Sacrifice:The Shenkar War Read Online Free Page A

out.”
                  Once the nurse finished up, she pulled back the curtain, exited, and two men in suits entered. The man on the left held up an identification wallet, showing him to be FBI.
                  “ Hello, Mr. Maxis . . . I am agent Mark Tennas. Please get your clothes and come with us.”
                  “ Where to?” Evan asked suspiciously. “Am I under arrest?”
                  “ No, Mr. Maxis, you are not under arrest. I am not at liberty to say what this is about, but I am under orders to deliver you, so please get dressed.”
                  Evan shrugged, grabbed his clothes, and dressed. Well, at least he wasn’t going to jail, so it didn’t seem that it could get any worse. Evan followed the two agents out of the emergency room to a waiting car and got in.

June 4, 2012, 7:55 a.m. EST
    Carl’s Electronics
     
                  Parking the motorcycle besides the building, Liam dismounted and walked to the front door to unlock it. But before he could unlock the door, he turned at the sound of a car pulling up. Liam’s stomach twisted at the sight of the driver.
                  While he might have sworn off caring for anyone after Sarah’s death, he had recently realized that he had failed. The cause of the failure was a twenty-one-year-old girl named Leah, a college student who was stunningly beautiful in every way possible. She was five foot zero inches, 98 pounds of pure beauty, from her straight shoulder-length brown hair, her green eyes with those long eyelashes, and full lips that you just wanted to kiss for hours on end. With a perfect tanned body, on a one-to-ten scale, she was an eleven. He had watched guys come into the electronics store and trip over each other just to get a look at her. It was hilarious. When the store was busy, anyone working with Leah had their line usually full of mostly female customers, while about 90 percent of the males would wait in Leah’s line, even if the other line didn’t have anyone in it.
                  He figured he wasn’t in love with her; she didn’t even think of him that way. Why would she? For starters, he was thirty-seven years old--sixteen years difference. He was way too old for her. Secondly, he just wasn’t her type--he imagined a different sort of guy she would go for. He didn’t think himself unattractive; he simply saw himself as average, that was all. He was six foot one, 188 pounds, with black hair and blue eyes, and he was in good shape, considering he didn’t do much in the way of exercise except for playing ice hockey a couple of times during the week and beach volleyball on weekends with friends.
                  He just didn’t see himself as a guy she would go for, which he actually thought was good since he already felt guilty for caring for someone when his wife was dead. He felt he was somehow betraying her, yet he knew that was stupid for him to feel, knew Sarah would have wanted him to be happy. As for Leah, he thought it odd that they got along so well; he didn’t understand why she liked to hang out with him. They went to dinner occasionally, saw movies, or even hung out at his apartment where he made her dinner.
                  They had struck up a friendship when she had discovered Liam had lost loved ones to the bird flu. Leah was writing a paper of the effects of close losses from the flu and how people were dealing with it. So they started meeting up to discuss what he went through and how he was dealing with it. He would tell her about his wife, son, and those family members he lost, and when not speaking of those things, they talked of stuff they liked, guys she dated, and so on.
                  Something he couldn’t understand was how she didn’t have a boyfriend. She claimed that she just couldn’t find the right guy, that they just were not nice like Liam. She often