The Fall by R. J. Pineiro Read Free Book Online Page B

as they let her through, the adrenaline racing through her system, heightening her senses.
    The Triumph roared toward the parkway, away from the sea of reporters waiting to get word on the jump. An even larger crowd awaited Jack’s descent northeast of Orlando.
    What a mess, she thought as she worked the gears, formulating her next move, her scientific mind scrubbing her options, zeroing in on her best choice.
    She needed information and she knew how to get it.
    The cybersword cuts both ways.
    Angela accelerated, lowering the goggles as she entered the parkway and headed south, away from the place she had called home for too many years—a place she intended to return to after she figured out what the hell had happened to her husband.
    She checked her mirrors.
    Clear. No dark Suburbans in pursuit.
    Yet.
    Soon everyone would be looking for her. She needed a place to hide, and fast.
    Her home was out of the question. She might have gotten away but knew Hastings’s posse would be on her trail soon, and based on his reaction, Angela wouldn’t be surprised if she saw her picture on the evening news. It was obvious to her that the good general would likely do everything within his power—which she guessed was quite extensive—to bring her into custody.
    But for what?
    The wind in her face and the sun in her eyes, Angela accelerated to the one place she felt she might be temporarily safe while her mind continued to—
    Her phone started to vibrate in the breast pocket of her leather jacket.
    The phone!
    Damn!
    She grabbed it. It was Pete.
    Angela frowned and thought about pitching it over the bridge going across the upcoming Intercoastal Waterway, the body of water separating the Cape and Cocoa Beach from the mainland, but quickly decided against it. Knowing that Hastings could use the phone to track her could be useful later on.
    She powered it completely off and shoved it back in her jacket.
    Sorry, Pete, and fuck you, Grumpy.
    She glanced at the fuel gauge. Half a tank. Enough to get her a hundred miles away from the nasty general.
    Why was he so angry at a change in a descent profile that anyone with a brain could quickly deduct had nothing to do with Jack’s disappearance?
    Unless …
    Angela realized she was speeding. Switching to the right lane, she slowed down while settling in between an eighteen wheeler and a UPS delivery truck. The last thing she needed was to get pulled over. In this day and age, it would only take a minute for Hastings to send out a nationwide alert to every law enforcement agency.
    Crossing the bridge over the Intercoastal Waterway, she drifted all the way to the right side of her lane while the faster traffic sped by as she kept to the speed limit on the parkway.
    The problem with this arrangement was that she couldn’t see anyone approaching from the left lane until they were right on top of her.
    Slowly, she edged the T140 to the middle of her lane, checking the left rearview mirror, and inched the bike a little more to the left of the lane until she could barely see the upcoming traffic and—
    A dark SUV, headlights gleaming in the twilight of early evening, was speeding in the left lane at the other end of the bridge, just exiting the parkway. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if it was one of Hastings’s Suburbans or not, but she had to assume it was.
    She quickly shifted back to the right, completely out of sight.
    How did they track her so quickly? It’d been less than two minutes since Hastings had left her in that room.
    Angela weighed her options. She could simply swing over to the left lane and punch it. Her well-tuned Triumph could easily do 120 miles per hour, certainly more than enough to get away from them, especially in traffic.
    But what if they didn’t know where she was? What if Hastings had simply dispatched his SUVs in every direction to try to spot her before she reached the mainland, where her avenues of escape