The Betrayed Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d kept her life simple by avoiding anything beyond surface-level relationships, but she’d come to Calais to find her family. She couldn’t have it both ways. If she wanted a family, she had to drop her guard, at least where her sisters were concerned.
    She pushed herself off the counter and headed upstairs for the first time. She paused on the landing, trying to remember what Alaina had told her about the layout. Right was Purcell’s office. Left was the girls’ room—the room Alaina had been staying in when she was attacked.
    Danae took one step in that direction, then froze. Was she ready to see the place where she’d spent her very limited childhood in Calais? If she had no memory of that room, then the chances of her remembering anything were so minuscule as to not exist. Not that she’d had any concrete expectation of remembering things she’d last seen at two years old, but she’d hoped for an emotional tug—something that let her know a piece of this place was part of her.
    Something that let her know where she fit.
    Abruptly, she turned and headed in the opposite direction, to her stepfather’s office.
    Coward.
    Ignoring the voice in her head, she increased her pace. Plenty of time existed for her to see her childhood bedroom, she argued. She had no reason to try to force it all into one afternoon. When she was comfortable with the house, she’d go to the room.
    Or when she was ready for the disappointment.
    Sighing, she pushed open the last door in the hallway and reached inside for a light switch, hoping the power had been miraculously restored. No such luck. She stepped inside the room and flicked the switch up and down to no avail. It figured. First thing tomorrow, she’d ask Zach to look at the electrical problems, starting with this room.
    The light from the balcony was the only source of illumination in the office. The lack of windows and cherrywood bookcases that lined every wall made it so dark it was impossible to see more than the dim outline of office furniture. She cursed under her breath at her lapse of logical judgment. Alaina had told her about the flashlights in the laundry room. She should have grabbed one before coming up here.
    She backed out of the room, but as she started to turn, she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye. She froze and stared into the darkness at the far end of the room, where she’d seen the flicker of movement. Nothing moved there now, but everything in Danae screamed at her that she was not alone in the house.
    She whirled around and ran all the way downstairs and back into the kitchen, where she’d left her purse. It was still on the kitchen counter, and she snatched it up. From the inside pocket, she drew out the nine millimeter she was never without.
    Let that be a lesson.
    With the distraction of Zach Sargent, and her first visit to her childhood home, and her conversation with her sister, she’d forgotten to keep protection within arm’s reach. Her sister’s attacker was dead and gone, but more than one danger could exist.
    Even in the same house.
    Clenching the pistol, she eased down the hallway and across the entry to the laundry room. Two flashlights and a lantern were located right where Alaina had said they’d be. She clicked on a flashlight to make sure it worked, then headed back upstairs to the office.
    She crept down the hallway toward the office and paused just before the doorway, listening for any sound of movement inside. Not even a breath of air swept by, so she stepped into the doorway and turned on the flashlight, shining it in the corner where she’d seen the movement.
    The corner was empty, but the last bookcase appeared to have an odd angle to it—one that didn’t fit with the other wall. Clenching the flashlight in one hand and her pistol in the other, she stepped across the room to the back wall, where she was surprised to find a narrow opening at the back of the wall. When looking into the room from