Alien Hunter: Underworld Read Online Free PDF

on him from above, wriggling wildly. Before he could rip it off, it had wrapped itself around his neck and was striking at his face, fangs gaping out of its bright red mouth.
    An illusion, he knew, but he wanted them to think it had convinced him.
    Letting fly what he hoped sounded like a bloodcurdling scream of pure terror, he leaned outward and let himself fall.
    As he passed the cave, he let off a couple of shots, intentionally wild.
    He spread his legs and arms, exposing as much body surface as possible to the water. Maximum resistance meant maximum deceleration.
    He hit the bottom hard, real hard, but didn’t feel anything break. He swam painfully to the surface.
    He came up gasping, coughing, flailing in the water. He needed to make his struggles look convincing. As he reached the bank, he wallowed, slipped and fell, and finally took off running down the gravelly path that paralleled Hecker Kill. He shambled along until he was well away from the ravine. Then he dropped the frantic dash of a surprised and defeated man and trotted efficiently away.
    Once he thought he was out of their range, he stopped. He listened. Normal sounds only. He used his nose. Pine and the sweet rot of the forest floor. Diana couldn’t have seen him fall, but she would have heard the scream. So she was probably heading down to the kill herself, trying to save him. If night settled before he reconnected with her, she’d probably panic and bring up a search party. All to the good. The worse at this he and his people seemed, the better the hunting later tonight.
    He sped up, moving among the pines like a ghost, silent, nothing scraping, nothing crunching. He gave the Miller place enough of a miss to ensure that he wouldn’t be seen, but he also drew close enough to the house to see it.
    It was near dark now, and light flowed from every window. Inside, he could see Eve sitting in one of the recliners. She was reading a book. There was music playing, a piano, its soaring notes drifting like birdsong across the quiet.
    He was immediately reminded of another piano, on a blizzard-ridden night in Montana last year, and the woman who had been playing it, beautiful, talented, and innocent. Taken by Morris amid the slaughter of Diana’s team.
    Eve Miller would not suffer a similar fate, or any fate, at their hands.
    Seeing that all the official vehicles were gone, he crossed to the wet area where Dan Miller had been found. He looked out across a clearing marked by bunched tufts of weeds jutting up from black water. It wasn’t deep, though, not even shoe deep. Miller had been drowned in the ocean like the rest of them, and brought back here.
    He looked up at the sky, empty now of larks, the first stars appearing. What had they traveled in, bringing Miller here? That was one of the great questions. The one flying disk that had fallen into military hands proved to be a simple assemblage of balsa wood and foil, like a kite, or so he had heard. But the wood could survive the highest temperature that could be generated, and the foil was stronger than a foot thickness of armor.
    It was full dark now, and that meant it was time to intercept Diana again. He turned away from the mire and went back to his car. He waited, but she didn’t show. So he cleaned his guns, making sure that their carefully oiled mechanics contained not a drop of water from his swim. Then he got out and opened the trunk. He gathered up his work clothes.
    â€œHi, there,” he said to the darkness. “Looks like I lived.”
    She came out of the forest. He hadn’t needed to see her before he spoke. He knew where she was.
    â€œI’ve decided that a capture attempt is too dangerous, Flynn.”
    â€œI wasn’t planning one.”
    â€œSo you agree with me. Good. We’ll go back to D.C. and build you a team. The team can attempt a capture.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œFlynn, I’m your superior officer.”
    â€œAnd I’m the only