The Shaughnessey Accord Read Online Free PDF Page A

intimidated far greater than swagger. His temples throbbing, he simply inclined his head.
    His man sent the hostage to the floor with a blow from the butt of his gun. The two female customers screamed, whimpered, sobbed. Danh's man acted automatically, quieting them both with duct tape before taking up his position again.
    Ignoring the tic at the corner of his eye, Danh returned to his interrogation. Seconds later, a bullhorn outside sounded with a loud, "This is the police!"
    The tic grew impossible to ignore. Now Danh was facing the only contingency he'd never planned for.
    A standoff.

Four

    "What the hell was that?" Tripp jerked his head away from Glory's and toward the storeroom's locked door. He stepped back while she smoothed down her shirt, adjusted her skirt and her panties.
    Frowning, she followed the direction of his gaze. "It sounded like"—he pressed a silencing finger to his lips; she lowered her voice—"a police bullhorn."
    "Yeah. That's what I was thinking." He held out a halting hand. "Stay where you are."
    "Uh, okay," she said, agreeing like the good little girl who followed orders he obviously thought she was when what she really wanted to do was move the hell away from the one and only entrance into the room. "How long do you want me to stay?"
    He didn't answer. Instead, he backed his way across the concrete floor, his gaze trained on the door until he reached the corner and the built-in, fireproof safety cabinet holding her safe, her files, and her security system's equipment.
    She watched, mouth agape, as he twirled the dial on the cabinet's combination lock and opened the door. She was done standing still. "What the hell are you doing?"
    "Shit. Your camera's down."
    "What?" What the hell was going on here? "Look, Shaughnessey . You don't tell me how the hell you know my combination, not to mention where my monitor is . . ." She peered around his shoulder at the small television on top of the VCR recording the store camera's data.
    He was wrong. The camera wasn't down. She could see movement in one corner. The rest of the lens had been blacked out by spray paint judging by the speckles peppering the missed spot. "I'm calling the cops."
    "No," Tripp barked, but she'd already backed away and lifted the handset from the phone on the wall.
    "It's dead." She held it out, away from her ear, wondering if the second line in the shop was still working.
    Tripp nodded but kept his attention on the coaxial cable running into the back of the TV.
    She hung up the useless phone, told herself she was in good hands, that she could trust him, even while a tiny voice reminded her that she didn't know him well enough to jump to that conclusion.
    The things he was doing, the knife he'd pulled from his pocket, the fact that he was cutting into the cable . . .
    She crossed the room, grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the knife, the hand he'd used to make her come, and stared him in the eye. "You tell me what's going on and tell me now or so help me—"
    "What? So help you what? You'll run out the door into who knows what?" He pulled back the cable's black covering, shredded what looked like a coating of woven fabric around the core copper wire. "Stay put. That's all I'm asking."
    She didn't want to do anything he said, not when he'd suddenly clammed up. Not when everything he was doing was as underhanded and sneaky—if not downright illegal—as anything that would bring out cops with bullhorns.
    But staying put was what she ended up doing because she had no better idea. She looked on as Tripp twisted a short strip of the shredded fabric and tapped it against the copper. Three short taps, three long, three short.
    An obvious SOS.
    "Are you trying to signal the security company?" And why, with the police already outside? "I don't pay for twenty-four/seven monitoring. No one is going to hear that."
    "They're not supposed to hear it."
    Glory rubbed a hand to her tense forehead. This was getting worse by the second.