Betrayed by a Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

face, and she could see he didn’t think her capable. Now was not the time to explain she’d done worse. “Go.”
    He nodded once. “Remember to stay down.” Then he was gone, disappearing deeper into the woods.
    Sleet and rain were making their way through the tree cover, pelting her as she contemplated the open field ahead. Dead or dying men were out there, and she was supposed to pat them down for evidence. It took her a moment to work up the courage, but she did it. Feeling exposed, she lay as flat as she could and crawled toward the first body, praying the whole time the long grass was cover enough to keep her hidden.
    It took forever, and her efforts rewarded her with an up close and personal view of a gunshot wound to the head. Shooter was wearing a Kevlar vest. Lot of good it did him. Dead. Dark hair. She searched his pockets, found nothing, and stripped him of his attached weapons and ammunition: a gnarly Gerber knife, four full magazines, and a ten-millimeter Glock she had to pry from his dead fingers. One dead guy down, five to go. She shuddered.
    The woods remained ominously silent, making Marnie almost wish for gunshots if only to pinpoint where the bad guys were. Almost. Her greatest wish was there’d only been six. Six dead was a lot. It was nightmare quality. Six dead, the seventh alive and shooting, was worse.
    She didn’t want to be here, crawling to the next body. It took her more time than she had energy for, taking care not to make noise or to rustle the brush around her. This gunman was blond, dead, wearing identical gear—black cargo pants, black turtleneck sweater, black Kevlar vest, comm unit at his neck, web suspenders with attached gear. He was the rifle holder, the one she’d almost emptied her gun into. Gratitude hit her, and she became weak with it. MacLain had saved her life again, and spared her from having to kill.
    She turned the gunman’s head, hoping he was the guy who’d shot her in the office hours ago. Her hand touched goo. Marnie gagged as she realized the back of his skull was gone. He wasn’t Alice’s killer. Too young. She stripped him of his web gear and then checked his pockets. Empty, too.
    A few moments later, MacLain hustled to her side, bright eyed and intense. He had three fully equipped web gears slung over his shoulder and still held his gun at the ready. “If there are more, I can’t find them.” He hunkered down beside her and the body. “No IDs on the three I searched. No blonds.”
    “You should have captured one. To question.” Marnie sat up, shuddering as she wiped her hand against the ground, trying to get the blood off.
    “I tried. He zigged. I zagged. He’s dead. Damned inconvenient.” He continued to scan the wood line. “What did you find?”
    “One blond. Not our guy.”
    “Same gear, comm units,” MacLain said. “They were outfitted, trained. Professional. This was a hit.”
    “You think?” She forced herself not to roll her eyes. He didn’t know what she knew. “Account managers activated.” Her instinct had been right. “When I pulled up your file on Whitman’s private server, I saw that your flight to the Cayman Islands triggered something. I wasn’t sure but suspected this.” She indicated the field and the dead bodies. “They couldn’t risk you getting access to the Tuttle transfer records.”
    “And your first instinct was to hike into the White Mountains?”
    “Saving you is the least of my responsibilities.”
    “A phone call would have been quicker.”
    “You’re in the white pages? Now you tell me.” MacLain was a fan of burner phones. He knew there was no way for her to call him.
    He acknowledged her sarcasm with a grunt. “So, where’s our guy?” He was looking at her like she was hiding Alice’s killer in her pocket.
    The ground was cold and wet, and her nose was filled with the smell of death as she scanned the area. She hurried to the last body—a brunet—and checked his pockets. Nothing. “Not