The Citadel
Chapter One
Oahu, Hawaii
The Present
The woman gasped and the man stopped what he was doing.
"You don't like it?" he asked.
"Like it?" Tai reached down and unstrapped her leg from the weight he had attached to her ankle. "It's killing me." She slowly stretched out the bandaged limb. She looked at the Velcro strap with the two weights attached and then added a third. She strapped it back on her ankle.
"I thought it was killing you," Vaughn noted.
"No pain, no gain," Tai said as she got to her feet and looked down the beach. Vaughn stared with respect at the slender woman of Japanese descent. Her short dark hair was plastered to her head with the sweat from her efforts. They were on the north shore of Oahu, far from the tourists in Waikiki. The first day Tai had been released from the hospital she insisted on hitting the beach, managing to walk about twenty yards in her casts before collapsing. Now she was running five miles. With weights on her ankles. They had just come one way over three miles, so he knew it was going to be even farther today as they turne ... read full excerpt from Citadel, The ebook