Crazy Wild Read Online Free PDF Page A

north end of the building, and the two of them were going out of it—ASAP.
    “You've got the wrong kid, mister,” she said belligerently, trying to shrug him off.
    He wasn't having any of it. “I haven't got a kid at all, Ms. Starkova. So let's just keep a low profile until we're out of here.”
    “I don't know what you're talking about.” She started to struggle, trying to break away, but Creed just held on tighter and moved her along faster.
    Then she kicked him, got him right in his bad leg, and a little bit of his self-control snapped.
    Coming to a sudden, tight-jawed halt, he took big fistfuls of old coat and baggy sweater in his hands and hauled her up to meet his glare. Nothing but her tiptoes touched the floor.
    “Don't,” he repeated in his best I'll-eat-your-balls-for-breakfast voice. “Not if you want to get out of here alive.”
    It was a tone and an expression guaranteed to put the fear of God in whoever was on the receiving end of it—except, it seemed, Dominika Starkova.
    Rather than quail and capitulate, she wasn't even looking at him. Her gaze had slid over his shoulder.
    “Oh, God,”
she whispered.
    It was the only clue he needed. He whipped his head around, saw what she saw, and wondered how in the hell the flat-faced hired gun on the west side of the hall had beaten them to the service entrance. It didn't make sense, but there he was, still looking every inch the gorilla, guarding their escape route.
    “Ernst Braun,” she continued under her breath. “Or maybe it's Edmund. I . . . I can never tell them apart.”
    Oh, shit, was more like it. “Twins?” he asked, realizing it meant there were four bad guys in the building, not just three.
    “Identical,” she said, her attention coming back to him, and for a second, as their gazes met, it occurred to him that her eyes were like a forest, a dark, richly verdant, mysterious forest, the mossy green centers flecked with the gray of mountain granite and streaked with the colors of the earth and sky.
    Sweet Jesus.
    “I can't believe he's here,” she said, and his momentary lapse came to a halt, leaving him even more unnerved—as if he needed that.
    Well, hell. There was another option, and without a word, he turned her around and headed back down the stacks, toward the far east side of the building, to the stairs. From the stairwell, it was possible to get out onto the roof, and from the roof . . . well, it was a helluva drop from the roof.
    But he'd think of something before it got to that. He always thought of something. At least he'd always thought of something up until the Colombian mission had gone bad.
    There hadn't been just one guy waiting for him and J.T. on that godforsaken jungle trail. They'd been ambushed and captured by a platoon's worth of NRF narco-guerillas, and he hadn't been able to think of anything, not once J.T. had started screaming.
    Nothing.
    There had been nothing but horror and pain—black pain, terrifying, blind horror, and a failure he would never be able to face.
    Never.
    He squeezed his free hand into a fist to stop its sudden trembling, and tightened his hold on the woman.
Damn
. He'd known he wasn't ready for this, ready to save anyone, let alone a woman who'd sold her soul for money and endangered everything he believed in—not when he hadn't been able to save J.T.
    It wasn't far to the stairwell from the service entrance, but only single-minded determination got him there—for all the good it did him.
    Jerking her back behind him, he swore under his breath, then glanced back around the corner to the stairwell door. Gorilla number one from the main hall had moved to cover the last base.
    “Edmund,” she whispered, looking around him.
    Edmund and Ernst—one of them had to go if he and the woman were going to get out of the library.
    A voice raised in anger with a German accent came from the direction of the service entrance, suddenly making it the least effective line of escape. Fine. Edmund's number had