Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

Clone one nodded. Clone two, being a clone, did the same. Somehow Mick wasn't mollified. The reflective lenses, he decided. He couldn't see their eyes. Couldn't see what was going on in their Spectra-washed brains.

FM wasn't so handicapped. His ruff stood in a fierce ring around his neck. A feral growl rumbled from his body into Mick's where the dog now sat on his foot.

Number one spoke next, while number two returned to his ATV. "We won't let that happen."

"Good deal, eh, dog?" Mick bent, scratched F's ears again, calming the animal as best he could. He needed the dog. He couldn't afford to have him go off on the clone brothers and risk getting himself shot. Not with all the surveillance intel stored in his collar.

In the end, Mick should've been more in tune to his partner's instincts. When the dog growled and lunged forward, he grabbed for his collar and missed seeing the rope. Number one swung the butt of his rifle, caught the mutt in the jaw. FM whimpered and went sprawling.

The rope sailed through the air and cinched Mick's arms tight against his upper body. "What the bloody fuck is going on, mates?" he growled. "I don't remember reading about this particular guided tour in your brochure."

Number two, at the other end of the rope, jerked Mick down to the ground. "What you did read was that trespassers would be shot."

From where he sat, Mick felt a surge of panic burst at the base of his spine and rise. "Trespassers, mate. Not poor lost fucks getting used to the terrain."

A second rope appeared in the hands of number one. Wordlessly, he sauntered over like a man with all the time in the world, a man loving his job, and used one end of the rope to bind Mick's feet.

That done, he tossed the other end to his partner, who gloated like a big bad steer wrestler having thrown his quarry to the dirt—the problem being that Mick didn't much like the impotent comparison.

He cast a quick glance at FM as the dog stirred where he'd crumpled two meters away. The sigh of relief Mick started to breathe was sucked quickly away, however, when the first clone produced a hunting knife and returned. The muscles between Mick's shoulder blades seized, relaxing only marginally once the other man made his intentions known, slicing into Mick's backpack.

He swore under his breath, grimacing as the pack was upended and the contents—camera, satellite phone, binoculars, energy bars—tumbled to the ground. Losing the equipment was a pain in the ass, but the real issue was the pack. He'd secreted away too many tools of his trade in the padded straps and thick leather base.

Clone one tossed away the pack like yesterday's garbage, squatted to examine the contents. He looped the binoculars around his neck, the camera strap over one shoulder, shoved the phone into a pocket. After a sniff at one of the energy bars, he left those on the ground.

And then he grinned at Mick and pushed up to his feet. "We're going to escort you back to your truck now, Mr. Savin. And hopefully next time you won't be so quick to get yourself lost."

Jesus bloody hell. He grabbed tightly to the taut rope circling his upper body, dug the heels of his boots into the ground. But his palms were already sweating, already slipping. He was unbelievably fucked. "I'm good with walking, mates. Seriously. Just point me the right direction and you won't see me back until opening day."

He watched—impotently—as the two men climbed onto their vehicles, his only saving grace the fact that one man held both ropes, saving him from being ripped apart. He'd simply be dragged to his death instead. The clones revved their engines, laughed like hyenas, revved them again.

He had a switchblade strapped to one calf, his SIG to the other, no time or way to get to either. He wasn't worried about shooting or stabbing himself; the holster and sheath were both secured. But either one would've gone a long way toward stopping this crazy shit before it got started.

Then it was too late. One hard jarring tug, and he was on his way to the great ops center in the sky. He did what he could to stay upright, to use his ass as a snowboard, but at the first awkward jerk of his legs, he went down.

He felt his shoulder go out first, two of his ribs seconds later. A shearing, shredding land mine of fire gutted the upper half of his body. He barely managed to hang onto the rope with one hand, to keep his head off the ground, his chin to his chest.

He shoved his useless fingers into his pants to keep his entire limb from dragging the ground and tearing away, and prayed the terrain would keep the machines from topping out their speed. He failed to take into account the duality of the mean streaks running down the bonehead clones' spines. They knew every bump, rock, and crater and hit them all.

Heat and dust and pain engulfed his hips, his knees, his torso. His spine stretched, threatened to snap. His head bobbed, smacked back. The cowboys up ahead yee-hawed. He thought briefly of FM, briefly of his Smithson Group partners and Hank, briefly of all the women he'd never known.

And then he didn't think of anything anymore.

If not for the dog, she never would have stopped.

She would have kept on driving, lost in thought—she had enough going on in her life to remain indefinitely, permanently mentally adrift—and man and beast would have both ended up as buzzard bait.

But Neva Case had always been a sucker for the underdog—canines included—and so she pulled her. gleaming black, dual-axle, crew-cab pickup to the grassy shoulder, shoved open the driver's-side door, and jumped down.

"Onion, pooch. Let's see what you're all about," she crooned softly, circling around the truck's bed to