Half-Past Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

their throats as the car spun headfirst toward the guardrail.
    But Jack finally gained control. Slowing down to catch his breath, he had turned toward Mia with a that-was-close smile when the flashing red lights lit up his rearview mirror and the back of the car.
    “Tell me you didn’t have more than two glasses,” Mia said as she caught her breath.
    “God, that was close,” Jack said as he pulled over to the side of the two-lane overpass that spanned the rushing Byram River. “I’m perfectly fine, though I think I shaved five years off my life with that little maneuver.”
    The flashing roof light slowly passed them. It was atop a black Chevy Suburban, and it came to a stop just in front of them.
    Jack rolled down his window, the pouring rain instantly soaking his arm and the interior door of his car, stoking his mood. “This is bullshit.”
    “Shhh, let’s keep it in check,” Mia said as she smiled and rubbed his leg. “Take the ticket like a man, and we’ll be home in ten minutes. Then you can continue playing with my new necklace.”
    They both sat silently, staring straight ahead, the thump of the windshield wipers rhythmically droning as a man in a dark suit approached. Jack glanced at the blue necklace and Mia’s cleavage, motioning with his eyes.
    Mia, feeling exposed, buttoned up her sweater.
    Suddenly, to Jack’s shock, there was a gun in his face, the black steel barrel coming to rest inches from his left eye.
    “Hands on the wheel,” the man in the black suit said quietly. His blond hair was plastered with rain to his head. He looked at Mia, “And you, hands on the dash.”
    Mia slowly put her hands on the dashboard above the glove compartment and turned to her right to see a second man in black, skinny, with a sharp long nose, his gun aimed at her head.
    As if on cue, both doors were ripped open, and Jack and Mia were violently pulled from the car into the pouring rain. The skinny man thrust Mia against the car.
    “What the hell is going on?”
    “Quiet,” the skinny man snapped, his red hair already soaked in the storm.
    “You have no idea who you’re messing with,” Mia said through gritted teeth as the rain ran down her face. “You may want to open my purse and check my badge, because, I swear to God—”
    The man brought the gun to rest inches from her eye, silencing her. He was painfully thin, his neck and jaw almost skeletal. With the rain running down his face, over his unblinking eyes, he looked like something out of a nightmare.
    The blond man spun Jack around, kicking his legs out as he assumed the position of a perp. The man frisked him from stem to stern, pulling the blue box from Jack’s pocket. He opened it and spied the pearl choker. Without interest, he closed the box and threw it into the car. He grabbed Jack by the neck, punched him hard in the kidneys, and threw him to the rain-soaked pavement.
    The skinny assailant spun Mia around, running his hands up and down her torso, her legs, frisking her through her soaked sweaterand black gown, while a third man, linebacker-sized, in a black suit, popped the trunk of their Tahoe.
    The team of three operated with military efficiency, as if every move was planned, as if they had a singular goal to accomplish on a hair-trigger timeline.
    “Where is the case?” the skinny man demanded.
    Mia just stared at him.
    “Case seven-one-three-eight?” The thin man leaned in, his breath assaulting her senses.
    Mia looked at Jack and began to mouth something—
    “Got it,” the third man cried out as he hoisted a long black metal box from the rear of the Tahoe.
    As the skinny man looked through the teeming rain at his partner, Mia drove her knee into the man’s crotch, following it up with a hard elbow to the nose. But while her FBI training was thoroughly ingrained in her mind, it didn’t prevent the powerful blow the man countered with and unleashed into her jaw, driving her 125-pound body into the car as he rammed his pistol into