Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly blog hop in which writers are challenged to post six paragraphs, no more and no less, from a published work or work in progress and then invite other writers, readers and random bloggers to read, critique and comment. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Sneak Peek is from Pool, my current work-in-progress. To set the scene, my heroine and her friends have spent their first night in the abandoned mine she has inherited and are beginning the clean up…

Norah rested her hands on the desktop and bent her head. “I don’t know what you want me to say and I don’t know why I have to say anything anyway. I’m sorry he doesn’t meet your standards of what makes a good boyfriend. You have my permission not to date him.”

“Okay, okay! I just—What the hell is this?”

Norah looked up. Hayley was looking down. She had swept the corner clean around the impressive bulk of the safe and out toward the middle of the room as she’d been talking and had uncovered part of a dark stain, invisible beneath the dust, but black against the floorboards.

“Ink?” Norah guessed, but even as she said it, her eyes moved to the inkwell on the desk. The reservoir was the size of a bottlecap. The bottle from which it was supplied could have held another ounce or two, but it was powdered. It would have taken the contents of several bottles to make the stain…and Hayley was uncovering more and more of it.

“It has to be ink,” Norah insisted, but her stomach didn’t believe her and neither did Hayley.

Sweeping faster, Hayley uncovered the whole stain and stood slowly back from it. It dominated the room, stretching from its narrowest edge past the desk almost to the door, where it spread out in a great pool…with a pale impression at its center that, with a little imagination, might have been a man’s upper body and outstretched arm.