Lie to Me by Gracen Miller Read Free Book Online

status. He didn’t care that her stupid daddy saved another, but he loved his mother and would do anything for her.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Stone said obediently, while disliking the haughty way the urchin stared him straight in the eye. He bided his time, playing nice, showing her to the school, the meager room she’d share with her mother, all the while intending to teach her a lesson the moment they were alone.
    Once they were finally unaccompanied, he’d turned on her. “You have to obey me in all things.”
    She’d blinked up at him, her emerald eyes too green and too big for her face. And for one weird moment, he’d felt the need to protect her, until she said, “Make me, pretty boy.”
    They’d spent the next week in a war of wills. Neither winning, but the pranks he’d plotted against her had been the most fun he’d had in a long time.
    Then he’d caught her on the banks of the river that ran behind their house, and she’d been cupping a toad of all things. The girls he knew ran screaming from frogs, but not this one. Nope. She’d offered to share her new capture with him, and then belly-laughed herself silly when it peed on him.
    They’d spent the next hour conspiring to secure it a home in an old aquarium he’d found among his family’s stash of relics. They plotted out a care regimen, taking turns and sharing the load of tending for the creature. A week later the amphibian died. Broken hearted, she’d cried, big huge tears rolling down her cheeks, and he’d held her as she wept against his shoulder.
    ––––––––
    “I hate it when you think about her.” James’s grumble jerked Stone out of his memories. “You get moody when she’s on your mind.”
    Nothing to say to that, Stone poured a finger of cheap whiskey and tossed it back. The spirits burned a path to his gut. He despised economy liquor. Not because he was too good for the cheap brand, but because his refined palate preferred the higher grade. But when slumming it was best not to draw attention by buying the better stuff.
    “What would you do if you discovered Mack Ellason was Kella?” James nursed his shot, eyeing Stone over the rim of his glass.
    That was the million-fram question. “No idea.”
    “You’d be the butt of her joke, you know, and everyone would know it.”
    Stone grunted and downed another shot, relishing the burn because it distracted his thoughts from his wife.
    “ If she’s Kella, she had all of you thinking she was dead, while starting a new life with a lucrative business.”
    “It’s all speculation anyway.” And again why would Kella leave him? Certainly she knew his intentions had been above par when he purchased her? Hell, he’d planned to grant her freedom in a few years. “I doubt it’s even her. Without an R-scanner we can neither prove nor disprove this line of thinking.”
    James set his chair on the floor and leaned his elbows on the table. “My friend, if she’s Kella, you must consider she had help. A fourteen-year-old girl doesn’t succeed with something this huge on her own.”
    He’d already given the same thought some consideration. It’d also be why someone of Mark Evans’s standing would know of her real identity because he’d been very sure Kella was very much alive.
    “Yeah. I should’ve looked at her papers.” If they met inspection, he’d know someone had aided her flight because passable paperwork came with a high price. He’d been told she left with nothing but the clothes on her back, no cash and no jewels missing. “A young girl shouldn’t have survived the badlands. Not alone and not without help.”
    “The Feeders should’ve gotten her.” James perched his chair back on two legs once again.
    Stone nodded. The Feeders resided in the badlands and dined on human flesh. His dad was certain she’d died by their hands. They’d found her jacket and knapsack with her blood all over them. His dad had had the DNA matched just to be sure it’d belonged to