Alpha One (Shadow Agents 1)

The car stopped. She rolled, banging her knees, still screaming for help.

Then she heard the voices. Footsteps coming toward her.

The trunk opened. Light spilled onto her. Susan stopped screaming.

And she started plotting.

I’m not dead yet. Her heart thundered in her ears.

Survive. That was all she had to do. Stay alive. Escape.

She just had to play the game right....

Chapter Nine

Juliana didn’t know why she went into her father’s room. Despite what Susan had said, Juliana didn’t expect any big revelations. She and her father—they hadn’t been close.

Not in years.

She stood in the doorway, feeling like an intruder as her gaze swept over the heavy furniture. The room was cold but opulent. Her father had always insisted on the best for himself.

He just hadn’t cared about giving that best to others.

Such a waste. Because when she tried hard enough, Juliana could almost remember a different man. One who’d smiled and held her hand as they walked past blooming azalea bushes.

She turned away, but from the corner of her eye, she saw...

My paintings.

Goose bumps rose on her arms, and she found herself fully entering his room. Crossing to the right wall, she stared at those images.

Storm Surge. The painting she’d done after the horror of the last storm had finally ended. On the canvas, the fury of the storm swept over the beach, bearing down like an angry god.

Eye of the Storm. The clouds were parted, showing a flicker of light, hope. The fake hope that came, because the storm wasn’t really over. Often, the worst part was just coming.

Her hand lifted and she traced the outline of her initials on the bottom left of the canvas. Her father...he’d told her that her art was a waste of time. He’d wanted her in law school, business school.

But he’d bought her art, framed it and hung it on his wall.

So he’d see it each day when he woke?

And right before he went to sleep each night?

“Who were you?” she whispered to the ghost that she could all but feel around her in that room. “And why the hell did you have to leave me?” There had been other ways. He shouldn’t have—

A woman was crying. Juliana’s head whipped to the left when she heard the sobs, echoing up from downstairs.

She rushed from the room, leaving the pictures and memories behind. Her feet thudded down the stairs. She ran faster, faster...

Susan stood in the foyer, her face splotched with color, and streaks of blood were on her arms and chest.

Gunner waited behind her. His face was locked in tense lines of anger.

“What the hell is going on?” Logan demanded as he rushed in from the study.

“Some of the guards near the gate found her....” Gunner picked Susan up and carried her to the couch. “She was walking on the road outside of the house.”

Susan was still crying. Her eyes—they didn’t seem to be focusing on anyone or anything.