Read Online Ultimate Warriors by Joy Nash, Jaide Fox, Michelle Pillow - Free Book Online Page A

quiet? To make certain she couldn’t influence, or protect, her child?
          The
scrape of gravel snapped Nari from her thoughts. Whirling toward the sound, she
saw that Shayne had returned and relief flooded her. Slipping off the car, she
met him. To her surprise, he wasn’t carrying anything.
          "You
didn’t get in?"
          Instead
of answering her, he motioned for her to get into the car. He didn’t speak
until they’d headed back to town.
          "I
looked through the file. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to remove
it."
          Nari
glanced toward him in surprise, but it was dark in the car and she couldn’t
read his expression. "Why?"
          "Somebody
went to a lot of trouble to bury your origins."
          Surprise
and uneasiness went through Nari at the same time. "You think so
too?"
          He
shrugged. "You never know the way they guard records these days--and it’s
possible the director of the orphanage is just a bitch who enjoys wielding what
little power she has, but I definitely got that feeling when we met with the
same resistance to seeing your mother’s records."
          Nari
digested that a while, relieved that someone seemed to share her paranoia and
at the same time further unnerved. "What could it mean, do you
think?"
          He shook
his head. "Your mother was killed in a freak accident--at least that was the way it was described. According to the story,
they thought she was trying to escape. She had gone up to the roof of the
building and was attempting to climb down when the fire ladder came loose and
she fell to her death."
          "But
you’re not buying it?"
          "It
would take a freak accident to kill somebody falling no more two stories. The
building just isn’t that high. Broken bones, I could accept, but plenty of
people have fallen even further and lived. The thing is, she was cut to ribbons
and there just isn’t any logical explanation for that in a fall."
          Sickness
welled inside of Nari as a vision of her mother’s broken, bleeding body rose in
her mind. "She was attacked."

Chapter Six
           
          Shayne
had left Nari with her own morbid thoughts after that, refusing to discuss the
matter further until they’d reached her apartment. Nariko hadn’t really prodded
him, embroiled as she was in her own thoughts. She had doubts that he could
really shed any light on the mystery in any case. It only seemed to deepen the
more she learned, not to become more clear .
          She was
accepting a lot on faith, of course. The truth was, no matter how companionable
she felt about Shayne, she really didn’t know him that well and she didn’t know
how much trust she could place in her own instincts considering the distress
she was under.
          In her
heart, she felt like she could trust him, but how much of that was dependence?
How much was based solely on her attraction to him?
          He knew
her. She suspected he knew a lot more about her than he’d revealed. But she
knew almost nothing about him.
          She
found by the time they’d reached her apartment once more than she really didn’t
want to deal with anything else at the moment. She was weary to her soul, not
just physically. As ridiculous as it might seem to anyone else, she mourned the
loss of her mother and that sense of loss was magnified by the horrible way her
mother had died.
          All she
really wanted to do was to escape to her room to mourn in private and think
things through for herself.
          Shayne,
however, insisted that the matter was something that needed to be discussed
then, not put off until later.
          She
settled on the couch, feeling resentment slowly overtaking her confusion and
sorrow as she watched Shayne pace her living room.
          "I
don’t see why this can’t wait until tomorrow," she said finally when he
showed no indication of being forthcoming anytime