Dark Waters (2013) Read Online Free

in big trouble. But I didn’t do anything wrong, I swear it.”
Papa?
He sounded panicked. His breathing was rough as if he’d been running. “I’m on my way to the FBI offices,but they’re too close. I’m never going to make it. They’re gonna kill me. They’re going to be looking for their money. I mailed you the printouts, but they don’t know where I sent it.
You
know. Take the information to the feds.”
    She squeezed her eyes shut and held the phone so tight it was a wonder the casing didn’t crack. What had he been involved in? Something illegal?
    “You need to get out of there until things quiet down.” The fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood upright. “Dammit, I’ve done it again.”
Please, no, Papa
. “I love you. And I’m sorry for everything. There’s only one person I trust besides you, you know that, right? Go to him, tonight. Tell him I’m cashing in those promises we made one another.” He was yelling now, and she pulled the handset away from her ear even as there was a rushing sound—her heart thundered when she realized it must be the train that had killed him—and then nothing. The white noise went on for another twenty seconds before it was cut off. The next message was a hang-up from him. She laughed hysterically, then pressed a hand to her stomach as it knotted tight. Bile started to sting the base of her throat. She bolted to the bathroom and heaved up wine and popcorn and her normal life. After five minutes with nothing left in her stomach, she washed out her mouth and pulled her hair back from her damp forehead.
    She stared in the mirror at her red-rimmed eyes and wondered how, after she had constructed her life to minimize trauma, this could be happening all over again. Only worse this time because her father was dead.
    And she might be in danger.

    Brent Carver lay in bed listening to the surf outside his open window. The rhythmic pounding pulse helped calm the ragged unsettled feeling that clawed inside him. Sometimes it even let him sleep. Not tonight.
    He shifted restlessly, sweat damp on his skin. The west coast was getting a blistering-hot summer that had him thanking God he wasn’t stuck in that shithole prison, sweating it out with a few hundred of his least best friends. He sat up in bed and swiped irritably at his too long hair.
    Gina had liked it long.
    Damn
.
    He’d spent the past year trying not to think about Gina, or her murder, and yet memories snuck past his guard all the time. Her smile, her giving nature, her unwavering dedication to his undeserving ass. When he’d broken things off with her, he’d hoped she’d finally move on. Find herself a man she could marry and have babies she could spoil. But things hadn’t worked out that way, and no one regretted it more than he did.
    He whipped back the covers and padded naked to the open window that faced the Pacific. It took a moment for his heartbeat to stop hammering. A moment for the burn in his chest to ease. At nearly forty years old, he’d spent half his life in prison and would never get enough of breathing in the fresh clean air of freedom.
    The dark water before him stretched like a smooth satin sheet all the way to the horizon. But the calm tranquility was an illusion that disguised deceptive currents and gigantic swells, cold depths and wicked storm surges.
    That ocean called to him—it always had. This sliver of coast was what he’d missed locked up in his cell for so many years. Not peace. Not serenity. Not pissing in a private bathroom. Huge rollers crashing home. Elements clashing like titans in his backyard. The abandon. The wildness. The energy. Prison had squeezed the need for that energy into a tiny corner of his mind and tortured him with it in his dreams. When he’d gotten out, he’d spent two days just staring at the ocean.
This
was where he belonged.
This
was where he needed to be. And no one was ever going to take it from him again. Being caged, being imprisoned, had almost