Sleepwalker by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page A

she possessed, every bit of training she’d ever had, even the oath she’d taken. But try as she would, she could come up with no alternative. She was shaken to the core, conflicted and upset. None of which was optimum for clearheaded thinking. Plus, his fingers digging into her arm hurt, and the suitcase kept banging into her legs. The cash was in paper bills: who would have guessed it could weigh so much?
    “You really think you’re going to get away?” she threw at him.
    By way of a reply he tightened his grip and growled, “What part of ‘shut up’ don’t you understand?
Run
.
”
    “Because from this end I have to tell you I don’t think it’s looking so good.”
    Before he could reply, a commotion on the other side of the eight-foot-tall holly hedge that blocked the pool area from the sight of the rest of the property drew their mutual attention. No sooner had Mick looked that way than the wrought-iron gate that provided access through the hedge burst open and a half dozen members of Uncle Nicco’s security force poured through. Armed to the teeth, dressed in dark uniforms that had been deliberately designed to make them look like cops, their reaction—the ones in front stopped dead, causing those behind to bump into them and then stumble off the semicleared walkway into the midcalf-deep snow on either side—told her they were almost as surprised to see her and the man hanging on to her as Mick was to see them.
    “There they are,” Terry Abrizzo shouted from the back of the pack, pointing out to the other guys what they had clearly already realized. Well, Abrizzo had always been a little slow on the uptake. Short and faintly pudgy, he had a perpetually worried expression that had just become even more pronounced than usual as he tried to keep his balance in the snow while taking in the scenario in front of him.
    “Hold it right there!” Lenny Otis yelled, his gun coming up and his feet planting on the walkway as he got his act together and assumed lock-and-load position. Bald and beefy, Otis was older than the others, had been on Uncle Nicco’s payroll for years, and tended to be more intelligent than Uncle Nicco’s average thug. Thus, the group seemed to look to him as an unofficial leader. Mimicking Otis, everybody’s guns came up and their feet planted.
    “Don’t fucking move,” a bunch of them screamed in almost perfect unison.
    “Stay back!” The thief yanked her against him and imprisoned her with an arm wrapped around her throat. Caught by surprise, Mick lost her footing. The brick walkway down which they had been racing was cleared of all but the newest snow, but underneath it was icy; her flip-flops were already wet, and they slipped on the brick like bowling balls sliding down a lane. When her feet went out from under her, she dropped like a rock and, in the process, lost her grip on the suitcase. Her chin caught on the thief’s hard-muscled upper arm, snapping her jaws together, jarring her teeth, wringing a surprised
oomph
out of her. She hung there, choking, feet scrabbling for purchase, shocked to find herself in such a position. Uncle Nicco’s guys, most of whom she’d known for years, goggled at her in astonishment. Her momentary discomfiture embarrassed her as much as it surprised them, and even as she fought to regain her balance she glared fiercely back at them.
    I can kick all your butts, and you know it, so you can just quit looking at me like that
were the words she mentally hurled at them. She would have shouted it out if she hadn’t been choking at the time.
    As she desperately clutched at the thief’s imprisoning arm while fighting for breath, it was all she could do not to react to her predicament with a sharp elbow jab to his ribs, which would have freed her in a heartbeat. But by keeping the endgame firmly in mind, she managed to hold off on doing him bodily harm long enough to get her feet underneath her again.
    Coughing, wheezing, shifting from foot to frozen