A Twist of Betrayal Read Online Free PDF

she heard someone call her name.
    “Justine!”
    The sound took her by surprise, and her abductor stopped and looked around, too. Then the voice registered, and Justine saw what might be her only chance to escape. She didn’t waste the precious time trying to figure out just how Dan came to find her.
    Justine took her only chance. “Dan!”
    An instant too late, the man with the beard clamped his dirty hand over her mouth. “That husband of yours is good. But then we both know that, don’t we?”
    “Justine!” Dan called again, his voice growing closer.
    The man holding her tried to pull her into the back of the van. But Justine fought him now with all her strength, kicking at him and pulling against him, knowing Dan was so close. She had no choice but to ignore his gun. She thought he was consumed in the fight and forgot about the gun in his hand, too. She didn’t know how Dan had found her, but all that was important just then was that he was coming to her rescue.
    She was suddenly terrified and relieved at the same time. Together, she and Dan could face this man. She didn’t have to do it alone.
    At the same time, Dan was stepping into danger. Dan might be from Chicago and an experienced police officer, but his experience for the past five years was small town—traffic accidents, small time vandals, an occasional breaking and entering, and drunk teenagers.
    Suddenly, her abductor pulled her in the opposite direction, away from the van. “I just wasn’t quite ready for him!” he growled in her ear.
    What? She wanted to ask, but she never got much of a chance. With one strong arm around her, he lifted her off the ground and kept her quiet with a hand pressed against her mouth. Despite her efforts to break loose of him, her kidnapper was twice her size and strength. But Justine never quit fighting him even though she worried he’d hit her with the gun again and knock her out cold. Then she wouldn’t be able to help Dan, wouldn’t be able to call out to him again if she got the chance, wouldn’t be able to warn him of the danger he was walking into.
    As if she weighed nothing, her kidnapper half carried, half dragged her into a nearby clump of trees where he forced her to her knees. “If you try anything—anything at all, I’ll give him a lot of pain. It’ll slow me down and make me change my plan, but I’ll do it. You decide. You’ve got about three seconds.”
    He held her in her place by grasping tightly to her hair with one hand and held his gun ready in the other as he looked in the direction of Dan’s latest call.
    “No!” Justine tried to fight against the powerful hand that kept her on her knees, but any movement merely sent new waves of pain through her already throbbing head. She no longer cared about the gun in his hand or the fact that it was mere inches from her. She only cared about Dan running into a trap where he had no chance. “Dan, he’s got a gun!” she called.
    Then as if he hadn’t heard her warning, Dan came into the nearby clearing, only a few feet away.

Chapter 4
    After Justine slammed the door and left for the supermarket, the house was as still as a tomb. Dan stood for a long time in a state of shock. Then he swore out loud and threw the grout-sodden rag he’d held in his hands across the room where it left a gray smudge on the newly painted white wall.
    The hell with it , he thought. In a matter of less than five minutes, his life had gone from heaven to…to…to something horrible. He muttered another curse before he stooped down to finish the grout job at his feet. He had no idea what else he should—or even could—do. Justine had just thrown a wrench into what he thought had been the works of their entire life together. It brought the truth before his eyes.
    He wished to hell he could look the other way.
    He couldn’t.
    Without thought, he finished the grout job before it began to dry into an unfixable mess at his feet.
    Justine’s parting words bit at him like