Read Online Tremble by Jus Accardo - Free Book Online Page A

leaving a trail of longing in its wake. Even like this, with him crushing me to the wall, possibly contemplating my death, I couldn’t get enough.
    There was something seriously wrong with the way I was wired.
    “Dez?” Alex called. “You coming out?”
    “Kale?” a voice yelled from inside the house. Kiernan.
    At the sound of her voice, he shook his head and backed away a few inches. I could see his entire face now. Beautiful but deadly. He watched me with a curious expression, eyes never leaving mine. For an insane moment, I was sure he’d lean down and kiss me—but he didn’t.
    “There’s no one here.” Kiernan was getting closer. “Kale? Where’d you go?”
    He opened his mouth to answer, but I interrupted. “Don’t. Please. Just let me slip out the door…”
    “I… Roz will… No. I can’t.”
    “Kale?” Kiernan was starting to panic. Inside, I could hear doors opening and slamming closed again.
    “Please,” I said again, begging.
    “NO!” he screamed and one word came to mind. Unstable. My Kale would never have such an emotional reaction. Anger was something he learned to keep in check at a very young age in order to survive. Whatever they’d done to him, it had shaken something lose. “No,” he repeated, calmer. “No. I’ll save you for last. I owe you for what you did to me. I’ll make you suffer like I did, then I’ll bring you in.”
    And just like that, the fragile patchwork of hope shattered, stealing my breath and bleeding me dry. My hand closed around something—I had no idea what, but it was heavy. That was all I cared about. “Good,” I said, resigned. I loved Kale and I’d do anything to get him back, but I wasn’t stupid. “Then that gives me time.”
    “For what?”
    I whipped the object—it turned out to be a wrench—around and slammed it into the side of Kale’s head as Alex yanked up the garage door. “To knock some frigging sense into you.”
    I raced toward Alex as Kale went down and Kiernan burst through the door.

7
    “Is this blood?” Mom had my T-shirt in her hand. I’d caught the sleeve on the way out Conny’s garage, gashing my shoulder in the process. Alex and I had gone straight back to the cabin after leaving Kale—something I felt horrible about doing. I’d hit him hard, and I had no way of knowing if he was all right.
    “Figures. One of my favorite shirts, too.” I pulled a clean shirt over my head and turned back to Mom. She stood in the doorway, the ruined shirt still in hand, and looked uncomfortable. It was easy to forget sometimes—especially lately—that she, too, had been a prisoner of Denazen. She had been there just slightly less time than Kale, having been imprisoned after becoming pregnant with me. “I don’t suppose we’ve gotten any leads on that Penny chick, huh?”
    “Nothing solid,” she said. “But Dax and I did manage to find one of the Supremacy kids.”
    This was the first I’d heard. “And by find you mean—”
    “Alive,” she confirmed with a smile. “We convinced her to come back with us, too.”
    “Seriously?” Maybe Alex was right and I’d been too aggressive with Ashley. Dax had mellowed her out a lot, but Mom still tended to be on the scary side if you didn’t know her. If they ’d managed to talk someone into coming back, I’d screwed up big time. “Who did you find?”
    “Her name is LuAnn Moore. Ginger has her in the new wing—on the other side of the pool. She’s keeping that area reserved for any of the Supremacy kids we find and bring back.”
    Reserved . Meaning quarantined in case they went bonkers. I wondered how long before they suggested a change of address for Brandt and me.
    Mom hesitated, then said, “How…how are you feeling?”
    “What you’re really asking is if I’ve started seeing any signs, right?”
    She kept her expression neutral, but I did catch a small twitch of her lip. For Mom, that was equal to an emotional outburst. She wasn’t the most touchy-feely person