hardest part in the beginning. She’d spend too much on things like hotels and food and then not have enough money to fill up her tank with gas.

The first night she had to sleep in her car in a parking lot in New Mexico had been eye-opening. She’d never let her funds get that low after that. Something always had to give, though. Her three biggest needs were housing, gas, and food, and without fail, one of them always got the short end of the stick. Usually food.

So today she would pay the bill and be grateful and hope this new job paid enough to keep her fed and warm. All she needed was enough money to fund her trip south and out of the cold. And the sooner, the better because all Philadelphia did, shrouded in clouds and snow, was remind her of home.

Checking the time, she shoved the money for the check into the folder and left it next to her plate before slipping out into the cold. The wind had died down, but it was starting to snow, and she was grateful she’d traded in her used sedan for the SUV back in Ohio. Even if it did take a little coaxing to start when temps were below freezing.

She patted the wheel and whispered encouraging words as she cranked the engine and held her breath through the clicks until it finally roared to life.

“Good girl,” she crooned, giving the dashboard a gentle pat.

She had time to kill and had spotted a library in her perusal of the area. She wanted to know more about her new boss, and while she could do the research on her phone, reading anything on the tiny screen for more than a few minutes gave her a headache.

She took a ticket for the private parking lot to avoid the meters and reminded herself to ask if they validated parking. The lot was mostly empty, but she parked at the back anyway, angled away from the security cameras she’d spotted on her way in.

At this time of day, the library was filled mostly with parents trailing behind young children and older people who were escaping the cold and the boredom. The atrium echoed with her footsteps, and she followed the signs to the bank of computers on the second floor.

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