by Clara Kensie
My body grew numb.
And then he said it. “Dennis Connelly isn’t the killer. Your parents are.”
* * * * *
~End of Part Two~
We hope you enjoyed part two of Tessa’s story!
Please read on for a sneak peak at what’s coming in
RUN TO YOU PART THREE:
THIRD CHARM
by Clara Kensie
About the Author
Clara Kensie grew up reading every book she could find and using her diary to write stories about a girl with psychic powers who solved mysteries. She purposely did not hide her diary, hoping someone would read it and assume she was writing about herself. Since then, she’s swapped her diary for a computer and admits her characters are fictional, but otherwise she hasn’t changed one bit.
The complexities of family, friendship and love have always intrigued Clara. Wanting to study human nature, in college she triple-majored in psychology, sociology and social services, then threw in a criminal justice minor for good measure. She interned at a group home for troubled teen girls. She visited prisons. Today Clara lives outside Chicago with her husband, their two kids and their troublemaking cat, appropriately named The King of Chaos. She writes twisty mysteries and chilling thrillers for young adults (but it’s the romance that will take your breath away). When she’s not torturing her characters, she’s on Twitter and Tumblr, reading YA lit or looking for her keys.
A family on the run from a deadly past, and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger…
If you loved the romantic thriller by Clara Kensie Run to You Part Two: Second Glance, don’t miss
Run to You Part One: First Sight and Run to You Part Three: Third Charm, available in ebook format.
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Bitter Sweet Love by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Another Little Piece of My Heart by Tracey Martin
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Chapter Thirty-Six
“Did you hear me, Tessa?” Tristan said.
I’d heard him. He’d just told me that Dennis Connelly wasn’t the killer, my parents were.
I heard him say it, and I tried to tell him he was wrong, that he was lying, but shock and fury and disgust formed a block in my throat, choking off my words, cutting off my air.
“Some of what your parents told you is true,” Tristan said. “Your father was a journalist. He used his press pass to meet politicians and businessmen. Your mom was the special events director at a hotel. She knew when politicians and important people were coming. Your dad used his press pass to meet them too. Then he’d watch all of them with his remote vision. If your dad saw them do something unethical, your parents would contact them anonymously and demand money from them. That’s how they made so much money. Blackmail. Not writing a newspaper column and planning parties.”
I blinked again, slid farther away from him. He was lying. He had to be.
And yet he continued. The putrid, rotten lies, each one worse than the last, came spewing from his mouth like vomit.
“If the victims refused to pay, if they called the police or started investigating who was blackmailing them, your mother would use her PK to give them heart attacks or brain aneurysms. She’d kill people and make it look like a car accident, or illness, or suicide.”
I stared at him and tried to let the words sink in.
But they wouldn’t.
Because they were lies. All of them. Every single one.
“I’m so sorry.” He reached for me, but I slapped him away and scrambled off the cot.
“You said you would never lie to me again,” I seethed through clenched teeth. “And that is the most vicious lie I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m not lying. I wish I were.”
“That man came to our house to kill us,” I said. “My father watched him slice open two people with his mind.”
“Dennis Connelly has one psionic ability, and that’s telepathy. He cannot slice people open with his mind,” Tristan said. “Your parents built him up to be some kind of all-powerful, indestructible super-villain. They demonized him to keep you scared and obedient.”
I cringed. That lie was the worst of all. “They would never do that to us.”
“We have evidence.”
“No, I have evidence.” I yanked my shirt up. “That man, that monster, did this to me.”
He touched his fingers to the scars, and I flinched. “He didn’t even know you were cut until I told him last week. He thinks you must have gotten cut on broken glass when your father pulled you from the car window.”
“Does he deny trying to kidnap me too?” I tried to growl it, to sound strong and menacing, but my voice came out high and uncontrolled.
“He did put you in his car,” he said. “But he wasn’t kidnapping you.”
“How is locking me in his car not kidnapping?”
“Eight years ago,” he said, “one of our sensors was in Washington, trying to find psionic people. Doing his job. He walked by your dad at a coffee shop and sensed he had some kind of psionic ability.” Tristan sighed and rubbed his eyes. “So the APR sent Dennis and his recruitment team to your house to talk to him. If they found evidence of psionics, they planned to invite him to the APR for testing and possible employment. While Dennis was outside talking to you, his team went inside to talk to your parents. He put you in his car when he heard what was happening in your house.”
I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “And what, exactly, was happening in my house?”
“Your parents were killing his partners, Tessa. He was just trying to keep you safe. Then he went inside to help his team, but it was too late. Your parents attacked him, too. Your mom gave him a heart attack. He barely escaped alive.”
The cell fell silent.
His words echoed in my mind, each one like a punch to the chest. I stumbled to the wall and sank to the floor as waves of dizziness brought back the fog. “Liar,” I managed to squeak, before the fog took me away.
“Tessa?” Tristan’s voice broke through the fog.
I didn’t move. I wanted—needed—to stay in the fog for a while longer.
“I need to tell you something else. About Dennis.”
“No more.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m holding anything back.”
“I can’t handle anything else right now. Please.”
“Okay. When you’re ready.”
We hadn’t moved in hours, it seemed. I remained huddled in a ball in the corner. Tristan sat on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, head hung low.
Finally he took a deep breath. “Tess—”
“Don’t say it.”
“I need to—”
“I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it. Please don’t say it.”
But whether he said it or not, I already knew what he wanted to tell me. Forbidding him to say the words wasn’t going to change it.
I gave a stuttery sigh of defeat. “He’s your father, isn’t he?”
Please, please tell me I’m wrong.
But he didn’t. He just nodded. “Dennis Connelly is my father.”
Read on for an excerpt from another
fabulous and unforgettable Harlequin TEEN digital-first novel:
ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MY HEART
; by Tracey Martin
Available now!
Copyright © 2014 by Kara Schein Critzer
What if your devastating breakup became this summer’s hit single? In this rock-and-roll retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, music can either bring you together or tear you apart.
At her dying mother’s request, Claire dumped Jared, the only boy she ever loved. Left with a broken family and a broken heart, Claire was furious when she discovered that her biggest regret had become Jared’s big break. While Jared catapulted into rock-star status, another piece of Claire’s heart crumbled every time his song played on the radio.
Now, Claire is trying to keep her head down and make it through a tense trip to the beach with her family. But when Jared shows up and old feelings reignite, Claire realizes that perhaps the past isn’t so over and done after all....
I meander through the rest of the store on my way to the registers: there’s six aisles of food and paper goods, plus the dairy and frozen-food cases and another half aisle devoted to books, magazines and beach toys.
I don’t pay much attention to magazines usually, but one photo snags my eye. Jared’s made the cover of Entertainment Weekly. I scowl at his smiling face.
Even after all this time, a hollowness opens in my gut when I see his picture. It’s not because I miss him. All the lies he sings about me have made it clear that dumping him was the best decision I ever made, despite what it felt like at the time. But there’s something else I miss—the happiness. We were insanely happy together, and I haven’t felt that sort of happiness since.
The cover photo is a good one. Jared looks hot with strands of hair falling over his face and a half smile stuck to his lips. Never mind that the critics love his album; I’m convinced that half of Jared’s popularity is simply because he’s good-looking.
Lost in these thoughts, I’m only vaguely aware of footsteps approaching until someone addresses me.
“Hey, ’scuse me,” says a guy. “You work here, right? Can you tell me where’s the sunblock?”
Oh yeah, the blazer. Guess I do work here now.
“Uh.” I spin around, certain I saw it during my self-guided tour. Before I can conjure where, though, all words vanish from my mouth. Possibly from my brain.
I’m looking past the guy who was speaking to the person behind him. A person with the same pair of beautiful blue eyes that I’ve just been scowling at. I blink, and my brain argues with me because I totally cannot be seeing what I think I’m seeing. My heart lurches.
Then those blue eyes lock on to my gaze, opening wide with recognition, and an expression of panic spreads across their owner’s familiar face.
I stare. I can’t help it. How is it possible that almost exactly two years to the day after I made the hardest decision of my life, I’m here locking eyes with Jared in an aisle of a tiny grocery store in a town I’d never heard of in a state I’d never been to until yesterday?
Is it a wild coincidence, or did the alien gods think it would be funny to give me a metaphorical ass kicking? I sure know which of the two it feels like.
Jared’s face suggests he’s pondering the same question. He’s got his sunglasses perched on his head, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. I remember every pore in his chin. I can tell he hasn’t shaved since yesterday morning—that’s how well I remember. He still wears that plain silver band on his right thumb, and that black leather cord around his neck. Only now the cord has a small leaf on it. Once, he wore a silver Buddha, a charm I gave him for his birthday. Guess he got rid of it when I got rid of him.
I jab my nails into my palms until the pain clears my head.
“Sunblock?” I repeat. I wait for the floor to swallow me up. For the ceiling to part and a thousand angels to point and snicker. Any of it seems about as likely as this.
The guy who asked the question glances between me and Jared. He thinks he’s had an epiphany.
“He’s not who you think he is.” The guy punches Jared in the arm. “They just look alike.”
It’s not a bad attempt on the guy’s part. If I was merely some crazy fan girl, maybe it would even work. But I’m not. I’m inhaling Jared even now. I spent enough time with my face pressed into that soft spot of skin where his neck meets his shoulder, enough time wrapped in his sweatshirts or my face buried in his pillow that his Jared-scent is unmistakable. I’m having a hard time breathing because of it.
It’s the shock, I tell myself. It’s only the shock of running into him this way. It’ll pass. My lungs will reinflate.
“Sorry, I’m new. I think I saw it—”
“Claire?” Jared’s staring at me.
I cross my arms. “Jared.”
A dumbfounded expression sweeps across question-boy’s face. “Oh, so you guys know each other?”
“Knew each other,” I say pointedly.
ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE OF MY HEART
by Tracey Martin
Available now at your favorite e-tailer!
Copyright © 2013 by Tracey Martin
ISBN-13: 9781460326763
RUN TO YOU PART TWO: SECOND GLANCE
Copyright © 2014 by Kara Schein Critzer
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