Sleepwalker by Karen Robards

the thought that they all probably had their safeties off, Mick’s skin crawled. Her heart, which was already pumping pretty fast, kicked it up another degree or so. The potential for disaster was terrifying, but dwelling on it did no good. Deliberately she closed her mind to the possibility that at any minute somebody’s trigger finger might twitch. Even so, she could almost feel a bullet ripping through her flesh.
    We’ve got to get out of here.
    We—as in her and the thief. The thought of what side of the fence she was now on was mind-boggling.
    “Stop right there!” Otis yelled. He was holding his gun so tightly that it quivered.
    “I’ll kill her,” the thief warned. Making a token show of reluctance while taking good care that she didn’t actually hamper him in any way, Mick stumbled backward in his grip while eyeing her would-be rescuers warily. Besides an accidental discharge, it was always possible that an individual idiot might take it into his head to try to shoot the thief to prevent an escape. Which, since she was plastered against him and had grave doubts that any of the contingent on duty tonight could put a bullet in an eighteen-wheeler parked inches away, could end badly for her. Plus, she had her own iron in the fire here. What she needed was for them to let him drag her away unhindered.
    “Otis, all you guys, don’t try anything!” she called to them with what she considered a truly artistic degree of shakiness in her voice. “You heard him: he’ll kill me.”
    “We can’t just let him take her.” Bobby Tobe sounded panicked. “The boss’ll be pissed.” Around Mick’s own age, he was thin and nervous. Even across the distance that separated them, she could see that his gun hand shook slightly, and she winced in response. Accidental shootings were just as deadly as on-purpose ones.
    “You need to let us go,” she called to them again, not even having tofake the conviction in her words. “If you don’t, if I get killed, the blame will be on you .”
    “Nice,” her captor approved in her ear, prompting Mick to longingly picture three different scenarios in which she decked him. But that, like many other things, was going to have to wait for later.
    His arm was once again locked beneath her chin as he pulled her backward with him, but he wasn’t choking her anymore, at least not on purpose. As long as she kept pace with him, as she took good care to do even while doing her best to appear reluctant, his grip allowed sufficient room for her to breathe.
    “Stop! I’ll shoot,” Otis bellowed, assuming firing stance as the thief dragged her within a few yards of the pool house, in the shadow of the tall shrubs that ringed it. The others immediately followed Otis’s lead.
    “You do, she dies,” the thief warned.
    Mick felt her gun shift from her side. A split second later she felt cold steel nuzzle her temple. Alarm shot up her spine. Her pulse rate instantly skyrocketed.
    “No!” she cried to the guys. “Stand down! I’m giving you an order.”
    The guns pointing at them wavered. Otis’s dipped; he looked uncertain. Because she was considered practically a member of the Marino family, and because she was a cop, her words carried weight, she knew.
    “You tell ’em, baby,” came the maddening voice in her ear.
    Later, she promised herself grimly. Even though she was 99.9 percent certain he wouldn’t shoot her, knowing that he had a gun pressed against her head was scary. She had no idea whether or not he was competent with a weapon, or what kind of nerve he possessed. If he should get jittery, the consequences could prove fatal. But she knew for a fact the safety was on, because she could see it from the corner of her eye, so how wrong could things go? Obviously very wrong, considering how her New Year’s Eve was already turning out, but she didn’t want to think about that.
    “Want to get the gun away from my head?” she growled.
    “What, am I scaring you now?”
    “As