Free Dark Abyss by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

gotten! How could she ever be sure he wasn’t behind anything else she happened to get? Keeping tabs on her, having her constantly watched, maybe demanding that she become a part of his organization?
    That was why her mother had run as far and as fast as she could, to keep from being tied to a man who thought killing was an answer, and she’d run until she had gone to college. Her mother had desperately wanted that for her, and she’d known she would never earn a degree if she was yanked out of college and moved every six months or so.
    She didn’t know her father had had anything to do with her mother’s death. The police had never solved her murder. But it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, whether it was likely or not. Miles thought nothing of killing people he didn’t even know! How much more motive would he have for killing someone who’d crossed him?
    Her mother had to have known something or she wouldn’t have run to start with.
    And what about her? Why had he suddenly decided to reveal himself? Had he leapt to the same conclusion that Simon had? Read her papers and decided she saw things the same way he did?
    As far as she knew, she was his only child. Had he decided it was time to start grooming her to take over?
    That seemed just too farfetched. If he’d been having her watched, he had to know that she didn’t have it in her to run anything, certainly not an organization like his. But what other reason might he have?
    Not love, certainly.
    She was never going to feel safe again, not while he lived! Not when he could pop into her life at any moment and turn it upside down!
    That’s why she was so angry with Simon. She felt like he was throwing her to the wolves!
    That was most of it, anyway. As soon as she realized that much, she also realized that, in spite of everything, she was deeply attracted to him. It was deflating to be so summarily dismissed when she couldn’t help but nurse the faint hope that he might actually notice her as a woman.
    She’d never actually mastered the art of flirtation. She wasn’t very good at interacting with people even of her own gender. She’d given up even trying after a while. It had seemed pointless and, in any event, it had been a tremendous struggle for her mother to pay her way through college. It placed an equally heavy burden on her to do her best. She hadn’t felt right to spare a lot of time for anything as frivolous as socializing instead of studying.
    She’d still managed to land a boyfriend in college—a gorgeous jock, who she found out was a player just about the time she fell hard for him. She’d never really understood how she’d caught his attention, though, beyond making a fool out of herself and staring at him with zen-like meditation every time she spotted him. Was it the clear signs of hero-worship that had emboldened him even though she ran like a turkey time he glanced her way? Or was it that he discovered she was the only virgin on campus that he hadn’t nailed?
    She didn’t suppose it mattered. She couldn’t think of anything in her previous ‘experience’ that was likely to be helpful. She hadn’t done anything beyond finally getting up the spine to stand her ground when he approached her. He had done all the flirting—seduced her—not that he’d had to work too terribly hard! She wasn’t saving her virginity. She just hadn’t managed to find anybody that wanted it!
    Her lovelorn situation was the least of her worries at the moment, anyway. It didn’t matter how attracted she was to Simon, or any of the others for that matter. It wasn’t doable even if it wasn’t for the situation she’d found herself in. They were mutants. She wasn’t. There was no future for an air-breather and a merman!
    It was far worse that she was looking at her life’s work crumbling to dust, with no idea of when or even if she would ever be able to take it up again.
    Was there any way, she wondered, that she could convince them not to pitch