Awakened by Virna Depaul Read Free Book Online

arm. “Plan H. Follow me.”
    She wondered what had happened to plans A through G, but there wasn’t time to ask.
    He reached down to grab his crossbow and arrows, then led the way to a door she hadn’t noticed. Once through it, he flipped several switches on a panel in an exterior wall. They were in a hangar. Huge panels opened slowly to reveal the sky. Silhouetted in the faint moonlight was a gleaming helicopter.
    Barrett gaped at the craft, momentarily at a loss for words. “Where’d you get that?”
    “It was here when I moved in,” he answered laconically.
    Like she was ever going to get a straight answer to a reasonable question out of him. Nick had been famous for procuring outrageously expensive gear at no cost to himself. Whenever he wanted to see what he could get, he had filled out requisition forms one after the other and his commanding officer had signed off on them without even looking.
    “As long as you know how to fly it.”
    “Just get in,” he sighed.
    She obeyed, putting on the headset with the attached mic she found on the seat.
    They were aloft in minutes, taxiing the short distance out of the hangar to a landing pad and rising swiftly when the rotors got up to speed. There was another scanner with a similar screen mounted on the helicopter’s instrument panel. Barrett didn’t want to look at it but she did. The gold dots moved higher on the map of the mountain, almost to the top. The deafening noise of the rotors didn’t drown out another, much more primal sound. And the headsets didn’t filter it out entirely.
    Ferocious howls rose to the darkening sky as they flew away.
    “Sounds like the hounds of hell,” Barrett yelled, wincing as her shout and the helicopter noise seemed to stab into her temples like razors.
    “Nah. Those are hunting dogs. The gold dots track them, if you really want to know. A breeding operation adjoins my property. The kennels are down there, below the ridge.”
    “Are they after us?” The question wasn’t meant to be serious but it came out that way.
    Nick adjusted his headset mic and glanced at the screen. “No. But someone let them out. They shouldn’t have been loose, which is why we needed to get out of there. But it’s entirely possible the dogs captured him.”
    She knew whom he meant but not exactly. They’d gotten off the subject of what had attacked her.
    He shut off the scanner and concentrated on a bewildering array of instruments and gauges, then looked out at the clear night sky, his mouth set in a grim line. They didn’t speak for some time. Barrett looked out through the clear bubble of the windshield as Nick piloted the craft. Her vision had started to tunnel and she blinked to regain focus. Her mouth was dry, her skin clammy. She needed to lie down. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for eons.
    She had no choice but to remain upright and bluff her way through. “Mind if I ask where we’re going?” she asked after a while.
    He glanced at her, his eyes narrowing as he took her in. “Got enough fuel to get to the Atlanta area.”
    “Why Atlanta?”
    He shrugged. “Big city. Safer.”
    “If you say so.”
    Nick kept his gaze on the instrument panel. “Rest. You look like you’re about to pass out.”
    “I don’t want to. Let’s keep talking.”
    They hit rough air and her stomach roiled from the turbulence. Nick righted the heli with some effort and flew on.
    “Fine,” he said. “You want to talk? Tell me why you came to me, Barrett. When the last time I saw you, you swore to never come to me—or for me—ever again.”
    His voice echoed distinctly inside her headset. Her face heated at his deliberately crude choice of words. Had she said that? She struggled to remember, distracted by the constant thudding of the rotors.
    Maybe she had.
    What of it? She’d beaten him to the punch, that was all, by being the first to say they should break up. Then added that she didn’t have a place for him in her life or in her bed.
    Over