Abandon Read Online Free PDF Page B

me scream and gone to call 911, no one was going to come to my rescue.
    Good evening. Tonight marks the ten-year anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera, who vanished without a trace from the tiny Floridian island of Isla Huesos while taking a seemingly innocent bike ride one hot September night.…
    “Are you
threatening
me?” I demanded, putting my hands on my hips, trying to appear braver than I actually felt. Because what I felt was utter terror.
    I didn’t realize he’d been moving closer as he spoke — I’d forgotten he possessed the ability to step as lightly as a cat when he chose to. This time, the dried-out poinciana blossoms hadn’t made a sound beneath those steel-toed boots — until he was standing six inches away from me.
    The closer he came, the harder my heart began to hammer. Not just because of what I was afraid he might be planning on doing to me, but because I was noticing all those little things about him that were so aggravatingly attractive. Up close, his eyes were as light as mine were dark…only mine, I knew, were a
warm
brown, with spots of amber and honey in them — as he himself had once informed me, in a tenderer moment between us.
    Which isn’t exactly a compliment if you think about it, since both amber and honey are sticky, gooey substances that bugs get trapped in.
    His eyes were filled with the exact opposite — flecks of steel, one of the hardest metals on earth.
    A fact that was hard not to notice, with his face just inches from mine.
    “Threatening you?” he echoed, looking down. “With what? What could I possibly do to you? You’re not dead. At least, not anymore.”
    I sucked in my breath, willing my pulse not to pound too loudly, since suddenly it was obvious what was about to happen:
    He was going to kiss me…
    …or maybe, I realized, my heart giving a disappointed little flop, not.
    I’d mistaken the focus of his attention. It wasn’t my lips he’d been staring at, but something farther south…the place where my dress had gapped open, thanks to my having undone the buttons in the front. I’d have liked to think he was attracted to my feminine form — and I had reason to believe that he was.
    But tonight it was what lay inside that gap, dangling from that gold chain I hadn’t removed since the day I died, that had him so interested.
    It was supposed to offer its wearer protection from evil. Or at least that’s what he’d said when he gave it to me.
    But it certainly hadn’t done me any good tonight — or any other time, as far as I could tell.
    It wasn’t until I was standing there in front of him in the cemetery, feeling his soft breath on my cheek, that I realized I’d never even asked if it was all right for me to take it back with me into this world. It hadn’t been stealing, exactly, since he’d given it to me.
    But I’m pretty sure it had been a gift that came with conditions, and one of the conditions had been that I stay in his world, and…
    Well, that hadn’t happened.
    Without any regard to the consequences, he’d said.
    My stomach clenched as I quickly folded my arms to hide both the stone and everything else going on beneath the front of my dress.
    “You still have it,” he breathed.
    His voice didn’t sound like thunder anymore. It sounded exactly the way it had the day we first met, when he’d been so kind and reassuring.
    “Of course I still have it,” I said, confused by his surprise.
    What did he think, that the minute I’d gotten away from him, I’d thrown it under a steamroller or something?
    Then I bit my lip. I suppose he was justified in thinking I might not have wanted to hang on to any reminders of the day I died…or of him. I probably
was
a bit of a fool not to have dropped it in the ocean, old-lady-from-
Titanic
style. Any other girl would have. Actually, most girls probably would have sold it, considering how much I’d been told it was worth.
    What did it mean that I’d