Free Darkness Falls by Kyle Mills Page A

satisfying snap that Erin had promised didn't materialize but the German released the wheel and landed hard in the dirt, rolling uncontrollably until he was stopped by the trunk of a tree.
    The vehicle still had enough momentum to jump back onto the road, and Jenna twisted around to look behind her as she slammed the door shut. The headlights of her car were still on, but it wasn't moving. She patted her jeans and discovered the keys safely in her pocket.
    Another shot rang out, creating a spider web pattern in the rear window before exploding into the back of the passenger seat. She ducked down as far as she could, watching the tree tops to keep herself in the middle of the road and listening to bullets slamming into the Expedition's hatch. Then, silence.
    She didn't sit fully upright again until she'd gone around a sharp corner, but when she did there was nothing but darkness behind her.
    "You had a gun three inches from her head and you missed!" Teague shouted, the throbbing of his injured hand amplifying his rage and frustration. Blood in the pattern of Jenna Kalin's teeth was beginning to seep through the handkerchief wrapped around his finger.
    "My brother was holding onto the side of a moving car," Udo said, using a kitchen knife to pull a sizeable chunk of wood from Jonas's shoulder. "Be reasonable, Michael."
    "Be reasonable? Exactly what skills does your brother bring to this organization? I financed it, I planned every detail, provided everything you asked for. I'm the one keeping us from being exposed." He indicated with his bleeding hand around the opulent living room. "I arranged it so Jenna would come here. All he had to do was deal with one unarmed woman."
    Jonas showed no interest in defending himself, or even that he'd heard; instead, he just sat there staring blankly as his brother continued to dig into his shoulder.
    "She was to come into the house, Michael. Jonas wasn't prepared to run through a dark forest chasing a car."
    "A car that I stopped!"
    "This should have been finished years ago," Jonas said, finally. "She should have never left the boat. I told you this."
    "Except that Udo couldn't guarantee he would be able to finish this thing without her help. So we had to keep her around, didn't we? And I was stupid enough not to worry about it because it never occurred to me that you couldn't be counted on to take care of --"
    "Michael!" Udo said, jerking around and pointing with the bloody knife. "What can be gained from this? We need to find her before she discovers what we've done. You know her best. What will she do? Will she go to the police?"
    Teague turned away, starting for the hallway but then pausing at the threshold. In the end, it wasn't a difficult question to answer. "No. Not yet. First, she'll try to find Erin Neal."

    Chapter 10.
    At two in the morning, the temperature was still above a hundred in the loft of Erin Neal's barn. It had taken almost an hour to find the boxes he wanted amidst the useless junk he'd collected over the years, and now they surrounded him, torn open and empty.
    He let the stack of papers fall from his hand and leaned back against the wall, staring at the yellowing notebooks and loose pages piled next to him. He hadn't thought he'd ever have a reason to look at all this old stuff again, but like everything else in his past lives, he'd never found the strength to just throw it away.
    There was little question anymore that the bacteria had been engineered and that the design was based on work he'd abandoned years ago. His goal, though, had been to create a versatile, durable, and effective creature that could be deployed to clean up oil spills.
    Because of the sensitivity of the environmental movement toward genetic engineering, he hadn't talked to many people about his ideas, and the only person who had ever looked at his research was Jenna. Ironically, it was on a trip to her beloved Alaska wilderness that she'd convinced him to give up on the project.
    "Jesus Christ,