Survival Instinct Read Online Free PDF Page A

time. She can pick up some things when she gets there.”
    Run, Karin, run. Surely they wouldn’t have her stamina. And they’d never find her once she hit the woods—
    Karin blinked down at her biceps, suddenly engulfed in the ex-boxer’s grip. Not so slow after all. And it hurt, dammit.
    Karin snarled—her own voice, her own words. “I said no! ” She tightened her fingers around the cultivator as she jerked against his grip, feinting toward the obvious target with her knee. He looked smug as he straightened his arm, pushing her out of reach and leaning forward a little to do it.
    Not so smug as she whipped the cultivator up and buried it into the side of his face. Oh God. Blood spurted from somewhere near his eye. As he screamed, high and thin and disbelieving, he wheeled away from her and jerked the cultivator out of her hand.
    In his eye. Into his cheek, into the side of his nose—
    Oh God.
    His buddy leaped to reclaim her, his fist raised for a blow—and then hesitated. Karin had only an instant to register the blur of white and red fur before Ellen’s dog— her dog now—launched himself at the man’s forearm.
    Not a trained attack dog, no. But a dog who knew how to do battle, who regularly brought her groundhog and possum, undeterred by his own battle scars. The man scrabbled away as the ex-boxer hit his knees, his hands over his face to pluck at the cultivator with horror, still screaming. “My eye! My fucking eye!”
    Somewhere inside her own horror, Karin realized the second man was hunting for a gun, hampered by the twist of his ugly sport coat as Dewey hung from his arm. She snatched the trowel from her back pocket and threw herself at him, slamming the dull blade viciously into his arm. It bounced right off the rock-hard muscle, but it must have hurt wickedly all the same because he roared and shook them both off. He took assessment of his partner and of Dewey crouched ready to spring again, his lips pulled back in a horrible snarl—and he pinned Karin with a furious gaze. Then he dragged his partner to his feet.
    The ease with which he did it sent fear spearing through Karin’s chest. He could have smashed her down and carried her one-handed to the car…and she’d gone for him. Oh God.
    He hauled the ex-boxer back to the car, shoved him into the passenger seat and threw himself behind the wheel, backing up with such angry haste that the wheels spit gravel the whole way.
    They’d be back. She might not know who Barret was or why the hell Ellen had been acquainted with him; she might not know any of the things Dave Hunter wished she did…but she knew these men would be back.
    Well. At least one of them would be back. The other…
    Karin looked down at her hands, found blood. And down at the cultivator, lying where the ex-boxer had dropped it…more blood. Back at her hands, to discover them shaking. Of course they’re shaking. She’d never attacked anyone before. A slap, a shove, some bluster to establish she wasn’t to be trifled with. Rumsey had wanted people’s money? Fine. She’d done what she had to, what she’d thought she had to. She’d even learned to enjoy being good at it, and to ride the jazz of a good scam coming together. She sure hadn’t hesitated to steal from Rumsey, to take her sister’s name, to lie her way through life while she decided what next.
    But she’d never hurt anyone before. Not truly. Not violently, with spattered blood and screams.
    She had to get her rifle and get it loaded. She had to double-check her escape stash in the trunk, make sure that she could run at any moment if she had to, even if she didn’t plan on it. This was her home, now—a life Ellen had given her, and which Karin didn’t intend to waste. Still, she’d be ready.
    But first she had to get this damned blood off her hands.
    She crouched on jellied knees, wiping her hands on the lawn. Scrubbing them. Dewey came to her, uncertain; he ducked his nose under her forearm and flipped up,