Dark Paradise Read Online Free

the crime scene alone until he arrives with the coroner.” He pauses, and I give him a blank face—the expression I hide behind whenever someone says something hurtful. Or in this case, to keep from laughing my head off over seeing big, bad, ex–football player, super-cop Georgie shaken. It makes him a little less superhero-like and more human.
    He gives me a relieved smile. “I don’t want to make a fool out of myself.”
    â€œDon’t worry, I won’t let you do anything stupid, like vomit on the body,” I tease. A slight chill in the air makes me shiver, and I wrap my arms around myself for comfort. I smell the sulfur stench of the water before I see the girl’s body lying on the muddy bank. “There she is.”
    George plays the flashlight across the corpse. “Oh Jesus, damn it,” he whispers, voice choked up. “It’s Lainey—Elaine Prince.”
    â€œ Lainey. ” I sigh the nickname. Knowing it makes her feel real. She didn’t before, not totally. I turn to George, unable to face her glazed stare. “She’s exactly how I left her.”
    â€œO-oh, well, that’s good.”
    We stand side by side over her body, coming to grips with the harsh reality of her death in our own ways. Seeing her again stirs up volatile emotions I refuse to contemplate too closely. I can’t afford to look weak, and breaking down in front of George is not an option. Finally, I can’t take the silence and ask, “You gonna pass out?”
    â€œNah, I’ll be fine. I knew Lainey.” George clears his throat. “She’s…she was a couple of years ahead of me in school. I had a huge crush on her in ninth grade.”
    He squats down beside Lainey and pulls her dress down over her legs. I almost remind him to put on gloves, but it doesn’t matter. Any evidence probably washed away in the swamp.
    â€œLainey comes from a good family,” he says. “Her father’s a well-respected preacher. Her mama’s always donating time. You know, doing good deeds like feeding and clothing the poor. They’ll be crushed.”
    My rubber boots squelch in the muck as I hunker down next to him. “Prince, huh?”
    The name sends tendrils of unease down my spine. The image of Landry Prince’s gray eyes form in my mind. His heavy stare followed me whenever I walked past him at school. I memorized his schedule last semester to avoid going to the places where he hung out with his friends. I’d shaken him until a few weeks ago when he started coming into Munchies on the weekends when I work a second job—not sure why he finds my waiting tables so fascinating. The irritating thing is he never speaks to me. Hell, he doesn’t even come in alone. He has a different bobble-headed girl clinging to his arm each time, but do his dates keep his attention from turning to me like a needle drawn to a lodestone? Nope!
    George glances over at me. The shadows make it difficult to read his expression, which means he can’t see how freaked out I am either. “Her younger brother, Landry, went to your school.”
    My chest tightens. I can’t breathe. I close my eyes and focus on drawing in air.
    Crap, she is related to him. My juju’s the worst today.
    â€œMala, are you okay?”
    I twitch, blinking in George’s direction. I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. “Oh, yeah, Landry got accepted to play football at the JC. I’ve seen him on campus.”
    I try to picture Landry’s face, but I’ve always avoided studying him too closely because he makes my stomach squiggly. The only image that forms clearly is of eyes like the sky before a hurricane. The rest of his features blur and morph into his sister’s bloated face and dead-eyed stare. My stomach sours like I ate a tainted batch of crawfish, and I swallow hard. Desperate for a distraction from how queasy I feel, I walk over to a downed log and