Known Read Online Free PDF

armed?”
    He pointed at the gun safe with his spatula. “Yes.”
    She stood and moved to a window, pushing aside the heavy curtain. Motionless, she stared out the window for a good thirty seconds. “It sounded pretty far off.”
    “I agree.” Melted cheese oozed out of one sandwich and sizzled in the pan. “Hungry?”
    “Starving.” Gianna sat on a rickety stool at the kitchen island.
    “You’ve been sick,” he stated.
    She frowned. “I wasn’t sick until the fire. I seemed to have had a bad reaction to something I ate or drank, or perhaps to the smoke. My brain is seriously muddled and I honestly can’t remember what happened last night.”
    Chris waited.
    “I had only one glass of wine last night. I think . . . I really can’t remember, but I feel like I’ve been drugged,” she admitted.
    He agreed. From his extensive surgeries, he’d had experience with every kind of prescription pain-killer and could recognize when someone was highly medicated. “You don’t take anything?” he asked. He moved to her side of the tiny island, studying her eyes, trying to get a look at her pupils. Her irises were so dark that the pupils were hard to see. Violet had the same eyes. “Any sore spots on your skull?” He reached out and gently pressed in several areas. Gianna copied his movements, feeling her own skull.
    “Nothing hurts. I wondered if I’d hit my head. That could cause the nausea and headache.”
    “So something was in your dinner. Or wine.”
    Silence dragged between them as they both glanced at the sleeping Violet.
    “What kind of kids has she been hanging out with?”
    “Not the kind who’d suggest she drug her mother,” Gianna snapped. “Especially in the middle of nowhere. What good would that do her? She can’t call anyone or text anyone.”
    Chris held up his hands. “Then what happened?”
    “I don’t know.” Gianna leaned her head back. “I asked myself that during our walk. My arms and legs weren’t behaving the way they should.”
    “I noticed.”
    “Maybe I inhaled something in the burning cabin that affected my motor skills and made me nauseated. But why didn’t Violet experience it? I’m trying to rationalize something to account for it. There’s got to be an explanation.”
    “Maybe,” Chris echoed. Something had definitely affected Gianna. How it had gotten into her system was a mystery. Clearly she was the type of person who needed proof. He strongly suspected she’d been exposed to something that’d made her feel ill, but it appeared she’d need to see a blood test before she’d accept it as fact. He figured it was the scientist in her. She needed to weigh every possibility before drawing a conclusion.
    It wasn’t a bad trait, but he found it a bit frustrating.
    “Back in New York, Violet had started hanging out with the wrong kids,” Gianna said quietly. “I brought her up here so I could spend time with her without being interrupted every ten minutes by her instant messages or email. She’s been very angry with me since we moved. Granted, it’s been only a few months since we left New York, but I’d hoped she’d be over it by now.”
    Chris nodded. Teen angst and issues were foreign to him. He’d been a teen at one time, but his perspective had been severely skewed. Being held in an underground bunker for two years after being kidnapped by a child abuser had given him a history few people could understand. He kept it to himself.
    “She looks just like you,” he commented. The teen had Gianna’s long sleek brown hair and dark eyes, but stood a good three inches taller than her petite mother.
    Pride flashed in Gianna’s eyes. “She does,” she said simply.
    Chris abruptly missed his son. Brian had the dark coloring of his deceased mother, Elena, but looked exactly like Chris as a child. “Violet was terrified when I first got there,” he said. “She’d been awake most of the night, making certain you were still breathing, worried about keeping