Dangerous Liaisons Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jesse.
    “Get out!” she shouted, desperately searching the darkness.
    She strained to hear panting or the muted sounds of a scuffle, but only heard the echo of cowboy boots on asphalt. Thug number one lay moaning with a broken leg, number three and Toothless were still out cold. Number Two, the man she had driven into the pavement, had vanished, leaving a blood puddle.
    “You want to die here?” Jesse snapped as the cowboy neared.
    The hair rose on the back of her neck. She whirled left, but a streaking shadow cut her off from the cowboy. She lunged, but was too far away to reach the thug before the cowboy swung, landing a punch to his attacker’s ribs. Jesse spun even as she felt the disturbance of air behind her. A foot whooshed a hair’s breadth past her face. She pivoted, kicking high, and caught Number Two’s bloody face across the temple. She swung full circle, and landed facing him. A side-thrust-kick to his chest sent him crashing onto his back. The girl shrieked and the cowboy sprinted toward the sound.
    “Stop!” Jesse bolted after him.
    Idiot. She should leave him to his stupidity.
    He halted. She skidded to a halt twenty feet away. No one but the cowboy stood at the dead end. She turned. The lit street at the far end of the alley might as well have been California.
    The cowboy turned and advanced. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
    Jesse kept her attention on the dense shadows along the walls.
    He stopped beside her. “Who are you?”
    “Shut up!” she hissed, and crept forward. “ Come out, come out, wherever you are ,” she sing-songed. Jesse whirled and knocked a hand from her shoulder before the grip had time to close. “Look, Tex, do us both a favor and shut up. Do that and you might live—” She halted at the unmistakable sound of a gun’s hammer being pulled back.
     

Chapter Eight
    “Get down!” Jesse snaked a foot around the cowboy’s ankle and yanked. He struck the pavement like the Jolly Green Giant.
    “What the—” he began as she dropped to a squat beside him.
    He tried to get up, but she seized his shoulder and bent toward his ear, catching a whiff of Drakar as she whispered, “There are two left. One has a gun. Don’t move.”
    He tensed under her hold. “A gun? Why didn’t they use it before?”
    How to explain? It’s likely they’ve been instructed to take me alive, so the head of one of the most secret government organizations in the U.S. can torture me for information that will incriminate him?
    “Who knows?” she replied, wondering what he would think if he knew he was their target. No witnesses would be Lanton’s order, which meant, of course, any unfortunate passers-by.
    What do you think of fate, Cowboy?
    She waited through a minute of silence.
    “Maybe they left,” he whispered.
    “I didn’t hear them leave.”
    “Surely they won’t kill us,” he said.
    Jesse snorted. “Right. Stay here.” She started to push up, but he grabbed her arm.
    “Where are you going?” he demanded.
    She grasped his hand and disengaged his hold. “Look, Tex—”
    “Cole,” he corrected.
    “What?”
    “The name is Cole.”
    “All right, Cole . Keep cool. I’m going to try to flush them out.”
    She rose and listened. A man moaned somewhere near the street-end of the alley. Jesse crept to the building on her right. Hugging the brick, she took one careful step toward the street before the sound of another trigger being pulled back caused her to freeze. A CO2 air-gun spit. She dropped to the ground as a tranquilizer dart snagged her upper arm before it struck the wall and bounced off.
    “What the hell?” Cole exclaimed.
    Jesse grabbed her arm and felt slick wetness trickling toward her elbow. “Damn.” Depending upon the drug contained in the dart, she could pass out in a second, or in an hour. Cole shifted, and she realized he was rising. “Stay down!” she ordered, and crawled to him. Her left palm came down on tiny pieces of glass. She bit back a