Into the Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

trust anyone else.” He looked down at her body. “It has always been just me and her.” He stroked her arm up and down with his knuckles as if she was sleeping soundly while he admired her. But the bullet hole in her forehead allowed for no such illusion. He looked away from her and back at me. “The plan was to steal the blood from you in the last moment to keep you out of the loop for as long as possible. We didn’t want any loose threads. But Shadowface’s attack was much more difficult to predict than we thought. More…explosive.” He set Ashley’s arm on the floor gently and stood to his feet. His eyes went to Samuel who stiffened slightly. “You told her that Shadowface would meet with her today. You said that she would be here, but you already planned to stop using Ashley, didn’t you?”
    “We knew her time was up,” Samuel answered involuntarily. “We’ve suspected all along that she was playing both sides to see which would come out ahead, but we found that to be even more useful than trusting her completely. It made her predictable. Today Shadowface decided that she was finished with Ashley.”  
    Mitch stood only a foot from Samuel, his teeth grinding against each other. “Do you know how badly I want to kill you?” he asked.  
    “Yes.”
    “Are you afraid of me?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m going to have to use you to get close to Shadowface.” A slight smile formed at the corner of Mitch’s mouth. “I might even make you kill her.”
    Samuel swallowed hard.  
    “Did you know that Shadowface’s real name is Olivia?”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you know that Olivia is my mother?”
    “No.”
    As I listened to them go back and forth, I thought about what Remi had told me about the woman she had seen at the university on the day of the outbreak. Remi suspected that she knew who Shadowface was, and now it seemed that my sister was right. But knowing that Olivia was Mitch’s mother brought a brand new perspective to everything. So, Jeremiah and Shadowface were once romantically involved? I shook my head at the thought. This whole conflict—the dead bodies on the ground, the war among us—seemed to have spawned from some twisted family dispute that was at least twenty years old.  
    I looked back at Ethan who hadn’t yet moved. The more seconds that passed, the less likely it would be that he was still alive. It made me hate Mitch all the more. It made me want to kill him. I wished more than anything that I could have found some way to thwart his hold over me, but I could think of nothing. I could only stand there, waiting for him to kill me.  
    “How many people know the identity of Shadowface?” Mitch asked Samuel.  
    “Your father,” Samuel said, “myself, and you.” He nodded at me. “And I assume Waverly too.”
    Mitch shook his head and started walking toward me. He stood by me and looked out the window at Ethan’s body on the ground. I studied Mitch’s expression for a brief moment and saw a change in his eyes. I don’t know what it was, but it seemed for a second that he felt like he shouldn’t have done what he did, that it had been wrong to take his anger out on me like he did. But when his eyes met mine again, any emotion of guilt he might have felt disappeared, and was replaced with anger.  
    “Do you know about Miss Waverly’s power?” Mitch asked Samuel.  
    “She can see the future by a simple touch,” he answered. “Paxton informed Shadowface of this.”
    “Does my mother want her blood?”
    “She wants to test Waverly, yes. She has been interested in her for some time. First, for the blood that you apparently drank, and second for her own ability. She wants to take Waverly alive.”
    Mitch only stared at me when Samuel explained this to him. He looked at me from head to toe as if to study me, to take me in fully. He shook his head. “She’s not going to get that chance.”
    “Are you going to kill me?” I was asking out of desperation. I didn’t want to