LITMIR.BIZ

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middle of the street. A man reared from the car, leaning over the hood, a dark object glinting in his hand. Police?

      Her heart thudded against her ribs. No. Like the men abducting her, he was dressed in civilian clothes, a black T-shirt stretched over powerful shoulders. Clipped brown hair, lean-planed features, chilling eyes.

      And a gun.

      Rain instantly plastered his hair to his head as the drops turned into a downpour.

      “Let her go,” he shouted.

      The hand holding her shoved her sideways and she was back on her knees as the sound of gunfire exploded. She heard the distant sound of a door opening down the street, a startled scream, then a slam.

      She realized one of the men was down, the man who’d jumped out of the van. Blood.

      Her pulse boomed in her ears. She scrambled on her hands and knees for the red compact car she’d rented at the airport in Key West, pulling the door open and banging inside, desperate breaths biting her lungs. She felt the humid warmth of the leather seat, her clothes and hair dripping onto it.

      Adrenaline burned her veins and she could barely think. The key.

      She twisted awkwardly, shoving her hand into her back pocket. Was it there or had she dropped it in the apartment when he’d grabbed her?

      Heart thumping into her throat, her fingers closed with numbed panic over the cold outline of the rental car key.

      Whipping her head to the window, she could barely see the outline of the man who’d grabbed her in the apartment. He’d made it to cover behind his van and another shot boomed through the pounding rain as he aimed at the man crouched behind the sedan.

      Surely the police would be on the way. But how long would it take them to get here? Did tiny Key Mango even have full-time emergency personnel?

      One of the two men left was going to kill the other, and then they’d come for her. And the idea that at least one of them had sworn he didn’t want her dead, yet, wasn’t a comfort.

      And as for the other one…

      He looked every ounce as dangerous as the abductor and he’d just shot a man dead. They were fighting over her—or fighting over Sabrina, if that’s who they thought she was. Why? Where was Sabrina?

      Panic roared through her bloodstream. She slammed the key in the ignition and sobbed when the car leaped to life. She screeched backward, plowing past the man by the sedan, striking the fender. A flash of hot blue eyes seared her as he reared back out of her way.

      She braked, spun, and in the stormy blur of the rearview mirror as she floored it, she saw the abductor from the apartment seize the moment of distraction to make it around his car and leap into the van. He was coming after her!

      Town. She had to head back to town. Find people. Key Mango didn’t have much, but she’d driven past a commercial strip of businesses, restaurants, small neighborhoods and a church, before reaching the touristy outskirts of beach rentals. She gulped in panicked breaths, roaring at blinding speed through the tearing rain.

      And she didn’t have the slightest idea where she was going. Had she missed the turn back toward the town?

      All she could see on either side of the road were jungle-thick mangroves. She’d gone into the interior of the island, but this wasn’t the road to town. Desperation clawed at her stomach. She crossed a bridge fanning over a lagoon. She must have gone the wrong way from the beginning.

      Headlights broke the storm-dark behind her. She caught a sign whizzing past: Key Mango Bird Sanctuary. Ahead, through the rain, she saw a chain-link fence, the gate padlocked shut. Dead end.

      The car spun, sliding sideways, tires losing traction on the wet road. She regained control and headed back, whipping past the van as it, too, spun around.

      As she hit the bridge again, she saw the sedan coming straight at her. She jerked the wheel to swerve around it. She should never have left North Carolina. This was a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. She was a university librarian. She never did anything more risky than exceed the daily recommended fat intake for a woman of her height and weight.

      That was the last thought she had before she realized the car was hydroplaning. She felt the bizarre sensation of spinning over the blacktop road, then the shocking crash of breaking through the guardrail.

      Dark water slammed up at her—oh, God, water!—and she struck the windshield.

      Chapter 2

      Cade hit the brakes, hanging on to the wheel as the sedan threatened to twist into a dangerous spin, stopping only when he crashed into the van that ground to a stop just short of following the woman’s car through the wiped-out guard rail. The impact thunked him forward hard, then back, his seat belt holding him in place.

      He jumped out, tearing through the howling wind and slashing rain. The driver of the van lay against the steering wheel, blood pouring out of the side of his head.

      The man moved, mumbled, his eyes flashing open. Cade landed his fist into the man’s face and he slammed back, dead to the world again.

      Cade raced from the van to the edge of the bridge and dove straight in. No way was he losing his target—and the lagoon was about to swallow her whole. The passenger compartment was taking in water fast. Already, the car was more than halfway to a watery grave. His body, skin made up of microdermal ridges invisible to the naked eye, streamed into the dark water like another liquid.

      He’d been six years old when his adoptive parents had found him at the bottom of the family swimming pool. They’d thought he was dead. He was just napping, and the fact that everyone didn’t nap underwater was news to him.

      The PAX League had already discovered that a shocking number of the children who’d survived the Valuatu Island bombing several years earlier had returned home with strange aftereffects. Biological mutations. And thus, the PAX League, once an organization dedicated purely to the philosophical pursuit of global peace through human rights missions, environmental campaigns and charitable projects such as the Valuatu Island hunger delegation, had transformed into something more.

      Beginning with those children, the new and secret underlayer of Paranormal Allied Experts had spent years researching the mystical, telepathic and transformational sciences. Its goal was not only to protect the work of the League’s outer humanitarian organization, but to prevent terror worldwide as it molded those original children into agents and created even more through its own experimentation.

      And Cade had lost his family—again.

      He surged back up to the surface beside the car, not for air—he didn’t need it. But she did. The woman’s head slumped against the window, water rising to her neck. He saw tangled wet hair, blood. Bracing his feet against the side of the vehicle, he yanked at the door.

      The water reached her mouth and nose and he slipped beneath the surface now to pull at the door. He saw the woman gasp and jerk back as the lack of oxygen stabbed her into consciousness.

      With corneas and lenses shaped to see light through water, he had the visibility to see her eyes bulge as she first jerked up to take in air, then reached for the door handle. She shoved uselessly, then screamed, taking in water again, and pushed up to the interior roof of the car, coughing and gagging, struggling for the last few inches of air.

      Then she slid her head sideways, panic in her gaze as she met his through the water. She was in emotional shock, had been even before the crash, and the physical shock was going to set in fast. The lagoon wasn’t cold, but without the specialized thermoregulatory system that kept him warm, she was probably losing body temperature already and at the rate the car was sinking, she’d be out of air in less than a minute if he didn’t get the door open.

      Still underwater, he motioned in efficient movements for her to shove as he pulled. Her gaze flicked down then back to his face as the water crept higher.

      Fear and survival warred in her eyes.

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