Time Patrol (Area 51 The Nightstalkers) Read Online Free PDF

downward on the insignia, to remind the wearer that humility is the true measure of a warrior.
    That part hadn’t seemed to take hold in her ex.
    Of course, he hadn’t always been that way. The first couple of years he’d been almost normal, as normal as someone who had made Special Operations their occupation of choice. But in 2005, on a deployment to Afghanistan, bad things had happened to a bunch of his SEAL buddies during Operation Red Wings, and he’d come back dark and bitter. He’d never talked about the greatest loss of life on one operation the SEALs had ever experienced. She’d read the books about it and saw the movie from the Lone Survivor, but still didn’t understand her husband’s role in it all.
    They’d divorced a long, hard year later.
    She’d stopped running on that beach when she was warned he was back from wherever it was he’d disappeared to. How “they” knew that, she had no clue, but within five minutes of the call she’d had her stuff in the car and was driving. She went about as north as one can go on the West Coast and still be in the States, then off the coast to an island.
    And started running again.
    After six months she was up to ten miles a day. She was also thirteen hundred miles away from where she had last seen the man who had begun his love with flowers and ended it with his fists and worse.
    She turned from Jane Eyre onto Wuthering Heights. Her right foot slipped on the edge of a puddle and slid out from under her. With a splash she went to her knees in six inches of black water without an expletive or complaint. Years of fear can blunt and silence even the most instinctive reactions.
    Teri got to her feet, stepped out of the puddle, and let water drain out of the pant legs.

    While she was doing that, Roland moved his head two inches to the right, removing his cheek from the rifle stock. He opened both eyes. The fall was the unexpected, which was to be expected. It would shift the timeline. How much? Roland hated when the timeline got shifted on an op. But he was trained to adjust. As he’d learned in his first infantry assignment as a young private: The best plan works up until you make contact with the enemy.
    Neeley chimed in. “Alpha on schedule, on Jane Eyre, heading to Wuthering Heights, moving faster than yesterday. Closing for the kill. Over.”
    “Roger. Over.”

    Teri began walking up the trail, letting each footfall squeeze water out of her socks and through her shoes. There was something to be said for a treadmill. But gyms required membership, and she was no longer a joiner. Even with the fake identification the Navy had given her, she kept her new name as tight to her as her skin.
    She checked her GPS. The fall had thrown her pace off, and she’d become obsessive about keeping time. She stood still and pushed buttons, updating the setting. Still no cell signal.
    It was only because she wasn’t moving that she heard the light patter of feet behind her.
    She turned and saw her ex-husband, Carl Coyne, come around the curve from Jane Eyre, running on the balls of his feet, his stride long and loose. He wore gray sweats, a hood pulled low over his forehead, almost hiding his eyes. The sweats were soaked from the rain, but she knew his answer to that: The human body was waterproof.
    She saw that look on his face, the familiar one, and knew she could never run far enough or fast enough. He was almost floating to her, easily skirting the puddle she’d fallen into. It was all for nothing, all the running, because his promise to destroy her had not been spoken as lightly as he now ran. That threat was a fuel that had kept him searching for the past six months with more ferocious determination than her trembling fear could propel her to hide.
    She was surprisingly calm as he closed in on her. Running would only gain her a few futile seconds. Screaming would just startle the wildlife. She realized she was actually almost relieved to be done with the constant fear,