Samurai Game Read Free Page B

she could make her way down. She slipped several times and cursed the two men over and over when she had to half sit to get over one spot.
    Glass was everywhere, scattered around the wreckage of the car. Thankfully she heard moaning. Harry was alive. Breathing a sigh of relief, she clawed her way to the overturned car. Harry hung upside down, blood dripping from his head. His eyelids fluttered and he stared at her with pleading eyes. Without touching him, she considered her next move. Harry was dying. Blood pumped from a gash on his leg and one side of his head appeared to be caved in.
    “Sorry, Harry,” she said, surprised she actually meant it.
    She stumbled her way around the car and, tearing a strip of cloth from her shirt, she pushed what remained of the passenger door open wider so she could lean in without allowing her body to touch anything. It wouldn’t be good to be found at another accident scene. Ignoring Harry’s moans, she opened the glove compartment. There was no envelope. The money was gone.
    Anger surged through her, followed by an adrenaline rush of sheer terror. She had to find that money. If she went back to Whitney a second time, reported an accident had killed another in his pipeline to Washington, and that the first installment of the payoff was once again missing, she was dead. He would kill her. She knew him. Whitney didn’t allow mistakes.
    She swore out loud. “Where is it, Harry? The money. You’re bleeding to death. If you want my help, tell me where the money is.”
    Harry’s gaze shifted to the empty glove compartment. He looked shocked. There was no doubt in Sheila’s mind he thought it would be there. She shifted out of the car as he gurgled, a little repulsed as blood trickled from his mouth. She didn’t like blood. She’d ordered kills many times, on Whitney’s behalf, but she didn’t actually get her hands dirty. She could hear his breathing, a death rattle now, and bile rose.
    The money was gone. Where, she had no idea, but it was gone. She couldn’t search that wreckage of a car; like in the bathroom a couple of weeks earlier, the money had disappeared. No officer had reported finding an envelope of money when Brenda’s body had been taken to the coroner. She backed away from the crumpled car and the smell of death. All she wanted to do was run, but with her heart pounding so hard, she stood frozen.
    Wind rustled leaves in the trees and moved brush so that limbs swayed and creaked. A chill went down her spine. She looked around, suddenly afraid. The night had eyes and she couldn’t be seen. She tried to run, a small sob escaping. She slipped and began to claw her way up the steep incline, more afraid than she’d ever been in her life—and for the first time it wasn’t Whitney she was afraid of.
    * * *
    M ajor Art Patterson whistled softly as he ran down the steps of the Pentagon. The sky had turned dove gray, not quite dark yet not light. He loved the time of day when the sun and moon came together. He glanced upward. A few stray clouds drifted lazily by, but were so thin the stars already out had no trouble shining. He grinned up at the moon and stars as he hurried to his car.
    Life was good. He enjoyed working for his boss. General Ranier was a four-star general, tough as nails but fair. The program the general was responsible for was one Patterson believed in. The GhostWalkers were men and women trained in every type of warfare possible, in every terrain, in water, in air, in every type of weather. They were the elite of the elite. He thought of them as “his” team. He should have been a GhostWalker. He would have made a great leader, and working for Ranier allowed him to play a very large part. He knew he was a great asset to the GhostWalker program.
    He drove a showy little silver Jaguar, racing through the streets toward his meeting with Sheila Benet. She seemed so cool, but she flashed fire when they came together. She liked the uniform and the power he