Midnight Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

least in hiding. And of course the huge question was—why? Did she dare ask him? This Jack was so formidable she was almost scared of him. But her curiosity was greater than her fear.
    How had he remained hidden for six whole months? He belonged to one of the most famous families in America. Had he been in Washington all this time? Had he actually been living on the streets or was that a disguise? And above all—
why
? Why let everyone think he was dead?
    Was it possible that he was in some way responsible for the Massacre? The instant she thought that, she jerked it right out of her head.
    No. The one thing she knew about Jack, over and above anything else, absolutely integral to his personality, was that he loved his family. The idea that he could hurt a family member, cause the death of a family member—no. Simply wasn’t possible.
    But killing someone else? This Jack Delvaux looked perfectly capable of that.
    Summer had never liked beating about the bush. She put down her knife—she didn’t know whether to be happy or angry that Jack didn’t seem to even notice she had a very sharp knife in her hand—and turned to face him.
    “Why?” she asked. “Why did you let everyone think you were dead? Why have you been living on the streets these past six months?” And then a horrible thought occurred to her. “Did
Isabel
think you were dead? Did you let your sister mourn all these months?”
    Isabel and Jack shared a special bond. Had he let Isabel grieve the loss of her entire family when her beloved brother was still alive, but in hiding?
    Nothing moved on Jack’s face. Nothing. He’d had such a mobile face as a young man, flickering through ten different emotions in so many minutes. That had gone. His face right now could have been carved out of stone.
    “She knows now,” he said finally. And said nothing else. If Isabel had recently discovered he was alive after all, surely...surely that must have been an incredibly emotional moment. And yet you wouldn’t know anything of that from Jack’s expression.
    “
Why?
” Summer asked again, everything she was feeling in her voice. “Why disappear?”
    Jack didn’t answer. He simply stood there and looked at her. So intensely his eyes were tracing her face as if they were fingers, touching every tiny muscle to trace out her intentions. She stared right back, memorizing this new Jack, with lines in his face and hard blue eyes and a grim mouth.
    The entire summer she’d spent with Hector and during the brief whirlwind affair she and Jack had had at Harvard, she had never seen Jack not smiling. Right now, it felt like the face she was looking at had never smiled and never would.
    “Are you going to write about this?” he finally said.
    “What?”
    “Are you going to write about this in
Area 8
? That you saw me, that I’m alive?”
    Well of course
, she wanted to say, but held her tongue. It was the biggest story imaginable. Jack Delvaux alive.
    He tilted his head, studying her. “You’d be crazy not to. Be a big story.”
    She said nothing. There was a
but
coming.
    He stared at her, intense blue eyes unblinking. “But I’m going to ask you to wait. An article now would ruin everything, but I can’t say more than that. Don’t run it.”
    Summer blinked. This sounded very much like a command. From a very big, rough guy who was undercover. A man she realized now she didn’t know at all.
    She swallowed. “Don’t run it or...what?”
    An impatient gesture of one of those huge hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you mean. Jesus, Summer. You know me better than that.”
    She slowly let out the breath she’d been holding. “I’m not a fool, Jack. Something big is at stake and it concerns a terrorist attack that claimed over seven hundred lives, including the man—your father—who was supposed to be our next president. Whatever is going on must be very serious if it forced you undercover for six months, and forced you to let your sister