Read Shadow Alpha for Free Online

realized she hadn’t gotten into the vehicle but simply stood beside it staring across the hood at him. “We need to go.”
    “Take off the goggles.”
    “What?”
    “I’m not going anywhere with you until you take off the goggles and I can see you are who you say you are.” She folded her arms stubbornly in front of her chest as she looked at him challengingly.
    Dair didn’t know whether to feel glad that Kat was no longer acting like a zombie, or tell her to move her butt—now—or he would move it for her.
    She could have all the answers she wanted once they were far away from here, but until then…! “You already acknowledged I’m Dair Grayson.”
    “I fed you that line.”
    “What about the doll?” he reasoned impatiently. “How the hell would I know about the doll if Gregori hadn’t told me?”
    “Take-off-the-goggles!”
    Dair’s jaw tightened at her stubbornness. So much for the sweet and innocent Katya he remembered! “Fine!” He ripped off the night-vision goggles to glare across the hood of the SUV at her. “Satisfied?”
    Kat wasn’t anywhere near to being reassured. Yes, she had followed this man into the woods, because he seemed to know where he was going. But five years of being Sergei Orlov’s wife had taught her never to take anything at face value. That nothing was ever as innocent as it looked. Least of all Sergei.
    “Open the door of the SUV so that the interior light will come on and I can see you properly,” she instructed tautly.
    There was the sound of an impatient sigh in the darkness. “And allow the light to alert anyone looking for us to exactly where we are?”
    “We could stop wasting any more time if you just did what I asked,” Kat reasoned.
    “I think I preferred you when you weren’t talking!” The driver’s door was wrenched open, giving Kat her first clear view of the man who had carried her out of the clinic.
    Those dreadful tweeds and the dark-rimmed glasses of yesterday morning were now gone, allowing Kat to look her fill of those harshly hewn features and that livid scar at his temple.
    His eyes were a curious color between grey and green, cheekbones sharply etched, nose long and straight, sculptured lips set in a grim line, his jaw square and determined.
    He was dressed from head to toe in black; fitted tee, jeans, and heavy boots.
    He looked like a warrior.
    He looked like Dair Grayson.
    Not that much younger Dair she had fallen in love with when she was only fifteen, but a hardened soldier who looked as if he could take on a whole army single-handedly—and win.
    “Satisfied?” he growled, his scowl emphasizing that scar on his temple.
    A scar that hadn’t been there the last time Kat had seen Dair Grayson. How had he gotten it? There had been lots of rumors after his disappearance all those years ago, and one of them had been that he had gone into the army to get away from his family’s reputation. That livid scar on his temple seemed to indicate, if that had been the case, that he had seen action.
    Dair really was a warrior.
    “Okay.” Kat nodded as she wrenched open the passenger door of the vehicle and climbed inside. “Well?” She looked at Dair expectantly as he still stood outside.
    “I definitely preferred it when you weren’t speaking!” he muttered as he pulled the goggles back on and climbed in beside her.
    Kat was having difficulty holding back a smile. Whatever happened next, for the moment she was free. And that freedom had never tasted sweeter.
    “Maybe you shouldn’t have told me how to avoid taking the drugs I hadn’t realized they were putting in my food.” She shrugged dismissively.
    That her brother Gregori had chosen Dair Grayson, of all men, a member of the Montgomery family, to come and rescue her, seemed slightly bizarre; was it any wonder she’d had trouble believing her own eyes and ears?
    Although it perhaps also made a certain sense, when Dair had no connection to the Markovic family, allowing Gregori to deny