In the Blood Read Online Free Page A

guilty. It’s like she has this knack of grounding me. Suddenly, I notice a tiny bead of sweat trickling down the side of her face and have to resist the urge to wipe it away.
    “Sorry, I didn’t notice him. I was thinking about the letter Dad sent me,” I say, intentionally drawing my thoughts away from my feelings for Summer, which really need suppressing. Because no good can come of them, however much I dream of a future with just the two of us, away from this hellhole.
    “Oh.” In an instant, her expression changes to one of concern.
    “Yeah, it’s ‘oh’ all right,” I say, stopping and looking directly into her eyes. “For the first time ever, he mentioned what he did. Sort of admitted it.”
    Summer’s eyes widen. It’s like I can almost see her thoughts processing. “But didn’t he plead not guilty?”
    It hits me without warning that I’m not ready to discuss this. Not with Summer or anyone. There are so many crazy ideas careering through my head about this it feels like my brain’s gonna burst.
    “You know what, I can’t talk about it. Sorry, Summer. I’ll run with you another time. Right now, I need to be on my own. Sorry.”
    I take off without waiting for her to reply. She’ll understand. She’s that type of girl. She understands everything. I just hope she doesn’t get fed up of me and all this, because then I’d be totally fucked.
    I’d already lost my dad, and my mom’s now a walking zombie. I can’t lose Summer, too.
    I quicken my pace until I’m running so hard my chest is as tight as the skin on a drum. I run like this for a while, ignoring my surroundings just concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other, until I start to gasp for breath and eventually have to slow down to a jog.
    I’d forgotten his plea, until Summer mentioned it. Maybe it wasn’t an admission and I got it wrong. Because surely the police would’ve read the letter and used it as evidence, if they’re allowed to. The law and evidence is crazy, if the TV shows are anything to go by. I really don’t know what to think. What else could his words mean? And it’s not like I didn’t already know he’s guilty. The hair belonging to those boys sealed it.
    I swallow hard, remembering... I was standing in the doorway of Mom and Dad’s bedroom when the detectives excitedly found his “souvenirs.” I’d crept back in, even though we were told to wait outside during the search. I was so angry with the police for barging in and pointing the finger at him, and I wanted to be there when they came up with nothing. I wanted to accuse them of being so stupid that they should resign and leave the policing to those who knew how to do the job.
    What an idiot I was. The feeling of absolute horror that engulfed my body when his trinket box of different colored hair was found will stay with me forever. A DNA test wasn’t needed for me to know the truth. None of the hair matched mine or Amy’s.
    And when they showed Dad what they had, his face paled, and his body went like stone. Mom and I stood there in silence, staring at him (luckily, Amy was playing in the den) but he refused to look at us.
    They took him away and I never saw him again.

Chapter Nine
    I wake with a start, my breathing heavy and labored. Blinking furiously, it takes a few seconds before I realize, with relief, that I’m in bed. That I’d been having a nightmare. A fucking disgusting nightmare.
    It was the most sickening and scariest thing ever. I was in my dad’s head while he went child hunting. He stood behind a tree, watching boys in a playground. And all the time he was fixated on a small boy with blond curly hair, who looked about six. And I could hear all his thoughts. Except they didn’t seem like normal thoughts; they were like sound-bites:
    Come to Daddy, little boy, it won’t hurt a bit.
    You know you want to.
    You’re making…
    STOP.
    I shake my head to bring myself back to reality. I spit into a tissue the bile that had shot