Read Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2 Online

Authors: Michele Callahan

Tags: #Silver Storm, #Timewalker Chronicles, #time travel

Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2

BOOK: Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2
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Table of Contents
 

Title Page

Dedication

Copyright

Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2:

A Special Note From the Author

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Books by Michele Callahan

Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3:

Prologue

About SILVER STORM

Lost

On a hot summer night more than twenty-five years ago a freak lightning bolt struck Sarah St. Pierre on Lake Michigan. Presumed dead, her body was never found. She simply…vanished.

Hunted

Timothy Daniel Tucker walked away, but the group of people he once worked for aren’t willing to give him up so easily. They watch him, waiting for him to crack, waiting for an excuse to bring him back in to finish what he started.

Found...

When Tim finds a beautiful naked woman floating in Hendrick Lake, he suspects a trap. She claims to be the same woman who disappeared over two decades ago, but she hasn’t aged a day. Worse, she knows intimate details about his covert work on a weapon that could destroy all of humanity. Trust is impossible, but Tim will not stop until he discovers all of her secrets, until he uncovers the truth.

Pursued by an unseen enemy, Sarah claims to see things no one else can see, to know things about the future that no one could possibly know. And she has a frightening power no human should wield. Falling in love is an unacceptable risk but Tim can’t walk away from her visions, her power, or the fierce desire she ignites within him. Predator or prey? Truth or lies? Love or duty? Decisions must be made. Millions of lives hang in the balance…and the clock is ticking.

Dedication

For Tom, who never stopped believing.

I love you, babe
.

Copyright

Silver Storm, Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2

Cover design Copyright 2014 by RomCon® & Cynthia Woolf
Photo Copyright © yuran-78

 

Second Edition. September 2014.

Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan

Published By Michele Callahan

All rights reserved.

 

This book is a work of fiction. Names, people, places and events are completely a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

 

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2:

 

SILVER STORM

 

 

by Michele Callahan

 

 

Copyright 2014 by Michele Callahan

All Rights Reserved

 

 

A Special Note From the Author


I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you
.” We’ve all said it. It’s a great joke. It’s funny…until it isn’t, until you meet someone for whom the words are true.

If you meet this person, odds are, you’ll never know it. The burden they carry is heavier than simple threats or bloodshed, loss of life or loss of innocence, it’s silence.

My uncle was what the urban legends would call a “company man”. They recruited him straight out of college. He was an honest, highly intelligent, hard-working, country kid from the Midwest when the “man in black” showed up and told my uncle to meet him at a designated time and place, “If you are curious”. He went.

According to the family lore, it was years before the extended family realized who he actually worked for. Those who did know, who’d been interviewed for the background check, were sworn to secrecy. No one else knew until after he “got out”. He worked for the CIA for a couple years, then transferred to the DOD. He was one of those guys who actually had a suitcase handcuffed to his wrist and a fully armed escort. (He joked about trying to use the bathroom on those days. It’s the little things, you know?)

As a child, he scared me. As a pre-teen, he became the most romantic and intriguing member of my family. And then, without warning, he walked away after nearly two decades on the inside. As a young adult, I couldn’t understand his choices. Now, as a mother with a family to support, only now do I even begin to grasp the enormity of the weight on his shoulders.

He passed away a few years ago and none of us ever learned what he actually DID. We do know he was in for nearly two decades, that he worked around advanced weapon development and had very, very high-level military contacts. As new weapons or machines were revealed to the world over the years, we’d occasionally hear, “I worked on that one.”

His top-level clearances extended to affect the rest of the family. They tried to recruit my dad in college as well. He wasn’t interested. My dad, like my uncle, was a bit of a loner, and ended up working for years as an over-the-road freight driver. My dad believed that because he’d been cleared, he used to be one of the few drivers who would haul truck loads of money, gold bars, and top secret crates around the country. Whenever he had one of those loads, he had an armed escort, and wasn’t allowed out of the truck, not even to use the bathroom.

When my uncle quit, he didn’t want his mother to be upset or worried. So, he lied. He told her his front company wanted to transfer him overseas, away from his family. He told his best friend and little brother (my dad) that he’d stumbled across something he shouldn’t have, and if
They found out
, he’d be dead. What it was, he never said. My dad, being curious, asked him several times. The Kennedy assassination? Area 51? The possibilities, and my twelve year old imagination, were truly endless. All my dad ever got in response was a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head.
I could tell you…but I’d have to kill you
.

My uncle said “you’re never really out”, but he walked away and tried to provide for a family of five as a true civilian. But no one would hire a man in his mid-40s with no prior work experience and no references. (The “company” he worked for claimed they’d never even heard of him.)
They
invited him back. He declined, and did door-to-door sales, took construction jobs and drove semitrucks for the rest of his life. Really glamorous life for a former “spy”.

I think of my uncle as the family oak tree, the giant that sits in the yard watching over the house, never speaking. He didn’t say much. I can’t remember ever hearing him yell—even with five kids in the house. I never saw him cry. He rarely laughed. He answered questions with questions. He didn’t talk much, even with his own family. But he had a wicked sense of humor, if you paid attention. He counted cards when we played Blackjack or Gin Rummy at Thanksgiving. He won, a lot. He stayed with his wife, raised five children, and when the youngest was approached by her own “man in black” on campus, he made a phone call. Couple days later the same man found her, said he wasn’t allowed to speak to her again, but left a phone number, “In case you change your mind.” She didn’t. Her father absolutely forbade it.

We all go to movies like
The Bourne Identity
and
Mission Impossible
, the great spy and spec-op thrillers. Where most see passion and danger, excitement and thrills, I see men and women who live truly solitary lives. Men and women who are always alone, even in a crowd. When we see a character like Jason Bourne or Ethan Hawke, we are all dazzled by his power, knowledge, and fearlessness.

I would argue the opposite is actually true.
WE
are the fearless ones. We are the innocent children who go about our daily lives without a thought or concern for the battles taking place in the shadows all around us.

I believe my uncle lived with fear every single day, the invisible
They
his constant companions, both ours and others. Ever vigilant, he always had a firearm nearby. He studied every face in every country diner. Every stranger was a threat, every dark corner a potential danger. I truly believe that he was watched, monitored, and haunted every minute of every day…and couldn’t speak of it.

For years I wanted to
know
what he
knew
. I am glad, now, that I do not. He protected us all with his silence.

The hero in
Silver Storm
, Timothy Daniel Tucker, is a math genius, recruited young, like my uncle, and set to work on weapons, research and development. Like my uncle, Tim gets out because he has to, because the price for staying becomes too high. Tim doesn’t look like my uncle, and their backgrounds are different, but I tried to give Tim my uncle’s soul, the intelligence and curiosity that got him in too deep, the honor and sense of duty that called him to serve for so many years, and the strength of will that allowed him to walk away. In Tim, I tried to give my uncle a fantastic, carefree, happily ever after to dream about.

This book is dedicated to my uncle, and to all the men and women out there, from CIA to military to civilian contractors who suffer in silence, who walk in the darkest places, who, like my uncle, will never be able to live wholly in the light again. May you all make peace with your secrets and find someone to love you, shadows and all.

For you, Uncle Ron, with love, respect, and gratitude. You were the strongest man I’ve ever known.

May you truly rest, at last, in peace.

Michele

 

Prologue

“Evening, Sir.” The armed guard would serve Tim’s purpose tonight, not his commander’s, not the Department of Defense’s, and not the company’s. Tonight the guard would keep out anyone who might be able to stop Tim, but the kid didn’t know that. The young soldier was wide-eyed and enthusiastic, traits Tim admired and had once shared. But that was before, back when service and duty had meant everything to him, and to his father.

BOOK: Silver Storm: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 2
5.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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