Mikal (Second Wave Book 3) Read Free Page B

preference?” the man asked, eying her curiously.
    Two smiled at the kind man, feeling his concern for her in his energy as she sifted him.
    “Smoking, please. I always get nervous on these business trips and end up smoking like a chimney,” she said with a laugh as she lied casually-the way she was taught.
    People always assumed the reason she wore sunglasses at night was to hide a black eye or signs of abuse. The lie enabled the old man to stop feeling concerned for her and concentrate on business. She didn’t want the human paying attention to her.
    “OK, how about a king size bed, smoking room that overlooks the pool?” he asked with a denture filled smile.
    “That would be great,” Two said with a genuine grin at the kind man.
    She signed the paperwork and the receipt with the name on the identification she’d purchased when she’d been on a mission last year. Like everything else she’d acquired on her missions, she’d had it hidden while she’d gone back to the labs, back to the abuse, back to her sisters.
    Two looked up and took the key from the older man’s hand and immediately felt the darkness in his energy. Not from evil, but from disease. He was dying. She quickly finished sifting his energy and discovered that he was a good man, a kind man who had been concerned for her because he regularly gave free rooms to battered women trying to flee abusive situations.
    With a last smile at him, she threw a bolt of energy at old man that made his knees weak, and he slumped into the chair behind the desk, completely unaware of why he suddenly felt so weak. The man wouldn’t realize until the morning how much better he would feel, the energy working to help heal the worst of his health problems.
    Two quickly found her room and went inside. She stood in the center and placed her palms together in front of her chest. She sent her energy around her in a circle, checking her perimeter to ensure she was safe—at least for the moment.
    With a heavy sigh, she sat cross-legged in the center of the bed and pulled her backpack to her. Two pulled out her laptop and pushed through the rubber-banded wads of money to find the burner cell phone she’d purchased.
    She opened her laptop, and although she was tempted to look up Mikal, she knew better. His name was most likely flagged, and they’d be on her in minutes. Two had learned enough to understand how things worked with the people who had created her and her sisters. How far their reach was and how easy it was for them to do whatever they wanted to do without anyone to stop them.
    In that aspect , she thought, they are god-like .
    They were above human law and they owned just about everything and everybody in one way or another. She couldn’t go to the news. None of them cared about the truth any longer; they were only interested in whoever paid them the most to lie. She couldn’t go to the government. Any government. They were a part of it. No one else could stand with her without being destroyed. She was alone.
    This time she didn’t have her sisters speaking to her in her mind as they comforted one another and learned of their powers. Powers that they refused to reveal to the doctors and the commanders who came to see them, who made them perform like trained animals before determining what mission she would go on and who was ready to start mission training.
    Alpha Two laid back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, her mind trying to process all the thoughts and feelings running wildly through her. Her thoughts kept returning to the handsome, midnight-colored man she’d seen.
    She couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t tried to kill her. He had every chance to shoot her or drug her, yet he’d only watched her. Two couldn’t figure out why. If he went back to his handlers and told them that he’d seen her but hadn’t fired, he would be punished—if not killed—depending on how many mission failures he had.
    Why would he take that chance? Why did he keep