Read Online Surrender by Stephanie Tyler - Free Book Online Page B

then he was really and truly burying Section 8 forever. “Do you know names of people Powell killed?”
    She blinked, played with the half-empty bottle for a moment before telling him, “My mother, for one. And you’ve already told me he killed your father.”
    “Do you know who my father was?”
    “Darius.”
    He took a step back like she’d physically pushed him. “You knew him?”
    “Yes—I knew him and Adele. I knew you were coming for me—I just didn’t know exactly when.”
    “If you knew I was coming, why didn’t you run?”
    “Where would I go? I’m tired of running. I was finally happy here.”
    “You have no survival instinct,” he told her, and no, he wouldn’t feel guilty about this. He was so tired of that, and it was heavy and he’d burdened himself with it for so long, he was pretty sure he’d never see himself clear of it.
    “What if you’re my survival instinct?” she asked.
    “Don’t you do that—don’t you make me that.”
    She smiled a little, as if she knew that thought was more frightening for him than facing down the barrel of a Sig. “Your father used to fish down by the docks.”
    “Don’t,” he warned through clenched teeth.
    “He’s a good cook too. Adele couldn’t cook at all. She always joked that she could burn—”
    “Water,” he finished. Pictured Adele laughing as she said it. “She always said her talents lay in other areas.”
    “She was so lethal,” Grace whispered now. “Lethal, and still so good. I wasn’t sure that combination was possible.”
    She trailed off and Dare was done asking questions for the moment. Questions were never the right way to do something. There were too many variables in the answers.
    But she wasn’t done sharing.
    “If you look in the closet in the last bedroom, you’ll find some record books with my handwriting,” she told him. “I know there are four bedrooms here. A basement with enough food to last for several months—and the bathrooms are down the hall—third door on the right and forth on the left, respectively. The room Darius stayed in had a picture of a guitar over the bed and a red quilt.”
    There was no way she could know that. “You really lived here?”
    “For a while, yes.”
    “As a hostage?”
    “At first, Darius and Adele treated me like one,” she agreed. “And then things changed.”
    Why wouldn’t his father have told him about this, about whether or not he could trust her? Darius had to have known this would come into play at some point. Had to have known how precarious his son’s future was.
    Darius had always been a selfish bastard, but nothing proved it more than this. Dare went to the closet and pulled out a few books, brought them to the kitchen table and found she’d written some key terms on a piece of paper.
    He was no expert, but this wasn’t a hoax—the writing matched. “You worked S8’s books.”
    She nodded. “I traveled with them. They passed intel through me.”
    “You knew what they did?”
    “I knew they weren’t bankers.” A wry smile twisted her lips. “They got me away from Rip in the first place. I left when I was eighteen and I’ve never looked back.”
    “Had you tried to escape before that?”
    She shrugged. Looked away. Didn’t want to go there, and yeah, he got that.
    When she spoke, it wasn’t a direct answer to his question. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when your father came along.”
    “How did you pull it off?”
    She gave him a sideways glance. “Got into a caterer’s trunk before they boarded the helicopter. Rip keeps the island on lockdown—very few people are permitted to stay longer than a night. For his parties, guests were flown in.”
    “No private chefs?”
    “One. He’s always on premises. If he needs help, he calls the same catering company that’s been vetted by security.”
    “And they had no idea you were on board?”
    Grace bit out the next words before she could stop herself. “Of course they knew. Darius