Free The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner

What the . . .
    She tried to take a step. Her mind commanded her body, screamed with primal urgency:
Run, run, run!
Her legs buckled. She went down in the knee-high grass as a strange, fluid warmth filled her veins and her muscles simply surrendered.
    The panic was receding from her consciousness. Her heart slowed. Her lungs finally unlocked, giving easily into that next soft breath. Her body started to float, the woods spinning away.
    Drugs, she thought. Doomed. And then even that thought wafted out of her reach.
    Footsteps, coming closer. Her last image, his face, gazing down at her patiently.
    “Please,” Tina murmured thickly, her hands curling instinctively around her belly. “Please . . . Don’t hurt me . . . I’m pregnant.”
    The man simply hefted her unconscious form over his shoulder and carried her away.
             
    Nora Ray Watts had a dream. In her dream it was blue and pink and purple. In her dream the air felt like velvet and she could spin around and around and still see the bright pinpricks of stars. In her dream, she was laughing and her dog Mumphry danced around her feet and even her worn-out parents finally wore a smile.
    The only thing missing, of course, was her sister.
    Then a door opened. Yawned black and gaping. It beckoned her toward it, drew her in. Nora Ray walked toward it, unafraid. She had taken this door before. Sometimes she fell asleep these days just so she could find it again.
    Nora Ray stepped inside the shadowy depths——
    And in the next instant, she was jerked awake. Her mother stood over her in the darkened room, her hand on her shoulder.
    “You were dreaming,” her mother said.
    “I saw Mary Lynn,” Nora Ray countered sleepily. “I think she has a friend.”
    “Shhh,” her mother told her. “Let her go, baby. It’s only the heat.”

CHAPTER 6
    Quantico, Virginia

7:03 A . M .

Temperature: 83 degrees

    “ GET OUT OF BED. ”
    “No.”
    “Get out of bed!”
    “No.”
    “Kimberly, it’s seven o’clock. Get up!”
    “Can’t make me.”
    The voice finally disappeared. Thank God. Kimberly sank blissfully back down into the desperately needed blackness. Then . . . a bolt of ice-cold water slapped across her face. Kimberly jerked upright in the bed, gasping for breath as she frantically wiped the deluge from her eyes.
    Lucy stood beside her, holding an empty water pitcher, and looking unrepentant. “I have a five-year-old son,” she said. “Don’t mess with me.”
    Kimberly’s gaze had just fallen on the bedside clock. Seven-ten A . M .
    “Aaaagh!” she yelped. She jumped out of bed and looked wildly around the room. She was supposed to be . . . supposed to do . . . Okay, get dressed. She bolted for the closet.
    “Late night?” Lucy asked with a raised brow as she trailed behind Kimberly. “Let me guess. Physical training or firearms training or both?”
    “Both.” Kimberly found her khaki pants, tore them on, then remembered she was supposed to report to the PT course first thing this morning, and ripped off her khakis in favor of a fresh pair of blue nylon shorts.
    “Nice bruises,” Lucy commented. “Want to see the one on my ass? Seriously, I look like a side of beef. I used to be a trial lawyer, you know. I swear I once drove something called a Mercedes.”
    “I thought that’s what drug dealers had.” Kimberly found her T-shirt, yanked it on while walking into the bathroom, then made the mistake of looking in the mirror. Oh God. Her eyes looked like they’d collapsed into sunken pits.
    “I spoke to my son last night,” Lucy was saying behind her. “Kid’s telling everyone I’m learning to shoot people—but only the bad ones.”
    “That’s sweet.”
    “You think?”
    “Absolutely.” Kimberly found the toothpaste, brushed furiously, spit, rinsed, then made the mistake of looking in the mirror a second time, and fled the bathroom.
    “You look like hell,” Lucy said cheerfully. “Is that your strategy? You’re going to