Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) by Rob Cornell Page B

feet. She couldn’t take her eyes away from Wertz. His growling turned up in pitch, sounded on the verge of a scream. He looked over his shoulder at her. Tears ran down his face. The rims of his eyes were swollen and red. “Go,” he said, voice quaking. Then his whole face scrunched up in pain. He turned back to face their attackers and screamed.
    Ree, again, pulled her toward the door.
    She stumbled along with him in a daze. What she had seen, what she had heard, did not process in her brain. How could Wertz stand in the path of a weapon that had destroyed the whole front of the freaking house?
    She had nothing.
    Through the kitchen and out the back door. During their retreat, four other agents joined them. They hurried across the fenced in backyard and its perfect square of bright green grass. Ree hoisted Jessie up over the rear fence while another agent helped her down on the other side. The chain-link rattled as the agents scrambled over. Then more running. On their way down the street, Jessie glimpsed a man standing on his porch in his boxer shorts. He tracked them with his camera phone, apparently recording their retreat.
    Not good.
    They made it a block away when the explosion roared across the suburb. Jessie ripped free of Ree’s grip and spun to look behind her. A column of fire rose above the rooftops of the cookie-cut houses, followed by a black plume of smoke that spread like a shadow at dusk.
    “No.” Jessie tried to run back, but Ree had her arm again, like her arm was a fucking leash to him. She jerked and twisted to break free. Another agent took her other arm. Together, he and Ree dragged her back on her heels.
    A walkie-talkie squawked from somewhere. A disconnected voice responded. “Roger that.” Background noise while Jessie stared at the smoke, wondering if any of it belonged to Wertz.
    Her guardian.
    A person she had let down.
    The one who had saved her life and died after an argument she would never get to apologize for.
    Tears blurred her vision, turning the billowing smoke into an impressionistic nightmare. A collaboration between Monet and Dali.
    Tires squealed behind her. A door rolled open. The agents pulled her into a van and buckled her into a backseat.
    The Agency always had an escape plan.
    The door slammed shut. Jessie’s stomach rolled when the van took off, again squealing its tires on the concrete street. One that looked like all the others in this place. Perfect camouflage for a safe house—unless you go out to a club and expose yourself to the enemy because you wanted to rebel without considering the consequences.
    The van turned, putting the looming black cloud out of Jessie’s line of sight. Jessie put her hands over her face and wept.
    Ree sat next to her and she felt his hand on her shoulder.
    She shook it away. She didn’t deserve comfort.
    I did this. I killed Wertz.

Chapter Thirteen
    B ACK IN HUMAN FORM, E LKA washed the last of Kenny’s blood off of herself in his shower. His body and head remained in the living room where they had fallen. The carpet had soaked up his blood in little time. Short of tearing it up, there was no way to hide the stains.
    With the water beating down on her, Elka leaned her head against the shower tiles. Damn it, why had he forced her to kill him?
    He didn’t. He dropped the knife after you changed. You could have scared him off and left without harming him.
    She pounded the tiles with the heel of her fist.
    She had wanted to kill him. Needed to. From the moment she woke up to the rage, someone’s death had been inevitable. But she was better than this. More careful. Kenny and his twisted, impatient lust had ruined everything.
    She no longer felt pity toward him. She was glad he was dead. That didn’t, however, change the fact that she had a job ahead of her. In broad daylight, disposing of his body would prove difficult. Scrubbing the evidence, impossible. This left her with one option. The one she had wanted to avoid, but that she had