Read Online Killing Game (Veritas Book 2) by Chandler Steele - Free Book Online Page A

might happen if he wasn’t here? She had no answers to those questions.
    Knowing it’d be another night wrestling with insomnia, Cait made one last trip to the toilet, then unzipped her tent. If she was lucky, she’d fall asleep for a couple hours. She knew better than to let herself sleep for much longer than that, or the nightmares would crowd her mind. They were bad enough when she was alone, but these folks would not understand her flashbacks, her screams.
    Crawling in, she settled on her bedroll. After taking a series of deep breaths to relax, she tried to clear her mind. She’d just let her eyes drift shut when she heard the creak of someone walking on the platform. Instead of moving past her, to the toilet, the footsteps left the platform and headed into the woods . You’ve got to be kidding me .
    Cait crawled back out of her tent, closing it behind her, then strapped the knife sheath to her leg. She gripped a flashlight in one hand and headed into the woods. It was easy to track her quarry. She’d expected it to be one of the guys, out for a rustic pee, but it wasn’t. A match flare illuminated Patti’s face and then went dark. The distinctive smell of top-grade marijuana came Cait’s way.
    Tempting as it was to get in the girl’s face, she waited as Patti smoked part of the joint, then ground it in the dirt. To Cait’s surprise, she unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and drowned the spot where the weed had landed. At least she’d listened to the fire-safety briefing.
    Patti turned and began to walk in her direction, then came to a sudden halt when she saw Cait. “Holy shit! You scared me.”
    “Better me than an alligator.” Cait had a couple ways to play this, both of which could go bad. Instead, she waited to see how the girl would react.
    “So go on, give me the lecture,” Patti began. “No wait, I have it memorized. I’m a supreme disappointment to my family, a drug addict, a bitch, and a loser.”
    Cait shook her head. “Maybe you are all of those. Maybe not. I don’t give a damn. You want to smoke pot, fine. I just don’t want you getting toked up out here. Too many critters can kill you if you’re stoned and not paying attention.”
    “Why would you care?” the girl shot back.
    “Because I don’t want to tote your dead ass back to base camp. In this heat, you’ll just draw a bunch of flies and I hate it when that happens.” Patti stared at her, stunned. “Now let’s go to bed. Dawn comes too early around here, and I’m a bitch if I don’t get my sleep.”
    “Sounds like you’re a bitch anyway.”
    Cait winked. “Now you’re getting the picture.” She gestured back through the woods toward the platform. “After you.”
    Patti threw her a middle finger as she stomped past.
    Cait made sure the teen didn’t see her smile. It was like looking in a mirror when she was about that age. Mouthy, disrespectful, pissed at the world. At least until the Marines had gotten hold of her.
    “Some folks never change, until they’re forced to,” she muttered.
    *~*~*
    Brannon was up at dawn, long before any of the others. Except Cait. From the dark circles under her eyes, he wondered if she had slept at all. She’d already made coffee and was frying bacon on both of the portable camp stoves.
    “Good morning,” he said, keeping his voice low.
    “Morning,” she replied. Clearly, she wasn’t up to believing anything was good about it.
    “Raccoons wake you?”
    She shook her head. “There weren’t any. We had a couple gators cruising around last night, and that kept them away.”
    “Who said those monsters aren’t useful except for fancy shoes.”
    Keith rolled out of his tent, followed shortly by the others. Brannon took the opportunity to walk a short distance away and turn on his phone. The e-mails scrolled in, one by one.
    The first reported that the tour operator’s car had been tampered with, and that the cops had opened a criminal investigation. The second e-mail relayed