Veil of Justice, Shadows of Justice Book 3 Read Online Free PDF

but his vocal cords couldn't push
out the words. Left with only his hearing, he listened as another
voice muttered, swore, and then pronounced him dead. Then even his
hearing was impaired by whatever they used to cover his body.
    He wasn’t dead. He tried to scream, to move,
to will a nearby mind to look closer, but nothing changed. Nathan
forced himself to relax. He had to think. He had to find some way
to break through because he sure as hell wasn’t going to survive a
month in the hole just to get buried alive by his primary
target.
     
    * * *
     
    Kelly surveyed the terrain surrounding
Leavenworth Federal Prison. She'd get no help from the flat
landscape that provided armed guards with miles of visibility. If
she'd harbored any hope of an easy or conventional breakout, that
was history now.
    "When will you learn to say no ?" Kelly
asked herself as she cruised along the two-lane stretch of highway
running parallel to the east wall. Nathan's Mustang purred across
the open road. It would've been fun to really let the engine off
the leash, if there weren't police cruisers and the occasional
tractor on the same road.
    It was her third day in town and she felt a
little guilty that she hadn't let him contact her. Whatever they’d
been putting him through, she was sure it wasn’t getting better. He
had to be beyond antsy, but his anxiety didn't help her confidence
or planning, and she wanted to break him out without taking
innocent lives if she could.
    Based on what he’d shown her, she did the
research to confirm he was being kept in an outdated, illegally
punitive cell known as the SHU – Solitary Housing Unit. In her
sheltered life experience, prisons and prisoner conditions never
mattered much to her. She'd learned about the reformations during
her required studies in school, but prison systems never topped her
list of major concerns.
    Now there was no reason to delude herself
that it wasn’t a deeply personal issue. Though they'd met only once
in person, she'd recognized Nathan the first time he'd reached out
telepathically. It may have started as a fun, mental pen-pal sort
of thing, but experience soon proved their connection was special.
Until she'd had to shut him out.
    So the gut clenching fury she felt for the
system that was hurting her friend shouldn't be all that
surprising.
    Except you’ve worked all your life to
diffuse your temper, Calisto.
    It was only right to lecture herself since
neither her father nor her brothers were alive to provide the
service.
    Shaking off the grief that threatened to
swell into tears, she turned at the next intersection and then
turned again several minutes later onto a dirt track scratched out
between cornfields. The escape plan was far from ideal. And the
timing sucked. Not even the local farms could provide much cover.
The fields had been harvested weeks ago and the grazing cows were
munching their way through the dried stalks.
    She thought about the double fence topped
with razor wire and the sheer prison walls in her immediate future.
What was one more challenge? Hadn't trying to out-train her
brothers prepared her for anything?
    She didn’t fight the anger or resentment,
needing the emotional heat to spur her forward through one more
sleepless night. She did fight off the regrets, they would only
slow her down and, if all went well, there’d be time for them
later.
    Coming to a stop mid-field, she shielded the
car from view with a net woven with leaves and debris from the
field. Not foolproof, but certainly better than nothing.
    Kelly crawled beneath the netting and leaned
over the front seat. Tripping the lock under the lip of the rear
seat, she prayed Nathan would overlook this latest modification to
his antique Mustang. Raising the bench seat revealed her stash of
escape-assisting equipment and she put her mind on task.
    What would serve her best?
    The guns were definitely out. She refused to
multiply her troubles by killing anyone, or giving Nathan a chance
to blindly