Sweet Seduction Shadow Read Online Free

identities and work histories and new wardrobes each time you hide. And you must hide, baby girl," he said turning his attention back to me. "You must hide in plain sight. Be clever about it. Never lower your guard. But always hide."
    "OK," I said, feeling the first stirrings of true fear. Even more fear than that night Roan appeared at the foot of my bed.
    "I'll teach you what you need to know, while I gather the money you'll need to hide. It will take time, but if we let Roan think we are beaten now, we might just make this work."
    "You'll come with me though?" I persisted, the child I thought I no longer was, rearing her head again.
    He sat down on my bed beside me and wrapped me up in his big, tender arms. "I will always be with you in spirit, Sarah. Always inside your heart."
    I cried then. The last time I have ever shed a tear. For the loss I knew was coming. For the life I knew lay ahead. For my father's sacrifice.
    For three years he saved enough money for me to escape and live a life in the shadows, but in plain sight. He was careful to hide it all from Roan. To never let on to what we had planned. In the three years it took to save and prepare, he taught me everything I needed to know in order to hide. On the day I turned eighteen, the day Roan expected my father to hand me over to him, I left.
    I didn't look back at my father as he stood at the bus stop in Wellington waving me off. I couldn't see what emotion would be showing on his face. I clasped my shoulder bag tightly to my chest. A few clothes, a new identity, a plan of where I was heading, that my father made sure I didn't divulge to him. And fifty thousand dollars of well hidden cash my father had saved to protect me. Nothing else. No photos of him, or me, or my dead mother. No mementoes of a life lived on the cusp of criminal society. Nothing to link me to who I was when I lived in Wellington.
    Sarah Monaghan died the night Roan McLaren entered my bedroom. The first of many identities started the very next day, but it wasn't until I left Wellington and arrived in Christchurch, that the first real chameleon moment began.
    I dyed my hair black, took out the studs and rings and replaced them with visible temporary tattoos. The Goth clothing disappeared and leather jackets and mini skirts took their place. And ID number one was born. Biker-babe receptionist to a Motorcycle mechanic - who happened to be a patched member of the Devil's Henchmen MC. I was proud of my first hide-in-plain-sight moment. There was no way Roan McLaren would tempt the ill temper of a motorcycle gang.
    Ten months later the itch started up between my shoulder blades and I could have sworn my temporary tattoos had become a bullseye on my back.
    Grunge-wearing barista in the campus cafeteria at Otago University followed. Then g irl-next-door deckhand on a Whale Watching boat out of Kaikoura, snow-bunny ticket-booth attendant at Cardrona Ski Field, country-bumpkin farmhand on a large secluded station in the High Country, and finally immigrant apple-picker in the Hawkes Bay.
    To my latest incarnation, my seventh chameleon moment, high street retail assistant in an Auckland jewellery store. Abi Merchant wore slim, pencil skirts, and form-fitting blouses and kitten heels. Her hair was always coiffed in a French twist. Her make-up was impeccable and barely noticeable, her eyes a stunning green due to coloured contact lenses. Her hair a vibrant red, sleek and shiny. Her manners perfect, her speech well articulated. Her back straight and head held high.
    I liked her. She was everything my life as Sarah Monaghan would not have been. She was everything Roan McLaren would not have wanted. She was upright and correct, she couldn't even jay-walk across the street.
    Not that she was present in this suburban neighbourhood right now. My long, flowing flower-power skirt swished around my ankles as I strode with purpose towards the bus stop sign I could now make out up ahead. My ankle laced leather sandals