Eye of the Storm Read Online Free PDF

might be the most crucial.
    "You can invite your friend, if you want," Stormwalker's grandmother said before heading into the house.
    Zan suspected she'd passed a test. Next time, perhaps, she would do the examining.  
    Stormwalker came closer. His strength was a quiet, palpable presence hovering between them, unsettling her.
      "I need to take care of the horses," he said. "We can talk while I work."
      They went into the barn. In the shadow cast by a dimly lit bulb she watched him tend to his animal.
      "What do you want to know?"
    "Why did you let Mac recruit you for that assignment in Vlad ?"
    "I had some naive notion that my actions would spell redemption for both the Corps and my people."
    "Why you?"
    "The lance corporal who got into trouble with that foreign agent was Sioux, a Lakota, like me. I hoped to find out how much damage had been done, maybe even catch the bad guys and make something positive from a negative situation."
    "So what went wrong?"
    "The unseen hands running the show ambushed me and left me swinging in the breeze."
    "How?"
    "It wasn't difficult," he replied without self-pity. "I was an amateur, armed with six weeks' training and an intense desire to right a wrong. My zeal was a poor weapon against a network of operatives and someone inside the Agency who would divert my reports."
    "How do you know they were diverted? Maybe they were never received."
    "They were received all right. Coded acknowledgments told me that, but when Mac's people tried to track them down, everyone had disappeared into the ether."
    "They searched everywhere?"
    He shrugged. "As far as I know."
    "Mac says you're a pretty good marine but a lousy spy."
    He gave her a sidelong glance. The self-deprecating smile softened his features, providing a glimpse of the young man he'd once been. She tried to ignore the butterfly flutters in her abdomen, but without much success.
      "Mac's right. When you're a soldier, you come to expect that the guy fighting beside you is a friend. When you're a spy, chances are he's just waiting to put a knife into you. I never could remember that."
    "Yet Dar is the one who's dead. That puts a different spin on the concept of betrayal, wouldn't you say?" Her voice vibrated with the anger she welcomed as an antidote to his charm.
    For the first time, he turned and looked directly at her. His right arm lay negligently across the horse's back. His left hand held a stiff-bristled brush. Beneath the dim light his eyes blazed, and a muscle beat along his jaw line.
    "When I was in the field, I sent back reports. Twice a week, per S.O.P. The crucial documents are nowhere in the computer database and no hard copies were ever found. That means they were intercepted and probably destroyed. Dar O'Neill was the only person who could have proven I was telling the truth. Why would I kill him?"
    "If you weren't telling the truth you had the perfect motive."
    Delivered in a cold, brittle monotone, his words had dropped like icicles into the heavy, musk-laden air of the barn, attesting to the countless times he'd told his version of the truth to listeners who refused to believe. His return to silence sent a strange feeling shivering through her, as if the heat of her anger had cooled by several degrees. Unwilling to accept the change and what it might say about her ability to stay on course, she pressed on.
    "If you were innocent, why didn't you appeal the verdict?" He remained silent and she stepped closer. "Why did you let them send you to prison without a fight?"
    A protest rumbled up from the horse's belly and he turned to nudge his owner. With a gentle hand, Stormwalker turned the horse's head and went back to grooming the animal.
    "I had nothing to fight with. I decided to save my strength to get through the next thirty years."  
    The horse nickered softly and stretched his neck toward Alexandra. She stroked his nose, hardly noticing its velvety feel beneath her fingertips. "I wouldn't have gone quietly."
    "Have