Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Maddie (Kindle Worlds Novella) (An Omega Team Crossover Book 4) Read Online Free

me feel better.”
    In seconds, they sat across the kitchen table from one other, each with a tub of ice cream.
    “So let me get this straight.” Gretchen licked her spoon. “A car pulls up to the foot of your driveway at the exact moment you get out of your car. Some guy jumps up and runs to you. Your next door neighbor is outside, he sees what’s happening, walks over to make sure everything is okay, and the guy jumps in the car and drives off.”
    Maddie nodded. “That’s it. If Greg Barnes, my next door neighbor, hadn’t been outside right then, I don’t know what would have happened.”
    “You called the cops, right?”
    Maddie swallowed a spoonful of salted caramel ice cream. “Of course. Fat lot of help they were. I’m beginning to get the idea they think I’m a nut.”
    “I think they’re the ones who are crazy.” Gretchen scooped her own bite of ice cream. “All these things happening to you? Something is going on. You told them that same gray car had been following you, right?”
    Maddie nodded. They’d been overly nice and listened to her politely but pointed out she had no proof it was actually following her. And gray cars were a dime a dozen.
    “They keep trying to tell me I’m imagining things. One of them even had the nerve to tell me I was having a delayed reaction to the episode at the school with Jason.”
    “What?” Gretchen nearly screeched the word. “They really are nuts. I wish I knew someone I could call in the police department. They didn’t do much about your break-in, either.”
    “What could they do?” Maddie looked up, hoping the fear didn’t show in her eyes. “Nothing else was out of place. There wasn’t even any sign of a break-in.”
    “You should have let me talk to them,” her friend said. “Didn’t they ever hear of lock picks? And that picture of your mom and dad didn’t disappear into thin air.”
    Maddie concentrated on the next spoonful of ice cream. “Maybe I just misplaced it, like they said.”
    Gretchen made a rude noise. “That’s a load of crap. I know how special that picture is to you. How close you are to your parents. You’d never misplace it. And didn’t you tell me you thought the drawers of your desk and your personal papers had been gone through? And someone had been fiddling with your computer?”
    “I did.” She shrugged. “But nothing was really out of place, maybe just moved a little. The police said I could have jumbled the papers myself going through them. And the only fingerprints they found on my computer keys were mine.”
    “Didn’t they ever hear of protective gloves?”
    “Gretch, you’re scaring me.” She took another big spoonful of ice cream, the one thing that seemed to settle her nerves.
    “I’d be scared,” Gretchen told her.
    “Well, whatever. Anyway, I’m sure they’re right and all of this is nothing more than my imagination working overtime.”
    “Stay here tonight.”
    The words startled Maddie. “What? What do you mean?”
    “I mean, stay here. I have two nice guest rooms and no guests.” She stuck her spoon in the ice cream tub. “Maddie, something is going on here. I don’t know what, and neither do you, but it makes me nervous and jumpy.”
    “Gretch, I have to go to work in the morning. I have no clean clothes, no toothbrush. No anything.”
    “We wear the same size,” Gretchen reminded her. “And I have extra toothbrushes and hair stuff.” She grinned. “I’m always prepared. Come on. You know you really don’t want to go home alone. Right?”
    She was right, Maddie thought. She hated feeling like an idiot, when she might actually be making something out of nothing.
    “Let me think about it, okay? Meanwhile, how about giving me the deets on the new hunk you’re dating.”
    Anything to change the topic.
    By the time they’d eaten enough ice cream to make themselves sick, Maddie had managed to convince herself she was imagining things. She’d be the first to admit the episode