Her Dying Breath Read Online Free PDF

mind. Would the woman ever truly recover?
    Brenda’s cell phone buzzed that she had a text, so she clicked to check it.
    Tell the Commander I left a present for him.
    Slaughter Creek Motel. Room 7
.
    Brenda’s pulse clamored, and she immediately texted back.
Who is this? Where are you?
    She waited several seconds but received no response, so she grabbed her keys and raced back to her car, then sped toward the old motel.
    The person who’d sent the text must have seen her newscast. They’d asked for anonymous tips, but this one sounded ominous.
    What exactly would she find when she reached the motel?

Chapter 3

    T he night sounds picked up as Brenda wound around the curves of the mountain, then turned onto the road leading to the Slaughter Creek Motel.
    The motel was ancient, situated off a beaten path from the main road but close enough that truckers and other travelers needing a layover before they reached the deserted thick forests of the great Smokies could see it.
    For a brief moment, she considered calling Nick, but she quickly dismissed the idea. She’d wait until she saw what was in that motel room. After all, this text could be a prank, someone who got his jollies by sending her on a wild goose chase.
    Or it could be some crazed person leading you into a trap
.
    Maybe someone who didn’t want her snooping around. Hadn’t Arthur Blackwood murdered everyone who’d tried to expose his secrets?
    She shivered, then patted her purse, where she kept her revolver. After being mugged in an alley in Nashville when she was a student, she’d bought herself some protection the next day.
    Her instincts told her that this text was for real. Maybe whatever the person had left in the motel would lead her to the namesof the subjects in the experiment. Or to the other people who’d been involved—Jake and Nick suspected that someone higher up in the military or CIA than their father had run the experiment. If she broke the story, Nick couldn’t leave her out of the investigation.
    Her decision made, she focused on the road. Headlights nearly blinded her as she raced around Blindman’s Curve, tires screeching as she rounded the switchback. An eighteen-wheeler barreled past from the opposite direction, and she slowed as an SUV pulled out from a dirt road and turned in front of her. Frustration made her curse, and she blew the horn to prompt the driver to move on, but he ignored her.
    Minutes crawled by and two other cars whizzed past, lights flickering off the asphalt. A warning sign for falling rock glowed from the rocky wall beside her, and water trickled down the side of the mountain.
    Finally the driver of the SUV turned onto another dirt road leading to a fishing lodge that rented cabins, and she waved him on and sped up. By the time she reached the motel, her palms were sweating and she’d imagined a dozen different scenarios, half of which left her dead.
    The person who sent the text could have been a psycho. Someone who intended to do God knows what to her. The one-story motel backed up to the woods—a murderer could leave her body in the forest, and no one would ever find her.
    She hadn’t told anyone about the text either, so it might take days for someone to even realize she was missing.
    Maybe she should alert her boss.
    But if this lead turned out to be nothing, she’d look like a fool and lose his respect. Being an investigative reporter meant digging in the trenches and taking risks. If she showed weakness now, no one would take her seriously as a professional.
    Still, as she parked at the motel, she checked the .22.
    The blinking lime-green lights of the motel sign created a strobe-light effect as they swirled across the nearly deserted parking lot. The lights on the word C REEK had burned out, so the sign read S LAUGHTER M OTEL .
    A rusted pickup truck, minivan, and RV were parked in the lot, but all of the rooms looked dark.
    She stepped from the car, then scanned the row of rooms in the L-shaped