Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure by Jeremy Robinson

Author:Jeremy Robinson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective - General, Special forces (Military science), Action & Adventure, Mystery & Detective, Thrillers, Bioterrorism, Horror, Geneticists, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), General, Fiction - General, Science Fiction, Americans, General & Literary Fiction, Suspense, Terrorism, Fiction
ISBN: 9780312540296
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-08-15T09:24:00.852000+00:00

THIRTY-TWO

AS DAWN CRESTED over the jungle, streaks of orange light snuck through the foliage and shot to the ground like laser beams. One of the beams struck King’s closed eye. He twitched. Both eyes opened and darted back and forth. They were alone. The three of them. Huddled together between two large tree roots, covered with large palm leaves, both for camouflage and for fending off the rain, which had stopped only an hour before.

After backtracking through the dark to Queen and narrowly avoiding being shot by her, the three had taken the weapons, backpack, and flashlights and fled from the VPLA camp without a word spoken about what they’d endured. They walked through the dark and rain for three hours, heading ever up, deeper into the Anna-mite range, where they finally decided to stop and rest. All three fell asleep within minutes, even Sara, whose mixed-up senses usually made sleep under the best conditions a challenge.

King looked to his right and found Queen facing the other way, her sleeping body curled up away from him like an angry lover. From this perspective she was the same Queen he’d grown to love like his now-dead sister . . . but he knew she’d changed. Become a darker version of her former self. He had yet to see the brand on her forehead, but he knew it was there. And he would have to be careful of how he reacted to it. Had this happened to his actual sister, King might have felt a deep sadness. It was an appropriate response to such a horrible act. But this was Queen. Compassion wouldn’t go over well and might earn him a swift kick in the groin. He made a mental note to not even glance at it when she finally let him see. Better to ignore its existence. Treat her the same.

Weight shifted against his body to the left. Glancing over, he saw Sara’s sweet face resting against his shoulder. She had long dark lashes he hadn’t noticed before, but they were offset by the dirt on her cheeks and her normally spiky hair lying matted against her head. She’d gone from sophisticated scientist to dirty tomboy. Still beautiful, though, he thought. He wondered what it would be like waking up next to that face under more . . . comfortable circumstances.

For a moment he wondered what he looked like. Though he’d been tortured, like Queen, the remaining pain from his ordeal resided in his muscles. No one would see it. But his shaggy hair felt heavier than normal. Probably filled with mud, he thought. His clothing clung wetly to his body. He rubbed his cheeks. The stubble on his face was longer than usual, almost a thin beard, and his goatee itched to be trimmed.

King almost laughed when he realized that for the first time in his career as a Delta operator, he was concerned about his physical appearance while in the middle of a mission. But then he saw a backpack lying next to Sara and remembered that she was more than a pretty face.

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