Dark Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

believe him, it didn’t ring true.
    â€œSilk…I mean, Tony…may I ask you a personal question?”
    He stifled a sigh as he steered the car around a sharp bend in the road. She didn’t trust him. He’d seen it in her eyes. He understood it, but he was still surprised that it hurt his feelings.
    â€œYes, of course.”
    â€œJudging by your appearance, you’ve become a very successful man. What do you do for a living?”
    He arched an eyebrow. “It’s legal, I assure you.”
    Sarah blushed. “That’s not what I—”
    Tony laughed. “Ease up…I was just teasing. I own a nightclub in Chicago…actually two, although the second one is about a month away from the grand opening. The first one is called Silk.”
    Sarah looked at him fully then, judging the very cosmopolitan man against the boy she’d known. She knew firsthand that it cost a lot of money to start a business, especially one like that. She was still paying off the loan she’d taken for the renovations on her own restaurant. Silk’s family had been poor—from time to time almost homeless. She thought of the million dollars her father had been accused of stealing and then looked at Silk De Marco anew. Could he have done something like that? Possibly. But the more pertinent question was, would he?
    â€œHow old were you when my father disappeared?”
    â€œSixteen,” Tony said. “I’d just finished my junior year in high school.”
    â€œToo young,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. She couldn’t see a kid pulling off a million-dollar bank heist, then being smart enough to pick a scapegoat and make him disappear in order to point suspicion in another direction.
    â€œToo young for what?” Tony asked.
    Sarah blushed. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken.
    â€œNothing,” she said. “I was just thinking aloud.”
    Tony frowned as he turned off the main road and took a narrow one-lane road that led to his lakefront home. What could she possibly be…?
    Then it hit him, and the shaft of anger that came with that understanding was quick and hard. He slammed on the brakes and then turned to her. Startled by his behavior, Sarah’s first instinct was to reach for the door, but Tony grabbed her by the shoulder before she could bolt.
    â€œMy uncle Salvatore loaned me more than half my start-up money, then co-signed my first loan. I paid him back within two years of Silk’s opening. I didn’t steal the million dollars, and I didn’t kill your father.”
    The anger in his voice made her flinch, but she wouldn’t apologize for what she’d thought. Until she knew the truth about what had happened to her father, she trusted no one.
    â€œI was ten years old when my world fell apart. Within three months of my father’s disappearance, I’d become an orphan. If it hadn’t been for Aunt Lorett, I would have become a ward of the state, and there wasn’t one person in the entire town of Marmet who would have been sorry it happened. I’m not going to apologize for what I asked you. You were the first one I questioned, but you won’t be the last. I didn’t come here just to claim my father’s bones. I’m not leaving until I find the person who killed him.”
    The determination on her face was matched by the fury in her eyes. Sarah Whitman had grown up, all right. She was no longer the helpless, innocent kid he’d last seen crying at her mother’s grave. But what she was proposing was not only foolish, it was dangerous.
    â€œYou can’t be serious,” he said.
    â€œJust watch me,” she muttered.
    â€œWhat do you do for a living?”
    â€œWhat’s that have to do with anything?”
    â€œJust answer me,” he said.
    â€œI own and run my own restaurant.”
    He sighed. “What makes you think you can do something the police