Sweet Seduction Shadow Read Online Free PDF

I needed to leave Auckland right now. I needed to get as far away as I possibly could from this person before me. I knew my liberty, my life , depended on it. The stakes had risen, the goal posts had shifted. Roan McLaren was closing in.
    "I won't go without a fight," I said and watched as the guy's face blanked momentarily. An impassive mask that was more chilling, than any fierce expression could have been. My hand wrapped around the can of mace in my bag. His eyes tracked the movement, but his body showed no other signs of preparedness. I wasn't fooled. "Tell him, if he wants me, he'll have to kill me first."
    There was an expression then. A shadow of unease fluttering across his face and then it was gone. The mask of impassivity back in its place. Gone was the good-Samaritan, in his place a battle-worn warrior who'd seen it all, done it all, and would do it all again when needed.
    "What are you runnin' from?" he asked softly, his voice almost drowned out by the diesel engine of the approaching bus. I held his gaze, noting the warm chocolate of before had become hard chips of granite now. I waited, timing my answer, willing my heart to slow, and the tremors in my body to still. I'd get one shot at this and one shot only.
    "He won't get me without a fight," I semi-repeated my statement of before. And just so Roan would get the message, I kneed the guy in the balls as the bus's door whooshed open at my back. Turning and dashing up the steps, slapping my bus pass down on the scanner and willing the bus driver to move with my eyes. He must have seen the panic, he'd certainly witnessed my attack. The doors closed, the bus shot forward and I stumbled to a seat down the back.
    I watched as my saviour rolled in a curled ball on the pavement beneath the bus stop sign, and although I knew I should have felt justifiable satisfaction at seeing one of Roan's men writhing on the ground in abject pain, I didn't. A lump had formed in my chest and blocked off all feeling from my mind. I stared numbly as the guy came up to a hunched crouch, his body protectively curved around his middle. His glossy eyes lifted to the rear window of the bus I was staring out of numbly.
    And he cocked his head, gave me a nod and smiled.
    Shit, shit, shit, shit. I abruptly sat down in the seat I'd been kneeling on and started to bite my thumbnail. This guy was good. Too good. He wouldn't give up after a small show of defiance on my part. If anything it would make him more determined to pin me down. I'd done it now. I'd shifted from that all important hiding-in-plain-sight my father had instilled in me, and come out of the shadows practically screaming "catch me if you can" at the top of my lungs.
    Panic, that all too familiar fiend, wrapped around my body and settled in my heart. I was living on borrowed time and the only thing that would save me now was to up anchor and haul arse out of town.
    I stared blindly out of the side window and contemplated my next destination. I hadn't decided where Chrystal would go, but Chrystal was now blown. The expensive, border ready papers, would have to be written off as a loss. A loss, after so many years of hiding, my purse strings could not easily cope with. I had a small amount of Dad's money left, a bit of my own, although the type of jobs I'd had barely covered living expenses, but still, maybe one more cheaper ID purchase. And the notion of crossing New Zealand's borders lost for good.
    I leaned my head back against the scratched vinyl of the bus seat and stared at the lights that tracked down the middle of the aisle in the ceiling. Far North or back down south, closer to Wellington and Roan McLaren? My heart told me to run as far away as I could, Cape Reinga if I could hitch a ride there. But what sort of forgery artist would live up North? My head told me I needed another city, where the chances of finding decent forged documents would be easier. I'd done the major centres, from Dunedin, through Christchurch, up to