Don't Say a Word Read Free

throat. Hesitated. Looked almost sheepish. Then a frown pulled at his mouth. “Later that night, she disappeared.”
    â€œYou reported her missing?”
    â€œNo. I thought she’d just left. Me.” His eyes darkened with hurt. “Figured I’d scared her off, or the ring wasn’t expensive enough.”
    Damon contemplated his brother’s declaration. He sounded serious.
    â€œI’ve never known you to fall for a woman, Antwaun.”
    Antwaun shrugged his blue denim-clad shoulders. “Never thought I would either.”
    Damon’s neck tightened as he parked the black FBI-issued sedan in the drive of his parents’ antebellum home. Since his last visit, they’d painted the house a pale yellow, the trim white. Huge ferns swung from the awning, and his dad had built a porch swing at one end and staged rocking chairs between pots of geraniums. Such a domestic setting.
    So at odds with the Dubois men and their jobs. And now this trouble…
    His mind spun back to Antwaun’s admission. If his little brother had actually fallen in love with Kendra Yates, she must have been pretty damn special.
    But now the woman was dead. Murdered—and they both knew that Antwaun’s relationship with her meant he would be interrogated.
    â€œAll right, Antwaun. Now tell me the truth. Do you know why someone would kill her?”
    â€œNo. Like I told you, I have no idea what happened to her.” His brother shifted, chewed the inside of his cheek, then stared at the woods that backed his parents’ property. A shadow caught Damon’s eye, and he watched a gator slither up onto the bank and settle in the dark bed of weeds, hidden.
    Damon’s gut churned. The cops called Antwaun a chameleon. When undercover, he could change colors to blend in with any background. Like the gator who hid in the spiny shadows of the weeping willow.
    But Antwaun also had a temper, and a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also liked to break the rules and push the limits. And sometimes he played the role of undercover bad guy a little too convincingly. His hotheaded temper had landed him in jail a few times when he was younger, and Damon and Jean-Paul had bailed out his ass, although they hadn’t been happy about it. And even in the service, he’d walked a fine line between fighting the enemy on the field and ending up in the brig for insubordinate conduct.
    Damon studied the rigid set to his jaw as Antwaun climbed out. There was more to the story than he was telling. Something Antwaun didn’t want him to know. Something about Kendra Yates? Or was it about himself and their relationship? What else had happened between them?
    * * *
    L EX V AN W ORMER WATCHED her sleep.
    Crystal, he called her, because she had no name. Not that she knew of anyway.
    Still, in spite of the way she had come into his life, she was an innocent angel shining light on his darkest hour. Like a rare piece of cut glass or a precious gem he’d discovered buried in graveyard dust.
    At a time when he hung in limbo, he’d found a kindred soul.
    Restless, tortured sounds erupted from her throat, drawing his aching eyes to the pale column of her neck. Whispers of fear echoed in her cries. Moments of reliving such horrid pain that even he felt like weeping from the misery.
    He had known misery himself.
    He had also caused it some, for which God would never forgive him.
    He tucked the sheet gently around her slender, quivering form, then laid a hand against the silky hair that fanned across the hospital pillow. His breath caught in his throat as he waited for her to turn and scream, then jerk away from his touch. Yet she nestled farther into the bedding and turned to press her cheek against his scaly hand.
    Tears of joy dampened his eyes. She trusted him. Needed him. And had accepted that he was grotesque from the disease that chewed away at his flesh. And not with his birth as a dark soul. One