Tempting Evil (17 page)

That didn’t mean he wasn’t around.

The Feds had made it perfectly clear she needed to report any contact from her father, or be considered an accomplice. They’d threatened her—jail time, loss of her private investigator’s license, her concealed carry permit.

The look on her father’s face gave her pause. And his words had sounded…truthful. But he’d had fifteen years to perfect his act. How could she believe him now when she hadn’t believed him then?

What if he
was
telling the truth?

It wouldn’t hurt to at least talk to Oliver Maddox, find out what he knew. Maybe he had proof of her father’s guilt, and that’s why Oliver had stopped talking to her father. If that was the case, Claire would call the Feds and set up a meeting to put her father back in prison.

Her heart twisted at the thought of turning in her father, and she focused on Pete Jackson’s walk-through.

Why couldn’t you have just stayed away, Daddy?

D
oug smiled. “It’s just you and me, now.”

Crying, she ran to the main door.

Did she think she’d get far in this weather?

She flung the door open, the blast of cold air filling the room. Doug crossed the room in three large steps and pushed her down, into the snow. If Doug had closed the door, she would have frozen to death just feet away from the cabin.

But he had other plans for her.

He grabbed her thick blonde hair and pulled her back into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind them. He locked it.

“N-n-no,” she sobbed, huddled on the floor in water and fear.

“No more games,” he growled. He picked her up. At first she didn’t do anything, she was still catching her breath.

Then she started to fight.

He almost laughed.
This was going to be fun.

Praise for Allison Brennan

“Fast becoming a master at delivering complex, layered plots and characters that erupt from the page, Brennan has created a roller coaster ride of chills!”

—Romantic Times Book Club

“Brennan does murder better than almost everyone writing in the suspense genre.”

—Armchair Interviews

Tempting Evil
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan

Excerpt of
Playing Dead
copyright © 2008 by Allison Brennan

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Ballantine and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming mass market edition of
Playing Dead
by Allison Brennan. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50753-2

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