Read The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) for Free Online Page B

Monroe? There
seemed only one conclusion: he was in a lot of trouble, and Scott had escalated
the machine’s absence. Buggeration.
      
But there was still a car drive into work to do before he got shouted at, and
he decided to focus on something more pleasant: an evening with Dee. Okay, it
had been a very awkward first date, and it probably didn’t count as a date
unless you were very desperate, and he was, but Joe had really felt the start
of a connection between them. Well, in between the theft issue and the whole
‘my father’s ghost is shredded’ problem, but if you removed those outliers you
definitely had a shared experience. And isn’t that what brought people
together, doing things together?
      
Best not ask her out again for a little while. Maybe after he’d got whatever
new job he’d have to when he was fired in a few minutes.
      
Joe realised he’d forgotten to turn the radio on, but noticed a plume of black
smoke reaching into the sky in the distance. Odd, a fire of some sort. But then
the radio was on, and now mostly ignored as Joe continued found thoughts
turning back to Dee. A lovely woman really, if light fingered.
      
Feeling like his time employed was ticking down at the speed of his car, Joe
turned down the road with the lab and got closer to the entrance. Whereupon he
realised the thick black plume of smoke, which had been getting closer, was
coming from the science park. From the labs. From his lab. Fire engines and
ambulances were all around and service personnel were running backwards and
forwards.
      
What the fuck had happened?
      
Leaving the machine in the passenger footwell, Joe jumped out and dashed over
to a small group of white coated people sitting round the back of an ambulance.
Jane and several other of the lab team were there, silent, pale, a couple with
marks on their face like they’d been struck.
      
“Are you alright?” Joe shouted as he neared them.
      
They all rose, hands out, and touched Joe as he got to them. “Oh thank god you
didn’t come in today,” Jane said, eyes filled with fear.
      
“They had guns,” one of the scientists said.
      
“Gu… Jane, what’s happened?”
      
“We were raided. That’s the only word for it. Raided. A group of people, maybe
men, with masks and explosives. They took the professor, took the machine, then
destroyed everything.”
      
“They had guns,” came the shocked reputation.
      
Very aware that he had the machine in his car, and that in the confusion
everyone thought these gunman had the machine, Joe began to grow both afraid
and pleased. So their work had survived, thanks to Dee. But there was a bigger
issue.
      
“Who were they, why did they take Scott?”
      
“We don’t know, the police don’t know, no one knows. But they wanted our work
and they ruined what was left behind.”
      
It seemed scarcely credible to Joe that this could have happened. That their
quiet lab and their small project would have caused a SWAT style raid. That
they had, if not enemies, then a serious problem of espionage. Joe decided to
keep the machine’s survival a secret.
      
“Monroe wants to speak to you.” Jane said it as an afterthought, because it
was.
      
“I’ll go check in, then I’ll get you all some coffee.”
      
As it turned out, Monroe wasn’t telling Joe off. In fact the former had simply
been trying to work out if the latter had been kidnapped too, and it seemed to
Joe that he might have been if he’d got up at the right time.
      
Having delivered coffee to the science team, and checked the other workers were
alright, it was clear there were no fatalities pending the location of Scott.
Just a lot of fear.
     
“Joe!”
      
If it was meant as a shout if didn’t sound like one, but he recognised the
voice and saw Dee coming through the vehicles towards him.
      
“Are you alright?” he asked, “you look awful.”
      
“You know how to reassure a woman.”
      
“Oh,