Danger That Is Damion Read Free

have stayed. It was too late for that. Too late because he was already on the GTECH’s radar, just like she was.
    The sound of female voices on the trail behind her stilled Lara momentarily. The instant they faded, her finger lifted to the trigger only to once again pause as one of Lev’s little girls rushed to his side. Lara hesitated at the unexpected tightness in her chest, urging her not to take the shot. Why couldn’t she take the shot? This was a big-picture job, about saving the world. She’d trained for this. She had prepared mentally and physically to do whatever was necessary to protect the innocent. She was a soldier. It hit her then, and she knew what was bothering her. The little girl . She didn’t want the little girl to see her father drop dead at her feet, which was insane and completely unacceptable. She was part of Team Serenity, part of a greater cause to save the world from a GTECH takeover, from GTECH enslavement. She was defending millions of little girls, not one. With that thought, a steely cold began to reshape inside her. A hardness that was part of her training, part of her destiny, had taken shape the day the GTECHs had slaughtered her family.
    Her finger moved a millimeter. She was ready to fire, but again, that tightening in her chest halted her. In that split-second of hesitation, an odd, dizzy feeling set her swaying. With one hand, she steadied herself on the fence, but before she’d even righted herself, a screeching sound ripped through her eardrums.
    A rush of images flew through her mind like a reel from a film on fast forward. Unfamiliar images of herself, of a life she didn’t know, of a man she seemed to love like a father. Of being dragged up the stairs by her hair, by someone she couldn’t see, to watch that man die. A shrill sound blasted through her skull, and just like that it ended.
    Lara came back to the present in a jerk and a gasp, unsure how long she’d been lost to whatever had just happened to her. Her head . God, her head was still pounding as if someone had beat it like a drum. She brushed at the dampness on her cheeks, shocked to realize she’d been crying. She hadn’t cried since the night Powell had saved her life, since he’d given her a chance to fight back, given her a purpose.
    A sudden gust of wind touched her hot skin and jolted her with full recall—the GTECH, her mission. The GTECH was coming. The GTECH was the wind. In a blast of adrenaline, Lara pushed herself off the fence where her fingers had somehow curled, reaching for the gun she’d apparently abandoned in her purse during her blackout, but she was too late. She could feel the heat of the body that materialized in the wind behind her a moment before strong, powerful arms surrounded her, held her.
    “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sweetheart,” came the rich male voice that whispered against her ear, his warm breath brushing her neck and sending a shiver down her spine. A voice that she knew instinctively, on every level, matched the man who’d been by the pool. The GTECH had found her.

Chapter 2
     
    The instant Lara felt the GTECH’s body molded far too intimately against her, her backside pressed to his hips, she tried to wind-walk, intending to reappear behind him and draw her weapon. But no wind came to her. Instead, pain splintered through her head, gray and white dots speckled with barely perceivable images, clouding her mind and sight.
    Something was horribly wrong. She couldn’t wind-walk. She could barely breathe, hardly think. Somehow, though, by sheer will or just plain luck, she blinked away the shadows and forced away the pain. This had to be the GTECH controlling her mind, controlling her wind-walking ability. She’d never once tried to wind-walk and not been capable of making it happen. There was no other explanation for something that had started the minute she’d found her way onto his radar.
    Recalculating her options with the loss of her wind-walking skill,