Read Online Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1) by Susan Vaughan - Free Book Online Page A

the dark corners of the room. “I was celebrating the end of basic training with my first pass. A bunch of us guys just got back from a local bar after tossing down more than a few beers. When the cops phoned the base to give me the sorry-for-your-loss speech, I was drunk. Like him.”
    Her heart aching for him, Laura pushed the chair aside and crossed to him. His rigid shoulders didn’t invite cuddling, but she pried open his hand, lacing her fingers with his larger ones. She longed to press her other hand to his whisker-roughened cheek, to trace the groove that had deepened with his emotion. But she didn’t. “You couldn’t have known. And you had a right to celebrate.”
    “A right to celebrate.” He shook his head, then eased his hand away and opened the door. “I knew then I didn’t want to end up like him. I haven’t touched alcohol since.”
    Alcoholism ran in families, so his was a wise decision. Compassion and admiration for him were the last emotions she expected to feel tonight.“Always a clear head, then, cowboy?”
    He barked a laugh. As she’d hoped, her light comment had lifted his dark mood a notch. “Not always, but at least my head’s not pickled.”
    Hell, in the long run, I did leave him. When he said that earlier, she wondered about the bitterness coloring his words. Now she understood. “Instead you’ve taken a long guilt trip. It wasn’t your fault, you know. The drink would’ve killed him one way or another even if you’d been there.”
    “I know.”
    “Do you? Do you really?”
    “Hell, woman. You know me too well. His liver was a sieve. Doctors said he didn’t have long to live anyway.”
    “So let the guilt and regrets go.”
    “And you?”
    His gaze and pointed question kicked her in the chest. Somehow the topic had changed. He’d turned her probing back on her. But she wasn’t ready to delve into their mutual past again so soon. She merely shook her head and shrugged.
    With that, he left the cottage and melted into the night.
    She closed — and locked — the door and checked the gas valve again in the dark. Tight. Of course he’d made it secure.
    She turned on lights in the bedroom and bath and got ready for bed. As she washed her face, she felt the day’s tension and weariness deep in her bones. She barely had the strength to brush her teeth.
    A pounding on the door jarred her awake from dozing on her feet.
    The monster clawed at her. Trapped. Cole had left her, and she didn’t know how to contact him. But would a hit man knock at the door? She nearly giggled at the notion.Dousing the bathroom light, she squinted at the kitchen door. Through the glass, she saw a familiar profile.
    Cole.
    With a small duffel over his shoulder. An overnight bag.
    She didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry or terrified. But her first thought up on the mountain had been correct.
    No escape.
    ***
    Gasping for breath, Laura surged to a sitting position. She shivered. Sweat beaded her brow and chest.
    Three a.m.The dial of her bedside clock cast the only light in the small bedroom. Outside, trees blocked the moonlight from the window. A sleepy chirp was the only disturbance in the night. She lifted the damp hair sticking to her neck.
    The old nightmare.
    She rubbed her eyes to rid her vision of the terrifying kaleidoscope — the spinning car, the screech of metal against metal, the rag doll that wasn’t a rag doll. The blood.
    Oh, God. A thunderstorm of memories crashed around her. She fought to control the anguish that churned like an egg-beater in her stomach.
    Breathe. Count of four in … four out. Four in. Four out.
    The techniques she’d learned from counseling were holding her together now, just barely. Breath control, visualization. She knew what to do, whatever the cause of panic.
    After the attempt on her life, knives and tiny claws and crimson darkness had monopolized the prime-time nightmare slot, and then tapered off. Tonight by popular demand the old rerun