She fought to hold back her screams as bullets whizzed over her head again, popping in the wood crates around her and sending a shower of wood chips and shattered glass from inside around her head.
This was bad. Very bad. She stared around, wide-eyed and dazed, as she scrambled around more boxes, more crates, fighting for as much protection between her and the bullets as she could find.
Crista Jansen was certain her horoscope hadn’t said anything about bullets today. Something about dark knights and ill-advised trips, but there had been nothing in there about bullets.
She would have remembered.
She would have changed her plans.
Oh boy, would she have changed her plans.
Scuttling behind what she hoped was a very thickly packed crate, she covered her head with her arms as glass sprayed around her.
Those weren’t just regular bullets. Those were fast bullets. Automatic? Uzi? Something. The kind that spat fire as they pelleted out dozens of rounds at a time. And she knew because the red flashes of light in the otherwise dark interior of the warehouse were a pretty good clue.
A terrified squak, a cross between a squeak and a squawk, fell from her lips as chips of wood exploded from the sides of the crate she found to hide behind.
They were serious out there. People were killing people, and she was caught in the crossfire and wondering how the hell she was going to get out of this one.
She knew this was a bad idea.
She knew. She had felt that sick feeling in her gut the minute she stepped into the cavernous warehouse and realized the lights didn’t work. But had she, dumb ass that she was, backed out and left?
Oh, hell no, she had just pulled her penlight from her purse and trudged merrily on her way, looking for that stupid box. She told the delivery company to deliver to her home, not here. Yet when she returned home from work, what had she found? An official notice that her package had been dropped off at their local distribution warehouse and why, lookie, there had been the magical key to open the damned locker it was in.
Well, guess what? There’s no locker here, she told herself sarcastically. No locker, but plenty of bullets singing a macabre tune through the darkness.
So now, rather than collecting her belongings, she was just trying to stay alive. When did fate decide to bust Crista Jansen’s ass? For God’s sake, hadn’t she had enough bad luck in the past eight years?
This was all Dawg’s fault, she decided. Every bit of it. He lived and he breathed and because of it; fate hated her. Fate was female, right? It was probably jealous. There could be no other explanation.
This was so bad.
“Where did the f**king girl go—?” a harsh, accented voice muttered roughly.
Okay she was the only girl she knew of in this stupid place. She had only heard male orders, commands, and screams since hell had erupted around her.
Crista turned, crawling on her hands and bare knees—she should have worn jeans instead of one of her few good skirts—trying her best to get as far away from the mayhem and bloodshed as possible.
She knew not to come in here, she reminded herself. Remember that sick feeling? That panicked feeling? Hadn’t she learned years ago it meant bad things? Get the hell out of Dodge type things?
She had been feeling it more and more lately. And this was just another event in a long string of very odd events. Clothes that would go missing and then turn back up in her closet, freshly washed. The feeling of being watched and strangers who thought they knew her.
Hadn’t she told her brother last week that something was wrong? And speaking of screwy brothers, where the hell was hers? Damn it, Alex would have to disappear when she needed him most.
Military mission be damned. She didn’t need him across the world, unavailable; she needed him here, now, getting her ass out of trouble.
And she hadn’t told him good-bye when she talked to him.
Strange that she should remember that as she wedged herself into a dark, musty corner surrounded by crates and backed by a cement support beam.
She hadn’t told Alex good-bye when she talked to him last week. She had just hung up on him because he had said something totally idiotic.
Something along the lines of “Call Dawg.”
Oh yeah, right. She was going to do that.
He should have known better than to make such an insane suggestion. Where the hell had his mind gone in the past eight years? Had he forgotten how hard it had been for her to stay in Somerset that summer? Dawg had chased her with steady determination for months before the rest of her world had collapsed around her. Even though it was more than obvious that he hadn’t remembered that one stolen night she had spent in his bed, he had still chased after her with a tenacity that reminded her why they called him Dawg.
Because he never let up. He never gave up.
She flinched as a projectile tore through the side of the crate that she had hoped was thick enough to protect her. She stared at the hole it made coming out mere inches from her upraised knees and gagged.
It was nearly the size of her fist.
“Get down!”
She heard the male voice screaming from a distance as another bullet ricocheted against the cement beam, inches above her head.
She went down. All the way down. And fought to get through the small crack between the support beam and the heavy crate, wondering how the hell a bullet could penetrate it when she couldn’t even move it.
Clawing desperately at the side of the crate, she pressed, pushed, wedging herself into the minute amount of space and almost—almost managing to escape.
She screamed, terror racing through her, freezing her blood to ice as hard fingers grabbed her hair and pulled her back, jerking her back by the thick, dark strands and sending agonizing pain racing through her neck.
Her hands reached back, her nails clawing at the wrist behind her, fighting, struggling as she was dragged from the only means of escape in sight.
“Stupid whore! Where’s my f**king money? I teach you to betray me, puta!”
She was jerked around, staring back in horror at the dark eyes and pitted face of what she was certain had to be a demon.
Stringy black hair fell over his narrow brow, his flat cheekbones were ruddy with rage, his dark brown eyes lit almost red with fury. And he had a gun.
Crista watched in slow motion. She had heard that expression, events passing in slow motion, and hadn’t believed it until now.
Now she was watching it. Tearless. Breathless. Watching in slow motion as his arm raised. One hand pushed her against the cement support, the other was coming up. Up.