Read Online Red Alert by Jessica Andersen - Free Book Online Page B

motive for her glare?
    “Did you see it?” Max demanded, gesturing to the fluoroscope, which held the results of his latest series of tests.
    That was when Meg realized she’d been so preoccupied by thoughts of Erik that she hadn’t even registered what she’d seen. “I’m sorry.” She made a vague gesture. “I’m distracted.”
    It was day four of her seven-day timeline. There hadn’t been any new attacks.
    But she hadn’t made any progress on the licensing, either, save for a vague promise of a “maybe” from Genticor after she forced herself to go through her mother’s second husband, and a “we’ll look into it” from Pentium Pharmaceuticals.
    Max grimaced, but his voice wasn’t as gruff as usual when he said, “You should take off early. Do something nice for yourself. Go home and have a bubble bath or something.”
    She nearly snorted at the idea—she couldn’t remember ever thinking of a bubble bath as a first line of defense against stress.
    Earlier in her life, when she’d been upset—and that was most of the time—she’d tested the boundaries between danger and safety. Windsong had soothed the jagged edges as she’d tumbled backward out of an airplane and let the altimeter needles spin until the last possible moment, when she’d yanked the parachute cord and flown free. Adrenaline had pushed aside her mother’s absence or her father’s lack of compromise when she’d leaped from a dozen bridges and train trestles, and waited for the bungee cord to take up the slack of freefall.
    Those had been her outlets, the only things that could quiet her soul when it seemed that nothing else was going right in her life.
    And now?
    Now, she realized with sudden clarity, she needed the exact same thing. A moment of privacy. Of clarity.
    Of intentional danger.
    She nodded at Max and grinned, though part ofher felt a little mean when she said, “You’re right. I’m going climbing.”
    She’d found the one place Erik Falco couldn’t follow, and she was damn well going to take advantage of it.
     
    AN HOUR LATER Erik leaned up against a padded wall and scowled, hoping the frown would discourage idle conversation. But he soon realized he didn’t need to bother—the others weren’t at the converted warehouse to talk.
    They were there to climb.
    On either side of him, the walls rose up and curled over to create impossible-seeming angles and overhangs, all formed out of foam and molded fiberglass in colors unimagined by nature. The vertical—and sometimes horizontal—planes were rusty-brown, criss-crossed with wild streaks of turquoise, green and yellow. Deep grooves scored the surfaces, ranging from penpoint-wide to forearm-deep, and improbable blobs of yellow, pink and blue handholds were scattered with apparent random disregard—thickly distributed in some places, thinly scattered in others.
    It might have looked like a normal room distorted by a funhouse mirror, if it hadn’t been for the climbers.
    They were everywhere, wearing a dizzying array of colors and meshwork harnesses, clinging to the walls like fluorescent human spiders caught in webs of thick nylon ropes and metal clips. They workedin teams, one above the other on the wall, or one on the wall, the other standing on the ground manning a long safety rope.
    The floors were heavily padded and the air smelled of sweat and healthy fear, with an overtone of talc. It didn’t look like any gym Erik had ever frequented, but the grunts of exertion and rumbles of encouragement he heard over the heavy thump of rock music reminded him of being fit. Being active.
    Being strong.
    “Hey,” Meg’s voice said at his elbow. Her tone was neutral, but when he turned, he saw questions in her eyes. Then he glanced down at the rest of her and his brain vapor-locked.
    The photos his investigators had gathered had included some from charity functions, showing her dressed-to-impress in floor-length gowns or one memorable little black dress. Those