Betrayed (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 9) Read Online Free PDF Page B

bar, some fruit she’d brought with her, and a coffee from a drive thru.
    She swallowed again as another wave of nausea hit her, this one stronger than all the others. Sweat broke out on her forehead and across her upper lip. Giving her head a little shake in the hopes of clearing it, she put her eye back to the scope. But this time she saw two sets of doors at the front entrance, and four guards instead of two.
    Blinking to clear her vision, she struggled to focus on the target before her. It didn’t help. And the fatigue that had begun to creep through her system was making it all too tempting to put her head down and sleep right here.
    She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, used the sharp pain to snap her out of the dangerous pull to sleep, a trick she’d been taught long ago by one of her instructors. Her muscles cramped with the effort of lying still for so long but she grimly held her position.
    Rossland would be coming out those doors anytime now, and when he did, he was hers . But she couldn’t afford to blow her chance and get either killed or arrested in the process.
    More minutes ticked past. Guests trickled out of the doors in small groups, none of them containing Rossland or his guards. There was a possibility he’d left around back, but she didn’t think so. The rear exit was too closed-off, too tight, the perfect place for an ambush. No, his security would want to take him straight out the front, thinking safety lay in numbers.
    Her stomach suddenly twisted hard and there was no fighting this one. She gagged, turned her head and emptied what little had been in her stomach all over the right rear foot well.
    Gasping and shaking, she wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. She’d carried out missions before while ill, but this was different. Considering the people hunting her and their skillsets, she was pretty sure they’d poisoned her somehow. But with what? When?
    Her mind churned as she reviewed her movements over the past thirty-odd hours. She’d been so sure that no one had been able to follow her.
    No one had tailed her on the way to and from her surveillance op this morning, and no one had followed her to the motel later on. All her anti-trespassing devices had been undisturbed as far as she could tell, so no one had opened the door after she—
    She sucked in a sharp breath as the answer hit her.
    The doorknob.
    Someone must have either seen her enter the motel room last night or leave it this morning. They’d waited until she’d left, or maybe they’d been waiting for her to return, and when she hadn’t, they’d put something on the doorknob. When she’d touched it, she’d absorbed the toxin into her skin.
    It was the only explanation she could think of. Because if they’d known where she was, a shot to the head would have been more efficient and far less risky.
    So what the hell had they poisoned her with, she wondered frantically. Janaia and Frank had both been killed with hydrogen cyanide, had suffocated in a matter of minutes after contact. Georgia wasn’t having trouble breathing, even though her heart was beating way too fast at the moment.
    The fingers of her left hand clamped around the stock of the rifle. She might be able to tough it out through the nausea and vomiting, but the double vision made it impossible to get a clear shot off and there were too many innocents around for her to risk it.
    Shit. She’d been determined to get Rossland tonight but now she had no choice but to pack it in for today, get out of here before the hunters found her, then find a safe place to lie low and see about medical treatment, if it wasn’t already too late.
    The logical side of her told her she hadn’t absorbed a fatal dose of whatever it was, as the onset had been too slow. Could still mean she was in big trouble though, and she needed to hole up now before she became any more vulnerable.
    Covering her weapon, she climbed to her hands and knees and dry heaved as another bout