Burned: Black Cipher Files #3 (Black Cipher Files series) by Lisa Hughey Read Free Book Online Page A

to go.”
    “I'd like to get that cup of tea with you like you promised, Sunshine.” Zeke smiled easily, glanced at the fancy techno watch on his wrist, then back at my mother. “If that’s okay with you.”
    “It’s my morning to open.” I lied, hoping that I didn’t sound as desperate as I felt.
    Blue looked like he was going to protest. My mother squeezed Blue’s arm, and they gazed at each other with silent communication and...love transmitting between the two of them.
    In that instant, I was lost.
    What about me? I wanted to shout like a little kid forgotten in the backseat of the car.
    “Enjoy your morning. I’ll open.” Mama turned back to us, the intimate glimpse of them gone. “Do you live around here, Zeke?”
    “Just visiting. I...had some time off and thought I’d spend a few days surfing.”
    “Time off in October?” Blue asked.
    “I’m in the private sector now,” Zeke replied. “Hoped Sunshine could join me at the beach for a day.”
    “Sunny doesn’t go to the beach,” Mama blurted out.
    I laughed as if I didn’t have a care in the world. “No time.”
    But he’d picked up on my mother’s statement. I didn’t go to the beach, as far as anyone knew.
    “Really?” Zeke Thorn, whoever the hell he was, gave me a speculative look.
    I had to get him out of here now.
    “Sunny should have you to dinner while you’re in town.”
    Over my dead body. “Sure.”
    My face was stiff with displeasure and worry and a totally fake smile that seemed to be permanently curving my cheeks and hurt like heck. I, we, needed to get out of there before the situation deteriorated any further. “Be back in a bit.”
    I grabbed his bicep, his skin hot against my palm, and tugged him out of the store. The heat rising from his body was immense.
    For a minute, we walked along the sidewalk in silence. His step was jaunty and a little too enthusiastic. After all, he’d gotten what he wanted.
    I should just ditch him but I needed information from Zeke Thorn before I sent him on his way.
    As soon as we were far enough from the shop that my mom and Blue couldn’t see my animosity, I asked abruptly, “How did you know my mother’s name?”
    “I asked about you and someone told me your last name.”
    Which sounded good, except he was lying. If he’d asked about either of us, the gossip network in our small, close-knit town would have kicked in and someone would have called to tell us a stranger was asking around. “Really?”
    “It’s been my experience,” he shot me an inscrutable look, “that lying about a situation tends to backfire on you. After I was a T.A. in physics at Cal Poly, of course.”
    “Okay. Fine. I’m a liar.” But so was he.
    “Why’d you pick physics?”
    “Because I audited a physics class there.”
    He gave me a long silent look. An indecipherable question in eyes the same blue as the pictures I’d seen of the ocean surrounding the Hawaiian islands.
    What the hell.... “And in my experience most surfers have at the very most a rudimentary understanding of physics. It seemed like a good fit.”
    “You lie well under pressure.”
    “Yippee. Something to be super proud of.” I decided beating around the bush was pointless. And I purposefully chose an incendiary word to raise his defenses. “Why are you stalking me?”
    “I’m not trying to stalk you,” he said with exasperation. “I wanted to thank you one more time. Properly.” He sounded sincere and he kept his body language relaxed, leaning slightly toward me, which usually meant sincerity. But I could sense, at the very least, he was not telling the whole truth.
    I needed to find out why he was coming after me. It couldn’t be as simple as a thank you, could it? “Really?” I injected as much cynicism into that one word as I possibly could.
    He looked chagrined, but didn’t answer, instead he countered with a question of his own. “Why didn’t you want them to know you were on the beach?”
    “None of your