Read Online Dark Creations: The Hunted (Part 4) by Jennifer Martucci, Christopher Martucci - Free Book Online Page B

his mouth, her cell phone began to sound with her father’s ringtone.
    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned as she sat up and retrieved her phone from her purse. “Hello?”
    Gabriel could not hear her father’s end of the conversation, only the slight exasperation in her tone.
    “Yes, yes, that’s fine Dad,” she said into the receiver.  “Oh and by way, don’t wait up.  I don’t think I’m coming home tonight.”
    There was a pause then she said, “Please don’t be disappointed.  Love you, Dad,” and depressed the end command on her touch screen.
    “Sorry about that,” she apologized.  “My dad, he has such great timing.”
    She dropped her phone back in her purse and turned to him.  The thought of her father having any inkling of what was going on before he called and what Gabriel hoped would happen since he’d called was unsettling at best.
    “I can’t believe you told him you were spending the night.  How did he take it?”
    “Not good.  But better than I ever imagined he would surprisingly enough.  I guess he sees enough girls at his job who are my age, or far younger, and have been around the block a few dozen times.  Don’t get me wrong, he yelled a bit and told me in no uncertain terms that he’s disappointed, but what can he do?”
    “So that makes it okay you think?”
    “I’m eighteen, and a virgin, Gabriel.  That’s like a record nowadays for a girl my age,” she said jokingly.
    “Even still, the last thing I want to do is get on your father’s bad side,” Gabriel admitted and remembered Christopher Martin’s rage at the Kevin incident. And though what would happen between them was not violent and completely consensual, he guessed her father felt a degree of disappointment at her decision, nevertheless.
    “Can we forget about my father and get back to where we were before he called?” she asked and tugged on his shirt playfully.
    “Sure, no argument here,” he said and leaned in to steal a kiss.
    When Melissa stood unexpectedly and walked toward his bedroom, the world went completely still.  Her slender body, sheathed in the thin, delicate material of her dress was backlit by the faint light of his bedroom.  She was a vision.  In her face, he saw his past, his present and a future he hoped she would agree to share with him.  He rose to his feet, crossed the small living room and took her hand.

Chapter 7
     
     
    Sergeant Jack Downing’s Ford pickup truck rumbled along Interstate 8, balking and protesting each time he depressed the accelerator.  The sun had just risen and thick fog still clung to the trees and low-lying areas.  In the distance, the Pine Valley Creek Bridge loomed and seemed to hover precariously above the canyon below, its thin supports completely consumed by the fog.  The Laguna Mountains were shrouded as well, only their peaks transcended the milky miasma and protruded with ominous majesty.  But Jack was unimpressed by mountain ranges, mist and bridges.  He had seen his fill of them during combat.
    At twenty-nine years old, United States Army Staff Sergeant Jack Downing had been fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly ten years.  As a career soldier during wartime, he had seen dozens of his men killed, two of whom died on his birthday a year earlier, and had personally killed more rebels than he cared to remember.  Now, however, after completing his final tour of duty, he had decided to switch careers and was headed somewhere far different.  He was headed home.  And he could not get there soon enough.
    More than one hundred cumulative months in combat had left him weary and with innumerable ailments.  He would never admit to any of them, least of all to his troops, but his knees had been badly damaged, his shins ached constantly, and roadside blasts had left him with both recurring headaches and a perpetual ringing in his ears.  But he would have gladly reenlisted, ignored each of them; were it not for the