Read A Time to Die for Free Online

running from the woods, tail wagging and tongue lolling. “Hey girl,” he said as he climbed out and got a face licking for his effort. “You ever catch that rabbit?” Lexus didn't have anything to say, and promptly went running off again.
    “How'd the sale go?” asked a familiar voice from the cabin door. Ann stood there with a coffee cup in one hand and brushing her long red hair from her face with the other.
    “Good, you ready to help with the unload?”
    “Tim and Nicole will be here in an hour,” she reminded him, “be easier with four hands.”
    “True,” he agreed and shrugged, “got any more of that joe?”
    “Sure thing, sailor.”
    The trees shaded the cabin well and the coffee was good, as usual. In the years Ann had shared the cabin with him, they'd grown into something more than friends, but less than husband and wife. He'd been within an inch of asking her to marry him more than once, but something always stopped him. Maybe his own short marriage twenty years ago, or her long but equally doomed one that ended just before they met. She was a longtime friend of the Prices (Tim & Nicole) and that had led them to introduce her. Along with Lisa and Brad Hopkins, they finished up the group he'd built around The Retreat.
    “I love coming up here,” Ann said as she sipped her coffee and watched Lexus sniffing around a tree a hundred yards away.
    “You should stay more often,” Vance suggested. Was this one of those times when he'd almost ask, only to lose his will at the last moment. He pretended to study the bottom of the heavy ceramic mug through the dark brown liquid.
    “I'd like that,” she said. Something more was unsaid there and Lance looked up. Sure enough, she was staring at him. He lifted and eyebrow in an unspoken question. She opened her mouth to speak, but took another drink of coffee. To his surprise, a tear formed in the corner of her eye.
    “Shit,” he said and moved closer. “I'm sorry I never… you know…”
    “It's not that,” she sniffed. “I mean, sure, I'd like to be an honest girl... it's just...”
    “What then?”
    She pushed the coffee mug away and looked him in the eye. Something said 'uh oh,' in the back of his mind just before she spoke. “I'm late.”
    A part of his mind laughed. No, you were right on time for a change. Another part recoiled in instant horror. The confused look on his face must have been obvious because Ann reached into her pocket and produced a tiny plastic appliance and slid it across to him. On its side was a little window where a red “+” was clearly visible.
    “Oh,” he said, and promptly fainted.

 
     
    Chapter 4
    Wednesday, April 11
     
    Lisha watched the wind and rain lash at the window pane and tried to concentrate. The rocking of the converted oil rig didn't help her attempt to get some work done. The early April gale was only a Category Two in the Saffir-Simpson scale, or so said the crew. To her, born and raised in New York's Bronx, it was damn near the end of the world!
    “Just a little storm, Dr. Breda,” a lilting feminine voice laughed from the corner of the lab. Lisha glanced over to where Assa, her young Irish redheaded lab assistant, worked away on the spectrograph, one ear sporting a compact Bluetooth set that no doubt pumped non-stop techno music.
    “Little storm to you maybe,” Lisha grumbled and popped another anti-nausea pill before turning back to her computer, “crazy Scottish bitch.”
    “Crazy Irish bitch!” Assa reminded her. Of course Lisha knew where she was from, it was part of their banter. “The sequencer finished its run.”
    “Thanks,” she replied to her assistant and checked the computer. Once she'd returned from New Mexico she'd turned over the samples of the unusual fox to another team and went back to work on The Project. However, now she was seeing the first results from the bio-genetic workups come onto her large plasma displays and it made her lean in closer. “What the hell,” she