Tempted by a Dangerous Man Read Online Free Page B

the backpack, then trudged after him. But deep down, I wasn’t as upset as before.

    ~~~

    Roughly four sweaty hours later, I spotted the abominable snowman again. He had cleared off a flat rock, over which he’d spread a small picnic.  
    “How are you?” he asked as I panted up to him. I noticed that he hadn’t started eating without me, a gesture that melted the last of my anger at him.
    “Fine,” I gasped, not sure how to explain how I could feel better and worse at the same time. Being out in the fresh air helped. So did moving. Made it moderately harder to obsess over my troubles.  
    Though I was hardly enjoying myself. It was exhausting. I had thought I was in shape, but apparently not.
    “These pants are waterproof, right?” I asked as I sat. It didn’t matter because I couldn’t stand a moment longer.
    “Of course.” Corbin handed me one of his overstuffed gourmet sandwiches. The scent of fresh bread and Corbin’s mustard vinaigrette sauce drifted toward me. I stared at the sandwich in my hand, salivating like crazy but too breathless to do anything more than ogle.
    “I love this hike,” Corbin said mildly, passing a bottle of lemonade. I managed to swallow a few gulps, then attacked the sandwich as best I could, which wasn’t easy given how tall it was.
    We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Corbin said, “I want to tell you about a man named Zachary Thompson.”
    I stopped chewing. Swallowed. Looked away. “I know who he is. Was. I picked him up a few years ago.” Until then, I hadn’t remembered his name.
    “That’s the one,” Corbin said. “Do you know what he had been doing since then?”
    “No. But I know what he’s doing right now.” I remembered the sound of his head slamming into the sharp, pointed desk corner, and my stomach lurched.
    “Eat,” Corbin said. He waited for me to take another bite. “Zachary got out of prison for testifying against his cellmate. Once released, he turned back to dealing, hanging around the high school and middle school. He didn’t always make the girls pay in money.”
    My hand trembled so violently that I had to put down the sandwich. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done. I know he was a scumbag. It was obvious. But no one is all bad, and people can change.”
    “Change?”
    “He might have changed. And now he won’t because he’s—”
    “Much more likely, he would have only gotten worse. That’s been my experience with criminal sociopath types.”
    “Oh, God.” I leaned forward, dropped my head between my knees and took deep breaths.  
    Corbin squatted in front of me. “Hey.” He caught my face between his hands and forced me to look at him. I saw nothing but patience in his eyes. “Do you think you killed him? Is that why you’re upset?”
    I nodded, but Corbin forced me to shake my head. “You didn’t kill anyone, baby. It was an accident. And not a particularly tragic one except for the fact that it’s messing with your head.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Close your eyes.”
    Shutting out the world was an easy order to follow right about then.
    “Tell me everything that happened two nights ago. I know you don’t want to relive it, but I need to know. I can’t fix what I don’t know about. So start at the beginning. And keep your eyes closed.”
    I licked my dry, chapped lips, some part of me relieved that he was forcing me to tell him. Then I explained about the photos of us together, how I’d broken into Smile’s house and then had gone to the office to get the physical copies.
    When I reached the point where Zachary arrived at the office, my voice faltered. “I was terrified when I realized it wasn’t my dad,” I said.
    “Ok,” Corbin said. “Tell me what happened. Details. What do you see?”
    Details? I didn’t want to. But I did. I told him about the phone call to Henry. I told him how I’d tried to hide the photos from Zachary.  
    “And then he tried to grab me… and I moved and pushed