Collector's Item by Denise Golinowski Read Free Book Online Page B

colors, and sound intensified as Andi fought to break free of KT’s control.
    A frantic twist opened the lock. KT shoved it out of the clamp and thrust the door open. She dove to her right and rolled behind a wooden crate. The whine of a bullet preceded a shower of splinters above her head. She scrambled to the other side to peer around the edge. Another shower of splinters from a nearby crate made her duck back out of sight.
    Gunshots echoed off the walls of the hangar. She pressed as close to the crate as possible and vainly attempted to see both sides at once.
    A sudden barrage of shots nearly deafened her while movement to her left caught her attention. Under the storm of gunfire, Torne sprinted into view, headed for a closed door KT hadn’t noticed before about halfway down the side of the hangar. Massey and Peyton followed, hard on his heels.
    Torne slammed into the crash bar, and out the door, to disappear in the darkness beyond. Just ahead of Peyton, Massey slipped through the opening and the door swung shut behind them.
    KT crouched behind the crate. Andi snarled for her to follow Peyton. Hunt!
    Logic, and Peyton’s instructions, told KT to stay put until the shooting stopped. But the muffled sound of shots outside the hangar made her decision for her.
    Peyton!
    Staying low, KT sprinted toward the door. Shots continued to echo through the air. She gasped a quick prayer that none made it her way. She burst through the door and dove to the right as it swung shut again. Scooting along the space between the parked cars and the side of the hangar, she distanced herself from the door as quickly as she could.
    A lone light shone above an open gate in a high chain-link fence at the far end of the hangar. Andi growled, uneasy. The shadows between the cars could hide an army. As if to compensate for the ringing in her ears from the gun battle inside coupled with the roar of jet engines, KT’s eyes and nose kicked into overdrive.
    Blood! KT eased up enough to peer through the windshield of a large sedan. But whose?
    The whine of jet engines faded away, and in the buzzing silence, a car engine snarled to life. Tires squealed somewhere to her left. She flinched back from the glare of headlights as a low-slung sports car spun out of a parking space.
    “Stop!” Her attention snapped to her right at the sound of Peyton’s voice.
    Over the hood of the sedan, she saw Peyton standing behind the front end of a pickup truck about midway down the opposite lane, a gun aimed at the car. The car accelerated, and he fired. A shot from inside the car made Peyton stagger. He held his position and fired a couple more times. The car zigzagged toward Peyton and two more shots spun Peyton around to disappear behind the truck.
    “No!”
    She sprinted toward the truck, keeping low, and with one eye on the sports car as it raced toward the open gate in the rear fence. In the glare of the overhead light, she glimpsed Torne hunched low over the wheel. He made a sharp right turn just outside the gate and, for a split second, KT saw a face through the passenger window, staring back.
    KT stumbled to a stop. Patricia? Just a flash of an oval face surrounded by a cloud of dark hair. KT’s heartbeat sped up. Patricia!
    Two Alliance Rangers raced from the end of the hanger, tracking the vehicle with their guns, shots accompanied by flares of brilliant light. The car never paused. Gravel rattled against the chain link fence as the car fishtailed onto the access road and disappeared from sight, one taillight going out in a flash of light.
    Shit! What was Patricia doing in Torne’s car? Was it Patricia? It’d been so quick. Could she trust the fleeting glimpse? She couldn’t be sure what she’d seen. She took a quick breath, the scent of blood drawing her back to the scene. Peyton!
    She ran around the front bumper of the truck. The glint of light on a gun barrel stopped her in her tracks. Then the gun dropped out of sight.
    “Damn it! Just like a