Read Online Shrouded in Darkness (Shrouded Series) by H. D. Thomson - Free Book Online

didn’t come here to talk about John.” Malcolm reached over and flipped the light switch with his free hand. He nodded to the computer at Jake’s side. “It looks like you’ve started. Good. I want to know how far you’ve gotten.”
    Jake blinked at the sudden light that flared within the barn. “Turn it off. Margot’ll see it and wonder what’s going on.”
    “Ah, yes. My ex-wife.” Malcolm’s lip curled, but he turned the light off. “I hope you haven’t been stupid enough to tell her about—”
    “Of course not.” Body tensed for any possibility, Jake watched Malcolm edge across the room. “How much does she know?”
    “I don’t know. I have a hard time reading her nowadays. Maybe nothing, maybe everything.”
    “But she was married to you, wasn’t she? She must know something. She can’t be completely in the dark.”
    “She knows only what I want her to know,” Malcolm replied in a hard and ruthless voice. “However she’s also John’s sister.
    He could have told her everything that last week. And if he did, let’s hope she’s smart enough to keep her mouth shut. If she so much as breathes a word to the locals or someone in Boston, her life isn’t worth one of her dime store books.”
    Rage launched Jake across the room. He slammed a shoulder into Malcolm. The semi-automatic tumbled from Malcolm’s grasp and skidded across the floor without firing. He shoved Malcolm up against a table while digging his fingers into the flesh and muscle around his windpipe. Grunting, Malcolm bent backward over the table, struggling to pull Jake off him.
    “Don’t even think it,” he hissed into Malcolm’s ear. “I won’t have it. I’ll not have another death on my conscience. I swear if another person dies, I’ll come after you. Do you understand? Do you?”
    Realizing Malcolm couldn’t answer because of his grip around his throat, Jake eased the pressure. “Do you understand?”
    “Yeees—”
    “Good. Because you can’t hide. You know it. In the dead of night, before you know what’s happened, before you even realize someone’s crept up on you, I’ll have both my hands around your throat, and I won’t let go until I kill you.”
    In utter disgust, Jake flung him away. Malcolm tripped over his expensive wing-tipped shoes, awkwardly twisted at the waist and latched onto the edge of the table with one flailing hand to break his fall.
    Brushing off his hands, weary and sickened, Jake watched Malcolm straighten. “Get out. Just get out.”
    Malcolm lurched sideways and snapped up the gun. With both hands affixed around the handle, he backed up to the door.
    Jake froze. “Don’t do something stupid.”
    “This isn’t over,” Malcolm said between long, shallow gasps. Semiautomatic thrust forward, Malcolm bumped his back up against the door. “That formula’s mine. I’ve got too much money and time riding on it. One way or the other, I’m going to end up with it.” He opened the door. Thick rays of moonlight rushed the room, highlighting everything in its path and the savageness of Malcolm’s face. “You will find the answer.”
    Chin raised, jaw clenched, Jake bit out, “I don’t have to do anything.”
    “True, if you want to stay the way you are—some sick freak.”
    Jake flinched. “Don’t.”
    Having Malcolm say aloud what he’d come to think of himself was far more painful and self-effacing than Jake wanted to admit.
    “Don’t, ‘what’? Tell it like it is?” Malcolm pressed on. “How happy can you be in the state you’re in? Granted, you can do things you’ve always dreamed of, travel anywhere or any place you’ve ever wanted to go. But you can’t be anyone. Not really.
    Maybe at night you can get away with it. But for all intents and purposes, you’re dead. A freak of science. You don’t exist.”
    Malcolm slammed out of the building.
    Chest heaving, fists balled at his sides, Jake stared at the closed door. For several, long, agonizing moments as his heart