The Best Victim (Kindle Serial) Read Online Free PDF

sections, knowing that the conversations on these websites often were both personal and painful.
    “ They’re just stupid trolls ,” she’d warned Rachel the day her sister called in hysterics over a rash of particularly cruel comments, “ pathetic losers who’ll say anything to get a reaction. They’d come out against fresh air, sunshine, even the damned Easter Bunny if they thought it would get them five minutes’ attention. ”
    Recalling what Durant had just said about the other victims’ tragedies, Lauren asked him, “What kinds of tragedies? Were there similarities?”
    “Sad stuff, all of them.” His mouth tightened before he added, “You’re sure you want to hear the details?”
    No , she wanted to shout, but she had to understand. Had to know if Durant could be right—or if he was completely insane. “Yeah.” She nodded. “I have to know.”
    “One was a young mother whose baby died after she absentmindedly left him to roast in her hot car. There was a teenaged girl, too, who’d been blogging about her struggles with anorexia for about six months when another set of parents accused her of ‘encouraging’ their daughter to starve herself to death. And then there was the woman whose—”
    “Enough, please.” Lauren raised a hand, bile burning in her throat. Sickened, she turned her head and stared out the window at the bleak, brown farmland sliding past, stark behind the rippling veil of snow.
    “I’m sorry,” he said somberly. “It’s just—I know you’re already in shock, overwhelmed.”
    “Don’t tell me what I’m feeling,” she interrupted, too upset to care that he was right on both counts. Not when he’d added raw fear to the mix. Fear that she was blinded by grief—and as crazy as her captor for believing anything that came out of his mouth.
    “I think I do know,” he had the balls to answer, “I know because I’ve—”
    “You’ve what ? Delivered bad news to a lot of people? Abducted them from their homes, too?”
    He glanced over, his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. “I am not abducting you.”
    “You scared me half to death at the house. You still do.”
    “I’m only trying to make sure you’ll listen long enough for me to explain the truth to you. The truth you’ll never get from the police, the FBI—not from anyone but me. I’m giving you the information I’ve spent the last year gathering, and I’m letting you decide for yourself if you want to help me catch your sister’s killer.”
    “And if I don’t believe you?”
    “Then when we get to Austin, you’re free to go and grieve your sister’s suicide.”
    As the flurries in the headlights dwindled, sunset peered beneath the cloud cover to stain the flat horizon as red as fresh-spilled blood. She wasn’t ready to let her fury die, too, to leave herself in the grip of an endless winter mourning and questioning her sister’s choices. Questioning, too, whether her own first instinct—that Rachel never could have done this—had been right, or she was merely being sucked into Durant’s delusion.
    “I’ll listen,” she agreed. “I’ll listen and then decide. But first I want to know, when did you meet Rachel? What did you talk to her about?” Why didn’t you protect her, even from herself?
    “She agreed to meet about a week ago, at a coffee shop.”
    Her gaze narrowed. “Which coffee shop?”
    “Ah, I don’t recall the name. Some trendy little place on Chicon Street—great espresso.”
    Lauren nodded, remembering her sister taking her there on one of her rare visits. Rachel had started mooching the shop’s free Wi-Fi back in college, but the hazelnut lattes were what kept her coming back long after leaving school to work in hospital billing.
    Still, Lauren reminded herself that anyone could figure out as much about Rachel’s habits by checking out her Facebook page or Twitter account, or reading a review of the café she’d posted online somewhere. As often as Lauren had warned