Read Online Dream Shadow by Mary Wine - Free Book Online

like a coiled snake. It was odd that something that personal had been left behind, but then it was very possible another child could have been moved in haste after Paige had been removed.
    Grace reached for the blanket, curling her fingers into the fabric. She closed off everything and fell into the void that might allow her to locate the owner of the item.
     
     
    Brice stood and waited. He had been waiting for the past hour. No one spoke. Nothing moved. There was no sign of Grace, and from his view there was no movement inside the cabin either.
    Brice ran his eyes over a couple of the unit’s Rangers. They were deadly serious and equipped for war. Brice felt inadequately armed with only his pistol on his hip. Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised that Grace jumped into a fighting stance on a regular basis. Her companions were fingering automatic rifles.
    Another hour crawled by. Jacobs started to shift closer to the cabin. Tension was beginning to build in the man’s body.
    “Is this running long?”
    Jacobs nodded. “But I’ve seen longer.”
    Another twenty minutes passed by before the tension broke. Jacobs turned his head. Something must have come over his radio. Brice watched as the huge shoulders relaxed and he started down into the clearing. Brice followed, watching as Grace came around the corner of the structure. A small scrap of cloth was tightly clenched in her fist as she covered the ground separating them at a rapid pace. It seemed to require a great deal of effort for her to halt and give Jacobs the briefest of glances.
    “There was another child here.”
     
    How could she have missed a second child? She was never that careless. Grace put her aggressions into climbing the hill. The others were scrambling to keep up, but she didn’t care. By the time she got to the helicopter she was drenched in sweat, her heart pounding beneath her breasts. Still, she couldn’t have cared less. She had been so certain that there weren’t any other children here that night. How had she missed it?
    Grace paced around the helicopter in circles. She was so mad it hurt. She could clearly see the other child but couldn’t get a location. It was floating in pieces around her head. There was just too much static. Nothing was clear. Except for the actual child herself. Anger boiled higher as frustration caught her in its grip.
    She could hear her. The tinkling sounds of laughter. It echoed between the trees. Solid red clouds were all that Grace saw as she faced the aircraft. Self-inflicted anger consumed her, as did the inability to solve the current case. She looked at the tiny box that she was expected to climb into and her mind rebelled. She heard the laughter again and instinct took over. She pivoted on both feet and went toward the sound.
    She made it three paces before Jacobs grabbed her around the waist. With one arm, he lifted her off her feet. Two strides and he wrenched the door of the helicopter open and dropped her into the seat. He sent the door closed with a slam and depressed a lock button on the exterior of the door. He pinned Brice with a hard stare.
    “Now we’ve opened a can of worms,” he stated before circling the craft to climb into the pilot’s seat.
    They covered the distance back to Brice’s home in record time. Grace seemed determined to outrun her vision. But she was intent on some goal. She left the helicopter the moment it landed but stopped just twenty feet from the black machine. The blanket dangled from her fingers that were free from the black gloves she seemed to favor. Now she worked her slim fingers along the spots that were worn while pacing.
    The rest of her unit fanned out and hunched down to remove themselves from her line of sight.
    “Is she always this intense?” Brice asked.
    “When she works, yes.” Jacobs watched his operative with a practiced eye.
    She suddenly stopped and threw the blanket down. The action seemed to jerk her away from whatever link she’d established.