Her Private Avenger. Elle Kennedy

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СКАЧАТЬ find her. I don’t trust anyone else with the task.”

      His lips curled in a sneer. “Funny, you never trusted me before.”

      Kerr uncharacteristically slammed one hand against the desk. “This has nothing to do with the past, damn it. You have to find her.”

      “I’ll think about it.” He sounded like a callous bastard and he knew it. Yet he couldn’t ignore the anger and bitterness yanking at his gut. He’d lost the woman he loved because of this man.

      “I understand your anger and reluctance.” Kerr swallowed. “But you simply have to find her, Adam.”

      Adam. Shit. Now there was a name he hadn’t heard in years.

      “You can pretend all you want,” the other man added, “but we both know you still care for her. And you might be a bastard, but you’d never walk away knowing Morgan might be in danger.”

      Quinn swore under his breath. He loathed this man. Loathed Kerr’s manipulation and arrogance and those guilt cards he liked to throw out whenever it suited him.

      But the son of a bitch was right.

      No matter how bitter he was, no matter how angry and disappointed, if Morgan was in trouble, Quinn couldn’t turn his back.

      Not by a long shot.

      The cabin was deserted and shrouded with darkness as Morgan Kerr let herself in with the spare key she’d found under the porch. Good thing she knew her way around, even in the shadows. During the walk here, as she navigated the dark, slushy woods in the direction of the snow-littered clearing where this little cabin stood, she’d wondered if the place would look the same. If it would feel the same. To the former, the answer was yes. The cabin’s small living room still boasted a sofa with plaid upholstery and a coffee stain on the right arm, the gorgeous stone fireplace, the scratchy forest-green carpet.

      But did it feel the same?

      Not in the slightest.

      Setting her purse on the table in the hallway, Morgan breathed in the scent of mothballs, dust and loneliness. Quinn obviously hadn’t been back here since they’d parted ways, and every inch of the cabin ached with loss. As did her heart.

      A part of her had been hoping she’d walk in and find him here. Big, hard body sprawled on the couch, dark hair messy as always, his piercing green eyes sparkling with love and desire.

      God, she missed him.

       Forget about Quinn. You’ve got bigger things to worry about.

      She approached the sofa and sank onto the plump cushions, a hysterical laugh bubbling in the back of her throat then spilling out and breaking through the silence of the dark room. Oh, yeah, she definitely had bigger things to worry about.

      Like the fact that everyone in her life thought she was crazy and suicidal.

      Morgan released a long calming breath and lifted her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She didn’t care what her father or Tony or those doctors said. She hadn’t purposely driven her car off a bridge.

      Someone had run her off the road.

      Pain seized her insides as she remembered what her father had said when she told him what really happened. You were just imagining things. You were drunk and upset and not thinking clearly. Nobody tried to kill you, Morgan.

      The pain transformed into anger when she thought about the staff at the psychiatric hospital her dad had her committed to. The nurses’ sympathetic stares. The doctor’s patronizing words. And her father’s voice, drifting in from the hallway as he spoke to the doctor.

       My daughter is…ill. She’s suffered with delusions and mood swings all her life.

      Delusions and mood swings, her ass. Sure, she’d been rebellious as a teenager, but that didn’t make her nuts. And was it her fault the press had decided to paint her with the troublemaker brush? Senator’s Wild Child. Senator’s Daughter Caught with Cocaine. Senator’s Loony Daughter.

      The memory of all those newspaper headlines had her clenching her fists in fury. She’d never deserved all those labels, and yet somehow she’d gotten stuck with them, and she’d been spending the past ten years trying to rid herself of the stigma.

      She’d been doing so well, too. Out of the tabloids for years, landed a legitimate job at a respectable magazine, used a pseudonym to build her writing reputation.

      And now…now she was back to square one.

      A wave of frustration crashed into her, causing her to stand abruptly. A plan. She needed a plan. She couldn’t hide out in this cabin forever, no matter how safe she felt here. No matter how close it made her feel to Quinn.

      If she was going to find the answers, then she needed to return to the scene of the crime.

      Autumn. It started in Autumn.

      And that’s where she needed to be.

      The frustration eased, replaced with a rush of determination that coursed through her blood and got her adrenaline going. She was not suicidal or crazy.

      There had been another car on the bridge that night. She’d seen the headlights in her rearview mirror, felt the impact of the other vehicle’s front bumper smashing into her car.

      Which meant someone had tried to kill her.

      And the only reason someone would’ve done that was because of Layla’s disappearance. She’d been investigating her best friend’s vanishing act for almost ten years, and the moment Layla’s remains were found, someone pushed her car off a bridge? It was too much of a coincidence. In fact, it screamed cover-up.

      Lifting her chin in resolve, she headed for the little table next to the front door, where she’d left the purse she’d retrieved from the drawer next to her hospital bed. The small leather bag contained her wallet, ID and credits cards, but she was loath to use anything other than cash in case her father had someone watching her accounts. Which he probably did. She knew he wanted her back in that psych ward, where the doctors could monitor her and make sure she didn’t try to harm herself.

      Her cell phone was mysteriously absent from her purse, but she could walk back to the gas station on the main road and call a taxi from there.

      In the morning, she decided. She wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of walking around in the dark, no matter how well she remembered these woods.

      She dropped her purse on the table and headed back to the sofa. Then she froze.

      Were those footsteps she’d just heard?

      She swallowed hard, then focused on the soft noises coming from outside the cabin. Snap, snap, snap. Twigs snapping.

      Probably an animal. A squirrel scurrying across the clearing, maybe a coyote in search of a midnight snack.

      The noise grew louder, the distinct sound of footsteps climbing up the steps. The creak of the porch as the intruder approached the front door.

      Her СКАЧАТЬ