Shattered Destiny by GJ Stevens

Author:GJ Stevens [Stevens, GJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

53

James

Her smile was the least he’d expected. With his own expression wide with horror, he could do nothing but listen as feet pounded, cracking the dry steps. The sound echoed as if just beyond the door.

He watched her disappear into the darkness, leaving behind her faint orange aura before she reached out, gripping his jacket collar and pulling him close around the waist.

Tight against her warmth and in the door’s shadow, he held his breath as the house fell silent.

***

Luana

Present

With its tyres crunching the gravel as they rolled, the fluorescent chevrons grew vivid with each flash of her main beam.

Its window hung low as it pulled alongside, and lifting her hand, the dark-clothed officer lit up the interior, raising a confident smile.

***

James

In the dim orange glow, her gentle breath glanced across Fisher’s cheek, not faltering with a sudden crack of dry wood from the corridor. A moment later, she pulled him closer still when the heavy weight against the steps rose above their heads. As a door slammed up high, the floorboards echoing in its wake, her touch fell away. Taking a step back, he stared into her eyes, unable to draw himself away.

About to speak, although saying what he wasn’t sure, a thud of bass rattled through the house, soon joined by the scream of drums and a thrash of guitars, the racket enveloping them. Relaxing at the shroud to hide their movements, they both smiled before Fisher turned to the door, stopping only as her hand rested on his shoulder before he could leave.

“Where are you going?” she said as he turned to meet her, yet her words were barely heard despite knowing from her expression she’d shouted.

“But…” Fisher said, glancing high.

“We’ve still got a job to do,” she replied before turning back to the desk.

Knowing the discussion was over, he glanced back to the open door, then shrugged as the red light came on then soon sharpened to a beam of blue sending motes of dust sparking as she lit up the cluttered desk.

After several glances back to the door, Fisher stepped to her side, and he picked through the desk’s contents. Moving past piles of student papers scrawled with red ink, he leafed through a stack of books on so many subjects. Most were thin crib guides on geology or similar topics, together with thick hardbacks about far-off places, Antarctica and Australia among them.

Periodicals were at the bottom of the pile. Oil & Gas. Energy Global and Offshore Magazine. As he moved them to the side, his gloved finger brushed against a sticky note poking out from the glossy pages of the latter, its yellow still vivid in the blue glow. Opening the page, he glimpsed a sculpture of tall, silvered pipes against a bright blue sky, their lengths contorted, spiralling and intertwined. As he read with speed, the light shot away, his gaze following it along the side of the desk. Holding the magazine in his hands as he moved back, angling it against the window, he attempted to capture the orange glow.

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