Winter's Scars: The Forsaken (Winter's Saga 5) Read Online Free PDF

Alik’s phone from the center console and was waking the touch screen to life.  “I’m way ahead of you big brother.”

    Chapter 9  Fragile
     
    Margo’s heart was broken.
    “Where could he be taking her?” she mumbled as she patted her nose with her sleeve.  The tissues had run out a while ago, and she was too proud to ask Theo for more.
    “Probably back to Germany, but he may assume we’d think that and have a different destination in mind,” Theo answered miserably.
    “What is he doing to her?” she had asked this question no fewer than a dozen times since hearing from Alik two hours earlier. 
    “He’s always wanted their blood so he could recreate the original serum,” his voice was small with exhaustion.
    “What does Senator Arkdone want with my children?” She stared at her dead legs hopelessly.
    “He’s a powerful man.  There’s talk in the news circuit that he’s the lead in the nomination for his party’s presidential hopeful.  Maybe he just wants more power.”
    “By collecting our children?”
    “I don’t know, honey.” Theo held his pounding head.  He’d been trying to console Margo for so long and he was dizzy with his own grief. 
    They sat in dejected silence for a while, letting the fears and anguish over the fate of their children curl around them like smoke. 
    The sound of a key in the lock of the front door didn’t stir them, though they heard Greg Burns enter the room.
    “I got your message.”  Burns looked between his best friend and the woman in the wheelchair.
    “I’m really sorry to hear about Meg, Dr. Winter,” he started.
    No one said anything, too lost in their individual depressions.
    Greg looked back and forth between the two people in the room and felt a surge of anger at their despondent body language.
    “Shit, Theo!” the retired cop barked, having spent the entire sum of his gentility in the first thirty seconds in the room.  In the good cop/bad cop ruse, he was always the bad cop.  It was just his nature. 
    “Don’t just sit there!  We need to come up with a plan!  Your kids are out there and feel as if they can’t come back.  That is no effing—excuse me Dr. Winter—way to live!”
    The retired detective stood and paced the room, rough hands parked on his hips.  He left his post as a detective to join Homeland Security nine months ago.  They had been trying to recruit him for years, but Burns didn’t want to leave his duties until he had solved some nagging cases.   The missing children’s cases gnawed at him. 
    But things came up that moved beyond his control.  He had to pass his cases to another cop and take the badge being offered to him.  He decided it was a matter of being proactive in his fight rather than rea ctive.  He was going after the Big Dogs now.
    “What do you want me to do, Greg?  We’re dealing with some pretty powerful people here.”
    “Yeah, Theo.  They are just guys—like you and me.  Nothing they have can’t be taken away.  They’re conducting illegal businesses like human trafficking, trauma-based mind control and medical experimentation on humans!  Shit like that doesn’t go unnoticed forever.  I don’t care how powerful they think they are.”
    “Who’s going to believe us?  It’s our word against a US Senator who’s in line to receive his party’s backing for president.   The other guy actually has our daughter and could retaliate by killing her if we force his hand.  And you know what?  Death may be better for that poor girl because Williams, the sick bastard, could do much, much worse to her than kill her!”
    “What ?  Like erase her memory?  Trap her in a cell with no food or water for days and inject her with microscopic weapons that would kill the people she loves if she steps close enough to them?” Greg flung his hands up in frustration.  “Theo what have you got to lose?”
    “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Burns?” Theo’s eyes shot daggers of