Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 26999 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26999 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 135(@200wpm)___ 108(@250wpm)___ 90(@300wpm)
Quickening my pace, I click the locks on the silver Audi that had replaced my Beetle—a little luxury for once, a luxury I decided I deserved. I’m about to climb inside the car when a black sedan with dark windows pulls up beside me. The back window rolls down. “How’s my favorite daughter?”
My heart stops beating for an instant, and I’m not sure if I’m more shocked to see my father—who I haven’t seen since my move—or to see him out of uniform, in what appears to be some sort of designer-looking black suit jacket. “Father?” I ask, questioning the obvious, reeling with disbelief. “What are you doing here?” The wind gushes again, snow and ice plastering my hair against my head and face, reminding me why leaving my hat in the car was a bad idea.
“Get in, sweetheart,” he orders before he too states the obvious. “You’re getting wet.” The door pops open.
He’s right, of course, I am, but still, I stand in place, my feet cemented to the parking lot, and I’m just staring at the door, my heart randomly charging and stalling. Unbidden, tears prickle my eyes—unacceptable tears for a general’s daughter—and I’m thankful for the snow that hides the dampness clinging to my cheeks. I haven’t cried since that first night in the hospital when I’d faced Creed’s betrayal. But my father’s actions were no less brutal, both in what he did to Creed and the soldiers like him he’d experimented on.
In the aftermath, he’d become something I didn’t recognize, nor would my mother if she were here today; someone desperate, when I’d never known him to be desperate a day in his life; a man trying to save himself no matter what the expense, including the lives of the soldiers he’d pushed to the edge; and his relationship with me. But I’d dealt with those things and all the ways they’d beat me up and destroyed me, at least temporarily.
Or so I’d thought.
But I’m no fool, at least not this evening, aware that the emotions expanding in my chest say otherwise, even calling me a liar. The very existence of the pain stabbing my heart right now says I haven’t dealt with anything but rather simply hid what threatened to do me in. I came here. I ran. And running never solves anything, but maybe, just maybe, it allowed me the distance to survive the heartache that the two men I’ve loved in different ways, but with all my heart, created in me.
Time was a gentle friend who allowed me the façade of quiet distance, but its clock has officially run out.
With a slow, calming breath, I force myself to slide inside the vehicle, directly across from my father. He reaches for the door and pulls it shut, brushing the snow away from the jacket of his well-pressed, and, dare I say, expensive, suit.
“What’s going on, Father?” Even as I ask that question, a stark, cold memory fills me—a memory of asking that same question that day at Groom Lake.
He arches a brow. “No, ‘how are you?’ ‘Happy New Year, Dad!’ No hug for the old man?”
My gut twists and turns. “I’d prefer skipping the part where we pretend everything is okay,” I say, my voice rasping a bit too obviously. “We both know you didn’t come to Germany to wish me a Happy New Year.”
He studies me for several heavy beats, and he must decide to skip the niceties as he offers me a file. I ignore it, refusing to be pulled back into his world.
“Take it, Addie,” he commands.
My lips thin. “Whatever you’re up to now, Father, I want no part of it.”
He ignores my objection and briefs me as if I’m on his payroll. “Julian’s Zodius army has been attacking our naval bases. They’ve claimed a New Mexico base and another in Texas. Men are dying. Good men. And you can help prevent that. Take the file, Addie.”
“Me?” I ask incredulously. “Do you really want to go down the path you’re leading us both right now?”
“I know what I did,” he snaps back. “I’m crystal clear on what I did, daughter, but the past has made a mark, and it doesn’t change the statement I made as fact. You can help me save lives.”
He’s turned it all back on me. He’s manipulating me. He’s playing on my guilt, and I don’t like it. My rejection of his mind games comes hard and fast with a burst of anger. “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to know this. But…now I do, now I can’t pretend I don’t know, and you know that. You damn sure know that.” I snatch the file from him, my gaze flickering over the label that reads “Red Dart” and underneath that, “PMI Research,” then back to him. “What is ‘Red Dart,’ and what is this ‘PMI’?”