Silent Scream by Karen Rose Read Free Book Online

to know it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse.
    The call had pulled her from sleep. The mental picture was a distracting one. She’d forgone her usual neat French braid, instead
     pulling her blond hair into a ponytail so severely tight that he’d gotten a headache just looking at it. When she wasn’t working,
     she let her hair fall loosely around her shoulders and he had a vague recollection of how it felt between his fingers.
    He swallowed hard. He had a vague recollection about a lot of things, none of which he had any business thinking about right
     now.
    How many times in the last seven months had he almost knocked on her door? Too many. He’d about given up waiting for her to
     come to him. And then tonight, here she was. She’d felt it, whatever it was between them. He’d seen it in her eyes. So he’d
     wait a little bit longer.
    How much longer? How much longer before you either fish or cut bait?
    “So?” said a voice behind him.
    David whipped around and Micah Barlow jumped backward, his eyes focused on the pike pole David clutched in his hand. “Don’t
     sneak up on me like that, Barlow,” he gritted between clenched teeth, then made himself relax. “What do you need?”
    Micah’s gaze flicked from the pole to the gatethe uniformed guard had just pulled closed behind Olivia’s car, then back to his face. “She really doesn’t like you. Why?”
    David felt his face heat. “That’s none of your business.”
    Micah frowned. “Yeah, it kind of is. But we’ll deal with that later. For now, I want you to walk me through exactly what happened
     tonight, from the minute you got here until the minute you walked out of the building with that damn jelly ball in your hand.”
    Annoyance spurted and with it the desire to tell Micah to stay the hell away from Olivia Sutherland.
But it’s not my business either
. Not yet anyway. If he had his way, that would change, very soon. For now, he’d do his job.
    “It wasn’t a jelly ball,” he said. “The ball was solid glass. It was just covered in gel.”
    “That’s a start. So take me through it, step by step.”
    Monday, September 20, 2:00 a.m.
    He flipped on the tube and sat back in his easy chair, nursing the beer he allowed himself after snagging a new “client.”
     Tonight he’d earned the whole six-pack, but he never allowed himself more than one. Drunk men made stupid mistakes. He should
     know. The stupid mistakes of drunk men accounted for a good portion of his business.
    Remote in hand, he viewed the DVD he’d burned, smiling as smoke filled the screen. Every word the quartet had spoken was discernible.
     Some parts were louder than others, but the audio was crisp because his equipment was top-of-the-line. Skimping on equipment
     was bad economy in the long run.
    And I plan for the long run
. He looked around his small apartment. It was stark, utilitarian. But eventually his bank accounts would plump enough for
     him to buy an island villa staffed with discreet servants. He already knew which villa he’d choose. It was currently owned
     by a wealthy politician with a very nasty proclivity toward underage youths. The politician actually believed he’d be free
     when he’d finished depositing his blackmail payments into an offshore account in small, monthly installments.
    His marks always believed they’d be free.
That I’ll be satisfied and go away
. But he never went away. He just quietly raised the price, and his marks always paid.
    Because he chose his marks wisely, just as he’d done tonight. These four had parents who’d be willing to sacrifice a great
     deal to keep their darlings from going to prison. And prison was exactly where they’d go. They’d been very naughty, setting
     a bad fire. Two people were dead. Of course the guard belonged to him, but he was quite willing to give the College Four the
     credit. They’d walked away from a screaming teen, left her to die. The cops would have no trouble