You Can Run... Read Online Free PDF

stiffened, glaring at him. “Don’t fight me about this,” he said in a steely voice. “If you haven’t noticed, you’re trembling all over. Even your lips are twitching. You’re more upset than you realize.”
    Diana made a sound she hoped conveyed supreme contempt for his appraisal, but secretly she felt grateful for the large, sturdy hand holding her arm as they began walking. Everything inside of her seemed to vibrate and her legs were shaky. She’d always been strong, emotionally and physically, which is why Great-uncle Simon had allowed her to accompany him on her first Egyptian expedition when she was only eighteen. Now, though, she felt weak and vulnerable, although she was doing her best to hide her unusual fragility.
    Diana kept her gaze on the ground, determined not to trip over anything, as Tyler Raines had predicted she would. She wanted to show him she was totally in control. But she wasn’t. She jerked to a stop as they neared the house and she heard wood cracking. A man screamed hoarsely before a crash came from inside the house, and Diana knew the floor had given way under one of the three firefighters who’d entered the building.
    A general shout of distress mounted into the night, men rushing to the front of the little house, not daring to step inside and put more weight on what was left of the living room floor. Two firefighters, looking unreal in the glare of powerful electric lamps, stood plastered against the wall. Both gazed into the basement and one shouted, “Davis, you all right?”
    Everyone seemed to hold their breath for at least ten long, silent seconds. “Davis! Are you all right?” the man yelled again.
    After a moment, a feeble, breathless voice floated from the depths of the house. “I’m alive. Landed on my side.” A pause, then a soft moan of pain. “Think I broke . . . couple of ribs.”
    “Don’t move. You might puncture a lung.” Pause. “Paramedics!”
    No one came and someone else called. Once. Twice. Then two men and a woman came around the side of the house pushing a gurney. A firefighter rushed to them and began bellowing as if they weren’t standing three feetaway from him. “One of our guys fell through the floor! He thinks he’s broken some ribs. You’ve gotta help him!”
    The female paramedic looked at the firefighter. “I’m afraid your man will have to wait a few minutes until the second emergency team arrives,” she said quietly, her young face immobile. “We found a woman in the backyard.”
    “Penny!” Diana broke away from Tyler and ran toward the gurney where a motionless figure lay. She reached the gurney and looked at the motionless form covered by a white sheet, only the head exposed. The sight hit Diana like a hammer blow. A paramedic had brushed back what was left of Penny’s short mahogany-brown hair to reveal her once lovely face, the left side of which now seemed to bubble with vicious, searing burns that stretched halfway across her forehead, destroying a cheek, annihilating her nose, obliterating the left eye.
    Diana stepped back in shuddering horror. She went cold and rigid, as if turned to stone. Finally, she whispered desolately, “My God, Penny.”
    The female paramedic looked at Diana with compassion. “She was lying in a little rubber pool with a couple of inches of water in it. The right side of her face was in the water, but her nose was exposed or she would have drowned.”
    “Penny?” Diana leaned toward the burned woman, saying uselessly, “Penny, it’s Diana.”
    “She’s unconscious, thank the saints,” the female paramedic said gently with a slight Irish accent. “She can’t hear you, ma’am. Don’t look at her any more than you have already. She wouldn’t want you to see her this way, and you won’t want to remember her this way, either.”
    “ ‘Remember her’ ” Diana asked vaguely, then louder, “She’s not dead, is she?”
    “No, but . . .” The woman trailed off and looked down at