Read Online Red Knight Falling by Craig Schaefer - Free Book Online

Kevin’s room.
    She held up three fingers and looked back. I nodded, grabbing my Glock from the end table and getting ready. On a silent three count, she yanked the door open and we rushed into the hallway.
    Kevin froze. Hair disheveled, looking half-awake, he’d been fumbling with his room key.
    “Oh,” he said, “hey.”
    Jessie lowered her gun. “What the hell , Kevin? What part of ‘stay buttoned down’ did you not understand?”
    He ducked his head, sheepish. “My throat was scratchy. Wanted to run down and get a soda so I wouldn’t be coughing all night and keeping April up.”
    “Then you should have come and woken one of us up,” I said. “We don’t know who our enemies are or where they are. It’s too dangerous to be alone.”
    “Sorry,” he said. “Jeez, sorry.”
    “Go to sleep,” Jessie said with an exasperated sigh. I followed her back into our room. As the door clicked shut, though, she pressed her back to it and broke into a grin.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Somebody,” she said, “is getting over his imaginary ex-girlfriend.”
    “Kevin? What happened?”
    “You know how my sense of smell is a lot sharper than most people’s?” She tapped her index finger against the side of her nose. “The nose knows. He was getting something all right, but it wasn’t a Coke.”
    “You mean . . .” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Wait. Did Kevin just have sex ?”
    She smirked. “I don’t know if it was a home run, but I’m thinking he at least made it to second base. Our boy got lucky tonight.”
    I started to ask “with who,” but the answer was obvious.
    “Bette,” I said.
    “Spelled,” Jessie said, imitating her voice, “with a t and an e on the end. Much as I want to come down on him for sneaking out like that, this is the best news I’ve gotten all week. He’s digging out from under Mikki’s dead thumb.”
    “He’s healing,” I said. “Well. You know what this means: now we have to make sure those kids get out of here safely.”
    Jessie did a belly flop onto her mattress.
    “Ah, geeks in love. Or lust. Either’s good. G’night.”
    Before I got back under my sheets, she was snoring again.

EIGHT
    Morning came too soon, but at least there was a continental breakfast attached. Down in the lobby, the tables for last night’s wine tasting had been repurposed as a free-floating buffet, with baskets offering fresh muffins and single-serving boxes of cereal.
    “Eat up,” Jessie mumbled around the bagel half sticking out of her mouth. “Lot of miles ahead of us today.”
    I craned my neck, taking in faces, looking for anyone new. No notable faces, except an absent one: Nadine was nowhere to be found. Neither was Agent Lawrence, for that matter. It was 8:04, and he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who missed an appointment even by a minute.
    “I don’t like this,” I told Jessie. “Take a jog down to his cabin with me?”
    Spotting Bette and the other would-be satellite hunters, Jessie beckoned Kevin close.
    “Harmony and I are going to hunt down our esteemed colleague,” she told him. “Do me a favor: go have breakfast with your new friend, and keep your ears open.”
    “Got it,” Kevin said, nodding firmly.
    “I want to know where they’re gonna be at all times. If they’ve made any kind of a hiking plan, if you see any marked maps, memorize all of it. Consider this training for real fieldwork, all right? Do a good job and we can talk about letting you out from behind the computer more often.”
    His eyes lit up. “All right! You can count on me.”
    Jessie slapped his shoulder. “Go get ’em, tiger.”
    As he made his way over to the back table, April watched him go with a faintly amused look on her face.
    “A mysterious absence in the evening hours, heightened enthusiasm and bravado the morning after . . . not hard to follow those clues. A certain someone just enjoyed a bit of intimate company.”
    Jessie put her hands on her hips and