Reckoning by Jo Leigh Read Free Book Online Page B

miss even an hour of work, so she’d soldiered on. Harper had tried to tell her that her brother was fine, that he was too smart to get caught, but Christie wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw Nate.
    It would have been great if they’d walked into Christie’s room at the motel and found that Nate and Tam had arrived, but no. It was still good to see Kate and Vince. And here was Cade, whom she’d heard about but never met.
    He was quite large. Conan large. But he had a shy smile and his sandy brown hair had a cowlick in the back, reminiscent of Dennis the Menace. She wondered if the guys in his unit had given him hell for it, but then he’d probably had a crew cut back then.
    “I’m Harper,” she said, extending her hand.
    He shook it almost too gently, as if he knew he could easily hurt her. “Ma’am.”
    “How was your trip?”
    He shrugged. “Okay, I suppose. It was tricky getting the boxes on board. Security is tighter now, even at the bus stations.”
    “Boxes?”
    “Weapons,” he said. “We’ve collected quite a few, and we couldn’t afford to leave them behind.”
    “Of course,” she said. She’d been told he was a sniper. An excellent one. She shivered, still not used to the nearness of death.
    Even being together in one room like this was incredibly dangerous. But, then so was everything else. They would either come up with a way to defeat Omicron, or they wouldn’t. Right now all she could do was spend as much time as possible with Seth.
    “Nate and Tam are on their way,” Boone said. “He called.”
    Harper hadn’t even realized how on edge she’d been about them until her shoulders relaxed.
    “Thank God,” Christie said. “Let me get something to drink, then catch us up, okay?”
    Harper went with her, wishing she could have showered before this meeting.
    “Actually,” Boone continued, “there’s good news for you and Harper. Vince here has generously decided to bankroll us, at least for now. So you two won’t have to go back to that truck stop.”
    Harper looked at Christie and they both grinned like idiots. “Gee, what a shame,” Harper said. “I’ll so miss coming home smelling like burgers and onion rings.”
    “I’m assuming we won’t be laying about eating bonbons,” Christie added.
    Boone shook his head. “I wish you could, but no. There’s work to be done.”
    Harper poured herself a cold soda and Christie went for iced tea. Boone didn’t wait until they returned. He filled them in on their discovery of the chamber, and the biometric hand scanner that stood in their way.
    When she joined the others, she sat on the floor next to Seth. He looked exhausted, but that was nothing new.
    “We need to get into that chamber,” Boone said. “We’re pretty sure we have a way, but it hinges on a kidnapping.”
    Harper smiled. “Well, as long as it’s not anything illegal.”
    Boone grinned back. “That’s not all. The subject can’t know he was kidnapped. And we’re going to need him for at least three hours. Can it be done?”
    She thought a moment, then nodded. “There are a couple of drugs that we could use. Rohypnol could work, but there’s even less chance of him remembering with gamma-hydroxybutyrate. GHB is odorless, colorless, tasteless and given the proper dose, it should knock out the subject for several hours. Might be hard to give you just three, though. More like five to eight.”
    Boone looked at Seth. “That could work, right?”
    “Yeah. Especially if we find the right man leaving the Renegade.”
    Harper hadn’t been to the Renegade, but she’d seen the bar every day on her way to work. It was a local hangout, and a lot of people from the base went there. They had pool tables and video poker and lots of cold beer.
    Seth squeezed her arm, then turned to Vince. “You’re sure you can get us the Mikrosil?”
    Vince nodded. “I’ll have it in a couple of days.”
    “What’s Mikrosil?” Christie asked. “And why are we kidnapping