Read Online Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion by Berinn Rae - Free Book Online Page A

face. “I know that.”
    Something in her response or her expression caused him to frown and he stepped away. He always did that. It was as though he couldn’t risk someone seeing inside him, and he’d close himself up tighter in response. “Did Roden say anything about another rendezvous point?”
    Talla gave a quick shake of her head, feeling a pinch of disappointment at Jax’s unerring control of emotion. “The
Striga
is the rendezvous point. Everyone is supposed to find a way to get to it.”
    “That doesn’t sound like a walk in a park. It’ll be completely surrounded by the time it lands.”
    “True,” she said. “But once we get to it, we’ll be safe. Roden did say that if we can’t get to the
Striga
, his Earthside base is the backup plan, but that’s over a thousand miles from here, and without my wrist-com I don’t have the exact coordinates. All I know is it’s in the northwest corner of the United States. Do you think you could get us there?”
    Jax grunted. “So the core ship it is. And we’ll have to hoof it from here.” He turned back to the wreckage. “They must have put a tracer on the Jeep.” His fists clenched. “Son of a bitch. I should’ve thought of that.”
    “You’d have no way to know that they’d be tracking their own people,” Talla said. “Good thing it was on the Jeep and not on you, or else we’d be dead right now.”
    The tracer had to be the drone’s target. Its targeting system hadn’t even tried to scan for heat signatures. The first bit of luck they’d had all day.
    Holding a hand out to protect his eyes from the heat, Jax stood by the cargo compartment, reached to unbuckle the ammo boxes, and yanked his hand back. With a muttered curse, he pulled off his shirt, wrapped it around his hand, and this time unstrapped the two metal cases.
    Each case dropped onto the ground with a
thud
.
    He bent over, flinging his dog tags around his neck to be out of his way. Aside from a burn on his left shoulder that he’d gotten back at the Etzee, his skin was smooth and accentuated acres of tight muscles. His cargo pants were slung low across his hips. For the first time in her life, she looked at a man’s wingless back and found it even sexier than a Draeken back.
    She watched Jax as he poured out the contents of one box and then moved to the other. The contents snagged her attention. Talla came down to her knees to sift through the items. A small first aid kit, a bottle of water, a protein bar, an emergency blanket, and a large Swiss Army tool. “Impressive,” she said.
    “I go off-roading on the weekends. I like to keep a few bare essentials in an overnight kit just in case.” From the other box, he pulled out another knife and a hand gun in a small black holster.
    She gave a low whistle. “That’s quite the overnight kit.”
    He shrugged, then turned and gave her a boyish grin. “I was an Army brat as many years as I’ve been in the Army.” He frowned. “
Was
in the Army, I mean.” His last words were quiet.
    She watched him for a moment. “Your affiliation doesn’t make you any less heroic. Warning everyone, you did it to save more than my people or the Sephians. You did it to save yours.”
    He stood abruptly and pulled on his shirt. A flash of frustration slipped through Talla. He fastened the holster around his chest and checked the M9. He picked up the knife, also in a sheath, and tossed it to Talla. “This tanto will work a hell of a lot better than the baby shiv you have.”
    “Thanks,” she said as she tied the sheathed blade to her thigh. It was military-issue, with a solid six-inch blade and would be far more useful than the short tape-wrapped metal in her pocket, even though she kept that as well.
    Jax and Talla stuffed their pockets with the remaining gear. “We better get going,” he said. “We should find somewhere to hide before nightfall.”
    Talla would’ve volunteered to fly over the area to scout for caves and holes, but the risk