Read Worth Dying For (A Slaughter Creek Novel) for Free Online Page A

normal.
    Bitter but normal.
    Maybe Regina’s son could give them some answers.

    Nick and Brenda joined Jake, Sadie, and Amelia at Jake’s house. Thankfully, Gigi, the woman who’d half raised Jake and was now his daughter Ayla’s caretaker, had carried Ayla to the park, giving the adults an opportunity to talk.
    Nick and Jake wanted their families and loved ones unharmed. Sadie agreed to the safe house automatically. She was as protective of Ayla, Gigi, and her sister Amelia as Nick was of Brenda.
    Both of them were worried that the Commander’s escape would cause Amelia to relapse in her recovery.
    Sadie gripped her twin sister’s hand.
    “The Commander escaped?” Amelia asked in a shaky voice.
    Sadie nodded. “I’m sorry, Amelia.”
    Amelia’s face paled. Nick hated to put her through this ordeal. She’d been diagnosed with DID, dissociative identity disorder, as a result of the abusive experiments she’d undergone and the drugs she’d been given as a child. But she’d made great strides in therapy and merging her alters.
    Jake cleared his throat. “Amelia and Sadie—you two, Ayla, and Gigi are going to a safe house until my father is caught.”
    Amelia lurched up and began to pace, her fingers tapping a rhythm on her forearm. “I can’t be locked up. It’ll be like I’m a prisoner in that hospital again.”
    Jake shot Nick a concerned look.
    “You won’t be locked up,” Nick assured her. “I made arrangements for you to stay in a nice log cabin on the river. Think of it as a vacation for you and Sadie.”
    “A vacation with security,” Jake added. “Please, Amelia—it’ll be easier for Nick and me to do our jobs if we don’t have to worry about you.”
    Sadie curved an arm around Amelia. “He’s right, sis. Besides, we can take canvases and paint. The mountains in the winter are so beautiful.”
    Amelia chewed her bottom lip, her voice low. “I suppose.”
    Sadie’s tone gained enthusiasm. “A cabin on the river sounds inspirational, too. If it snows, we can go sledding with Ayla and build a snowman.”
    “I’ll go with you to help you get situated,” Jake said.
    Amelia paused, the tapping continuing on her arm. Nick noticed a cut mark that hadn’t been there before. Cutting hadn’t been a characteristic of any of her alters.
    Unless she’d developed a new one that nobody knew about yet . . .

Chapter Five

    H e stared into the woman’s cold, listless eyes, excited to have his next victim.
    Whoever said looks could kill was right.
    Hers had destroyed him as a child.
    Now it was his turn to destroy her.
    He laid her body out on the floor of the sanctuary he’d created for himself, the plastic beneath her crinkling as her limbs fell limply by her sides.
    He paced, ticking off the information in his head as if a computer had been turned on, spewing out details.
    There were three layers to the eye: the outer layer, the sclera, in which the cornea formed a bulge at the front of the eye; the middle layer, the choroid, which formed the iris toward the front; and the inner layer, the retina, which contained nerve cells that processed visual information and sent it to the brain.
    That was the part he found most interesting. The retina had millions of sensitive nerve cells that converted light into nerve impulses.
    So did her brain tell her eyes that she liked watching children be tormented, or was something about her nerve impulses warped?
    Eyes were supposed to be precious gifts, enabling us to enjoy the beauty of the world.
    But hers held nothing but ugliness. Evil.
    Now those eyes stared, wide open, terror and shock etched into the brown irises, the whites bulging as if they might explode as she struggled to escape.
    She had never expected him to find her. To seek revenge. She thought she’d obliterated his free will and the fight inside him, that she could control him with those devilish laser looks.
    Not anymore.
    He removed the scalpel from his pocket and held the shiny blade