Carlie Simmons (Book 4): The Gathering Darkness by JT Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page A

through her like lightning
before the arrival of a thunderstorm. She glanced around the room and back at
him. “This, uhm, this has been amazing, Shane. I just, uh, I really had a nice
time but I should go.” She slowly extracted her hand and walked to the door,
turning to give him a warm smile and running her hand through her hair as she
turned the handle.
    “OK,” she said, trying to convince herself
of her resolve. “See you tomorrow.” She waved self-consciously as she retreated
into the hallway.

 
    Chapter 9
    In the armory the next morning, while
Shane was running through an inventory of his team’s weapons and ammunition, he
heard Matias and Eliza enter the room. He turned his back to them, examining
the barrel of an MK-12 rifle.
    “So how’s mi amigo doing on this fine
morning?” said Matias, grabbing the back of Shane’s shoulder with both hands in
a congratulatory rub.
    Shane just grumbled, “I’d rather not talk
about it.”
    Matias looked back at Eliza, who hunched
her shoulders up.
    “So, she showed up and you two had dinner,
right?” Matias said.
    “Yeah, we had dinner,” he said, shoving
the rifle back on the rack. “We had dinner and everything was going just fine—and
then she had to go all of a sudden, had to prep for today’s training activities.”
He raised his fingers to claw out air quotes at the last two words.
    Matias and Eliza both stepped back,
crossing their arms and trying to hold back their discomfort at the awkward
situation. Shane turned around and grabbed the same rifle off the rack to
re-inspect it.
    Eliza cleared her throat. “You know, Carlie
can be very stubborn and…” Before she could finish Shane cut her off, turning
around with a greasy rag in his hand that he kept squeezing in his right hand.
“‘Stubborn’ is too kind a word for that woman. She’s a thick-headed,
steel-vaulted…” He stopped, his face red and his jaw clenching. He threw the
rag at the wall and walked off.
    “Fuckin’ soap opera I’m livin’ in,” he
muttered as he stomped up the steps.
    Matias watched him walk away and then
glanced back at Eliza. “Those two just gotta stop putting hurdles in their
way.”
    Eliza placed the rifle back on the rack. “I
suspect it’s mostly Carlie, and she’s probably tripping over some of her own in
this case.”

 
    Chapter 10
    Inside the infirmary on the second floor of the prison, Doctor Benjamin Holcomb
was finishing the last stitches on the cervical region of his patient. Holcomb
was hunched forward, his bifocals barely clinging to the tip of his glistening,
oily nose. A few strands of floss-like hair hung over his balding head and his
miniscule eyebrows kept scrunching together as he completed the final knot in
the suture.
    “The anesthetic is going to be wearing off
soon,” said the lanky assistant on the far side of the operating table.
    “Yes, yes. I’m nearly done here so
everything should be fine. This procedure went much smoother than the last one,
wouldn’t you say.”
    The man just grinned, exposing his missing
front teeth. “Good thing there’s no longer any insurance companies to worry
about, eh.”
    Holcomb’s unconscious patient was face
down, the cheeks resting on a donut-shaped pad, allowing the mouth and nose to
remain unobstructed. A slight moan emanated out from the space below the
headpiece and the fingers began twitching, the hands secured by leather straps
to the sides of the table. As Holcomb finished snipping the end of the
remaining suture, he leaned back in his swivel stool and stretched his stiff
shoulders. “Only two more surgeries to go and then it’s dinner time. The rest
of them I’ll finish tomorrow. ”
    He heard footsteps approaching and he
turned to see Mitchell entering, flanked by two thugs. “Dinner will have to
wait. I am speeding up the timeline. I need all of your work completed by
tonight.
    The two henchmen covered their mouths with
their sleeves and then stepped back out, closing the door