Web of Secrets (Agents Under Fire) Read Online Free Page A

she couldn’t control. He was glad for the simple way to help her. A pair of earrings. The symbol of purity and chastity. Of humility and innocence as his mother had first told him, her switch following each word, after she caught him with one of the fast girls at school who would sleep with anyone. Even him, with the twisted trail of scars running over his body.
    Mother had been furious.
    “Purity, Reginald,” she had snapped, dragging him by the ear and forcing him to the floor in the closet. “It’s a virtue you must learn, must keep, until you find the equally pure woman you will marry. I know it’s hard. Especially at fifteen with all those hormones rushing through your body. Let me help you learn control as my father taught me. Your father could never grasp the concept of control. It was the reason he had to leave us.”
    She ripped his shirt from his back, took a tighter hold on his ear, and cracked the belt across his naked skin. The pain bit into his body, racing along nerve endings, begging him to cry out. But he wouldn’t. Didn’t. Just as he hadn’t during the fire. She would see it as his carnal nature calling out, and she’d keep going, crack after crack until it was extinguished.
    Now he was the master and it had been worth it. Superb in every way. Untouchable, as long as he remained smart and in control. And he was smart. His control still needed perfecting, however. Molly had proved that.
    “See. I told you, you’re a loser,” Billy said.
    Reginald ignored him and stepped around the space, looking for anything he’d missed that could lead the police to his doorstep. At the shelves on the far side of the wall, he knelt on the ground to shine a flashlight into the dark recesses.
    There. In the corner. A hair thingy Allie—his lovely wonderful girl number seven—had worn. Powder blue, the same color of the eyes that had stared up at him for so long. He carefully retrieved it and stuffed it into his pocket. He’d been careless. Now he’d have to go back to the clearing to add it to the bag of clothing he’d buried last week. He’d kept it all for a long time. Touched it. Smoothed it over his skin when the urge grew too strong. But when he’d found Molly, and then learned Lauren was alive, he knew he had to divest himself of all traces of the other girls. For Lauren. She’d be jealous to learn he’d moved on.
    Lauren.
    Why had she deceived him? Faked her death.
    “And you were stupid enough to believe it all these years,” Billy mocked.
    “Everyone did.”
    “But you’re supposed to be this big guru. You should have known. Instead, you had to find Molly, then dig up Lauren’s coffin to look for her tiny ear bones to complete your collection.” Billy laughed. “Man, that was a day. You finding the coffin empty. Never seen you quite so shocked.”
    “Wouldn’t you be shocked to learn she’d faked her death?”
    “Nah, I’d go with the flow.”
    “That’s because you weren’t called on to save the world like I was.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the jeweler’s box. “But now, I know her escape was meant to be. She’s pure. She didn’t want what Molly wanted. What the other girls wanted when they agreed to meet me. She only came to me to save Molly. She was pure. And if she still has that purity, she could be the one.”
    He gently cupped the box. Blue velvet with a midnight-black lining that accented his mother’s pearls so nicely. They rested in slumber as she, too, rested. He ran a finger over the bright white lustrous orbs. Took one out. Stroked it along his cheek.
    His mother’s pearls. A gift from her father. The finest. Worth thousands. Not that he would sell them. They were for the woman he would marry.
    Maybe Lauren, when he found her.
    “She’s alive, Mother!” he exclaimed. “Really and truly alive.”
    He wouldn’t be alone after all. Lauren was the one. The only one.

Chapter Three
    THE RAID OVER, Becca jogged down the steps of the tired