Read Necessary Evil for Free Online

quiet, a slow shiver of anticipation crept up the old man's spine.
    In that instant, he knew. He was being called to a danger he did not understand in a place that had been Tilok forever.
     
     
    Jessie held on to the back of Kier's coat, maintaining actual physical contact and tolerating this lash-up only because it was the simplest way to be sure that they weren't separated. Endless FBI training exercises had taught her to go from an ordinary state to the edge of an adrenaline high in seconds without the mind-spinning disorientation that ordinarily accompanied the shock of extremes. Being in a howling blizzard and looking for God-knew-what qualified as such a situation. She expected to find spilled jet fuel, with maybe more explosions, and probably people at death's door.
    This was not the time or place for a triage operation, Jessie realized. Kier's veterinary medicine would do little for people who needed plasma and blood. It would be agonizing for injured survivors. This was also not the time to allow quibbles with this man to prevent their cooperation in a potential disaster.
    Only after Kier turned to take her arm did she realize that she must have been dragging. She tried to concentrate on keeping up with him in the snow, an almost impossible task, for Kier Wintripp was superbly fit.
    As she put her head down to gut it out, she glimpsed snow-laden branches low to the ground, probably the firs between the field and Elk Horn Mountain road. The whole area around her sister's home was a jumble in her mind. Grudgingly, she credited Kier with an almost inhuman ability to find his way— and to find people, from the stories Claudie told. Jessie assumed he had a perfect map of this mountainous terrain in his head.
    More trees—a wall of them, with heavy brush beneath— slowed their progress. They slid through the dense stuff with a slapping of branches and barely audible crashes in the thickening whiteness. Kier paused. Correcting slightly, he headed off at a new angle—away from the road, she was sure. As they topped a steep rise, thigh deep in snowy windfalls, they spied a giant hole through a thicket of evergreens. It had to be the jet's crash path, if indeed it was a jet.
    They were trotting instead of running now, Jessie's bursting lungs filling in short gasps. The brush grabbed at her jeans and jacket. Tough, prickly branches raked her legs and shins.
    Kier stopped abruptly. "Through the brush," he said, pointing ahead. "It's big, but it's no 747."
    She could see the hole through the forest clearly now. Broken trees lay everywhere along the flight path. A small bunch of evergreens—Jessie thought some sort of fir, each tree about a foot in diameter—had been shattered six feet above the ground. Climbing through the downed trees looked impossible, but Kier scrambled over and under, breaking a trail, pulling and lifting her through the hardest spots.
    A silver squirrel with obsidian-bead eyes stood on the remaining stump of a sheared-off evergreen. Apparently his tree had snapped right at the roof of his hollow in the trunk, leaving him miserably exposed, shaking and chattering—the squirrel version of "Oh shit."
    They came upon more broken trees, oaks still not completely shed of their leaves. Big pieces of sheet aluminum lay about the ground and among the fractured branches. Everything was frosted with snow. She didn't see the jet engine until she had almost run into it, smoking hot and steaming in the cold. Not more than a few feet away a still-smoldering wing looked like the shredded remains of a popped balloon. They followed the trail of mangled foliage until they saw what looked like the main body of the plane. Squinting in the blinding snow, Jessie saw a blurry scene of shadow and white.
    The plane had the sleek look of the private jets used by corporate moguls and Hollywood stars. It was the size of a small commuter jet, perhaps a little shorter than a 737. It lay in a tangle of woody debris and earth, the