Read Online Darkest Fear by Cate Tiernan - Free Book Online Page B

hair was a very dark red, and I guessed that was the Garrison part.
    â€œWhy are you looking for my mother?” Matéo asked.
    Here we were—the crux of the matter. My throat tightened. “I wanted to tell your mom . . . that her sister is . . . dead.” My voicetrailed off. “My parents died . . . a month ago, at the end of May. Juliana knows. I wanted to tell Donella myself.” A month ago. In some ways it felt like just last week, and in some ways it felt like two years. A lifetime.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” Aly said, and put her hand on mine briefly. I gave her a thin smile and saw that she was younger than I’d first thought—maybe twenty or twenty-one. Matéo looked about the same age.
    It was all so surreal—the truth that my parents were actually dead, that I had driven all this way by myself, that I was now sitting talking to a cousin I’d never known I’d had. I thought of my other cousins, Juliana’s son and daughter, who were eight and ten years younger than me. They lived in Brazil, but I still knew them better, had seen them more, than this cousin just a few states away from Florida.
    â€œI’m sorry too,” Matéo said. “I thought—the way my mom talked, I thought your mom had died a long time ago. But it was recent?”
    â€œUh-huh.” My voice was tiny. “So you were . . . that jaguar outside.”
    Matéo looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Yeah, of course. I found a stranger sleeping in my yard.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “Did you say both your parents died? Was it an accident? A car wreck?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “They were . . . attacked. Someone killed them.” My eyes felt hot and started stinging.
    Matéo frowned. “Oh, no.”
    I nodded, a minuscule movement. “My dad’s heart.” I let out a deep breath. “His heart was cut out. Someone took it. They tried to take my mom’s. But I came back and saw her, and she was alive. For a minute. She looked at me—she looked at me and said, ‘Donella? I’ve missed you.’ Then she died. So I wanted to know who Donella was.”
    â€œOh, how awful,” Aly said softly. “You do look like her, you know. Donella. How did you find out who she was?”
    My face was wet with tears, which I barely noticed. “I found this same picture in my dad’s safe. Later, in my mom’s desk, I found an empty envelope—a letter your mom had sent to my mom. It had this return address on it.”
    â€œHow did you get here? Where do you live?” Matéo asked.
    â€œI drove. My mom’s . . . my car is out front. We live—I live—in Sugar Beach, Florida. A little town by the Everglades, on the west coast.”
    â€œHm,” said Matéo. He and Aly exchanged a look. Leaning forward, he traced around the picture frame with one finger. He seemed to be thinking about something, and I didn’t interrupt him. All I wanted to do was lie down somewhere and cry.
    Aly put her hand on Matéo’s shoulder and rubbed it gently. “It’s weird that your parents were killed, and your dad’s heart was taken,” she said to me, watching Matéo. His face didn’t change. I wondered if Aly was a haguara—if not, she was incredibly accepting of our affliction. “Donella and Patrick—Téo’s dad—were killed too.At first it looked like a car wreck, but there was an explosion and a fire, so the police investigated it. Téo’s parents were inside.”
    â€œOh, no,” I said again. “I’m so sorry.” Was our family cursed?
    â€œThey did autopsies,” Matéo broke in. “Because it was a suspicious death. Their hearts were missing. We figured it must have been some psycho. If there was any evidence, it was burned up.”
    â€œWait—their hearts were