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Risen To The Top CHAPTER 157
Sean and Alex wound their way up the street towards the Hoade house. A pickup truck almost scraped the driver’s headlights on Alex’s SUV as it took the angle of the corner too steep, traveling at a high rate of speed. Alex hadn’t had a chance to downshift from high beams, so the lights flashed on the face of a man behind the wheel wearing a Padres baseball cap.The Hoade’s gardener. “That’s strange.”“What?” Alex asked.“The fuckin’ gardener. Tori said his regular day was tomorrow. He’s about as good a driver as he is landscaper,” Sean snorted.“Something wrong about that, Sean,” Alex replied.Sean turned and looked toward the rear of the truck that was smoking, picking up speed as it barreled down the hill to the commercial district. Something was definitely wrong. He started having that feeling like he did sometimes when he was in an unfamiliar neighborhood overseas, when they didn’t know what was arou
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 158
Tori was being hauled from a truck that smelled of gasoline into a chilly, dark covered space, perhaps a garage. As her feet dragged along the floorboards, they snagged a gasoline can and tipped it, sending it crashing to the concrete below. She heard a man’s voice swear. The gasoline smell was almost overpowering.With his arms under her chest, her kidnapper dragged her through a doorway and into a carpeted small space. The room was done up in pink, complete with a set of Barbie Dolls on a French Provincial sideboard that looked like it came out of a little girl’s room.And then it hit her. It did look just like a little girl’s room. A single bed with a hot-pink, fuzzy bedspread, dotted with stuffed animal pillows was in the corner. An overhead chandelier in pink had lit up automatically as they entered the room. The massive arms hoisted her up and onto the bed. She was left in sitting position. She couldn’t feel much of her body below the neck
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 159
Sean and Alex raised their hands, partly to protect their eyes from the disruptive bright light. Sean saw smoke billowing around the massive legs and boots of the giant.“So, what the hell are you guys up to?”Sean put his fingers to his mouth to indicate he wanted silence but the man wasn’t having anything of it.Alex whispered, “He the one?”Sean shook his head, no.The man raised his voice further. “I said, I want some answers, and quick, or I’m calling the cops.”Not a cop? With the boots and the gun, Sean figured he was either a bad guy or a security guard trying to do his job.“They’re already on their way,” Alex said as a test. His voice was commanding but not threatening. Sean hoped they were not within earshot of the man who had Tori. The man with the shotgun didn’t move, so Alex continued. “We’re looking for a guy in a pickup. We think he has kidnapped a girl and bro
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 160
Sean wouldn’t leave Tori’s side. Paramedics came and tried to push him away, but he almost got heavy with the larger one and barked a “no” they would not soon forget. As usual, Alex was making nice with the local authorities, including Dole, who looked rather pissed.“We caught the guy, Karl. I’d have thought you’d be a little more grateful,” Alex said. The two of them walked off into the night to have a private conversation.Sean helped the paramedics remove Tori to the gurney for transport to the hospital.“I’m fine,” she kept on saying. “Really, I’m fine. You guys don’t have to fuss over me.”“Baby, that was so close. I’m never going to leave you alone again.”Tori giggled.God, how I love that sound!“Sean, come here.” She raised her head up and Sean kissed her. He would have climbed on top of the gurney if the paramedics hadn’t objected. They started pulling him away care
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 161
Sean couldn’t remember being so nervous. The sun was setting on the ocean from atop the grand master suite that had cost him a month’s pay. But this was going to be an important night. The rest of the L.J corporation team had their celebration last night. Sean had sneaked into the hospital room and spent the night in bed with Tori. He’d been tossed out twice, but still managed to get back in. Finally the nurses let him stay.She was just being held for observation, and Sean talked them out of needing a monitor, telling the nurses a lie that he was an intern, on his way to becoming a Naval physician.She had asked him afterwards if that was what he wanted to do, be a doctor.He said, no. He wanted to get naked and inside her as soon as possible.She seemed to like that idea just as much. Maybe better.But tonight was the candlelit dinner he had never done before. He wanted everything to be how she would l
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 162
The last ride.*One year later.Duke was on a military aircraft to Antarctica, Marshall had chosen him specially for this mission.He was the only available member of the L.j corp team.Sean and Tori had just gotten married and were on honeymoon, Marshall and Claire were expecting another child and Alex and Joanne were busy running L.j corporation.Earlier that week, they had gotten Intel that Vladimir Jores, the ex-military assassin that the Connery family had used for their dirty deeds, had been spotted in a small rural village there.Vladimir Jores was one of the most wanted criminals on Earth, he had worked for the Connery family for a long time.Doing their dirty jobs and testing their nuclear weapons in poor villages and testing it on children.Ever since L.j corp exposed the Connery family, the police had immediately
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 163
* * *The small plane taxied down the runway at Inuit in the Inuit Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Antarctica artic axis. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.Dr. Evelyn Cox stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her Polar bears and she was determined to find out what.Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow Polar bears here in the Inuit. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one signal completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a Polar bear called Sheba, one of only two femal
Risen To The Top CHAPTER 164
* * *Two hours later the sun was sinking into the west. Desperation and the need to hurry pulsed through her blood and made her head pound with frustration. The van got stuck twice but they’d managed to push free of the freshly thawing ground. The shock absorbers were toast. Ahead she could make out the faint outline of pale yurts set deep in the shadow of the mountains.A sonorous snore resonated from the back seat where Mikado slept. Ivan’s cheeks were ruddy from the exertion of driving in such demanding conditions. They’d all taken a turn behind the wheel.“Keep going,” she urged as they passed the yurts. To save time they needed to drive as far as they dared toward where she figured Sheba had denned up. Half a mile later they bumped over a rock the size of a football, and her head glanced off the side window. Dammit.“I can’t go much further without breaking an axle,” Ivan warned.“St