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

to have it end in the way she’d always known on a very deep level was inevitable. Death and taxes and here came the former.
    The moments were stretching out, the way they did when adrenaline surges and warps time, which should be an indication to all that perhaps time is not absolute, but a variable? Coyne was slowing to a determined walk, a narrow, double-edged knife in his right hand, a cluster of plastic cinches in his left; that last bit caused her to reconsider running.
    Those cinches indicated the inevitable would not happen fast. Her previous almost-relieved feeling floated away with a gasp of terror as the realization of torture before death hit Teri, and what little sense of self she’d held on to died.
    Carl stopped ten feet away and just stared at Teri, relishing the moment, his excitement palpable. It was getting dark even though it was not late, but daylight was different on this island that she had chosen for its remoteness and lack of a bridge. Teri should have known water would be no barrier to an ex-Navy SEAL. They lived and thrived in the water. Instead of protecting herself with a barrier, she’d enclosed herself in a prison.
    The thick trees surrounding them made it even darker. Teri looked up to the sky as if there was an answer, but she saw only leaves and a few specks of cloudy gray. She felt sad, wishing that she could see the sun one more time. The Pacific Northwest was indeed a great place for vampires to make their home, but for a Southern Californian girl, it was oppressively depressing. An eagle flashed by overhead, and she wished fervently she could take wing with that bird, experience that freedom. Be anywhere but here.
    Any time but now.
    Teri looked back at him. As she gazed into those rage-filled eyes, she saw a speck of red in the left eye. Something she’d never seen in it before.
    Carl took a step, closing the distance between them.

    Unfortunately, Roland couldn’t make one hundred percent positive identification because Teri’s head was in the way of most of the target’s face, plus the hood was pulled down low. Roland did have a clear line of sight just past her head on the suspect’s left eye and could put a 7.62x51mm steel-jacketed NATO round straight through the orbital socket, through the skull, and take a nice chunk of brain matter out the rear. And Roland did have Neeley’s positive identification. However, Neeley did not have her finger on the trigger.
    There were rules to a Sanction, and they were rules Roland took seriously, because they were the Cellar’s version of the Nightstalkers’ Protocols. Plus Neeley had insisted he take them seriously.
    One could never be wrong on a Sanction because they were what Neeley had called a “No-Do-Over.”
    Dead was not reversible.
    Of course, it didn’t occur to Roland: Who the hell else would be out here trying to kill this woman?
    Neeley had insisted, and Roland was a team player.
    Roland shifted the rifle ever so slightly and his finger curved over the thin sliver of metal.
    Roland had been following the rhythm of his heart ever since the woman turned the corner. Now he synchronized it with his shallow breathing as Carl stopped once more, five feet short. Blinking, as if the red in his left eye were a bug, distracting him.
    For a moment, Carl seemed to flicker. Most would have attributed the anomaly to an overactive imagination.
    Except Roland didn’t have one.
    He noted it, knew the flicker was real, but kept his eye on the target.

    “What is—” Carl began in a slightly puzzled tone, staring past her, but there was a breeze by Teri’s right cheek, as if a very fast hummingbird had flitted by. A crimson streak appeared just above and outside of Carl’s left eye along the skin on the edge of his skull, extending back over his ear. The gray hood was torn back, as if an invisible hand had grabbed it and jerked.

    Roland shed the ghillie suit with one smooth movement as he got to his feet, leaving the rifle lying on the