Read Online Alien Hunter: Underworld by Whitley Strieber - Free Book Online Page A

group was located there, scientists who sat in the desert thinking up reasons that contact with Aeon could be made to work.
    â€œI don’t have time.”
    â€œYou have time.”
    â€œI have time to keep searching for cases, and that’s all the time I have.”
    â€œLet me tell you what those kids out on the floor have been doing ever since you went on your murder mission.”
    â€œExcuse me, policing mission.”
    â€œThey’ve been communicating with Aeon, trying to save your life.”
    â€œWell, thank them for me. Unless I’m headed for a meeting with the needle. Then don’t thank them.”
    â€œA deal has been struck, Flynn.”
    â€œWhich involves the scientists at Area Fifty-One how?”
    â€œYou will accompany me to Area Fifty-One. Consider that an order.”
    He thought about that. Normally, she did everything she could to satisfy her brief from the scientists—short of giving him direct orders like this. That way, he could go on doing his job and she could go on being quietly relieved he was getting kills.
    â€œDiana, we both know that everything coming out of Area Fifty-One is bullshit. In any case, I want to go to Deer Island.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI got another one of those calls: 333676. Ring a bell?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s Dan Miller’s employee number.”
    She got up and went to her “window.” They were in a basement, so it was actually just a poster of the Grand Tetons she’d bought at Target and tacked to her wall.
    â€œI love it when you stare out at the view. It always means you know I’m right.”
    She turned. “We’re on a strict schedule. And frankly, if you want to stay in one piece, you’d better cooperate.”
    For a moment, he thought about it, then spread his hands, gesturing surrender. “You can count on me, boss. Down the line.”
    â€œWe leave at six. You might think about taking a shower.”
    He glanced at his watch. Half an hour wouldn’t give him time to go home. “Can I use your lair?” Her suite had a private sitting room and a full bath, which he often used between cases.
    â€œI’m gonna try to have a meeting in here. We’re cataloging new transmissions. So don’t disturb us, if you can manage that.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” He went through into the luxuriously furnished private suite that was a perk of her Senior Executive Service pay grade. The luxuries that interested him weren’t things like her Persian carpets, gleaming antiques, and 3-D TV. His cars were a luxury—the Audi and the Ferrari California that waited for him in Texas. Most of his guns were there as well—his pistols, his sniper rifles, his matched pair of Purdey shotguns handed down in the family for three generations. These were his luxuries, and the wine cellar his family started in the 1920s, when their land in the Permian Basin south of Menard had turned out to be a raft floating on a lake of oil.
    For most of his life, he had preferred to live only on what he made, but after Abby’s disappearance, he found himself wanting to embrace his own heritage. A couple of years back, he had started drawing on the family trust. In a strange way, it made him feel less alone.
    In keeping with family tradition, he lived modestly. Until he started buying extreme cars a couple of years ago, few people outside his small circle of close friends had any idea that he had money. The way he figured it, though, the work he did now was shortening his life, probably by a lot of years, so whatever he was going to enjoy, he needed to do that right now.
    He threw off his clothes, realizing as he dropped them onto her antique Sultanabad carpet, that they were really pretty damn dirty. Stained, too, with greenish purple blood.
    Showers bothered him. He didn’t like being in places with only one exit. He wanted two ways out, always. He turned the gold