Little Belle Gone Read Online Free PDF Page A

ass.” His voice was growing agitated, both because of her frustrating calm and because of the unnerving knot the supple line of her jaw stirred in his stomach.
    “The victims were my parents.” The callous tone of the statement, that answered all of his questions so succinctly, would have been believable if he hadn’t caught the quiver of her chin when he whipped to stare at her again. Pulling the car immediately to the side of the road, he slammed it into park and tuned to face her, but she would not look at him. Sighing, he cocked his head slightly. Strangely, she seemed scared right now. A mass of fear and sorrow hidden beneath the smooth sheen of her ivory skin. Suddenly, he saw the truth behind her facade. Though she tried so desperately to hide it, the murder of her parents must have truly marred her soul. The cold nature, the distrust and aggression, even the defensive need to be respected and taken seriously, all stemmed from that one horrible truth. The last of his anger melted instantly. She needed a friend, even if she didn’t want one.
     
    Feeling the softening of his gaze like razor blades on her flesh, she forced herself to face him. The pity in his eyes tied her stomach in knots and made her blood run hot. How dare he pity me ! She seethed inwardly. She had lived through that event and come out strong. She had turned her life into cold ambition, methodically planned, all in an effort to honor her parents and ensure that no other fourteen year old girl would ever have to live the horror she had. He didn’t know her story, and she wasn’t about to tell him. She couldn’t risk deepening that pity any further. Wanting to erase the look in his eyes, she gave him a bit more.
    “They died, yes. I was young, fourteen, when I found them. That phrase was written on the wall in their blood. It just caught me off guard to see it again. I shouldn’t have let the shock affect me as I did. It won’t happen again.” The controlled ice in her voice made his eyes go wide and victory welled in her throat. “Shall we continue?”
    One brow lifted as he studied her face, but she kept her countenance calm and collected, and when he turned back to the wheel, pulling them back out onto the road, she turned to stare out her window again. Satisfied she had told him all he needed, she went over the crime scene in her head. Everything matched so perfectly, right down to the pattern on the dress the desk clerk had been forced into. Doubt sprang into her mind. Perhaps she should have told him more, all of it, but she couldn’t. The memories were far to painful and she didn’t know him, nor did she care to. She would probably have to at some point. After all, she wanted more than anything to catch the monster that had completely destroyed what would have been her normal life. Part of her wanted to tell him, almost ached with the need to confide in him. It was that same small corner of her mind that fluttered any time his blue eyes roamed over her, and it shivered with the need of it. But she had been repressing that part of her, the part that craved the warmth of companionship, since the very day she had woken up in that horrible scene. She wasn’t about to give in to it now, and certainly not with him. He had called her kiddo!
    A few moments later, though an eternity in the awkward silence if his car, they were pulling up in front of her building. How would it feel to walk through the doors now? Knowing that the man who did such deviously horrible things to her family might be targeting her again, at her very front door, no less? Calming herself, at least outwardly, she slid from his car with ease and preceded him into the lobby where yellow crime scene tape still cordoned off most of the expansive room from the public. To her surprise and gratitude, she had come down that morning to face the tarps that had been hung to screen the rest of the tenants from the mess still covering the marble floor. The C.S.I. team hadn’t