Read Online A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense by Ec Sheedy - Free Book Online

get to make that porridge after all.” Again, he drove his fist into Adam’s stomach, and this time they let him fall to the concrete floor. “See you around.” They walked to a car a couple of spaces down, got in, and screeched off.
    Adam curled into a ball, sealed his eyes shut, and moaned.
    “Damn you, Holly . . .”

Chapter 6
    Camryn sat quietly in the rental car’s passenger seat while a morose and brooding Sebastian Solari slowed for the final turn into the cemetery. They drove through an ornate pair of wrought-iron gates.
    If there was such a thing as a perfect day for a funeral, this was it: a pale sun, billowy gray clouds spotting a soft blue sky, and barely breeze enough to stir or loosen the summer-burnt leaves still clinging to the trees scattered among the gravesites. Sad and unlucky trees, Camryn thought, to seed in a burial ground, their twisted roots going ever deeper into the soil, curling into old bones, new deaths.
    “You okay?” Sebastian asked, driving at a snail’s pace along the road taking them to Holly’s service.
    “Been better. You?”
    “I’ll make it.”
    The conversation faltered, so Camryn changed course. “How’s Delores these days. Any change?”
    He slanted her a glance. “Delores? Change? You’re kidding, right?”
    Okay, wrong course. “I talked to Gina the other day. I wanted to visit, but she—”
    When Sebastian’s jaw set hard, she stopped midsentence.
    “She put you off, didn’t she?” he said. “Made some lame excuse about her being too busy.” His hands clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. “She’s bad, you know, and getting worse every day.” He glanced out the driver’s-side window. “Makes me nervous as hell.”
    “How so?”
    “Like mother, like daughter?”
    Camryn shuddered at the thought. “What about the doctor you found for her? Isn’t he helping?”
    “Same old story. Can’t help people who won’t help themselves. I think she’s playing him. And me.” Irritation replaced concern, but he still looked like a man dangling from the end of a frayed rope. It struck Camryn there was something dark and dire about all the Solaris, as if they’d all eaten too much bitter pie. Or someone had thrown acid in their gene pool.
    “If there’s anything I can do, Seb, you only have to ask. You know that.”
    If anyone could play a psychiatrist, Camryn thought, it would be Gina. She was sharp, clever, intuitive—and a brilliant lawyer, or had been until, inexplicably, she walked out on her firm and what Camryn had thought was a stellar career and returned to the lake to live with Delores. Which, knowing Gina’s feelings toward her mother, had shocked Camryn senseless. Then, less than a month after her coming home, there’d been that awful shooting that left Delores in a wheelchair.
    The Solaris weren’t only dark; it seemed they were also doomed.
    “Thanks, but my family is my problem.” His answer was curt, and he went back to staring at the road ahead.
    Camryn resisted the urge to, not so gently, remind him Gina was also her friend and instead said, “You look tired.” The truth. His eyes were ringed, hollow, and he was too pale.
    He shrugged.
    Camryn knew Seb had flown all night and that his insides were as knotted as hers. She also knew nothing in the world would have kept him from Holly’s funeral.
    Unlike Gina. Thinking of her friend brought a surge of irritation along with worry. When she got back to Seattle, she’d march over there, welcome or not, and have a talk with her. There had to be some way of getting her out of that horrific house, getting her to live again. But she’d save those thoughts and plans for later; today was about Holly.
    Her stomach rolled, and she again looked at Sebastian’s sad face. “Seb?” She touched his arm.
    “Uh-huh?”
    “Stay close, okay?” She told herself she was saying this for his sake, to give him something to focus on, but that was only half true. This was a day when a strong