Read The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) for Free Online Page A

him. “Hey, Seyer, what happened to your nose, if you don’t mind me asking?”
    He turned and grinned, a smile Andrea didn’t care for. “I got into a disagreemen t. ”
    “With who?”
    “A colleague. It's nothing serious,” he said, and chuckled a little as he walked back to Michaels and the body.
    Nox stood and watched both of them, both standing turned away from her, and then got in her car. She sat with her hands on the wheel for another few seconds, a faint nagging at the back of her mind. It was like a small dog that nipped at your feet and then wasn’t there when you turned to look. She tried to reach for whatever it was, but couldn’t grasp anything. She shook her head and then pulled away from the hotel and its weird, empty neighborhood.

5
Base Desires
    —Next Day—
     
    A blue van with spots of blood-colored rust on the roof pulled into an unmarked parking space about fifty meters from a squa t, brick warehouse. Blue smoke belched from the van’s exhaust as the engine coughed and went quiet. The van had arrived by a lane, dusty with loose earth, that curved and disappeared into a dense forest. Tall, sickly grass surrounded the building, and trees stood in a perimeter that blocked the view of the highway between the outer edges of Beacon City and the towns that lay to the north.
    The building was proof that aesthetics in construction were left to rich architects and banks. The original gray was smeared with soot and grime from years as a storag e- warehouse. The scene looked even more forlorn in the light of a setting sun.
    Frank Mortimer put in his earplugs and stepped out of the van and onto the tarmac. He looked around and grimaced at the view. Frank hated the look of the place almost as much as he hated driving the beat-up old van.
    This place could do with some military grooming, Frank thought, and spat on the grass as he started to walk toward the building.
    A formerly obsessive groomer himself, Frank now paid little attention to his appearance. At six-foot-three, he still made an impressive figure, but his physique had begun to deteriorate. Jet-black hair, slicked back and combed daily, had been replaced with a stubbly dome. Having sailed through puberty with little to no outbreaks, now pimples had started to appear on the back of his neck. He ignored them the same way he ignored people on the street, forgetting about them unless they irritated him.
    As he neared the only entrance to the building, he saw a pair of boots on the end of a pair of crossed legs, jutting out from underneath a table. Rounding the corner, he saw their owner. The man wore blue overalls and a navy cap with the word ' Security' stitched across the front in faded yellow. The man unfolded his arms and sat forward as Frank appeared in front of him.
    Frank stood there, wordless for a second as they stared at each other, and for the briefest of moments considered running.
    “From one, from many,” he said, instead.
    The man in the cap nodded. “From all, from none,” he replied. His shoulders relaxed, the tension almost visibly oozing out of him. His gaze never left Frank’s cold blue eyes until Frank walked past him and into the warehouse proper.
    Frank reached the door at the far end of the lon g, empty room and his eyes passed unseeing over the sign on the door:
    'You May Remove Your Earplugs Now'
    The next room was small and appeared to be just as empty, except for the square trapdoor in the center of the floor. Frank squatted and hooked his fingers into the small handle and pulled up, revealing a ladder into darkness. He climbed down and flipped a switch on the wall to his left, lighting up the eight-foo t- high tunnel that stretched out in front of him.
    He reached the end and pushed through another door into another room. It was occupied by an open elevator shaft with a car waiting, and a woman with her back turned to Frank and the door. Her head was bent slightly, writing onto a clipboard. She seemed not to notice