Omega Read Online Free Page B

sarcastic comments to start.
    Instead, he lifted his head and looked her in the eye. She could swear his heartbeat sped up, although it was hard to tell over the pounding of her own. Well, this was damned awkward. He blinked and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
    Well, that was one good thing. Will had been stricken dumb, at least for a moment.
    Finally, he rolled off her, rose to his feet, and held out a hand. “Come on, help me dig my computer out of the dirt, and let’s get out of here.”
    Avoiding his eye, she batted his hand away and got to her feet without anything near his gracefulness. She might as well not be embarrassed by her reaction to him. He was sex on a stick and he knew it, with his just-wavy-enough hair and dimples and brown eyes the color of antique gold. And if he ever forgot it, there were plenty of women in what was left of Penton to pump up his ego, or anything else that might need pumping.
    Including her Omega roommate, Olivia, a human who’d been Will’s familiar for a few months and obviously wanted to be a lot more. If Randa had a pint of unvaccinated blood for every time Liv had mentioned Will’s name in the past three days, she’d have enough to feed for eternity.
    They knelt on opposite sides of the metal box and had it unearthed after a couple minutes of digging. “Why is your computer buried, anyway?”
    Will wiped off the loose dirt and tucked the box under his arm. “It’s my backup. I updated it every few days and reburied it in case we ever had to leave in a hurry and I couldn’t get to my primary computer. It contains all the diagrams for Omega and underground Penton. I knew I could probably get back to retrieve it even if something happened to the house.”
    He looked at the blackened shell of his home, a jagged outline in the moonlight. “You know, like if I had to burn it down myself, computer and all, to keep my dad from finding it.”
    Randa felt a stab of sympathy for him, then shook it off. A quick roll around on the ground didn’t mean she should forget what a brat Will Ludlam was. As the only girl growing up with four brothers at a string of army bases across the country, she knew brats. “We need to take a look in town first—before I spotted you, I thought I saw movement around the clinic.”
    “Yes, sir, Veranda, sir.” Will stashed the metal computer case beneath a pile of brush and covered it up.
    Asshole.
Randa stalked along the tree line, not looking to see if he was behind her. He could fend for himself.
    Silently, they took side streets into what was left of the small downtown area. “Wait a second.” Will put a hand on her shoulder and jerked his head toward the remains of the Penton clinic. “Damn, he
is
here.”
    A middle-aged man in an expensive-looking suit, thin, with salt-and-pepper hair cut stylishly short, left the clinic and got into a late-model silver sedan in the parking lot. “That’s Matthias. We should go in and see what he left behind,” Will whispered. “The clinic office is in the undamaged side of the building. I bet he’s using it.”
    “You do what you want. I’m going to follow him—he’s driving toward downtown.” Randa began moving away, then looked back at Will. “If I get a good shot at his head, I’m going to take him out. You OK with that? Even though he’s your father?”
    Anybody would balk at murdering a parent, even a bad parent, and a large-caliber head shot directly into the brain—the only way a bullet could kill a vampire other than multiple close-range shots to the heart—made a gory mess even if youdidn’t know the person. It would be better if Will went back to Omega and left Matthias to her.
    He moved closer and softened his voice. “My father deserves whatever he gets, but Aidan and Mirren have made their position clear. If we kill Matthias, it’s the same as declaring open war against the Tribunal. They’ll come down here with an army, and we won’t stand a chance. We need to