Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy Read Online Free PDF Page B

carefully, Kami almost tripped over the hose.
    The near miss jolted the breath out of Kami for a second. She heard the soft, almost stealthy sound of someone else breathing—which was when an arm locked around her throat and a male voice whispered in her ear: “Don’t move.”

Chapter Five
Listen for a Whisper
    K ami’s fingers bit into a pressure point on the arm at her throat. When the hold loosened, she went down low, keeping her grip steady, and used her body to trip the guy and flip him into the wall. “Rusty!” she snapped. “Quit doing that.”
    Rusty’s eyes gleamed up at her from his crouch, laughing-bright even in the darkness. “I’m keeping you on your toes, Cambridge,” he said. “Transforming you from a simple English schoolgirl to a lean, mean fighting machine.”
    Kami put out a hand and gave him a push on the forehead that tipped him back against the wall. “You’re right, I am feeling meaner.”
    Rusty got up and held the back door open for her because he was a gentleman, even if he was also an incredibly annoying person who kept attacking her. Kami called out for Angela, her voice echoing off all the white surfaces in that spotless kitchen, and Rusty leaned against the doorframe as if all the exertion had exhausted him.
    At first glance, Rusty was a masculine version of his sister—tall, dark, and incurably lazy. He had the same athletic frame, which he draped on walls and furniture as if simply too weak to support himself. He had the same classicfeatures and almost the same black hair, though his was shot with the red highlights that gave him his nickname.
    In reality, Angela and Rusty were markedly different. They were even lazy in quite different ways. Rusty was sleepily good-natured and thought Angela wasted energy being cranky. Angela refused to cope with being hassled by teachers, so she was brilliant at school, while Rusty had failed out of Kingston University after one term.
    Rusty had also been the one to introduce Kami to her one and only boyfriend, Claud of the unfortunate goatee. She didn’t hold it against him: it was hard to hold anything against Rusty.
    “Oh, Rusty, why did you let her in?” Angela said. “We could have just lain down on the floor until she went away. We could’ve had a nice floor nap.”
    “Have you guys eaten?” Kami asked. “I’m starving.”
    “Cooking is so much trouble,” Rusty said mournfully.
    “You could order in,” Kami suggested.
    “Delivery people are so annoying,” Angela responded.
    Kami opened the cupboard doors and began rummaging around for supplies. She found a half-empty packet of pasta and waved it about in triumph. “I’m going to cook something.”
    Rusty drifted over to the kitchen island, where he sank onto a stool. “So little and so busy,” he remarked with solemn wonder. “Like a squirrel.”
    Kami threw a piece of pasta at him. He caught it and then, as if he only worked in fast-forward and slow-motion, brought it gradually to his mouth and chewed it with great deliberation.
    “Rusty attacked me in the garden,” Kami announced.
    “Hey, women pay good money to have me attack them,” Rusty mumbled.
    “That makes it sound as if you’re running a one-man bordello.”
    Rusty leaned his chin in his hand, the effort of keeping his head upright obviously too much for him. “That’ll always be the dream.”
    Women really did pay good money to have Rusty attack them. He rented a room above Hanley’s grocery shop and taught self-defense. It was the sole thing in the world Rusty was passionate about, and that meant Angela and Kami had been jumped at regular intervals growing up.
    “What do you have now?” Kami inquired, chopping onions. “Six clients?”
    “Eight, counting you guys.”
    “You can’t count us,” Angela said, strolling into the kitchen. “We don’t come to your stupid classes, and we don’t pay you.”
    “My parents give me a roof over my head in return for teaching their only daughter to