Clara Kensie - Run to You Part Three - Third Charm

Part Three in the riveting romantic thriller about a family on the run from a deadly past, and a first love that will transcend secrets, lies and danger...

Betrayed, heartbroken and determined to save her family, Tessa Carson refuses to give in to Tristan Walker’s pleas for forgiveness. But her own awakening psychic gift won’t let her rest until she uncovers the truth about her family and her past. And Tristan is the only one who can help her sift through the secrets to find the truth hidden in all the lies....

Run to You

Part Three:

Third Charm

Clara Kensie

www.miraink.co.uk

Dedication

To K:

I.H.Y.D.

Contents

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Acknowledgments

Playlist for Run to You

Q & A with Clara Kensie

About the Author

Excerpt

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.”

Perhaps knowing I was about to cry, he opened his arms in an offer of comfort. I shook my head and pulled myself into a tighter ball and cried alone.

* * *

“How did you know?” Tristan asked from the cot when my tears had slowed to sniffles.

I sniffled one more time. “Back in your kitchen. Kellan called you Junior.”

“Ah.”

I put my head on my knees. I just wanted to go back in time, back to Winterball. I wanted to go back to the running path. Back to laying on his bed with his head on my stomach.

But there was no going back. I was here, locked in a cell with the son of Dennis Connelly.

Tristan was the son of the man who’d tried to kill me. The son of the man who’d chased my family out of thirteen homes in eight years. The son of the man who would soon come and finish the job he started.

I was in love with Tristan Connelly.

“Oh God...” Dennis Connelly’s son leaped off the cot and scooped me up, rushing me to the bathroom and bending me over the toilet just in time. He knew I was going to throw up before I did.

He held my hair back as I vomited for the second time since Kellan had kidnapped me.

No, the third. I had a flash of screaming, screaming so long and so hard I choked and threw up all over his white shirt with the pink embroidered horse, and started screaming again.