CHAPTER 18
ENDGAME I
Annie was jogging beside the woman.
“Faster, ma’am! We have to move faster!”
The teenager could tell the older lady was clearly flagging. The short, sharp gasps coming from her showed she hadn’t exercised so strenuously in years, if ever.
The woman also kept looking at her watch and pointing up ahead at Luke Ellis’ home. His unpretentious single-story ranch house stood on a slightly elevated piece of ground, as if the ex-soldier had deliberately built it on a small hillock to make it more difficult for enemy invaders to storm it.
That’s just too paranoid, even for me, isn’t it?
She struggled to catch a breath. In and out, in and out. Each tortured gasp followed by another one. “Pick ‘em up and put ‘em down!” she recalled some of her security people exclaiming to
