In Love by Christmas: A Paranormal Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked glum. They sat silently for a while.
     
    Leroy didn’t know how much time had passed when Hannah got up and poured them more coffee. “Do you know anything about torture, Leroy?” she said as though talking about turning on the news.
    Leroy gulped. “Uh, no, ma’am.”
    “I know a great deal about torture, both from healing people who have been tortured, and inflicting it myself. It changes people. That is why I rebuked Charles for calling Miss Duane a junkie. She is a junkie, of course, but she is also a human being. And a torture victim. I know what she faces. Do you know what torture does, Leroy?”
    “Huh. No, ma’am. Except maybe kill you.”
    “Dying is the easy way out. Torture does far worse than kill. Can you imagine being tied up and made available to hundreds of people? Being raped until your life is a succession of ramming thrusts and pain? Being flogged and screaming, or being shocked with a cattle prod in your body’s depths and knowing that no one will ever help you? Learning tricks and ways of pleasing men that revolt you, but will buy another day’s life?
    “The mind breaks. Even if the person survives and gets away, it’s not over. What happened repeats itself inside the brain, all the time. Faces leap out of nowhere, and the body shakes with remembered pain. Terror, always. Rage that it happened, that others allowed it to happen. Having known torture, you can never know peace.
    “The survivor can look all right for a time, but then the vicious tide rises and she reacts, screaming and fighting for her life.” Hannah grimaced. “That’s what torture does, and that’s what it’s done to Cass Duane.
    “I’ve known Cass since she was a child. When I came to California, I saw a disturbed family. Cass was a little girl, ignored by everyone. Her mother was often inebriated and unable to function. I cared for Cass like she was my daughter. I kept her safe. I loved the child the way no one else did. I will get her back, Leroy, and this time she will not be stolen again.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “ Shit ! I got it! I know how to find her.” Doug jerked erect in his chair.
    Leroy and Hannah turned to him.
    “I can find her. But what time is it?”
    “It’s four p.m.”
    “Fuck.”
    “What?”
    “It’s too early. It’s one in California. They won’t be working yet. They’ll just be getting up. Shit.” He jumped up. “Your guys need to get ready!”
    “For what?”
    “Do you have the technology to look inside buildings? To get into government files? Like city or county offices?”
    “Yes, of course. This is Numenon. We can look inside anything.”
    “Get your guys up here and ready for action. When it’s dark in California, I’m going to make some calls. And we’ll be ready.
     
    “This is one reason I work for Will Duane,” Hannah said, typing furiously on her keyboard. “He’s got the technology to do anything . Prototypes of inventions that no one’s even heard of.”
    She and her operatives had their laptops up on the dining room table. A screen that covered the wall had dropped from the ceiling across from the table. The agents’ computers were hooked up to it. Each laptop’s images circulated on the larger screen. A complicated metal structure like a pyramid about five feet tall was set up by the living room’s large window. Leroy thought it must be an antenna of some sort.
     
    It took them a long time to set it up, and more time to calibrate with their computers. The sun had fallen in the West. It was that dusky in-between time. The time of transitions and miracles.
    “We’re ready,” Hannah said.
    Doug looked at his watch. “It’s seven here, that means four p.m. in California. Maybe someone will be around. I’ll give it a try.” He went into his bedroom and picked up a secure phone’s receiver.
     
    “Hey, babe! How you been? It’s Doug Saunders, your old compadre. Yeah, been a while.” Doug smiled broadly, leering. “Oh, yeah. I remember those