Read Invasion USA for Free Online Page A

look.
    Brannon turned the F-150 onto the dirt road.
    He was less than halfway to the car when he realized that he recognized it. He slowed to a stop. The car was a Nissan and had a distinctively shaped bumper sticker on the rear bumper. Even though Brannon couldn’t read the words from this distance, he knew the bumper sticker came from the Torres Insurance Agency. The Nissan belonged to Carla May Willard. A week earlier, Brannon had sold her a bulb for her license plate light so the car would pass the annual safety inspection. He had gone outside the store and replaced the bulb for her, too, so she wouldn’t have to fool with trying to do it herself. Just a friendly gesture. He liked Carla May, and there had been a time when it had looked like she would wind up being his daughter-in-law. She had dated his son Brian all through junior and senior year in high school and they had talked about getting married after they got through with college.
    Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way. Carla May—she had been Carla May Stevens at the time—had gotten mixed up with that no-account Danny Willard. Brannon could have told her that she was making a mistake. She would have been a lot better off with Brian, and that was just unbiased fact, not opinion. Young people had to work out these things for themselves, though. A couple of years later, Carla May had married Danny. She stuck it out for eight years, putting up with the drinking and the running around with other women that the whole town knew about, and likely she would have still been married to him if he hadn’t up and left her.
    When Danny left town, Brannon had thought about calling Brian up in Phoenix and sort of casually mentioning that Carla May was single again. In the end, though, he had decided not to meddle in his son’s life. Brian would hear sooner or later that Carla May was divorced, and if he wanted to do something about it, he would.
    Those thoughts flashed through Brannon’s brain in a matter of seconds even though they had nothing to do with the question of what Carla May’s car was doing parked out here in the middle of nowhere. It looked to be empty, yet it hadn’t been there long. Carla May couldn’t have gone very far.
    Then Brannon’s eyes, still very keen despite his fifty-four years, spotted movement inside the car. A little hand waved in the air in the back seat.
    Good Lord! The baby’s still strapped into her carseat , Tom thought. Now he knew something was wrong. Carla May would never go off and leave little Emily alone in the car like that. The day was already heating up. Kids died from being left in cars like that. Brannon gunned the F-150 forward.
    He brought the pickup to a stop behind the Nissan and got out quickly. At least the windows were down in the car; that was something, anyway. Emily couldn’t have gotten too hot already. She smiled up at Brannon as he reached in the open window and tickled a finger under her chin. “Where’s your mama?” he asked. The car was empty except for the toddler.
    â€œGone wi’ men,” Emily gurgled.
    Brannon looked in the front seat. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a small drop of red on the upholstery. Was that blood? His gut told him that something was very wrong here.
    â€œWhat men?” he asked Emily. “Where?”
    She stuck her thumb in her mouth and didn’t answer. But she lifted her other arm and pointed.
    Brannon turned toward a clump of paloverde that sat fifty or sixty yards off the dirt road. He knew there was a dry wash on the other side of the trees. The wash ran full of water every time it rained, and enough of that moisture was trapped under the ground to keep the trees alive.
    â€œYou stay here,” he told Emily unnecessarily. The child couldn’t get out of the carseat, so she wasn’t going anywhere. Brannon stepped back to the F-150, reached into the cab, and took a tire iron out from under