Redaction: Extinction Level Event (Part I) Read Online Free PDF Page B

told you.” Aunt Mavis dug her fists into her hips and checked the lock before focusing on the pines again. “There won’t be an overt war. China has too much to lose.”
    Sunnie’s arms drooped from her shoulders. No war. That was good. Then she remembered the hedging. Overt. Did that mean there’d be a hidden war? Terrorist attacks that struck without warning, killed indiscriminately. “Aunt Mavis?”
    “Sunnie, I don’t have a magic ball. I don’t know what is going to happen for sure.” She bit her bottom lip and frowned at the lock. “Except that if we don’t get home soon, we will get shot.”
    The streetlights blinked on then off.
    Sunnie checked her watch. Ten minutes to curfew, when the Marines could legally shoot to kill. The very Marines who were a mere hundred yards away at the corner. She slouched in her jacket. The warm fleece brushed her tingling ears. “Don’t you have the key?”
    Her aunt nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not supposed to use it without another here as witness to my continued health.”
    Like those stupid rules mattered. This was a matter of life and death here. Her life and her death. “Geez, Aunt Mavis. We’re going to be shot in another eight minutes, and you’re worried about upsetting an octogenarian with a Robin Hood fetish.”
    “Mr. Quartermain is very good with his bow and arrows. He hunts every year and brings home elk, javelina and doves.”
    “But he’s not here now, is he?” Balancing on one foot, Sunnie tapped the lock with the tip of her sneaker. “Just open it before the men with guns show up and shoot us.”
    She glanced over her shoulder. No Hummer in sight. So far, so good.
    Aunt Mavis shook her keys.
    “Please?” With both feet on the ground, Sunnie rocked back on her heels. “I’m cold and I want to go home.”
    And find out what was happening on the net. Not that she didn’t trust Aunt Mavis, but someone might know something more.
    “All right.” Aunt Mavis sifted through her keys, picked out a small, silver one and crouched in front of the lock.
    Finally! Pivoting about, Sunnie began to retreat to the car when she detected movement in the corner of her eye. Turning, she looked at the bird.
    No, not a bird.
    An arrow.
    Shooting through the air toward... “Aunt Mavis!”

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    Trent Powers pulled his Jaguar into the three-car garage and eased it to a stop next to a cherry-red BMW. With the powerful engine purring, he idly watched the garage door close behind him, shutting out the rapidly fading twilight and the genteel decay that had reached even this suburban utopia thanks to the Redaction. Perfect. Absolutely perfect for his plans with Lucinda. Dorinda? Linda?
    His heart skipped over a few beats. Why couldn’t he remember her name? Names, details, and those little nothings made people think they mattered to him, personally.
    It was what he did best.
    It was why he was successful at everything he did.
    Almost everything.
    His one failure surged from the dark corners of his mind. Red painted his ex-wife’s collagen-enhanced lips. The scarlet sneer contorted her oval face into an ugly mask.
    She wouldn’t be laughing much longer.
    A tap on the tinted driver’s side window pulled him away from the past.
    “Hey, honey, you getting out?” Hand propped on her cocked hip, the woman’s baby doll lips pursed in a shallow pout. Wisps of blond hair teased the knife’s edge of the deep cleavage that nearly reached her chin.
    His attention darted between the puckered nipples pressing against her skimpy tank top. Dark aureoles made twin dots under the pink shirt. Would they taste vanilla like her body lotion?
    The over-sized take-out bag crinkled against the toned thigh outlined by her clingy mini-shirt. “Like what you see, darlin’?”
    Honey. Sweetheart. Darlin’. Did she remember his name? She would be screaming it before sunrise. He’d make sure of it.
    “Yes, ma’am.” His erection throbbed against the fly of his