Page 55 of Burning Secrets

“We’re coming up on the Birch Creek community.”

She looked out to see a large cleared area bordered by a dozen or so greenhouses. Across a dirt road, a fenced area held clusters of beef cattle.

And nestled among the trees, five small homes with vehicles parked in dirt driveways. A thin dirt road led through the forest toward a gravel road in the distance.

Remote. Contained. The perfect test site for a bioweapon.

She sat back, met Crew’s hard-jawed gaze.

What? They had a veritable army with them. What did he think was going to happen?

“Crew,” Rio said through the comms. “Does the SOR have a drone?”

Crew frowned. “Yeah. They use it for surveillance. Why?”

JoJo leaned over and looked again out the window. Oh, that was why. What looked like a prehistoric mosquito in the sky, nine feet across, ten feet tall, a tank on the bottom—it was a monster—sweeping over the garden with its four arms, spraying its payload.

It then swooped away toward the beef pasture.

No, oh no?—

“Because,” said Rio, “I think they’re already here.”

“Put us on the ground, Dodge!” Rio’s voice, but Crew’s inner shout as he watched the drone circle the field.

He couldn’t tell if it had deployed the poison or not.Please, God, not?—

“Just open the hatch and hand me a gun,” Hammer said, unclipping from his harness.

Crew looked at him, wide-eyed, as Hammer wrenched open the chopper door. What? He was in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, flying over Vietnam.

“Get back inside!” Rio shouted.

Hammer had found a gun strapped to the back of the pilot’s chair—a .44 Magnum. Crew glanced at JoJo. She held upher hands, shook her head, so not hers—probably belonged to Dodge.

Hammer leaned out the door, aimed, and popped off five shots. At least one hit the drone, and it flipped, spun, and crashed, shattering in the middle of the cow pasture.

He shut the door. “Now set us down.”

Crew watched as he sat down. Okay then.

Still, the second they set down, Rio unstrapped, then jumped out of the chopper, running, head down, toward the downed drone.

Get a mask.He didn’t know why he thought that, but—okay, probably a mask wouldn’t help. But the wholebioweaponterm had his skin crawling.

He also unharnessed and opened the door, got out, the blades above slowing their spin. They sat in the middle of the field, dust in the air. They were probably breathing toxins right now.

JoJo probably thought the same thing, because she had donned her handkerchief over her nose. Another brilliant move.

She made a better undercover agent than he did. Sheesh.

Not that he cared, because the sense of tomorrow, a.k.a. hope, still sat under his skin. Last night, hanging out with her crew, the easy belonging—it’d felt like his father’s stories of his buddies in the Marines. The kind of guys you could count on, who had your back.

And maybe it was a foolish dream, but yes. He could fly with her, fight fires with her…

Be like Skye and Rio.

He could still taste JoJo’s kiss, still feel her in his arms.

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