Page 120 of Close Pursuit

Ian ducked around a corner and Alex urged Katie to go ahead of him. She disappeared from sight and he experienced a moment’s cold, hard panic. Once they got clear of this disaster, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight for a good long time.

He cleared the corner and saw Ian and Katie sprinting down a long hall. He took off after them and caught up just as Ian threw open the exit door at the end of the corridor.

They burst out into the cold and dark of night behind the casino. After the noise and bright lights behind them, the sensory deprivation of blackness and silence out here was disorienting.

Which was maybe why he didn’t seem them right away. Several men leaped out of the shadows at them and something hard and heavy slammed into the back of his head. The last thing Alex registered was an explosion of pain as his legs dropped out from under him and he went down like a rock.

22

Katie screamed as the men jumped out at them and her brother and Alex both dropped to the ground.

A tall, familiar figure stepped out of the shadows—Natasha Gudenov—casually pointing a pistol at her. “You’re not going to make me kill you, are you, Katie McCloud?”

“What’s happening?” Katie demanded frantically. “I don’t understand.”

“My associates desperately want to get their hands on you and that baby. Enough to order a…direct approach…to you.”

“That’s what you call this? Shooting up a casino and hurting or killing who knows how many innocent civilians?” Katie was suddenly so ragingly angry she could hardly speak. Must be the adrenaline surging through her.

“The Italians need to understand that times change. This isn’t their town anymore,” Natasha growled. “Side benefit of tonight’s attack.”

One of the men with Natasha muttered in accented English. “Time to go. No more talk.”

“Thank you, Kiril,” Natasha said smoothly. To Katie she said more roughly, “Over there. Now.” The woman waved her pistol toward a big, dark SUV.

Katie knew from her father never, ever to get into a car with an armed hostile. Better to get shot where you stood and take your chances with getting medical help than to be hauled away to somewhere isolated where there was no chance of help or rescue.

“No,” she said firmly.

Natasha sighed. “Gentlemen.”

Two huge thugs lifted Katie by her upper arms and bodily hauled her and Dawn to the SUV. She kicked and fought and yelled for all she was worth, but to no avail.

The men shoved her into the vehicle and she barely avoided landing on top of the baby. She glared as the men piled in beside her. They ignored her fists as she pummeled them fruitlessly.

Were Alex and Ian okay? She didn’t dare ask about them lest Natasha casually order them shot. Katie strained to see their bodies on the ground, to see if they were moving or showing any signs of being alive.

Please God, let them not be dead.

Panic ripped through her as the SUV pulled out of the parking lot to the sound of sirens—a lot of them—screaming down the strip toward the front side of the casino.

Her mind worked at hyper-speed. She hadn’t been killed in the parking lot. Natasha’s bosses wanted her alive for now. She wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, but she desperately needed to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Why am I so important to your bosses?” she asked Natasha who sat in the front passenger’s seat.

“Not you. The baby.”

“Dawn?” Katie asked blankly. “What’s so important about her?” Holy crap. Whowasher father, anyway? Dawn was still frantic and Katie hugged her close, shushing her and rocking her until she began to calm down.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” the Russian woman replied. “I just do what I’m told.”

“And that includes throwing a tiny, helpless, newborn under a bus?” Katie snapped.

“Exactly,” Natasha replied blandly. If anything, the bitch sounded faintly amused.

“Do you know who her father is, then?” Katie couldn’t resist asking.

She caught the faint frown that passed across the woman’s face as she glanced back at Katie. “I assumed it was Alexei.”

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