Power Up 3: Whispered Words Read Online Free

thinks I’m cuuuute.”
    Definitely time to hit the slopes.

Chapter Two

    So far so good. She’d had been hiking all day and night to reach the cabin. By now her car would lay buried under several feet of snow in the lot off the highway.
    She had enough food and clothing to last her a few days, and she knew from experience the cabin would be stocked with canned goods. Chloe felt bad about reserving, then canceling at the last minute, but the snowfall made the excuse a plausible one. No way to trace her whereabouts.
    The cabin was the ideal place in which to lose herself, to give herself space, and to help find her voice again. Accessible only via a hiking trail, it served hard-core hikers and campers. Parking as far away as she had along the highway, no one would guess it might be her destination. What crazy idiot would walk twenty miles in the snow to reach a cabin they hadn’t even reserved? She’d be lucky if the cabin had a generator to power electricity.
    An owl hooted overhead. The quiet soothed the worries she’d been carrying for far too long. Not much stirred under the dark sky. The unfettered moonlight and beaming stars overhead made her think of fairy tales and universal mysteries as she neared the marker that signaled the rise to the cabin that lay snug in the woods.
    She wondered about her voices, why she had them, how they could be so precise. She’d heard them ever since her sixth birthday. Dry, dispassionate orders that told her all manner of things. Who liked who, which neighbor had stolen a car, cheated on his wife, or had gambling debts. Odd facts about things she had little interest in. Sometimes the information led to an arrest, sometimes it just entertained her. She’d find a missing engagement ring. Point out who stole a book from the corner store, or what kid had secretly been bullying others.
    As she grew older, another voice became more distinctive. It told her what to do, who to trust, secrets that helped her avoid danger. All of the advice from her voice, from him , helped her to advance in life, stay safe, and be a better person. She tuned into him more than any of the other voices, although why she thought of it as a man’s voice, she couldn’t say. The voice could as well have belonged to a woman. It had no gender, no inflection. The voice simply was, and it always took care of her.
    It bothered her more than she wanted to admit that she’d lost that intimate tie to the psychic plane. No matter how often she reached out to him, she heard nothing.
    The pack on her back felt ten pounds heavier as night turned into early morning. Yet she trudged forward step-by-step. Jack had been right. She’d needed the exercise. Though tired, she felt worlds better than she had the past week. Her ribs no longer pained her, and the exertion awakened her fuzzy brain.
    As dawn approached the horizon, she saw it. The hazy outline of a rooftop past a scraggle of branches and pines blanketing the forest floor amidst the snow.
    To her dismay, smoke curled from the chimney. She hadn’t thought for one second someone might have intruded into her space. Hell, yesterday morning the rental Web site had showed the place still empty. What the hell?
    Could it be her stalker had beaten her out here? Chloe shook her head. There was no way the man could have followed her trail. No one had sensed or seen him, and the team had done its best to use all their resources to scry for him. Still, it paid to be cautious. She carefully concealed her pack at the edge of the tree line and withdrew her pistol from the front pocket.
    Then she approached the cabin. She made her way to the eastern side, where she could peer through a window into the kitchen at the back of the house.
    Firelight flickered against a pot of something steaming on the stove. Past the kitchen, she noted a long arm strewn over the back of a couch. The arm belonged to a man with short dark hair. She couldn’t make out his features or his height, just the