Twisted (Burbank and Parker 1)

Upon returning from their run, she’d unleashed the hounds in her backyard and romped all over the grounds with them until they were exhausted. The whole bunch of them, herself included, went inside and drank tons of water, after which the hounds plopped on the sofa and fell fast asleep.

With a loving smile, Sloane left them to their nap. She collected her archery gear and went out back, trudging over to the far side of her property where her archery course was set up.

She loved the bow and arrow. She always had, since she’d learned to shoot them as a kid. Being a target archer cleared her mind, sharpened her focus—and, these days, strengthened her grip. In her gut, she believed that one day her relentless target practice would play a major role in getting her back into the Bureau.

For now, she still anchored the bowstring with her middle and ring fingers. But one day that would change. Her trigger finger would heal. And the scars on her palm would toughen up enough to withstand the tight grip needed to anchor a Glock 22.

It was up to her to make that happen.

She reached her destination, and put down her gear long enough to set everything up. That done, she pulled on her leather glove with the reinforced finger pads to protect her injury. She checked to make sure her bowstring was adjusted to just the right tension, then pulled the first arrow out of its quiver and placed it across the bow. Planting her feet, she straightened, pulling back the bowstring as she took careful aim at the target. She gritted her teeth against the twinges of pain in her wrist and fingers, keeping her arm as steady as possible.

When her focus was dead-on and her breath was suspended, she let the arrow fly.

It cut through the air and struck the target in the red circle, a solid inch and a half away from the bull’s-eye.

“Dammit,” Sloane muttered. She lowered the bow, wiping her arm across her forehead and doing a few shoulder rotations to release the tension in her upper body. Patience. She had to have patience. At least she was hitting the red and the blue now. There was a time when black was a reach, with most of her arrows hitting the outer white ring, and a few of them flying off into the woods.

Even so, she wanted that bull’s-eye so much she could taste it.

Her quiver held nine more arrows and she shot them all. Only one surpassed her first shot, lodging closer to the inside line of the red, just outside the coveted yellow circle.

Close but no cigar.

She put down her gear and went to collect the arrows.

Her cell phone rang.

Startled, she pulled it out of her pocket. It wasn’t even 7 A.M.. The caller ID read restricted, which gave her no clue. So she punched it on.

“Hello?”

The only response was some crackling noise and a prolonged silence.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

More crackling sounds and then the beep-beep-beep that told her the connection had been broken.

Before she snapped her phone shut, Sloane glanced down to see the number of bars registering. Four. Great reception at her end.

So the problem was with the caller, who probably had lousy cell reception and had, no doubt, punched in a wrong number. On that thought, she resumed her task of retrieving the arrows.

Her phone rang again.

With an exasperated sigh, she abandoned her task and whipped out her phone again. “Yes?”

There were those damned crackling noises, interspersed with silence.

“Is someone there?” Sloane asked in a strong voice.

There was a definite breath or two, another prolonged silence, and then the connection was broken.

Weir

d.

Just for the hell of it, Sloane accessed her log of received calls, zeroed in on the most recent entry, and made a callback attempt. But, as she suspected, the connection failed, and her display read unavailable, since the number was clearly blocked.

There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.