Deep Breath Read Online Free PDF Page A

easy, toast, and bacon?”
    “You got it.” She dropped the menu back into the bucket with the rest of the laminated sheets and turned to jot down the order for Phil. Reaching up, she clipped the ticket to the carousel, gave it a spin, and froze.
    Time froze, too, the aluminum wheel spinning and spinning, the green and white ticket flapping like a flag in the breeze. Phil stood with his hands raised shoulder level, facing a man who wore sunglasses and a light summer suit, was clean-cut with dark hair, and held a pistol-grip shotgun like the one Freddy showed her at the pawn shop when he bought his thirty-thirty for hunting season last year.
    Tracy squeaked. The man turned, the barrel of his gun swinging toward her. She screamed. The customer at the counter scrambled up and over, sending salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles flying, and tackled her to the ground.
    He lay half beneath her, his arm around her middle, his heart beating as hard as hers, her chest heaving harder. Water from his glass dribbled off the edge of the counter onto the floor, the sound making her need to pee even worse than her fear. She swore her chest was about to explode.
    What the hell was happening?
    The front door opened. She heard footsteps, followed by a loud, booming, “Sit. Don’t move.”
    She wanted to get up, to see what was going on. The man holding her wouldn’t let her go. He whispered a soft, “Shh,” waiting, his body tense, alert, still, then leaned forward to grab a steak knife from the utensil bucket beneath the counter and slipped it into his sleeve.
    The diner’s interior dimmed as the window blinds were closed. The front locks thunked into place, that noise followed by the screech of the door sign sliding from Open to Closed. “Everyone quiet. You don’t talk, you don’t get hurt.”
    Eyes squeezed shut, Tracy prayed, wanting to see her father, wanting even more to see Freddy and tell him so many things. She got to “Our Father who art in Heaven” before she and her rescuer were hauled to their feet.
    Her eyes flew open. The man who’d been holding the gun on Phil now held it on all three of them. At least until he figured she wasn’t much of a threat, and ordered Phil and the customer to cross the room and join the couple guarded by a second man with a darker suit and lighter hair.
    The third man who’d come in stood silently at the door, doing nothing but watching everything going on. The first man, the one nearest Tracy, reached beneath the counter for the tub of menus and shoved it into her hands. “Get over there. I want cell phones, car keys, wallets, pocket knives, nail clippers. Everything they’ve got on them. You, too. Pockets, purse. All of it in here.”
    She nodded, then stood there shaking, trying to make her feet move, afraid she was going to barf all over the menus Phil had paid a pretty penny to have laminated.
    Behind her, the man slammed shut the warped back door and locked it. The order window’s rolling cover came down next with a metallic bang. And when the side door leading to the hallway between the bathrooms and the kitchen thudded closed, she jumped.
    “Hurry it up,” he said, nudging her forward. She caught a sharp breath and shuddered, feeling like a traitor, unable to meet any of the other hostages’ eyes. Because that’s what they all were, wasn’t it? Hostages? Like on Law & Order or CSI or something?
    Her shoes felt like lead weights as she crossed the room, holding the tub while the second man, the one in the darker suit, first searched Phil, robbing him of his keys and wallet and the dog whistle his grandson, Sam, had made in Scouts. She watched all of his things land on top of the menus and wanted to cry.
    Phil squeezed into one of the booths as the crook patted down the man from the counter. She lifted her lashes and met his gaze, drawing a bit of strength from the way his brows came together over his dark green eyes and the way he gave a shake of his head as if