Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor (top fiction books of all time txt) 📗

man who hadn’t even been around for her birth? So that he could take pride in his off-spring?

She felt betrayed in every sense of the word, belittled by what he’d done.

She realized abruptly that she did believe every awful thing they’d said about Miles Cavendish, as hard as it was to accept. It was accepting that his blood ran through her veins that she was having trouble with.

She hadn’t believed him when he’d spun her the tale about her mother. She hadn’t wanted to believe it and therefore she’d tried to keep an open mind. Deep down, she’d felt the entire time that he was a liar. She didn’t know him, but she knew her mother. There was just the two of them. They’d been close enough that she felt like she knew her mother better than anyone. The very fact that her mother had never said one word about him seemed proof positive that he was a liar. She didn’t believe her mother would’ve stayed on the run throughout her life without a reason.

And that reason had to be that she was terrified of the man she’d married. If it had been a ‘misunderstanding’ as he claimed, she might or might not have reconciled with him, but it seemed probable that she would’ve vented about it—at least at some point.

She’d never understood why her mother kept them on the move. There’d been many times when she’d resented it, become angry and argued with her mother and just generally been a pain in the ass. She had a hard time making friends. She didn’t fit in easily and it had made her miserable every time she made a friend and then had to give them up until she’d finally ceased even trying to connect. She’d nursed a lot of resentment toward her mother because of it.

And to think all that time her mother was just trying to protect her!

She was so sorry she’d doubted her mother, angered that her mother hadn’t trusted her enough to explain it.

She must have found out what he was doing, Anna thought abruptly. She must have discovered he was a terrorist!

* * * *

Anna was huddled in a tight ball in the middle of his bed when Simon entered the room. He checked momentarily, his gaze flickering over her, and then continued inside.

Grabbing his easy chair, he pushed it closer and settled in it, studying her, trying to read her ‘tells’ as he generally did with prisoners. He discovered she was much harder to read than his usual suspect, mostly because he was having trouble putting it out of his head that she was in his bed. She was still shaken. He could see that, badly, but was it only shock? Or was guilt, at least a little, behind her nervous movements?

“Where am I?”

“I’ll ask the questions.”

Her lips tightened. The show of spirit, minor though it was, surprised him.

“Just tell me one thing. Are you … some sort of … thug? Are you after him because he cheated you? Or … what?”

Anger washed through him. He supposed, given the way they’d taken her, he deserved it, but it still pissed him off. “I’m High Guardian—head of the Watchmen.”

She frowned, turning that over. “That’s territorial lawmen, right?”

“It is.”

She lifted her head and looked around. “This isn’t a jail.”

And this interview wasn’t going the way he’d expected either! “The Watch Center was damaged when the bomb went off. I was in it at the time, so I think you can probably understand that I’m pretty fucking pissed off.”

Her gaze flickered over him. He didn’t doubt she was assessing the damage. She looked away after a brief appraisal. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. I didn’t even know about it.”

“I guess it’s unanimous, then. Air-breathers don’t give a fuck what happens here.

One would’ve thought it would warrant at least five seconds on the news considering the death toll.”

She blinked at him, turning red, and cleared her throat. “I don’t actually watch the news. It’s always depressing.”

“That’s a little dangerous in this day and time, isn’t it? Not keeping abreast of the weather at least.”

She shrugged. “Water City always sounds the early warning if there’s dangerous weather headed our way. In any case, I’d notice if my neighbors broke their moorings and moved away.”

“Would you?” he asked dryly.

“Maybe not,” she admitted uncomfortably. “But I always have an assistant to keep me informed.”

“Tell me about Paul.”

Anna felt her face heat with embarrassment. “I don’t really know much about him. When I fired my last assistant, the research center sent him over—the company funding my project. He had all the right papers. I just assumed he’d been thoroughly checked out.”

“You said you’d found out that your father was your patron and he’d sent Paul.”

She shrugged. “Either he was lying about being my sponsor or he owns the company or some part of it. I don’t know. I don’t even know if what he said about Paul was true. Although ….”

“Although?”

She lifted her hands to her cheeks. “He … uh … I thought he liked me, you know? He acted like he did. Anyway, he told me he was a member of Humans for Humanity and kept trying to talk me into joining them. I’m not really much for socializing, though, you know? And I also didn’t think it was a very good idea to get personally involved with my assistant, but he said they were having a get together, a party, to welcome new members and talked me into going with him. I actually