Survival Instinct Read Online Free PDF Page B

refusal to believe her. She forestalled the impending argument. “Who is this guy, anyway? Barret? What’s he got to do with me?” And then as something changed in his face, she added, “Or maybe I don’t want to know.”
    But she did.

    His face still stung from her slap. He relaxed only with effort, with his body still pounding at him to finish a fight he’d never really started. She was right enough; he’d left her to it. Not by design, but it hardly mattered. The most he’d done was release the dog. Also not really by design; he’d been headed for his car. So she’d been left alone, and first she’d softened into the woman he’d met a year before, and then she’d—
    Wow. Boy, had she.
    Ellen Sommers. Who’d have thought it?
    They said sometimes head injuries caused a change in personality.
    She dropped her chin, looking at him from beneath those expressive brows in a way that deepened the gray of her eyes. He recognized an ultimatum when he saw it. “Barret Longsford,” he said, “is the son of a senior senator, being groomed to take his mother’s place. He’s also a player. He likes money, he likes power…he likes to get his own way.”
    “And he likes little boys? I dated a man who likes little boys?”
    “Likes them and hates them,” Dave said, unable to help a flinch—there, at the corner of his eye where it always seemed to come out—at the thought of Terry Williams. He did his damnedest to make sure his cases didn’t end like that. “The FBI profiler thinks the perp is killing himself.”
    She looked a little baffled, and the ultimatum turned to a faint knitting between her brows. “That just doesn’t seem—I mean, I just can’t imagine myself dating a man like that.”
    Dave shook his head. “He’s fooling a lot of people, and he’s doing it every day.”
    “And you’re sure I—?”
    “I’m sorry. Yes.”
    “Doesn’t sound like my type,” she muttered, and gave him a deliberate glance. An up-and-down glance.
    Good God. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
    It came only as a second thought that she’d done it on purpose. Manipulating him.
    Oh, yeah, Ellen Sommers had changed all right.
    She moved on before he could call her on it. “I still don’t remember any of it. And why haven’t the Feds grabbed him?”
    He grimaced, a fleeting expression. “You think it’s easy to close in on someone with his influence?”
    The dog decided Dave wasn’t part of the problem and ambled over to the shade cast by the porch, flopping down to maintain his alert watch from there. Ellen let him go; her narrowed gaze stayed pinned to Dave—and then she lifted her head with dawning understanding. “No one else believes you.”
    He did little to hide his annoyance, both because she was right, and because she’d figured it out at all. “They can’t afford to believe me. Not with the little evidence we’ve got.”
    “But you know better,” she said flatly.
    He did. He was the only one who’d received a phone call from Barret Longsford, a condolence call for Dave’s failure to find Terry Williams in time. On the surface, a perfectly normal call, made by a man with political aspirations who’d been questioned simply because, like Ellen, he’d been in the park the day Terry disappeared. But his voice…
    Something in his voice had chilled Dave on the spot. He’d made the required polite small talk, all the while his mind racing, trying to make connections…
    He couldn’t. Not then, not now. Not the solid connections necessary to push an investigation, not when the feebs had already been warned to tread lightly—and when they were just putting up with him after his failure.
    Good health insurance, good retirement benefits, a chance to keep jobs about which they were otherwise passionate…Dave didn’t blame them for their caution.
    But Dave paid for his own bennies. He had nothing to lose.
    Nothing but an already damaged reputation.
    Ellen waited, more patiently than