Halfway Hidden Read Online Free PDF

turned around, quirking her trembling lips into a pale imitation of a smile. Her fingers shook, causing the tumblers in her hand to tap against each other, the light tinkling of glass cutting through the silence like a jagged knife. She sauntered back to the bar with a nonchalance she prayed would fool him. Her only option was to deny everything, make him think he’d got the wrong girl. She needed to act out the role of her life.
    As she walked toward him, each footstep seemed to take forever, and fear exploded in her chest. Murphy watched her intently, his expression guarded, his head quirked to one side as if he was analyzing each action. The way his stare burned into her skin felt like an invasion, making her want to pull up the barriers, rebuild the wall she’d let him demolish. Nausea gripped her stomach when she forced herself to look at him.
    “Who’s Lucy?” She reminded herself not to flinch. She didn’t want him to see her react.  Because he knew her name, her real name; the one she’d tried to bury back in Boston. Hearing it again for the first time in more than a year dragged her back to a past she was too petrified to remember. She thought she’d left it all behind, that she’d shrugged off her old persona like a snake slithers out of its old skin, leaving it on the ground like a relic of the past.
    She should have known her escape was only temporary. She thought she’d been clever, choosing a town where nobody ever came, picking an area that technology hardly touched. She was a fool for thinking she could escape from a man whose obsession bordered on pathological. That’s if she’d been thinking at all. She didn’t even need to ask Murphy why he was there. She knew why—she knew who had sent him. What she didn’t know was whether she would make it out alive.
    She sucked in some air between her gritted teeth and placed the dirty glasses on the countertop. She was still playing the part, trying to keep him guessing; she wouldn’t let him see her break down.
    The edge of Murphy’s jaw twitched, and his earlier, soft gaze seemed ominous. He was a six-foot-three, dirty-blond devil, and it wasn’t her body he was after. It was her soul. It was enough to make her heart slam against her ribcage.
     “I think you know who Lucy is.” Murphy’s tone was even and low. “Lucy Eversleigh, formerly of Beacon Hill, Boston, disappeared fourteen months ago, without a trace.”
    She felt sick at the certainty of his words. It meant he knew, he really knew, who she was.
    Her shaking fingers ached to feel the cool metal of her gun. She started to work through her options, trying to think the situation through, but panic kept clouding her thoughts. She reached out her hand to steady herself on the wooden counter.  Murphy knew enough about her to be sure who she was, that much was clear. To keep denying it was futile; she needed to start planning how to get out of this situation instead.
    “Did he send you?” she asked. Measured breaths kept her heartbeat even enough for her to seem unperturbed on the outside. On the inside, she was a mess of fear and horror.
    “If by ‘he’ you mean your husband, then yes.” Damned if Murphy’s face didn’t look eager and satisfied, like a hunter who loved the thrill of the chase. There was an air of danger behind his words that chilled her to the bone. Rachel hid her hands behind her back, still not willing to let him see the way they trembled.
    Maybe she was too proud to let him know how he’d affected her. Somewhere, buried deep beneath the fear, there was anger too. Not quite fury—that was too strong—but she was more than annoyed she’d let this handsome stranger pull the wool over her eyes. Angry at herself, at him. At David, too.
    She’d thought better of herself than that, and she’d thought better of Murphy, too. Had she really got him so wrong?
    Then terror overwhelmed her again as she remembered crawling on all fours out of the house she shared with