Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
We’re going in, he warned her.
He still hadn’t let her go, and for the first time it occurred to her that he was making certain she couldn’t escape. She was even more sure when he pulled her right into the water with him.
I swim better with two arms. Shylah tested her theory.
If you’re Shylah, sister to Bellisia and Zara, you can swim with your hands tied behind your back.
That was true. She’d done it on more than one occasion. It was part of their training.
I’m not going anywhere. I’m not about to take the chance of infecting anyone else with this virus. I was here to try to track the source. Whitney is an asshole, but he definitely doesn’t want a hemorrhagic virus let loose on any country, let alone the United States.
Swim with me, we’ll sort it out on the other side. I’m not losing you in the river. Tell me if you have to go up for air.
She doubted if he could lose her. He was too omnipotent. Invincible. Even with having to do CPR on him after his injury, there was a part of her that thought it was possible he would have miraculously come back to life without her. And she wouldn’t have to go to the surface for air. She could breathe shallowly, let one tiny bit of air out at a time and last for a very long time if needed.
She used her legs, kicking strongly. She helped with her one free arm, but he essentially was a bullet in the water, speeding through like an otter to the other side. When their feet touched the bottom, they were in the mangrove forest, the roots rising all around them in the brackish water.
We have to get into the trees before they see us. Try not to make a sound.
That annoyed her. She was no amateur. She’d been observing the members of the MSS for some time without detection. You didn’t have a clue I was anywhere near you. She couldn’t keep the snippy note out of her tone.
Shylah didn’t want to think about the virus and her exposure to it or what it meant. Death. Certain death. She could deal with dying, it was the how. Death from this particular hemorrhagic virus had looked horrific.
Don’t. We’ll figure that out later. Right now we need to make the few feet into the forest. They will come after us and that’s what we want, just not right now.
She noticed he didn’t apologize for thinking she was an idiot and needed a warning when in enemy territory. Why do we want them to come after us?
Because we’re going to turn the tables on them and kill as many as possible.
She remained silent, and this time made certain he was completely out of her mind. She didn’t want to chance him reading her thoughts. She knew all the members of the MSS were to blame for what had happened to the people of Lupa Suku. Intellectually, she knew. She was fine with the GhostWalker killing the commander of the terrorist cell. She’d seen the atrocities he’d committed. She didn’t mind Draden killing the guards—after all, he had to escape. She wasn’t in the least opposed to killing—that would make her a hypocrite—but she wasn’t certain he could stop killing. The death toll was already so high.
Draden remained crouched half in and half out of the mangroves, making himself smaller by keeping his lower half in the water. Roots protruded, rising up like sentries. He was still enough that someone looking through the driving rain might think he was part of the trees rather than a human.
You didn’t kill all those guards to escape. She knew it came out somewhere between an accusation and a little bit of awe. You wanted them dead. All of them.
He glanced back at her over his shoulder, his incredible eyes moving over her face. Seeing her. Focusing on her. The way he looked at her made her heart begin to accelerate. Holy cow, Draden. You should be outlawed. If those guards were women, you would just have to look at them like that and they’d worship at your feet. She tried going for humor, but it was too close to the truth for her to inject laughter into her mind.
He gave her a faint grin that raised her temperature about a hundred degrees. The flash of his white teeth, that mouth, the way his face softened just for a moment to let humor escape, had butterfly wings fluttering in her stomach. Maybe other places too but she wasn’t acknowledging them. She’d lost her chance for that to ever happen. She would die with no experiences. None.
I don’t see you worshipping yet, Shylah.
She had been enhanced as a soldier, trained as one, and she was going to die as one. Draden was right, they couldn’t take the chance of infecting anyone else. Still, she really didn’t want to die that way. If they were going to wage war on the enemy and she wasn’t killed in battle, she was saving her last bullet for herself. In spite of her grim thoughts, she couldn’t help but appreciate his sense of humor.