Blindsided by Katy Lee Page A

different in his eyes that she was not used to seeing.
    Anger.
    Usually people’s eyes widened and they looked away to some sudden interesting occurrence off in the distance. A child might stare and snicker or point and ask what happened, but adults never did. But they also never turned eyes so boiling on her that her skin could melt again.
    “Kill her.”
    The words spilled from his lips in smooth clarity but bounced off her ears as her mind rejected the command as real.
    Then the man who held her arms down before wrapped an arm around her throat.
    Roni reached for his tightening forearm, knowing she couldn’t stop the quick death coming her way. She closed her eyes, but suddenly the arm fell away lifeless in her hand. She had no time to understand why, but a quick turn of her head showed Ethan dropping the unconscious man to the floor.
    He jerked his head to his left, and she took that as her cue to run for it, but a lift of his boot caught her attention. He reached for something and a tear of fabric could be heard.
    The next second he dropped some plastic disk to the floor and stomped on it. She looked back over her shoulder and he shoved her to his right. “Run!” he shouted as he jumped up on the table to dive at the Boss who suddenly had a gun aimed at her. Roni fell to the ground. Her scarf lay in front of her, forgotten in the commotion of fists against flesh above her and around her. She grabbed the silk and pushed to her knees, her head peeking up above the line of the tabletop.
    Above her plate of forgotten food and napkin, she saw Ethan had kicked the other guard in his dash across the table. The man now roused and gained his feet. He rushed at the back of Ethan, who fought the Boss and Guerra at the same time.
    Three against one. He’d never make it out alive, which meant neither would she. Roni reached for one of the tureens of food and aimed it at the guard’s head. It found its target and bounced off, eggs flying one way while his body went the other.
    The eggs reminded her of her own uneaten ones—and of the object under them.
    Roni reached for her napkin, scooping up the object in it. With no time to look, she fled for the kitchen door. It was time to get Maddie.
    The door swung in on an empty kitchen. Maddie was nowhere in sight.
    “The FBI is storming in right now.” Ethan’s voice halted her search. One look back and she saw Guerra and the Boss had him cornered. But his threat lingered among them all.
    “You’re a snitch?” Guerra growled.
    “A federal agent, and you’re both under arrest. This whole operation is going down today.”
    Ethan Gunn was a federal agent? The idea smacked Roni speechless. He wasn’t a criminal?
    “I should have known,” the Boss said.
    Guerra leaped at Ethan. “You’re dead!”
    Roni ran at Guerra’s flying back without hesitation. Some unexplained decision in her mind pushed her across the room to help Ethan. With the full force of her body, she slammed into Guerra, sending him off his course. She dropped her napkin and scarf in the impact and landed hard on the floor in a skid across the tiles, the wind knocked from her lungs.
    Her body jolted in pain, but her ears heard more than bones smacking stone tiles. They heard the tinkling of whatever was in the napkin.
    Something black and silver skidded across the floor, stopping ten feet away.
    A key fob.
    And if she wasn’t mistaken, the unique black crystal told her it belonged to a very special car. Maddie, Roni realized, had given her wheels out of here. And she couldn’t have picked a better set.
    On her knees, Roni raced across the floor and made a dive for the key—only to be stopped by the heavy stomp of the Boss’s Italian leather loafers. But if he blocked her path, then what happened to Ethan?
    * * *
    Ethan plowed his fist into Franco Guerra’s face. The punch felt liberating. He’d waited a whole year for such an occasion. Cuffing him would take the prize, though. And as soon as Pace got in