Intrusion Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t tell me someone else was after it.” The man’s voice thinned. “Or I wouldn’t have given them the opportunity to beat me to it.”
    Anxiety popped out on Ivan’s brow and he swiped at the moisture. “Then I suggest you get it back. By whatever means necessary.”
    “I need more money.”
    “You’ll get it when you deliver the armor.”
    He turned off his phone and tossed it on the counter. His throat ached and he tried to swallow past the threat of his words, but they were lodged in his esophagus by shame.
    Violence begets violence.
    His pacifistic mother must be turning in her grave. But he couldn’t let anything stand in his way.

Chapter Three
    Audra smoothed a wrinkle from the gray jacket of her Calvin Klein pantsuit then reached up to tuck an errant strand of hair back into its chignon.
    Business meetings sucked—especially when she’d purposely spent the last few days dodging the boss’ calls.
    The security breach weighed heavily on her. If she’d only done something—tied the man to the chair, knocked him out with her bag—anything to keep him in the lab until the guards arrived.
    But no, he’d flustered her with those intense eyes and a grin that lacked the cold calculation she would’ve expected from a hardened criminal. So she’d stood there and flubbed the chance to take him down.
    Now, reeling from an acute lack of sleep after last night’s delayed flight, she was forced to heel to Charlie’s brusque summons. Somehow she didn’t think the purpose of this meeting was to welcome her back after her successful trip.
    She shifted the sheaf of papers in her arms, pushed her shoulders back and strode into the conference room. Her feet stumbled to a stop.
    A man she didn’t recognize sat at the head of the large oak table. He was thin with square framed spectacles that drew attention to his large, dark eyes currently pinned on her. Charlie, short in stature, but large around the middle, sat to the man’s left. For him to have relinquished what was known around Nanodyne as his spot...
    Something was definitely up, and it wasn’t good.
    At least she had one ally in the room: Jonathan Peterson from the Department of Defense, her staunchest supporter and cheerleader. She’d collaborated with him from the start of the project three years ago and counted him as a friend. He glanced up from his legal pad, dark circles marring his normally clear blue eyes.
    “Audra.” A heavy note of apology weighed down his smooth voice.
    He reached up to push aside an unruly thatch of blonde hair that curled against his forehead, but instead of meeting her gaze, he dropped his hand to the table and fixed his attention on the white bandage across his knuckles.
    “Jonathan.” Why wouldn’t he look at her? She frowned at Charlie. “Is everything all right?”
    Charlie’s mouth flattened under his bushy salt and pepper mustache. “Audra, take a seat.”
    “Charlie, if this is about your phone calls, I’m sorry I didn’t return them. I barely had time to complete the tensile series on the nanotubes before—”
    “Sit.”
    Gripping the nearest leather chair, she dropped into it, feeling like a child at detention. Her cheeks burned and the heat teased an unwelcome grimace from her lips. She tossed her packet of papers on the table, trying not to squirm under her boss’s frank scrutiny.
    He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in front of him. “Where have you been?”
    Her spine stiffened. “At ChemTech, of course.”
    He sighed. “I spoke to Lee Adams of ChemTech. He said you didn’t show up until four o’clock on the fourteenth. Your flight left for Chicago on the afternoon of the thirteenth. What took you so long?”
    “What is this?” Her heart squeezed tight then burst into a painful rhythm in her chest. “An interrogation? You knew I grew up in Chicago. Being back there…”
    She’d gone and stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of the rubble that had once been St. Anthony’s