Beauty & the Beast Read Online Free PDF

again. There was pained desperation in his dark eyes. It looked like he was crying. The sight made her heart clench. Then familiar tender feelings welled up. Was he really sorry for what he’d done, how he had treated her? Did he want to make it up to her? Did he love her after all?
    “Ravi, calm down,” she said to him through the door. “I’m going to open it but I’m keeping it on the chain. You’re scaring me.”
    When she turned the knob he pushed hard, making the door rush inward and the chain snap taut with a thunk .
    “Heather, you’ve got to let me in.” He pressed his face in the gap, his eyes pleading, his cheeks streaked with tears. He had been crying. Over her. “They almost caught me.”
    Not crying over her?
    He sounded crazed and that scared her even more.
    “Who? Ravi, what are you talking about?”
    “I think they’re in the…” He snapped his gaze to the right. “Oh, no…”
    A hand appeared above his head and thick, stubby fingers gripped his topknot. Each finger had a blue-dark tattoo above the first knuckle. Ravi’s eyes squeezed shut as the hand wedged his forehead, cheeks, and chin back into the narrow gap between the door and its frame.
    “Open door,” said a man’s voice from the hall. He sounded like a Russian bad guy in a cartoon.
    Heather couldn’t move.
    Ravi’s head jerked a couple inches to the side and she saw the muzzle of a pistol pressed against his temple.
    “Open door or I blow his brains out now.”
    She couldn’t close the door—Ravi’s face was blocking it, as was the toe of a shoe that was definitely not his. Ravi was a narrow Italian loafer kind of guy; the shoe in the door was a steel-toed boot.
    She tried to unfasten the chain. It was impossible with the door ajar.
    “I can’t!” she cried. “Oh, my God, what do you want? Are you robbing us? I’ll give you my purse!”
    Get Cat , she thought, but Cat was gone. Call the police. But her cell phone was on the breakfast bar.
    “One,” the man said. “Two…”
    “Wait, wait. I can’t get the chain loose unless you move back,” she said.
    “No tricks,” the man said. “I kill him then I kill you. Through door.”
    Where are Cat’s neighbors? she thought. If she screamed—
    If I scream, they’ll shoot Ravi.
    It was more of a stumble than a decision when she stepped backwards, almost landing on her ass in the laundry basket. The chain went slack as Ravi and the boot were withdrawn.
    For a fraction of a second Heather considered throwing her body against the door, but she wasn’t sure she could actually close it with the counterweight of two bodies on the other side. So she whirled and raced for her cell phone. She got just three steps before she heard the chain splinter off the jamb and the door slam back against the wall behind her.
    “You stop!” said the voice. “You stop now.”
    She turned. A thickset man in a dark blue windbreaker and jeans bull-rushed Ravi into the apartment. He had a very tight crew cut, sandy brown hair almost shaved to the skin. Though he was shorter than Ravi, he easily controlled him with one hand in his hair and the other holding the pistol jammed against the side of his head. Eyes huge, Ravi was silently pleading with her. To do what?
    As Heather staggered in reverse on weak knees, a third person entered the apartment. A blonde woman, late twenties. Tall, slender, dressed in fashion-forward black leather pants and a form-fitting black jacket, with a cross-body sleek metallic-gray messenger bag and heeled boots. Her blood-red nails and perfect manicure looked jarringly out of place wrapped around the grips of the ugly black handgun. The woman closed the door and locked it.
    “What-what do you want?” Heather’s words came out in a shrill prepubescent squeak.
    “What is belong to us,” the man said, shoving Ravi forward past her, forcing him to his knees in front of the sofa.
    The woman waved the muzzle of her gun in Heather’s face and then pointed it at a