Read Online Night Game by Christine Feehan - Free Book Online Page B

her eyes to adjust to the difference in lighting. The room smelled of gardenias and lavender. A rose-colored sheet covered a gray-haired woman sleeping in the four-poster bed. She looked especially fragile and Flame frowned, wondering why Whitney’s hunter had led her to civilians—unless he’d stolen the Jeep.
    Flame moved with care, not wanting the floorboards to creak as she moved across the room to the door. There was a vanity with an old-fashioned brush and mirror set and several pictures just to the left of the door. Flame glanced at the pictures, trying to make out the faces in the dark. This was a home. It had the bayou trappings, but smacked of money. Somewhere along the line the family had come into money. She wondered if the money had come from Whitney, a bribe for Gator to hunt her down and bring her back.
    Had Gator gone after Dahlia? Poor Dahlia. Flame remembered all of the other girls, every single one of them. Whitney hadn’t been any fonder of Dahlia than he had been of Flame. He’d locked Dahlia up in a sanitarium and kept her from the world, kept her from a home and family—just as he’d done with most of the others one way or the other. Dr. Whitney had experimented on infants, continued the experiments on them as toddlers, teens, and even into their adult lives. He was never going to let them go and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let the world discover what he’d done.
    She looked around her, shocked that Whitney could get anyone to leave such a beautiful home to work for him. The structure had probably started out as a more traditional frame house one and a half stories, with a covered porch or galerie raised on pillars to keep the sill from the soggy ground. The Fontenot farm had a frontage on the bayou to ensure travel on the waterways as well as harvesting the waters. They had plenty of woods for hunting and harvesting trees as well as fields for growing what they needed to survive. From the looks of the house, they’d done well.
    She crept down the hall to the long staircase, studying the layout below her as she went. How had Whitney lured someone like Gator Fontenot into his world of deceit and treachery? This was a home filled with love. She could tell by the pictures of laughing faces. Someone, most likely the woman asleep in the upstairs bedroom, quilted and wove cotton for material. There were beautiful home-crafted items throughout the house, items fashioned with care to detail. Something none of the girls Whitney had experimented on had ever known.
    No wonder they were all so dysfunctional—they hadn’t grown up in a nice family environment with a sweet old lady to cook them breakfast every morning like this one. What had gone wrong with Gator? What would make him trade all that to work for Whitney? A flash of anger curled through her and she felt the house shift ever so slightly. Forcing air through her lungs, she continued moving, trying to think of other things.
    She flashed the small penlight on the pictures above the stairs. Little boys smiled out at her, surrounding an older woman who looked both proud and stern. As Flame moved down the stairs, the boys became older, barefoot teens with alligators and fish, the same silly grins of their faces. She recognized Gator. He seemed the oldest of the brothers with their mops of black, curly hair and bright eyes.
    At the bottom of the stairs was a chest with a marriage quilt thrown over the top of it. Three more chests stood in a row, each covered with a marriage quilt. In spite of the gravity of the situation, Flame found herself smiling. Someone was trying to not so subtly tell the boys something. It was amazing to think that families like this really did exist and Gator had been lucky enough to grow up in one. The knowledge made her angrier at him. It seemed a betrayal, taunting her with the very thing she had craved all her life. She fought back her rising temper. Maybe whoever raised him should have given him a swift kick. It