Darker Shade of Pale - HER FREEDOM Read Online Free PDF Page B

timbers, even.
    "Remember the scene with the albino taking Wesley to the pit of terror? That's kinda like my treehouse."
    "A pit of terror?"
    "Only for the uninvited." He got out of the Mule and I followed. He walked to a nearby large tree and climbed up, only to reach for a branch. He bent the branch down and then a great rumbling sounded. Tyb let go and fell the six feet to the ground. He whirled around and trotted towards the huge dead tree. "Hurry, it's on a timer!"
    Shit. I bolted for Tyb's side, so I would know where the entrance was. The entry point to the treehouse it seems, was at the stump of another dead tree, about twenty feet away. A small door was cracked open. Tyb widened the aperture and stepped inside. "It's amazing what cams, gears, weights, and some chain can do. After pulling that branch, it drops a stone weight which gives slack to the chain holding this door shut. Coring out that tree was a real bitch, by the way. Had to seal it on the inside to keep the sap from gooping shit up. Anyway, the weight falls, and with a series of gears and stuff, the counterweight will pull that door shut again in under thirty seconds. Makes it a pain in the ass for someone who doesn't know that the key goes nowhere near the door." While he spoke, Tyb walked a little ways and started climbing down a ladder. "Come on Izzy, we don't have time to waste."
    By now, the door had shut and light, gone. I was in the dark. To play it on the safe side, I crawled on hands and knees toward the ladder Tyb used. It was shorter than I thought. After trotting down a small hallway, things got fancy. Steel door and lights ended the hallway. Tyb already had the door open. There were two other doors in the chamber he stood in. "Come on, Izzy." He opened the left door and lights automatically turned on. The room was Spartan. Chairs surrounding a long table, a bunch of cabinets and shelves, sink and countertop.
    "Okay, here, hold this." Tyb put some rectangular gadget in my hand and turned around to dig through some drawers. I looked at the contraption and recognized it as the same Mara used to scan my hotel room. Tyb returned to my side with his hands full of things. Bottles and cotton balls and something wrapped in plastic. When he put it all on the table, I recognized the plastic wrapped items as scalpels in autoclave sterilization packets.
    "You're going to cut me?" With Christos's words about skinning me, the thought of something cutting through my flesh did not sit well.
    "Sub-dermal means   under skin . We'll locate it with the wand and I'll remove it. It'll be destroyed."
    "Why do you have all this sort of stuff?" Scalpels? Gizmos?  How the hell did he afford all this stuff?
    "Like I mentioned earlier, Haytham tried killing me. Twice. First time, he and his brother beat the shit out of me. Was in the hospital for months. Second time, he ran me off the road. I crashed my car, the hood was smoking when I got out through the passanger side. He didn't see me because he drove on and turned around. By the time he reached my car, it exploded because the fire reached the gas tank. Gave me the chance to disappear off his radar. But in the event he tried finding me again, I was going to be prepared, even if that meant battle-ground surgery."
    I swallowed the knot growing in my throat. In my wildest dreams, I could have never conceived my husband doing the things he did before I grew to know the real him. "I'm sorry he caused you to give everything up."
    Tyb smirked. "I gave nothing up. I have the world, here. It may not be a fancy city life, but it is more rewarding to me than anything I knew before hand." All business now, he took the gizmo from me and turned it on. "Hold out your arms." I did so, and he scanned them. "Okay, legs." Same thing. "Stand up, please." Can do, and did. First he scanned my front. Lights stayed green on the contraption. "Turn around." I did as asked. No more than ten seconds passed. "Okay, found it."
    "Where?" I wanted to